I feel like I've said this a thousand times now, but every time I think my opinion of this administration cannot possibly sink any lower, some new story comes out that demonstrates some new form of incompetence that forces me to reconsider. Even with that said, this new story really is shocking.
Back in the fall of 2002, the Bush administration made a startling claim about North Korea's nuclear ambitions. In addition to the plutonium enrichment program that the world already knew about - a program that had been frozen under a UN inspection regime agreed to during the Clinton years - the administration claimed the North Koreans were also secretly pursuing a parallel uranium enrichment program. If ever there was confirmation that N. Korea belonged in the Axis of Evil, this was it.
Moving quickly, the administration declared the previous framework null and void, ordering an immediate end to US energy shipments to the country. North Korea responded with equal speed, throwing out UN weapons inspectors, restarting their plutonium program, and eventually, producing and testing several nuclear bombs.
Only one problem. It turns out that the uranium claim was false. Today's NYT has the details:
Last October, the North Koreans tested their first nuclear device, the fruition of decades of work to make a weapon out of plutonium.
For nearly five years, though, the Bush administration, based on intelligence estimates, has accused North Korea of also pursuing a secret, parallel path to a bomb, using enriched uranium. That accusation, first leveled in the fall of 2002, resulted in the rupture of an already tense relationship: The United States cut off oil supplies, and the North Koreans responded by throwing out international inspectors, building up their plutonium arsenal and, ultimately, producing that first plutonium bomb.But now, American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.
“The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.
The disclosure underscores broader questions about the ability of intelligence agencies to discern the precise status of foreign weapons programs. The original assessment about North Korea came during the same period that the administration was building its case about Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs, which turned out to be based on flawed intelligence. And the new North Korea assessment comes amid debate over intelligence about Iran’s weapons.
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 at 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,” Senator 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.”
Two administration officials, who declined to be identified, suggested that if the administration harbored the same doubts in 2002 that it harbored now, the negotiating strategy for dealing with North Korea might have been different — and the tit-for-tat actions that led to October’s nuclear test could, conceivably, have been avoided.
Let's be very clear about this. The incompetence of this administration set in motion a series of events that led directly to development of a North Korean nuclear bomb. Before this mistake, North Korea had nuclear ambitions and a frozen nuclear program. After this mistake, they developed and tested nuclear weaponry. The administration labeled North Korea part of the Axis of Evil, and then their incompetence allowed the very same people to acquire nuclear weapons.
But why are we learning this now, you might ask? More NYT:
It is unclear why the new assessment is being disclosed now. But some officials suggested that the timing could be linked to North Korea’s recent agreement to reopen its doors to international arms inspectors. As a result, these officials have said, the intelligence agencies are facing the possibility that their assessments will once again be compared to what is actually found on the ground. “This may be preventative,” one American diplomat said.
Anyone want to place bets on the likelihood that inspectors won't find any evidence of a uranium program? After all, there's no point in playing this sort of CYA if you aren't concerned that you are about to be made to look the fool.
And in what might be one of the greatest ironies of the entire thing, just as it once did in Iraq, their miscalculations and misinterpretations once again hinge on aluminum tubes.
His report zeroed in on thousands of aluminum tubes that the North Koreans bought and tried to buy in the early 2000s. The C.I.A. and the Bush administration, the report said, pointed to these tubes as the “smoking gun” for construction of a large-scale North Korean plant for the enriching of uranium. It was assessments about the purpose of aluminum tubes that were at the center of the flawed Iraq intelligence.
In the North Korea case, intelligence analysts saw the tubes as ideal for centrifuges. But Mr. Albright said the relatively weak aluminum tubes were suitable only for stationary outer casings — not central rotors, which have to be very strong to keep from flying apart while spinning at tremendous speeds.Moreover, he added, the aluminum tubes were “very easy to get and not controlled” by global export authorities because of their potentially harmless nature. So that purchase, by itself, Mr. Albright added, was “not an indicator” of clandestine use for nuclear arms.
Rather than investigate and negotiate, the Bush administration chose to play tough. Clinton's agreement, conservatives loved to claim at the time, was a disastrous failure that, if left in place, would virtually guarantee that North Korea went nuclear. But then....
Last but not least, I really do need to address the quote I chose for the title of this post. Let me re-quote the section of the article I took it from:
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 at 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.
Mid-confidence means that the information can be interpreted multiple ways. In this case, on possible interpretation is that the N. Koreans do have a uranium program. Another interpretation, however, is that they do not. If this is what mid-confidence looks like, what does no confidence look like?
UPDATE: Given the level of coverage this story received across the progressive blogosphere, I thought it might be helpful to provide links to what I think is some of the best analysis.
First off, get historical. Back in 2004, Washington Monthly ran a piece that essentially predicted all of this would come to pass.
Josh Marshall, as always, summarizes the issue at hand better than most. An excerpt:
We don't need to get into the details of the agreement at the moment. The relevant point is that from 1994 to 2002 the North Korean nuclear weapons program was frozen in place. The strong consensus judgment was that they had not yet made any nuclear weapons. And during that period they could not access the plutonium they had already produced.
It was on the basis of this alleged uranium enrichment program -- which may well not even have existed -- that the US pulled out of that agreement. This allowed the North Koreans to get back into the plutonium business with a gusto. And they have since produced -- by most estimates -- at least a hand full of nuclear weapons, one of which, albeit a rather feeble one, they detonated last October.So now let's review that quote from the senior administration official: "The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently."
Frankly, it's not much of a question.
Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House the White House got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons -- not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing.
It's a screw-up that staggers the mind.
Last but not least, Hilzoy gets to the question of motive.
You might ask: why would North Korea admit to having a uranium program if it didn't actually have one? In this case, there's an obvious answer. Namely: North Korea has a long history of trying to get our attention. In any previous administration, this would have gotten it. (Bear in mind that the Clinton administration nearly went to war with North Korea for things that the G. W. Bush administration has barely reacted to at all.) Claiming that they had a uranium enrichment program when they didn't would be completely in character. (So would trying to develop one. I'm not trying to say that this is evidence that they did not have such a program; just that if they didn't have one, it would not be out of character for them to pretend that they did.)
This is yet another feature of the Bush-era approach to foreign policy that has always baffled me. Diplomacy is in large part the art of public posturing. Foreign leaders and officials, therefore, often say things which are not entirely true but which are designed nevertheless to advance one or more of their particular goals. Shading the truth is, in short, part of diplomacy. Nevertheless, under Bush, we have acted as if we must always take everything anyone says at face value. This episode perfectly illustrates the enormous danger of that approach.
Like Saddam before them, the North Koreans have an enormous incentive to lie about their nuclear program. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that other nations (most notably the United States) want to attack and invade their country. Although a conventional deterrent is good, in such a situation a nuclear one is clearly better. Add to that the fact that the world believes North Korea to be a regime crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, and you can start to see why they might be inclined to lie about such things.
Think about this in terms of your own life. When you know that someone has both a history of lying and an incentive to continue doing so, does it make much sense to act as if everything they say to you is the truth? Clearly, it does not. Unless, I suppose, your last name is Bush or Cheney.
God help us.
UPDATE II: I knew "mid confidence" reminded me of something. From the Watergate tapes, one of the classic phrases of the era:
PRESIDENT: You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the--let it hang out, so to speak?DEAN: Well, it's, it isn't really that--
HALDEMAN: It's a limited hang out.
DEAN: It's a limited hang out.
EHRLICHMAN: It's a modified limited hang out.
PRESIDENT: Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or privately.
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