EPILOGUE

THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATIONS responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence on foreign nuclear weapons programs at the beginning of 2006 were largely the same ones that had performed those functions for decades. The CIA was still running spies and technical collection programs, while the Air Force Technical Applications Center remained responsible for managing the Atomic Energy Detection System. The NSA monitored communications, and NRO satellites produced imagery and intercepts. Analysts at the CIA, the DIA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Z Division, and other agencies pored over the collected data to try to understand foreign nuclear capabilities and intentions.

But there was at least one important difference. On December 8, 2004, President Bush had signed into law the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The act, many of whose provisions came from recommendations contained in the report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, established the post of Director of National Intelligence (DNI). It also eliminated the job of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), leaving the CIA director responsible only for the operations of the agency.¹

The DNI’s job came with more power over budgets and non-CIA personnel than the DCI had ever had, although not nearly as much as those favoring an intelligence czar would have liked. In February 2005, President Bush announced that his nominee for national intelligence director was John D. Negroponte, a longtime diplomat who was serving as ambassador to Iraq and whose previous jobs included ambassador to the UN and ambassador to Honduras.²

A key responsibility of the nation’s new intelligence chief, along with directing the intelligence effort against Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, would be overseeing the intelligence community’s work against Iranian and North Korean targets. In January 2006, to assist him with the later job, Negroponte appointed two mission managers. He tapped Joseph De Trani as mission manager for North Korea—thus, making him responsible for integrating the collection and analysis of information on the Hermit Kingdom. De Trani had served as director of the European and East Asian operations divisions for the CIA, as well as head of the agency’s Office of Technical Service and Crime and Narcotics Center. At the same time, S. Leslie Ireland was announced as mission manager for Iran. A Middle East specialist, Ireland had served in both the CIA (as special advisor for Iran collection issues, among other posts) and the Department of Defense (as country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the secretary).³

At the time, work was already well under way on the annual threat assessment Negroponte would present to assorted congressional committees. In his early February 2006 appearance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Negroponte, in open session, told his audience that North Korea’s claim to have nuclear weapons “is probably true.” Those weapons appeared to Pyongyang “as the best way to deter superior US and South Korean forces, to ensure regime security, as a lever for economic gain, and as a source of prestige.”⁴

In closed session Negroponte probably discussed the national intelligence estimate that either had recently been completed or was on its way to completion. That estimate concluded that North Korea had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of 2001 and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb’s worth of new plutonium each year. The assessment left unclear how much of the plutonium had been fabricated into bombs.⁵

In the two pages devoted to Iran in his threat assessment, Negroponte covered Iranian support to terrorism and the insurgency in Iraq, regime stability, the threat to the Persian Gulf states, Iranian conventional military power, as well as the Iranian nuclear program. He told the congressional committee that “Iran conducted a clandestine uranium enrichment program for nearly two decades in violation of its IAEA safeguards agreement, and despite its claims to the contrary, we assess that Iran seeks nuclear weapons.” In addition, the community believed “that Tehran probably does not yet have a nuclear weapon and probably has not yet produced or acquired the necessary fissile material.” “Nevertheless,” his assessment continued, “the danger that it will acquire a nuclear weapon and the ability to integrate it with ballistic missiles Iran already possesses is a reason for immediate concern.”⁶

THE ANALYSIS AND conclusions in the estimate on which Negroponte briefed Congress were based in part on a stolen Iranian laptop computer, one example of the continuing intelligence efforts dedicated to gathering and analyzing data on the country’s nuclear ambitions. The laptop, which had been obtained in mid-2004 from a longtime Iranian contact, contained studies on the essential features of a nuclear warhead, including a sphere of detonators to trigger a nuclear explosion. The documents also examined the question of how to position a heavy ball—presumably consisting of fissile material—inside the warhead so as to guarantee the stability and accuracy needed as it descended toward its target. In addition, they specified an explosion about two thousand feet above the target—a preferred altitude for a nuclear blast.⁷

