Former CIA chief: U.S. was wrong on Iran, N. Korea

MOSCOW -- A former U.S. intelligence chief says the CIA committed serious flaws in its assessment on the missile capability of Iran and North Korea.

Speaking last week at a news conference in Moscow, James Woolsey said the 1995 assessment that played down the missile threat to the United States only took into account the indigenous capabilities of Iran and North Korea. He urged that Moscow and Washington amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for anti-missile defense in both countries.

"We decided that that assumption was fundamentally wrong," said Woolsey, accompanied by several members of Congress. "The thread of technology related to ballistic missiles occurs in many ways from country to country. It occurs because of perfectly legal international commerce in such matters as space-launched vehicles and high-speed computers, and for the decontrolling of much of that technology that United States has been heavily responsible."

Woolsey said Iran has also benefited from the transfer of missile technology. He said Iran and North Korea could speed up development of their missile programs by ignoring safety standards observed in the United States.

North Korea, he said, has deployed the No-Dong intermediate-range ballistic missile, able to fly over Japan, after only one test. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would ever have made a deployment decision for such a missile.

Woolsey said North Korea was able to hide its missile development program by working underground, out of sight of spy satellites.

Last summer, a commission headed by former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Iran or North Korea would be able to produce an intercontinental missile capable of striking the United States within five years. Iraq, the commission said, would be able to achieve this within 10 years.

Woolsey said that today the nine members of the commission have revised their assessment. They said Iran, Iraq and North Korea could complete development in a shorter period of time.

"Even more troubling, we assessed that the United States may not know when such a program began in, say, Iran or North Korea," Woolsey said, "so the warning time could be considerably less than five years in those cases."