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| National Intelligence Director James Clapper testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 11, 2013, before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- A U.S. intelligence report concludes that North Korea has
advanced its nuclear knowhow to the point that it could arm a ballistic
missile with a nuclear warhead, a jarring revelation in the midst of
bellicose threats from the unpredictable communist regime.
President
Barack Obama urged calm, calling on Pyongyang to end its saber-rattling
while sternly warning that he would "take all necessary steps" to
protect American citizens.
The new American
intelligence analysis, disclosed Thursday at a hearing on Capitol Hill,
says the Pentagon's intelligence wing has "moderate confidence" that
North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic
missiles but that the weapon was unreliable.
Rep.
Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., read aloud what he said was an unclassified
paragraph from a secret Defense Intelligence Agency report that was
supplied to some members of Congress. The reading seemed to take Gen.
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by surprise, who
said he hadn't seen the report and declined to answer questions about
it.
In a statement late Thursday, Pentagon
press secretary George Little said: "While I cannot speak to all the
details of a report that is classified in its entirety, it would be
inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested,
developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced"
in Lamborn's remarks.
`"The United States
continues to closely monitor the North Korean nuclear program and calls
upon North Korea to honor its international obligations," Little added.
The
DIA conclusion was confirmed by a senior congressional aide who spoke
on condition of anonymity because the Pentagon had not officially
released the contents. The aide said the report was produced in March.
Since
the beginning of March, the Navy has moved two missile defense ships
closer to the coast of the Korean peninsula, in part to protect against a
potential missile launch aimed at Guam, a U.S. territory in the
Pacific. The Pentagon also has announced it will place a more advanced
land-based missile defense on Guam, and Hagel said in March that he
approved installing 14 additional missile interceptors in Alaska to
bolster a portion of the missile defense network that is designed to
protect all of U.S. territory.
On Thursday,
the Pentagon said it had moved a sea-based X-band radar - designed to
track warheads in flight - into position in the Pacific.
Notably
absent from that unclassified segment of the report was any reference
to what the DIA believes is the range of a missile North Korea could arm
with a nuclear warhead. Much of its missile arsenal is capable of
reaching South Korea and Japan, but Kim has threatened to attack the
United States as well.
At the House Armed
Services Committee hearing in which he revealed the DIA assessment,
Lamborn asked Dempsey, whether he agreed with it. Dempsey said he had
not seen the report.
"You said it's not publicly released, so I choose not to comment on it," Dempsey said.
But
David Wright, a nuclear weapons expert at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, said the DIA assessment probably does not change the views
of those who closely follow developments in North Korea's pursuit of a
nuclear weapon.
"People are starting to
believe North Korea very likely has the capability to build a nuclear
weapon small enough to put on some of their shorter-range missiles,"
Wright said. "Once you start talking about warheads small enough and
technically capable to be on a long-range missile, I think it's much
more an open question."
The DIA assessment is
not out of line with comments Dempsey made Wednesday when he was asked
at a Pentagon news conference whether North Korea was capable of pairing
a nuclear warhead to a ballistic missile that could reach Japan or
beyond.
In response, Dempsey said the extent
of North Korean progress on designing a nuclear weapon small enough to
operate as a missile warhead was a classified matter. But he did not
rule out that the North has achieved the capability revealed in the DIA
report.
"They have conducted two nuclear
tests," Dempsey told a Pentagon news conference. "They have conducted
several successful ballistic missile launches. And in the absence of
concrete evidence to the contrary, we have to assume the worst case, and
that's why we're postured as we are today." He was referring to recent
moves by the U.S. to increase its missile defense capabilities in the
Pacific.
At the same House hearing where
Lamborn revealed the DIA conclusion, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was
asked a different version of the same question: Does North Korea have
the capability to strike U.S. territory with a nuclear weapon? Hagel
said the answer is no.
"Now does that mean
that they won't have it or they can't have it or they're not working on
it?" Hagel added.
"No. That's why this is a very dangerous situation."
"Now
is the time for North Korea to end the belligerent approach they have
taken and to try to lower temperatures," Obama said in his first public
comments since Pyongyang threatened the United States and its allies in
East Asia with nuclear attack.
Obama, speaking
from the Oval Office, said he preferred to see the tensions on the
peninsula resolved through diplomatic means, but added that "the United
States will take all necessary steps to protect its people."
The
North on Thursday delivered a fresh round of war rhetoric with claims
it has "powerful striking means" on standby, the latest in a torrent of
warlike threats seen by outsiders as an effort to scare and pressure
South Korea and the U.S. into changing their North Korea policies.
Lamborn
is a member of the Strategic Forces subcommittee of the Armed Services
panel, which oversees ballistic missiles. A former state legislator who
was elected to the House in 2006, was a member of the Tea Party caucus
and belongs to the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of House
conservatives
At a separate hearing Thursday,
U.S. officials offered their assessment of the North Korean leader, who
is a grandson of the country's founder, Kim Il Sung.
Director
of National Intelligence James Clapper told the House Intelligence
Committee that he thinks Kim, who took control after his father, Kim
Jong Il, died in 2011, is trying to show the U.S., the world and his own
people that he is "firmly in control in North Korea," while attempting
to maneuver the international community into concessions in future
negotiations.
"I don't think ... he has much
of an endgame other than to somehow elicit recognition" and to turn the
nuclear threat into "negotiation and to accommodation and presumably for
aid," Clapper said.
Clapper said that the
intelligence community believes the North would use nuclear weapons only
to preserve the Kim regime but that analysts do not know how the regime
defines that.
Secretary of State John Kerry
was headed Thursday to East Asia, where he planned talks with officials
in Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo about North Korea.
