...and the hits just keep on coming

Annals of National Security

The Cold Test
by Seymour M. Hersh

What the Administration knew about Pakistan and the North Korean nuclear program.

Issue of 2003-01-27
Posted 2003-01-20

Last June, four months before the current crisis over North Korea became public, the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a comprehensive analysis of North Korea's nuclear ambitions to President Bush and his top advisers. The document, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, was classified as Top Secret S.C.I. (for "sensitive compartmented information"), and its distribution within the government was tightly restricted. The C.I.A. report made the case that North Korea had been violating international law—and agreements with South Korea and the United States—by secretly obtaining the means to produce weapons-grade uranium.

The document's most politically sensitive information, however, was about Pakistan. Since 1997, the C.I.A. said, Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information, and weapons-testing data with the Pyongyang regime. Pakistan, one of the Bush Administration's important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb.

It was bad enough when I believed that the government had known about North Korea's nuclear ambitions 12 days before letting Congress or the public know about it.  Now, we find, they not only knew about it 4 months before making the information public, but that they also have known that Pakistan, our supposed great ally, has been helping them along. 

Think about what that means for a moment.  We are planning to go to war against Iraq because they may be trying to develop nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons, and because they may have connections to al-Qaeda, but so far there is no substansive proof of either contention.  We do, however, have evidence that Pakistan has been helping North Korea - one of the "axis of evil" nations - with developing their own nuclear weapons.  Rather than threatening war against an acknowledged enemy country, and rather than pressuring Pakistan to stop helping North Korea, however, we are trying for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis and we're supporting the Pakistani government and continuing to work with them on the so-called "War Against Terror".

In what world does this make any sense?