Trump refused to believe US intelligence on North Korea's ICBM launch because Putin told him otherwi

[applegrove]

Trump refused to believe US intelligence on North Korea's ICBM launch because Putin told him otherwise, McCabe's book says

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-took-putins-word-over-us-intelligence-on-north-koreas-icbm-2019-2?r=US&IR=T&utm_source=reddit.com

Bt Ryan Pickrell at Business Insider

"SNIP....

President Donald Trump believed Russian President Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies on North Korea, former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe reveals in his new book "The Threat," The Washington Post reportedThursday.North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4, 2017.Trump insisted intelligence reports claiming North Korea had launched an ICBM were incorrect, refusing to believe the reports because Putin had told him that North Korea did not have that capability.The president has repeatedly clashed with the intelligence community he leads on a wide range of issues.

When US intelligence first informed the president that North Korea had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, he reportedly refused to believe them. Instead he relied on the questionable information given to him by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, explains in his new book "The Threat," a detail from which the Washington Post reported Thursday evening.

North Korea launched its first ICBM — the Hwasong-14 — on July 4, 2017, shocking the world by demonstrating advanced capabilities beyond what many believed possible for the rogue regime.


....SNIP"

[soryang]

1. An earlier article on the ICBM by Business Insider

For now, experts such as Wright assume North Korea's recent ICBM launched with a very lightweight dummy payload to give the missile alarming show of range. An actual warhead built by North Korea might weigh "several hundred kilograms," or more than 600 pounds.

"That's going to significantly reduce the distance," Wright said, likely enough to keep an armed missile payload from striking American cities.

Their source was David Wright, a physicist and missile expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists.


https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-missile-range-united-states-nuclear-bomb-2017-11

[applegrove]

2. Scary.

[soryang]

3. Siegfried Hecker, another prominent expert, agreed at the time

with Wright's assessment of the ICBM threat with respect to payload weight. So the North Korean program was on the cusp of presenting the threat to mainland cities of the US when testing was suspended.

The threat presented by intermediate range North Korea ballistic missiles is considered to be already present. There is a consensus that warheads could be delivered by existing intermediate range ballistic missiles in their inventory, presenting a regional threat.

What bothers me is that Trump's pronouncements on these complex issues in particular present a fractured understanding of what he's been told by advisers, or perhaps in this case as stated by Putin. I'm sure Putin has a good grasp of the issue. Trump really doesn't. He has a vague recall of someone telling him something, and he is either trying to clumsily disguise what he's been told, or characterize it in some inaccurate or childishly simplistic manner. Maybe he thinks of himself as a clever manipulator or dissembler but the impact is the exact opposite.

I could tell by Trump's disjointed statements about the North Korean negotiations earlier today, that the coverage by South Korean sources on the US negotiating strategies were corroborated in a weird way by Trump's public utterances. The less he speaks the better.

[Scurrilous]

4. K&R