Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

A year later, amid reports that North Korea had grown frustrated with the failure of the United States to normalize relations, the New York Times published a front-page article by David E. Sanger—“North Korea Site an A-Bomb Plant, U.S. Agencies Say”—which revealed that “United States intelligence agencies have detected a huge secret underground complex in North Korea that they believe is the centerpiece of an effort to revive the country’s frozen nuclear weapons program, according to officials who have been briefed on the intelligence information.”¹⁶ Congressional sources later revealed that Sanger’s source was unanalyzed intelligence photographs probably leaked by Lt. Gen. Patrick Hughes, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency. According to congressional aides, General Hughes regularly passed on information about the site, later identified as Kumchang-ri, to Republican congressmen.¹⁷ None of the Times’s reporting on this incident ever cited a single government official by name, relying instead on the “blind quote”: “high government officials say,” “sources close to the White House reveal,” “members of the intelligence community disclose,” and so forth.

Two days after the article appeared, the Pentagon announced that the underground A-bomb plant actually seemed to be a large hole in the ground—one of thousands of such holes, some of them containing whole factories that were sited underground after the devastating American bombing during the Korean War—and that the United States had no evidence the North Koreans had ceased to comply with the Agreed Framework. Analysts in Asia speculated that if North Korea did decide to pull out of the agreement, it need only restart its reactors at its nuclear research center at Yongbyon instead of building a brand-new, inherently risky and expensive underground reprocessing plant. In Europe, the IAEA’s spokesman said that the international monitoring agency first heard of the alleged new nuclear site from the New York Times.

Dr. C. Kenneth Quinones, who from 1992 to 1994 was the State Department’s desk officer for North Korea and subsequently the Asia Foundation’s representative in South Korea—as well as the American who probably has visited the North more often than any other—wrote, “This . . . story is centered in Washington, not in Pyongyang. It involves America’s intelligence community and not North Korea’s nuclear program. . . . The recent leak of unsubstantiated ‘intelligence’ certainly appears to have been an irresponsible effort by a ‘pessimist’ within the American intelligence community. . . . The U.S. government has officially denied the accuracy of the reports.”¹⁸ Nonetheless, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the “suspected nuclear facility” a “huge threat” and demanded the right of the United States to conduct inspections in North Korea when and where it chooses.¹⁹ North Korea agreed to let Americans look into Kumchang-ri in return for food aid. When the inspection was completed, American officials disclosed that it was a huge, empty tunnel and that there was no evidence of any preparations to construct a nuclear reactor or install machinery of any kind in it.²⁰

In addition to these and other North Korean alarums, 1999 saw a number of strident but ultimately overstated U.S. claims about Chinese missile deployments and nuclear espionage, and unfortunate “accidents” (the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war). These raised serious questions about whether the armed and intelligence services were either out of control or being manipulated for political ends.

This is not to say that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are not serious problems. Since there is as yet no worldwide treaty banning them, nor an effective defense against them, all programs to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, including those of the United States and Japan, are “destabilizing.” They constitute the most dangerous offensive weapons in existence at the present time. The issue is what to do about them. North Korea remains isolated in part because of policies the United States has pursued over the past forty-five years. To be sure, these policies were first formulated during the Cold War, but with the end of the old postwar order in East Asia, we finally have a chance to help promote a peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. Instead, the Pentagon is promoting a ballistic missile defense system. Surely no better illustration exists of our continued imperial ambitions and delusions.