NEWS & POLITICS: September 11

Analysis: Nuclear Bomb that Destroyed Seattle Likely Came from North Korea
by Lowell Feld
Washington Post
September 18, 2005; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Just one week ago, a crude but powerful nuclear device carried in a large cargo ship exploded as it entered the port city of Seattle, killing an estimated 125,000 people and wounding more than 500,000 others. Now, senior Clark Administration officials reportedly have reached the conclusion that there was a "95% probability" the device was North Korean in origin. Most likely, according to top defense officials and terrorism experts, the bomb was sold by North Korea to hard-line elements in the Iranian government sometime in late 2004 or early 2005, then passed along to Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, or another Islamic terrorist group.

According to numerous high-level sources, the Clark Administration is now considering its options, high on the list being nuclear retaliation against North Korea -- and possibly Iran as well if that country's involvement can be proven. However, with both Iran and North Korea possessing multiple nuclear warheads and long-range delivery capabilities, the Clark Administration must consider the possibility of a nuclear exchange that could destroy South Korea, Japan, Israel, and possibly even additional U.S. cities. In addition, China has warned the United States that it is "strongly opposed" to a nuclear war in East Asia and would take unspecified "measures" to defend its interests, while Russia also has warned against a nuclear attack on Iran. Thus, the world is is now facing a potential for a nuclear World War III.

Meanwhile, President Clark remains in hiding and reportedly is moving frequently between top-secret bunker locations, most likely away from the coasts in the middle of the country. Vice President Bob Graham, who warned of just such a disaster scenario only three years ago and urged that stronger Homeland Security measures be taken against it, is believed to be somewhere near Washington D.C., although this cannot be confirmed. Secretary of State Bill Richardson is rumored to be with President Clark, while Secretary of Defense Joseph Biden remains at the Pentagon, directing the deployment of huge U.S. naval, air, and ground forces toward East Asia and the Gulf region.

Shocked and terrified Americans are now asking: how did this disaster come to pass? Who is to blame for allowing this to happen? How did we not see this coming?

According to former Ambassador Robert Galucci, who served as a special U.S. envoy on proliferation matters and chief U.S. negotiator on the 1994 "Agreed Framework" (see below) that froze North Korea's nuclear weapons program, last week's attack on Seattle was highly predictable. In fact, Galucci all but predicted such an attack back in 1999, when he stated: "One of these days, one of these governments [will fabricate] one or two nuclear weapons, [give] it to a terrorist group created for this purpose," then bring it into a U.S. port city by boat. Galucci estimated the likelihood of his nightmare scenario coming to pass within 10 years as about 50-50. Unfortunately, Galucci's prediction was correct.

That the prime culprit has turned out to be North Korea is not surprising, according to Galucci and other analysts. Trouble with North Korea was a nearly constant feature of international relations for the entire period since the Korean War of the early 1950s. In the decades following this war, which left the Koreas divided and still technically at war, the North fell behind the South in almost every way - economically, culturally, and politically - becoming increasingly poor, more isolated, and militarily bloated. Ultimately, the North's only significant sources of hard currency earnings to keep the system from collapsing were illicit in nature: narcotics smuggling, counterfeiting, proliferating missiles and other weapons to anyone who could pay cold cash. Combined with the North's constant paranoia regarding a U.S. attack, the country decided to move decisively to build a significant nuclear weapons program.

In 1994, following the death of long-time leader Kim Il-sung (and the succession of his son, Kim Jong-il, to power), the situation nearly came to a head, with the Clinton Administration concluding that war, or at least a surgical strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities, might be the only option to prevent that country from crossing a critical "red line" by reprocessing spent nuclear materials and developing a nuclear weapons arsenal. But, just as the two nations seemed on a path towards inevitable military confrontation, a compromise agreement (the "Agreed Framework") was reached, whereby North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program in return for $5 billion worth of free fuel and two modern nuclear power reactors.

