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Trung
A Pentagon spy agency concluded for the first time that North Korea
likely has the ability to launch nuclear-armed missiles, illustrating
the high stakes surrounding the escalating tensions on the Korean
peninsula.
But a Defense Department spokesman later on Thursday cast doubt on
whether Pyongyang is fully capable of firing nuclear missiles, as a
study dated last month by the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency
suggested.
The secret assessment — which was mistakenly marked as unclassified
and partially revealed at a congressional hearing — said the agency had
“moderate confidence” that North Korea is able to launch nuclear-armed
ballistic missiles. But it said the weapons would probably be
unreliable.
The evaluation was made public by Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn as he
questioned senior Pentagon officials about North Korea’s nuclear weapons
program during a hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services
Committee.
“[The Defense Intelligence Agency] assesses with moderate confidence
the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic
missiles. However, the reliability will be low,” Lamborn said, quoting
from a DIA report titled “Dynamic Threat Assessment 8099: North Korea
Nuclear Weapons Program (March 2013).”
Effectively confirming the assessment, a government official said
Lamborn had done nothing wrong in releasing the statement, but declined
further comment on the study. He said the quotation cited by Lamborn was
in a section of the study that had been erroneously marked
unclassified.
Lamborn did not say what range the nuclear-capable North Korean missiles might have.
Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons analyst at the Federation of American
Scientists, said one analyst recently claimed a nuclear warhead
capability for North Korea’s Nodong short- to medium-range missile would
be able to hit U.S.-based facilities in the region, including South
Korea and probably Japan.
U.S. government officials tried to downplay the DIA evaluation.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said, “It would be inaccurate to
suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed, or
demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the
passage.”
A U.S. official said the DIA study was a lower-level assessment that had not been approved by the full intelligence community.
Unable to Reach U.S.
The consensus inside the U.S. government is that North Korea does not
yet have a nuclear device that would fit longer-range missiles which
conceivably could reach U.S. territories.
“It’s very clear that it cannot, at this stage, include long-range
ballistic missiles because they’re just basically not developed
sufficiently yet to be able to do this,” Kristensen said.
All the same, the release of part of the DIA report will likely raise
tensions on the Korean peninsula where North Korea has stationed as
many as five medium-range missiles on its east coast, according to
assessments by Washington and Seoul, possibly in readiness for a
test-launch that would demonstrate its ability to hit U.S. bases on
Guam.
Most observers say Pyongyang has no intention of starting a war that
would likely bring its own destruction, but they warn of the risks of
miscalculation.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a Pentagon spy agency that gathers
information about the capacity and strategic intentions of foreign
military forces.
Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence analyst now
with the Arms Control Association advocacy group, said that while he did
not have access to the classified material cited in Congress, what was
said publicly about the DIA’s assessment sounded quite tentative.
“It really says to me that this is a speculative statement,"
Thielmann said. “Moderate [confidence] is higher than low confidence but
it doesn’t say they know very much.”
He described the DIA statement as a “cautious worst-case assessment.”
© 2013 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.
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