William Perry, former Secretary of Defense (1994-97) and former Special Adviser to President Clinton on NK, knows more than just about anybody in the world about NK's nuclear capacity. He wrote a definitive 1999 report to President Clinton about it, still online at
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eap/991012_northkorea_rpt.html .
Yesterday, the Washington Post published an op-ed of his.
The key point that Bill Richardson and other party spokespeople have omitted on the air this week is that, under Clinton, 8,000 spent reactor fuel rods that now are being reporocessed into up to 30 NK plutonium weapons a year were kept locked under IAEA seal and 24-hour video surveillance.
For more background, see
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2368449 .
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From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001285.html :
"In Search of a North Korea Policy; By William J. Perry
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; Page A19
North Korea's declared nuclear bomb test ... demonstrates the total failure of the Bush administration's policy toward that country. For almost six years this policy has been a strange combination of harsh rhetoric and inaction. President Bush, early in his first term, dubbed North Korea a member of the "axis of evil" and made disparaging remarks about Kim Jong Il. He said he would not tolerate a North Korean nuclear weapons program, but he set no bounds on North Korean actions.
The most important such limit would have been on reprocessing spent fuel from North Korea's reactor to make plutonium. The Clinton administration declared in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed, it would be crossing a "red line," and it threatened military action if that line was crossed. The North Koreans responded to that pressure and began negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not end North Korea's aspirations for nuclear weapons, but it did result in a major delay. For more than eight years, under the Agreed Framework, the spent fuel was kept in a storage pond under international supervision.
Then in 2002, the Bush administration discovered the existence of a covert program in uranium, evidently an attempt to evade the Agreed Framework. This program, while potentially serious, would have led to a bomb at a very slow rate, compared with the more mature plutonium program. Nevertheless, the administration unwisely stopped compliance with the Agreed Framework. In response the North Koreans sent the inspectors home and announced their intention to reprocess. The administration deplored the action but set no "red line." North Korea made the plutonium."
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