The Agreed Framework, although flawed, was by most accounts successful in freezing, or at least slowing considerably, the North Korean nuclear program. Meanwhile, a period of rapprochement with South Korea led to an historic summit meeting in 2000 between Kim Jong-il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, winner of the Nobel Prize for his pursuit of peace with North Korea, under his so-called "Sunshine Policy." Overall, the situation in the Koreas was far from perfect, but nonetheless appeared to be improving slowly. Then came the Bush Administration, and what many analysts believe was the beginning of disaster.

Shortly after George W. Bush assumed the presidency in January 2001, he quickly reversed course in two areas of great concern to North Korea. First, the Bush Administration began pushing hard for a missile defense system - "Star Wars" -- which had the potential to render North Korea's, China's, and other nations' nuclear deterrents obsolete. This pushed North Korea into a corner, and if anything encouraged them to accelerate their nuclear program.
Second, President Bush made it clear from the early days of his Administration that he had nothing but contempt for Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy" towards the North. Further, Bush spoke of how he "loathed" Kim Jong-il, about how North Korea was part of an "Axis of Evil," and about how he would not make the same "mistake" that Bill Clinton made in "rewarding" North Korea for its bad behavior. At a White House meeting in March 2001, Bush humiliated and embarrassed South Korean President Kim by denouncing both North Korea's Kim Jong Il as well as the Clinton Administration's policy of high-level talks with the North.

With negotiations going nowhere, at some point in the fall or winter of 2002, North Korea finally decided to cross the "red line" set by Bill Clinton in 1994. In December 2002, the country began to reactivate its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, while expelling nuclear weapons inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. I January 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the key international agreement aimed at preventing the spread of atomic weapons. Finally, starting sometime during mid- to late-2003, North Korea began extracting spent fuel from nuclear rods and reprocessing it into weapons grade material, crossing the "red line."

At this point, there were few good options left for the United States to stop North Korea's push for nuclear weapons. With U.S. military forces stretched thin following the war against Iraq in 2003, the conventional military option on the Korean peninsula was basically off the table. Even without Iraq as a major distraction and resource constraint, an attack on North Korea would have been far from appealing. To begin with, there was the near certainty that, if attacked, the North would annihilate Seoul and possibly Tokyo, using its tens of thousands of pre-positioned artillery pieces plus a nuclear strike. Millions of casualties would have been the likely result.

Another theoretical option would have been to resume bilateral or multilateral negotiations with North Korea. For a variety of reasons, however, such negotiations, including multilateral talks in the late summer and early fall of 2003, never really got off the ground. Neither side trusted the other, and North Korea's demands - financial assistance and a non-aggression pact with the United States - were non-starters for the Bush Administration. At the same time, the Bush Administration largely held to its ideological, even moralistic belief that negotiations were simply rewarding "evil." Bush Administration hard-liners in particular continued to insist that North Korea unilaterally and fully dismantle its nuclear program before the United States would even consider any concessions, such as the non-aggression pact demanded by North Korea.

The end result of these failures to compromise was that, by early 2004, North Korea had started mass-producing nuclear bombs. With no response from the United States to its demands, and desperately in need of money, it is believed that North Korea sold its first nuclear bomb, probably to hard-line elements in the Iranian government, in late 2004 or early 2005, just as U.S. attention was distracted by the presidential election, followed by the transition from George W. Bush to General Wesley K. Clark, as well as the shift from a Republican-controlled to a Democrat-led Senate. After that, details are unclear, but it is highly likely, according to various experts, that either the Iranians passed the weapon on to Islamic terrorists - Hezbollah or Al Qaeda are considered most likely - or the North Koreans simply sold another bomb directly to one or both of these groups. After that, and especially given the failure by the Bush Administration to institute adequate Homeland Security measures on commercial shipping coming into the United States, it was essentially a countdown to doomsday in Seattle or some other U.S. city.

What now? With Seattle in ruins, hundreds of thousands of Americans dead or wounded, and with both North Korea and Iran now possessing nuclear arsenals, the options all look terrible. It appears fair to state that the possibility of nuclear Armageddon today is higher than at any time since the height of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And President Clark, presumably holed up in a secure facility somewhere in the middle of America, is faced with one of the most fateful decisions ever contemplated by a U.S. President or any world leader.

About Lowell Feld

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