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“Officials” Attempt To Sabotage Further North Korea Talks
Several Congress people and some officials in the CIA and Trump administration try to throw a spanner into the negotiations with North Korea. They "leak" to NBC News about an intelligence assessment on North Korea's nuclear facilities. The result is a sensationalized piece that includes no surprising facts.
North Korea has increased nuclear production at secret sites, say U.S. officials
"Work is ongoing to deceive us on the number of facilities, the number of weapons, the number of missiles," said one U.S. official.
One of the NBC authors is Ken Dilanian who is well known for his tight cooperation with the CIA.
Its opening:
U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.
The intelligence assessment, which has not previously been reported, seems to counter the sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after his historic June 12 summit with Kim that "there was no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."
Analysts at the CIA and other intelligence agencies don't see it that way, according to more than a dozen American officials who are familiar with their assessments and spoke on the condition of anonymity. They see a regime positioning itself to extract every concession it can from the Trump administration — while clinging to nuclear weapons it believes are essential to survival.
The result of the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore was a "freeze for freeze" deal. North Korea stopped its nuclear and missile testing while the U.S. stopped the large maneuvers it regularity held with South Korea's army. Both sides agreed to further talks. North Korea made some aspirational statements about denuclearization which have the same time frame as similar aspirational statements made by the U.S. in Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). There is no time frame to reach a certain state. There is no commitment towards declaring nuclear sites nor is there a commitment to stop the production of nuclear stuff.
Trump declaration that there is "no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea" is correct in the sense that there is certainly no North Korean intent to launch a nuclear attack.
Kim Jong Un will not only "try to hide" the North Korean nuclear facilities. He will surely keep them secret as long as he can. The security of his country depend on them.
That "more than a dozen American officials" talk with NBC on that issue shows that there is a concerted operation to sabotage a possible deal. Those opposed try to move the goalposts.
While the North Koreans have stopped missile and nuclear tests, "there's no evidence that they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production," said one U.S. official briefed on the latest intelligence. "There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the U.S."
Four other officials familiar with the intelligence assessment also said North Korea intended to deceive the U.S.
Why is it "deceiving" when North Korea continues something that it did not promise to stop? Why is it "deceiving" when North Korea rejects to submit targeting coordinates of its nuclear facilities? There is no deceiving in either.
The intelligence assessment the "American officials" (the term includes Congress staffers) talk about says that North Korea has the well known Uranium enrichment site in Yongbyon, a second one at an unnamed place and possibly a third one. All of this was known to people who read the details about the issue. They are not new and were certainly known to the CIA boss Pompeo and Trump while the negotiations took place:
Ankit Panda @nktpnd – 12:00 UTC – 30 Jun 2018
These assessments have been around since at least May, I understand, so POTUS should have been briefed prior to the Singapore summit.
The "leak" to the NBC/CIA's Ken Dilanian lacks any surprising content. The only interesting point is that it happened at all. It demonstrates that are are serious forces who will try their best to sabotage the talks and a possible agreement.
To take the next steps towards a larger deal and towards peace on the Korean peninsula will require month of diligent and detailed talk and serious attention by senior administration officials. Until a special envoy is named to lead further talks Secretary of State Pompeo will continue the negotiations. He will visit Pyongyang next week to push the issue.
In my view the Korea talks are one of the few things the Trump administration is doing right. It is sad that many are out to destroy them.
“In my view the Korea talks are one of the few things the Trump administration is doing right. It is sad that many are out to destroy them.”
Maybe more “right” things are seeping through, between the lines and lies as it were.
At the risk of incurring some readers’ wrath, derision and indignation, let me attmept to add a bit of calm context to the Trump phenomenon, which includes his verbal tweeting jousts with Kim and then subsequently a veritable embrace of Kim, but one of indeterminate sincerity.
Trump is still only a year and a half into his presidency, a presidency that has from the very first day elicited far more modernesque berserk animosity, more old fashioned hatred, more political opposition, and more media dishonesty – very very fake news – than any previous presidency of my memory or knowledge.
As I have pointed out previously Trump came to power via nationalistic rhetoric, and possibly sentiments, and against the efforts of both the Republican and Democratic establishments. Jim Stone Freelance is among those who have opined that Trump actually received more than two thirds of the legitimate votes in the election, and that an attempt to steal the election for a publicly unpopular Clinton was averted by way of the massive popular support Trump actually received, as well as, presumably, by supportive machinations by elements of military intelligence.
Be that as it may, the formal victory by Trump was inspiration for a continuing vast outpouring of invective towards and attempts to undermine Trump, with for example, the American public being presented with a non-stop year-long bizarre attempt to portray the Trump victory as some kind of Putin coup, via ‘investigations’ by former FBI head Mueller, a corrupt deep state operative if ever there was one.
Now I should at this point note that it is easy to compile a long list of Trump’s personal and political shortcomings, including war crimes. But it is noteworthy I think that whereas Bush the latter and Clinton the former and latter, and Obama, were all certifiable war criminals and also worthy of a long list of certifiable and circumstantially convincing ‘other crimes and despicable characteristics’, it would seem that they lacked the royal psychological jelly of some kind to induce widespread foaming at the mouth opposition.
Those who assert that Trump is merely another plutocrat, a clever psyop, merely serving himself or Israel, are of course right to a point. But by ignoring or downplaying the extent to which Trump is politically anomalous, a wild card in terms of actual allegiances and intentions, I think they are missing something important. Trump represents a metaphor of sorts for the power of the unexpected, the quirky, the monkey wrench thrown into the ‘magnificant’ machine.
While telling many many lies, Trump has also blurted out uncustomary truths. And within a cultural context where for control purposes staying on message with wall to wall, 24/7 bs, is job 1, mandatory, for Trump to, for example, point out the obvious about the S. Korean/US military annual military ‘exercises’ – that they are “provocative” – well that word alone, that little injection of realism, was enough to induce howls of indignation from ‘elite’ ‘expert’ ‘unnamed officials’, who inhabit a world of determined team-playing make-believe and propaganda.
Do you recall when someone asked Trump about some bad guy out there, (implied was ‘we of course are the good guys’) and Trump replied in effect, yah well we do bad stuff too.
Trump then is for all his many faults, at least a temporary break from scripted business as usual, and there are many, not just a few, aspects of his tenure that pose challenges to the madness which we are all embedded in.
Yesterday I had occasion to be briefly in the company of a little 4 year old who is among those very large and growing number of youngsters, young boys especially, who are deemed autistic. Trump has asked so what’s with all this autism, and what about all these vaccines. The suggestion that Trump might ask Robert Kennedy Junior to investigate the matter was enough to launch much indignant angst in mass media.
I mention this to underline that Trump represents an actual (yes deeply flawed, problematic, uncertain in outcome) opportunity whcih includes potentially beneficent aspects. Trump’s soon to come meeting with Putin, arguably one of the most astonishingly successful political figures of our times, is imo deeply worrying for the real bad guys. Trump and Putin between them might just decide, or just blurt out, something significantly real.
There is the well known metaphor of cutting through the Gordian Knot. In our day, the truth wielded well is the sword, the believed or obeyed bs is the deadly knot. Donald Trump, may on his occasional good days only wield a mostly tweeting jackknife of sorts, but well honed, it could loosen the death grip temporarily, and provide a kind of wedge, an opening, for subsequent and broader and deeper sanity….
Posted by: Robert Snefjella | Jul 1 2018 13:07 utc | 35
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