Nuclear experts at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, after conducting computer simulations based on the drawings in the laptop concerning Iran’s Shahab-3 missile, concluded that they represented an effort to expand the missile’s nose cone so that it could carry a nuclear warhead. Indeed, the drawings showed eighteen different approaches to producing a satisfactory combination of size, weight, and diameter to accommodate a nuclear warhead. The Sandia experts concluded that none of them would work—possibly explaining the DNI’s comments that implied Iran still needed to find a way to integrate a nuclear warhead with its ballistic missiles.⁸

The documents on the pilfered computer also included sophisticated drawings of a 130-foot-deep underground shaft, with remote-controlled sensors to measure pressure and heat—the type of shaft used for an underground nuclear test. A test control team was to be located six miles away. There were also designs, with the most recent ones dated February 2003, for a small-scale facility to produce UF4, uranium tetrafluoride, or “green salt,” an intermediate product in the transformation of uranium into a gaseous form. Absent from the documents was evidence—in the form of construction orders or payment invoices—that the projects had gotten beyond the drawing-board stage.⁹

Aside from past experience with their source, U.S. intelligence officials found the documents on the laptop, which were written in Persian, convincing because of their consistency and technical accuracy, as well as their portrayal of a progression of developmental work from 2001 to early 2004. Gary Samore, a former Z Division analyst and head of nonproliferation at the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, told reporters that “the most convincing evidence that the material is genuine is that the technical work is so detailed that it would be difficult to fabricate.”^10*

The content of the stolen laptop was the subject of a briefing senior U.S. intelligence officials presented to the top echelon of the IAEA in Vienna in July 2005. At the same time, the United States hoped to benefit from the agency’s inspections in Iran throughout 2005 and 2006. In late 2005 Iran was less forthcoming than the IAEA, and the United States, would have wished in response to the atomic energy agency’s requests for information. “Full transparency is indispensable and overdue,” wrote IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei. And there was a chance things could get worse, with Iran threatening to bar the agency’s inspectors from its declared nuclear sites altogether if the agency referred Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.¹¹

But the agency, during visits to Iran that October and November, received access to buildings of interest at Parchin and took environmental samples, and “did not observe any unusual activities in the buildings visited.” It also reported that the UF6 being produced at the Uranium Conversion Facility at Esfahan “has remained under Agency containment and surveillance measures.” In contrast to those items of information, another that it reported—that civil engineering and construction of the reactor at Arak was continuing—was intelligence that U.S. satellite reconnaissance could provide on its own.¹²

At the end of January 2006 the IAEA had more to contribute, providing data that U.S. intelligence officials would have been more than a little pleased to have acquired through a spy or communications intercept. Iran showed the international agency more than sixty documents concerning uranium metal. Included was a fifteen-page document describing the procedures for the reduction of UF6 to metal in small quantities, and the casting of enriched and depleted uranium metal into hemispheres, common in the production of nuclear weapon components. Iran claimed the document had been provided, along with other material, by A. Q. Khan’s network at Khan’s initiative. However, Iran did not permit the agency to make a copy. Iran also provided some documentation on some of its efforts to acquire dual-use material, including laser equipment and electric drive equipment.¹³

The threatened end of “cooperation” with the IAEA followed in early February, after the agency’s board of governors voted to report Iran to the UN Security Council for failure to be sufficiently forthcoming. Iran, which had reopened its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz during the first part of January, requested the agency remove, by the middle of the month, its remaining seals and surveillance systems from Iranian facilities. Still, in a report at the end of the month the agency was able to report that on February 11, Iran began enrichment tests by feeding a single P-1 centrifuge with UF6 gas and that a ten-centrifuge cascade was undergoing vacuum tests and began receiving UF6 on February 15.¹⁴

WHILE THE DATA from the laptop computer and IAEA helped America’s spies in understanding Iran’s nuclear activities, there were still gaps—thanks in part to Iran’s less than complete cooperation with the IAEA. In its early 2006 reports, the international agency stated that it had not been provided a copy of the document on the fabrication of uranium metal hemispheres, and noted that Iranian officials had refused to discuss the “green salt” project, claiming that such a project did not exist.¹⁵

Satellite imagery helped in monitoring further developments in construction during the late winter and early spring of 2006. High-resolution commercial imagery of the Uranium Conversion Facility at Esfahan, obtained in late March, provided evidence of construction of a third tunnel entrance to the facility. Commercial imagery of Natanz in late February provided an up-to-date overhead view of the location of the underground cascade halls for the fuel enrichment plant, and of further construction next to the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant.¹⁶ Imagery interpreters at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency may have seen those photos, but certainly were able to examine the more detailed images that would have been produced by advanced versions of the government’s KH-11 satellite.

