North Korea's recent disclosure of a new uranium enrichment facility with a light water reactor and centrifuge cascade is seen as a serious U.S. intelligence and policy failure that goes back over a decade. State Department and U.S. intelligence officials were fooled by repeated denials from Pyongyang that it was pursuing a uranium enrichment program and as late as 2008 gave up all efforts to try and have the North Koreans give up the covert program, favoring instead a negotiated settlement of the plutonium based nuclear weapons programs.

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