U.S. admits doubts on Korea arms 3 Edition

• Published in: International herald tribune
• Main Author: David E. Sanger and William J. Broad
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Paris New York Times Company 02.03.2007
• Edition: International edition
• Subjects: Broad, William J; Sanger, David E; WASHINGTON
• ISSN: 0294-8052

The public revelation of the intelligence agencies' doubts, which have been brewing for some time, came almost by happenstance. In a little-noticed exchange on Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Joseph DeTrani, a longtime intelligence official, told Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island that "we still have confidence that the program is in existence - at the mid-confidence level." Under the intelligence agencies' own definitions, that level "means the information is interpreted in various ways, we have alternative views" or it is not fully corroborated. "The administration appears to have made a very costly decision that has resulted in a fourfold increase in the nuclear weapons of North Korea," Reed said in an interview on Wednesday. "If that was based in part on mixing up North Korea's ambitions with their accomplishments, it's important." The assessment, read by two senior intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity in a joint interview, said the intelligence community still had "high confidence that North Korea has pursued a uranium enrichment capability, which we assess is for a weapon." It added, they said, that all the government's intelligence agencies "judge - most with moderate confidence - that this effort continues. The degree of progress towards producing enriched uranium remains unknown, however." Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, declined to discuss the decisions they made or the quality of the intelligence, though in the past they have both noted that North Korea purchased equipment from Pakistan that could only have been intended for use in producing weapons fuel. One former official said that it was Rice, in a meeting at the CIA in 2004, who encouraged intelligence officials to soften their assessments of how quickly the North Koreans could produce weapons-usable uranium.