Of course, the satellite photos were far from perfect guides to what progress Iran was making in uranium enrichment and weapons design. Tehran itself offered some information. In mid-April, Muhammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran’s atomic energy organization, announced that his nation had 164 operating centrifuges, was capable of enriching uranium, and would seek to quickly put 54,000 centrifuges on line. Before Saeedi’s statement, U.S. intelligence analysts believed Iran was still years away—five to ten at least—from becoming a nuclear weapons state. And his statement did not change their mind. “Our timeline hasn’t changed,” Thomas Fingar, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said. Kenneth Brill, who as head of the National Counterproliferation Center (established to coordinate proliferation intelligence across the intelligence community) reported to Negroponte, observed that “an announcement is one thing” and “it will take several years to build that many centrifuges.”¹⁷

More information on Iran’s uranium effort became available later that month, when ElBaradei reported on the results of a trip to Iran by five IAEA inspectors during the first part of April—the first inspection trip since Iran had suspended cooperation in February. In addition to discussions with atomic energy officials in Iran, the inspectors visited both Esfahan and Natanz.

In a report described as having “an unusually bleak tone,” the agency confirmed that Muhammad Saeedi’s claim of Iran having begun small-scale uranium enrichment was accurate. The agency’s director general also reported that all the nuclear material declared by Iran to the IAEA could be accounted for, and that environmental samples taken from the Lavisan-Shian Physics Research Center were still being analyzed. They were first analyzed at an agency laboratory in Seibersdorf, Austria, and then sent to a network of laboratories around the world to confirm the results. Once the samples were fully evaluated, before the middle of May, the agency could state that they contained traces of highly enriched uranium, implying that unless there had been contamination of equipment from abroad, Iran had enriched uranium to far beyond the level needed for civilian reactors.¹⁸

A significant reason for the report’s bleak tone was Iran’s continuing refusal to provide information or documents with regard to many aspects of its nuclear program. In his late-April report, ElBaradei wrote that his agency was still waiting for Iran’s “clarifications” with respect to its effort to purchase assorted dual-use equipment for the physics research center, and needed further access to the procured equipment. Other problems included Iran’s refusal to discuss the green salt project, or address questions relating to high-explosive testing and the design of a missile reentry vehicle. The title of a New York Times article that May aptly summarized the situation: “Iran’s Secrecy Widens Gap in Nuclear Intelligence.”¹⁹

OF COURSE, it was the job of U.S. intelligence, in the absence of Iranian transparency, to close that gap by clandestine means, including human intelligence. In March 2005 the commission investigating America’s ability to spy on weapons of mass destruction programs had listed Iran among the nations for which “human intelligence is still not delivering the goods.”

The commission had also reported that with regard to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, “the Intelligence Community frequently admitted to us that it lacks answers.” Just a little over a year later, in mid-April 2006, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld described Iran’s nuclear program as “a very difficult target for our intelligence community” and that he was “not confident” in the Intelligence Community’s estimate that it would take Iran five to ten years to join the nuclear weapons club, citing the possibility of the Islamic republic receiving foreign help.²⁰

A report by the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States, released in August, stressed the need for America’s spies to do a better job collecting and analyzing intelligence on Iran, including its nuclear weapons program. The report asserted that “the United States lacks critical information needed for analysts to make many of their judgments with confidence about Iran” and that a special concern was the major gaps in America’s knowledge of Iranian nuclear, biological, and chemical programs. The staffers who prepared the report also argued that while “Iran, being a denied area with active denial and deception efforts, is a difficult target for intelligence analysis and collection, it is imperative that the U.S. Intelligence Community devote significant resources against this vital threat.”²¹

The committee staff suggested a number of steps that the Intelligence Community needed to take to upgrade its understanding of Iranian nuclear developments: improving analysis, using more open-source intelligence, “the availability of which is augmented by Iran’s prolific (if persecuted) press”; improving coordination on Iran-specific issues; augmenting linguistic capabilities; and, of course, enhancing human intelligence capabilities. With respect to the latter, the report’s authors noted that “the nature of the Iranian target poses unique HUMINT challenges; since American officials have so little physical access to Iran, it is difficult to collect information there.”^22*

