The World Tribune

Betrayal
Betrayal:
How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security
By Bill Gertz

Support World Tribune.com. Purchase "Betrayal" online at a discount.

Excerpts from the new book, "Betrayal:
How the Clinton administration undermined American security"
By Bill Gertz


  • Ignoring alarms
  • From Russia with technology
  • Undermining Scott Ritter
  • Flashpoint in North Korea

  • Flashpoint in North Korea

    Last of four excerpts from a new book, "Betrayal:
    How the Clinton administration undermined American security"

    By Bill Gertz

    Wednesday, May 12, 1999

    Top-secret satellite photographs taken in the spring of 1997 showed fifteen thousand workers building the underground facility in Kumchangni, an area some twenty-five miles northeast of Yongbyon--the original North Korean nuclear facility whose construction was supposed to have been frozen by the 1994 agreement. The intelligence photographs revealed that a three thousand-volt, high-tension electronic wire had been constructed around an artificial lake and an artificial island, according to officials who have seen them. Military forces were deployed in the surrounding regions to provide security. There was no other conclusion the analysts could reach: North Korea was building a new secret facility for a graphite-moderated reactor - an excellent source for producing plutonium. Since the United States, Japan, and South Korea had already agreed to provide North Korea with two other reactors that were not graphite-controlled, the only real use of the new facility was for nuclear weapons. The North Koreans could build the two “light-water” reactors for electrical power generation, but still use the facility at Kumchangni to transform the “communist hermit kingdom” into a regional and even global nuclear power.

    The final assessment among the intelligence analysts: The North Korean facility at Kumchangni, approximately 400,000 cubic meters in size, was likely being built to house a 200-megawatt graphite-moderated reactor - possibly the same Yongbyon reactor.

    The North Koreans realized their communist system, based on the ideology of “juche” or self-reliance, had failed. But they also knew that nuclear weapons and long-range missiles would put North Korea on a par with the world’s superpowers. In December 1998 the Korean Central News Agency, the government’s official organ, warned the United States that more missile launches, like the test firing of North Korea’s first long-range Taepo Dong missile in August 1997, could be expected. The agency noted that it was “foolish” for the United States to expect any change in North Korean government attitudes. After the United States warned North Korea not to undertake further “destabilizing” missile tests, the North Koreans blustered: “We will never be frightened by the U.S. warning. The U.S. still knows little about the DPRK.” On that point they were right.

    One failure of understanding was the Clinton administration’s assumption that the North Koreans could be bribed to comply with the freeze. The administration had offered to help replace North Korea’s graphite reactors with two light-water reactors, which the White House considered more “proliferation-resistant” – less likely to be used in building nuclear bombs, more focused on producing nuclear energy for electrical power that would help the North Korean economy. The deal, worth $4.6 billion, included a promise from South Korea to pay 70 percent of the costs of dismantling the graphite reactors, or about $3.2 billion, while Japan agreed to provide $1 billion. As part of the arrangement, North Korea would also receive 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil as a form of compensation to make up for the electrical power temporarily lost from agreeing to switch reactors.

    Yet from the start, there were concerns in Congress that the fuel oil would be diverted from civilian use in order to help North Korea’s one million-man armed forces. In fact, in late 1998, according to one government official, the State Department had evidence that ten thousand metric tons of the imported fuel oil had been diverted to China, probably as part of a barter arrangement between the communist countries.

    Moreover, it was clear from the beginning of the Clinton administration that the North Koreans had no intention of limiting its nuclear program to producing electrical power. In February 1993 North Korean technicians at Yongbyon, north of the capital of Pyongyang, reprocessed spent fuel from a nuclear reactor to create plutonium out of the fuel rods used in the reactor. The North Koreans claimed they produced only one hundred grams of plutonium, but it became obvious to nuclear experts working for International Atomic Energy Agency Director Hans Blix that the North Koreans had at least the eight kilograms necessary for one nuclear warhead, and probably had more. It seemed that the agency could do little about North Korea’s plutonium. Blix reported in 1994 that the North Koreans raised major suspicions about their sincerity during inspections carried out in March and May of 1994. At Yongbyon inspectors spotted a second reprocessing facility in an advanced state of construction that had never been inspected, and the North Koreans refused to let the inspectors into the second site. The two reactors are part of seven sites under international inspection that became the focus of a crisis in mid-1994, a crisis in which Clinton blinked.

    Bill Gertz is national security correspondent for The Washington Times and the author of a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton administration undermined American security from which the above is excerpted.

    Wednesday, May 12, 1999


    Contact World Tribune.com at world@worldtribune.com

    Return to The World Tribune front page