Erratic North Korea poses serious threat

DONNA CASSATA,Associated Press

LARA JAKES,Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — An erratic North Korea, with its nuclear weapons and increas­ingly bel­liger­ent tone, poses a seri­ous threat to the United States and East Asia nations, the direc­tor of National Intel­li­gence warned Tues­day in the annual account­ing of the threats worldwide.

In his exten­sive overview, James R. Clap­per told Con­gress that a less decen­tral­ized ter­ror­ist net­work has sig­nif­i­cantly altered the threats while the Arab Spring upris­ing in the Mid­dle East and North Africa has cre­ated spikes in the dan­gers fac­ing Amer­i­can inter­ests in the regions

The intel­li­gence chief offered a sober assess­ment of threats from poten­tial cyber attacks, weapons of mass destruc­tion and the months-long civil war in Syria. North Korea, Iran and Syria stirred the most con­cern as the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress weigh the effec­tive­ness of sanc­tions against Pyongyang and Tehran.

Clap­per tes­ti­fied just days after North Korea’s com­mu­nist regime said it was scut­tling the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and has main­tained peace on the penin­sula for more than half a cen­tury. The admin­is­tra­tion slapped sanc­tions against North Korea’s pri­mary exchange bank and sev­eral senior gov­ern­ment officials.

North Korea, led by its young leader Kim Jong Un, has defied the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity in the last three months, test­ing a long-range mis­sile and a third nuclear bomb.

“These pro­grams demon­strate North Korea’s com­mit­ment to develop long-range mis­sile tech­nol­ogy that could pose a direct threat to the United States, and its efforts to pro­duce and mar­ket bal­lis­tic mis­siles raise broader regional and global secu­rity con­cerns,” Clap­per told the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence committee.

While the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity has fig­ured that Pyongyang’s nuclear efforts are designed for deter­rence, world­wide pres­tige and coer­cive diplo­macy, Clap­per con­ceded that that the United States does not know what would be the trig­ger that would prompt North Korea to act to pre­serve Kim’s regime.

Pressed dur­ing the hear­ing, Clap­per said he was “very con­cerned” about Kim actions, which has included tough talk as well as a recent invi­ta­tion to for­mer bas­ket­ball star Den­nis Rodman.

“The rhetoric, while it is propaganda-laced, is also an indi­ca­tor of their atti­tude and per­haps their intent,” Clap­per said. “So for my part, I am very con­cerned about what they might do. And they are cer­tainly, if they chose … could ini­ti­ate a provoca­tive action against the South.”

Tes­ti­fy­ing before the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, the gen­eral in charge of U.S. Strate­gic Com­mand said he is “sat­is­fied” that exist­ing U.S. mis­sile defenses can defend against a lim­ited attack from North Korea.

Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler also said he is con­fi­dent the coun­try is ade­quately defended from a lim­ited attack by Iran, “although we are not in the most opti­mum pos­ture to do that today.”

The Intel­li­gence panel hear­ing also sought, in part, to rebuild some trust between the nation’s top intel­li­gence offi­cials and sen­a­tors who com­plain they have been refused admin­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments and other infor­ma­tion that are nec­es­sary for con­gres­sional oversight.

Join­ing Clap­per at the wit­ness table were newly minted CIA Direc­tor John Bren­nan, FBI Direc­tor Robert Mueller, Defense Intel­li­gence Agency Direc­tor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, National Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Cen­ter Direc­tor Matthew Olsen and Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Intel­li­gence and Research Philip Goldberg.

At one point, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., ques­tioned Clap­per on whether the National Secu­rity Agency is eaves­drop­ping or oth­er­wise col­lect­ing data on Amer­i­cans in the U.S. The NSA gen­er­ally mon­i­tors tele­phone and Inter­net traf­fic over­seas, but was autho­rized by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion after Sept. 11 to col­lect data within the United States to track al-Qaida.

That pro­gram stopped in 2007 but fueled sus­pi­cions about whether a White House might tram­ple Amer­i­cans’ civil and legal rights in the name of safe­guard­ing against terrorists.

“Does the NSA col­lect any type of data at all on mil­lions or hun­dreds of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans?” Wyden asked Clapper.

“No, sir,” Clap­per answered.

“It does not?” Wyden pressed.

Clap­per quickly and halt­ingly soft­ened his answer. “Not wit­tingly,” he said. “There are cases where they could, inad­ver­tently per­haps, col­lect — but not wittingly.”

The intel­li­gence chief said that in Syria, Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s inabil­ity to quash the upris­ing increases the pos­si­bil­ity that he will use chem­i­cal weapons against his people.

“We assess that an increas­ingly belea­guered regime, hav­ing found its esca­la­tion of vio­lence through con­ven­tional means inad­e­quate, might be pre­pared to use chem­i­cal weapons against the Syr­ian peo­ple,” he said. “In addi­tion, groups or indi­vid­u­als in Syria could gain access to chem­i­cal weapons-related material.”

The United Nations esti­mates more than 70,000 peo­ple have been killed in the civil war, which started two years ago against Assad’s rule. Clap­per said Assad’s days are num­ber, but added that he did not know “how many days.”

The intel­li­gence chief said Iran has become so entrenched in Syria that it likely will have some sort of foothold in a post-Assad government.

In assess­ing Iran, the report stated flatly that Tehran is devel­op­ing nuclear capa­bil­i­ties to enhance its secu­rity and influ­ence and “give it the abil­ity to develop a nuclear weapon.” But the report stopped short of say­ing a deci­sion has been made.

“We do not know if Iran will even­tu­ally decide to build nuclear weapons,” the report said.

Clap­per explained that in the last year, Iran has made progress in work­ing toward pro­duc­ing weapons-grade ura­nium. How­ever, the report said Iran “could not divert safe­guarded mate­r­ial and pro­duce a weapon-worth of weapons-grade ura­nium before this activ­ity is discovered.”

Last week, Gen. James Mat­tis, the top U.S. com­man­der in the Mid­dle East, told Con­gress that sanc­tions and diplo­matic efforts to stop Iran from gain­ing nuclear capa­bil­i­ties are not work­ing, and added that Tehran has a his­tory of denial and deceit.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, asked Clap­per if he agreed with Mattis.

“Not com­pletely. I think the … the sanc­tions are hav­ing a huge impact on Iran. And I think clearly that that is going to have an influ­ence on their decision-making cal­cu­lus. And we see indi­ca­tions of that. But where I do agree, at least to this point, it is — the sanc­tions thus far have not induced a change in Iran­ian gov­ern­ment policy.”

Collins said that fact sug­gests Mat­tis was cor­rect in say­ing that the sanc­tions are not working.

In his assess­ment, Clap­per warned about the impact of auto­matic, across-the-board bud­get cuts that kicked in March 1, argu­ing that it will degrade the abil­ity of the intel­li­gence community.

The top U.S. intel­li­gence chief said the bud­get cuts have jeop­ar­dized America’s secu­rity and safety — and will only get worse over time. He said the reduc­tions will shave about $4 bil­lion from intel­li­gence bud­gets. He said that amounted to about 10 per­cent of national intel­li­gence programs.

Clap­per said if the gov­ern­ment is not care­ful, “we risk another dam­ag­ing down­ward spiral.”

Sen. Dianne Fein­stein, D-Calif., chair­woman of the com­mit­tee, pointed to suc­cesses in the war on ter­ror — 105 terrorism-related arrests in the United States in the past four year and 438 con­vic­tions since Sept. 11, 2001.

___

Asso­ci­ated Press writer Richard Lard­ner con­tributed to this report.

Posted by AP News on Mar 12 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.