A few days after the House committee released its report bemoaning the state of U.S. intelligence on Iran, the nation’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, showed up at Arak for its official launch and provided some public remarks and video for analysts to ponder, including the statement that the plant was operational. That latter bit of information would be significant to U.S. intelligence analysts if they were not already aware of the plant’s status, for “if . . . it’s operational, if it’s producing heavy water, that would be a big breakthrough,” according to former weapons inspector David Albright.²³

U.S. intelligence also received some new information at the end of the month from the IAEA, despite the limits Iran had put on the agency’s access. In addition to confirming that Iran continued to produce low-level enriched uranium at Natanz, it also reported that it had discovered new traces of highly enriched uranium in a year-old sample taken from equipment at a technical university, equipment that the IAEA had inspected in conjunction with its investigation of the activities at the physics research center.²⁴

On October 3, about a month after the IAEA report was released, and after having seen whatever data U.S. imagery satellites, communications intelligence, human sources, and other collection methods had produced on Iran’s nuclear activity since his congressional testimony of early February, DNI John Negroponte told a Voice of America audience that “we don’t have any fast facts that could demonstrate to you a particular date by which we’re certain Iran will have a nuclear weapon. But yes, it is our judgment, based on all the information available to us, that Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons and, secondly, they are on a path to achieve that within the next several years. The estimate that we have made it that somewhere between 2010 and 2015 . . . Iran is likely to have a nuclear weapon if it continues on its current course.”²⁵

OF COURSE, while the United States and IAEA were trying, throughout 2005 and 2006, to acquire more information about exactly what the Iranians were doing, diplomatic efforts continued in an effort to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. In November 2005, the Bush administration and the three European nations known as the EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany) approved offering Iran the opportunity of conducting limited nuclear activities within Iran, but having all of its uranium enriched in Russia. The United States and Europe also agreed to put off attempts to refer Iran’s case to the UN Security Council in order to give Russia, China, and India the opportunity to persuade Iran to halt its suspicious nuclear activities.²⁶

During the first several months of 2006 there were developments, but few that were positive. The Iranians cancelled a high-level meeting with the IAEA scheduled for early January. A few days later Iran broke the IAEA seals on the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. President Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran had the right to its peaceful nuclear program and that “no excuse could deprive the country from this right.” On February 4 the IAEA’s governing board voted to refer Iran’s nuclear activities to the UN, by a vote of 27 to 3, with Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba voting no. But in mid-March Iran announced that it was rejecting the proposal that uranium enrichment for Iranian reactors take place in Russia.²⁷

Throughout the remainder of March and the two following months the UN pleaded for Iran to halt its nuclear activities, while Iran remained defiant and Russia and China dissented over possible sanctions. The United States and the EU-3 came up with a revised offer to Iran, which included assisting the Islamic republic with building a light-water nuclear reactor for civilian use in return for halting its objectionable nuclear operations. The offer also included the United States lifting its sanctions on the sale of commercial jets, agricultural equipment, and telecommunications technology to Iran.²⁸

Ahmadinejad was immediately dismissive, addressing the United States and EU-3 in front of a cheering crowd in Arak, “Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolates and get gold in return?” A few weeks later, at the beginning of June, the United States, EU-3, China, and Russia reached agreement on a new offer. Along with the promise of U.S. assistance for an Iranian civilian nuclear energy program, it left open the possibility that Tehran could continue to enrich uranium once the IAEA certified that Iran’s nuclear program was a peaceful one.²⁹

Iran’s initial, nineteen-page response included a presentation of the Islamic republic’s beliefs concerning the unfortunate impact of massive weapons spending, Iran’s legal position, engagement as a means of conflict resolution, and the conditions that would make negotiations constructive, rather than specifics concerning what was being offered and what Iran would want. An actual response would, Iran’s president said, take over a month, which seemed like “an awful long time” to President George Bush.³⁰

At the end of June, calls from the United States, Russia, and the other industrialized nations that make up the G8, for Iran to give a “clear and substantive response” the following week would fall on deaf ears. Three weeks after the G8 demand, Iran promised that it would respond on August 22, unless its case was referred to the UN Security Council. Running out of patience, the Security Council passed a resolution on July 31 demanding that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities by the end of August or face sanctions. Iran promised to ignore the deadline, and on August 21 refused to allow inspectors access to Natanz.³¹

The August 31 deadline came and went and Iran did not blink. On the other hand, several of the nations that had demanded Iranian compliance did. Within days after the deadline, Russia was hinting that it would not support sanctions. Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov told students at Moscow State Institute of International Relations that “we cannot support ultimatums that lead everyone to a dead end and cause escalation.” It took France a few weeks to join Russia and China, with President Jacques Chirac proclaiming that “I am never in favor of sanctions.”³²

In late September, the United States along with the EU-3, China, and Russia set a new deadline—early October—although the events of early September gave Iran no reason to expect there would be consequences if it failed to comply. On October 1, Ahmadinejad told students that Iran would not halt its uranium enrichment activities and that “nobody has the right to make Iran back down over its rights.” By the end of October, with another deadline having been ignored, the United States and its European allies were squabbling among themselves over terms of a resolution that would punish Iran, with the United States believing the proposed resolution was too weak to be effective.³³

In November, negotiations within the United States, EU-3, and Russia would continue, with Iran threatening more noncooperation with UN inspectors if the body’s Security Council approved sanctions. At virtually the same time that it was issuing its threat, President Ahmadinejad claimed that Iran would soon complete its nuclear fuel program: “I’m very hopeful that we will be able to hold the big celebration of Iran’s full nuclearization in the current year,” he said in Tehran. Iran also promised to build a heavy-water reactor at Arak without IAEA help, if necessary. Meanwhile, the IAEA reported that it found unexplained plutonium traces in a nuclear waste facility in Iran.³⁴

On December 23, almost four months after the UN deadline, the UN Security Council voted to approve sanctions that banned the import and export of materials employed in uranium enrichment, reprocessing, and ballistic missiles. The sanctions reflected the demands of Russia and China. As a result, the freeze on the assets of twelve Iranians and ten companies said to be involved in nuclear and ballistic missile programs was qualified to give countries more leeway to unfreeze assets than had been envisioned in earlier drafts of the resolution. In addition, while the United States and European nations would have preferred a mandatory travel ban on Iranians believed to be involved in prohibited nuclear activities, the resolution only called on nations to “exercise vigilance” over their borders. Russia’s objections also meant that there were no sanctions against the nuclear power plant that the Russians were building at Bushehr. The resolution did demand that Iran immediately suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing within sixty days or face further sanctions.³⁵

Iran responded with further defiance. Iran’s ISNA news agency quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that “nuclear technology is our right, and no one can take it away from us” and asking, “What kind of Security Council is this that is completely in the hands of the Zionists, the United States and Britain?” The Iranian Parliament approved a resolution that the government should “revise its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency based on the interests of Iran and its people.”³⁶

But during 2006, it was North Korea’s nuclear weapons program that took center stage.

WHILE THE NUCLEAR confrontation with Iran held the spotlight for most of the year, it was North Korea’s actions in October of 2006 that had the most dramatic impact. For most of the year there had been no progress in the multilateral efforts by the United States and its four partners—Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea—to halt or reverse North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Kim Jong Il’s September 2005 pledge to abandon his nuclear weapons program and rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty “at an early date” proved to be another instance of false hope—at least for those who were optimistic enough to believe such promises. North Korea insisted that it receive a power reactor before it disclosed the details of its nuclear program while the United States insisted that disclosure come first.³⁷

In determining what the North Koreans were doing while the diplomats talked, the United States used a report from former Los Alamos chief Siegfried Hecker and colleagues who had returned to North Korea in August 2005 to talk with government representatives. While Hecker’s group did not return to Yongbyon, they did sit down with Ri Hong Sop, the facility’s director. They were told at their meetings that the fuel rods for the country’s 5-megawatt reactor had been unloaded in April and that North Korea was going to complete a 50-megawatt reactor within the next two years—which would represent a tenfold growth in the regime’s ability to produce fissile material. In November, Hecker told an audience at a conference in Washington what he had presumably already told U.S. government representatives, that the North was “moving full speed ahead with its nuclear weapons programs.”³⁸

America’s spies also had their secret sources of information, one of which was satellite imagery. Included in that imagery was certainly a higher-resolution version of the photograph obtained by a commercial satellite that showed preparation for construction at the 50-megawatt reactor site, including restoration of a building near the reactor.³⁹

At about the time Hecker was speaking in Washington, representatives from the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea met in Beijing for three days to continue discussions. The top American negotiator at the talks, assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill, told the press that “I think we’re going to talk about concepts of how to go forward.” During those three days, the Chinese representative would appeal for flexibility, while the United States and North Korea would stick to their positions as to whether disarmament or reward should come first. North Korea would also complain about financial difficulties it was suffering as a result of financial sanctions the United States had imposed on a Macao bank that it had concluded was laundering $100 bills produced by North Korea’s counterfeiting operation—the sanctions resulting in the bank’s assets, including those belonging to North Korea, being frozen. At the conclusion of the meeting Beijing characterized the talks as “pragmatic and constructive.”⁴⁰

While there had been talk of more talks in January, the North Koreans weren’t interested.

In April, the negotiators were all in the same place—Tokyo—but they were there to attend the Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue, an academic conference on international security sponsored by the University of California at San Diego. There was no dialogue between the negotiators concerning Pyongyang’s nuclear activities. The North was offering to resume talks only if the United States would lift the financial sanctions on the Macao bank.⁴¹

Over the next six months President Bush’s top advisors reportedly recommended a new approach, including commencing negotiations for a peace treaty in the midst of efforts to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and of Bush and South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun agreeing to work together to restart the stalled talks. After a September meeting with Roh, Bush stressed the benefits to Kim Jong Il of returning to the negotiating table and giving up nuclear weapons. “First and foremost,” he said, “the incentive is for Kim Jong Il to understand there is a better way to improve the lives of his people than being isolated.”⁴²

But, as Bush was well aware, improving the lives of his people has never been very high on the North Korean dictator’s “to do” list. Bush had told journalist Bob Woodward a few years earlier, “I loathe Kim Jong Il!” because he was starving his people. Inducements are “not valued according to whether they are good for the North Korean economy or people, but whether they help keep Kim Jong Il in power,” according to two observers of the regime. And Kim’s behavior in 2006 would only serve to increase the North’s isolation. In July the regime test-fired six missiles over the Sea of Japan, including an intercontinental missile that failed or was aborted, in defiance of warnings from Japan, South Korea, the United States, and China. But worse was yet to come.⁴³

On October 3 North Korea’s foreign ministry announced that it would conduct a nuclear test, claiming it was doing so in the midst of increasing U.S. hostility toward the regime—specifically Washington’s “financial squeeze,” which it described as a “de facto declaration of war.” That squeeze included increasing pressure from the United States on foreign banks not to handle transactions involving the North’s military and political elite. North Korea never specified a date or location for the test.⁴⁴

Objections from other nations and the United Nations followed. The Bush administration transmitted a secret message to North Korea through its mission to the UN, warning it not to go ahead with a test. Assistant Secretary of State Hill warned publicly that the North “can have a future or it can have these weapons. It cannot have both.” He added that “we are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea, we are not going to accept it.” In Russia, in a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Lavrov “stressed the unacceptability” of a North Korean test. China suggested North Korean restraint rather than “taking actions that may intensify the situation.” The UN Security Council urged Kim not to test, stating that it would endanger regional stability and produce worldwide denunciation.⁴⁵

OF COURSE, even without North Korea’s announcement, America’s spies had been monitoring North Korea for activity at its nuclear sites and signs of a possible test. There were seven potential test sites to be monitored, the primary one being at P’unggye, a few-dozen miles from the city of Kilju—although it was possible that P’unggye was only a high-explosive site associated with the nuclear weapons program. Commercial satellite photography showed two suspected tunnel openings in a mountain several miles from P’unggye, as well as barracks for support personnel and a multitude of cables running into the tunnel. Three layers of security and a number of warehouses in a valley below the test site were also visible in commercial images, as was a rail station in the area. Imagery showed that it had recently been upgraded with “VIP” features.⁴⁶

American spy satellites had returned images of activity at the site in August and September. The images showed movements of people, vehicles, and fencing. But it was not clear whether the images showed actual test preparations or activity staged to make it appear that a test was imminent—possibly timed to the September 2006 visit to Washington of South Korean President Roh.⁴⁷

Part of the problem in determining what the North Koreans were actually planning was the lack of a historical record with regard to North Korean testing. One intelligence official commented that “the Chinese used to white-wash the curbs before a test to look good for [VIPs]. That was always a good indication something was imminent. [Today], we see everything necessary for a test. . . . They should be ready to go. But it’s hard to tell what North Korea’s intent is.” Another noted that “we don’t have a wonderful timetable that says they have to do 14 things to prepare for a test and they have done seven of them. There is no precedent for assessing how North Korea does its test preparations.”⁴⁸ But soon there would be.

In South Korea, the Korea Earthquake Research Center had been put on twenty-four-hour alert in August, probably as a result of the satellite images showing activity at P’unggye, and the Defense Ministry had sent soldiers to examine the center’s video displays for any indications of a test. It was Sunday night on October 8 in Washington when North Korea announced that it had detonated a nuclear device. According to the North Korean Central News Agency the test was “a historical event that has brought our military and people huge joy.” South Korean officials announced that they had detected a seismic event measuring about 3.6 on the Richter scale as having occurred at 10:36 a.m. local time, Monday, October 9, in Korea.⁴⁹

The announcement produced the expected condemnations. President Bush characterized the very claim of a test as a “provocative act.” Even the People’s Republic of China, North Korea’s best friend and benefactor, was annoyed. The Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing stated that North Korea “has ignored the widespread opposition of the international community and conducted a nuclear test brazenly on October 9.” Russian president Vladimir Putin told Bush of Russia’s strong concern about North Korea’s activities, and the French foreign minister called the test “a very grave act” that required “a firm response” from the international community. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe told a news conference in Seoul that North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons constituted a “major threat” extending “beyond northeast Asia.”⁵⁰

WHILE LEADERS and foreign ministries were busy making public statements condemning the claimed test, American nuclear intelligence analysts were busy evaluating the data they had from the event while intelligence collectors attempted to gather more. A U.S. intelligence source told the Washington Post that satellite imagery, intercepts, and seismic signals would all be used to put together a picture of the test and improve understanding of the North’s actual nuclear capabilities.⁵¹

The seismic data available to the United States included those obtained from South Korea as well as the signals obtained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and AFTAC. The USGS detected a seismic event with a 4.2 magnitude at the same time that the South Korean earthquake center detected the claimed North Korean detonation. Exactly which AFTAC arrays also picked up seismic signals is not public knowledge, but they probably included the ones in South Korea, Thailand, and Australia.⁵²

The data left no doubt that an explosion, rather than an earthquake, had taken place in North Korea, but it was not a very impressive one for a nuclear explosion. Other nations’ first tests had produced yields of at least 10 kilotons; France’s first detonation had produced a yield of over 60 kilotons. But according to one intelligence official the United States “assessed that the explosion in North Korea was a sub-kiloton explosion.” At that yield, “we don’t know, in fact, whether it was a nuclear explosion,” he added, raising the possibility that the North had set off a large chemical explosion in an attempt to mimic a nuclear detonation.⁵³

There were also other possibilities, all of which involved a nuclear explosion having occurred. One was that only a fraction of the device’s plutonium core exploded, due to asymmetrical implosion or poisoned plutonium (a core that contained too much plutonium 240). Another possibility was that the North had used less plutonium than anticipated because it had less available than had been believed. Less likely explanations were that Pyongyang had manufactured a smaller, more sophisticated device, and that engineers had intended to test the device’s design instead of its yield.⁵⁴

One indication that the explosion had not been a North Korean deception effort came from what U.S. spy satellites had not seen: any signs of chemical explosives having been unloaded at the site. Information indicating that the device had not performed as expected came to a senior Bush official from “Asian contacts,” most probably a Chinese official. What the U.S. official was told was that the North Koreans had expected the device to produce a 4-kiloton yield.⁵⁵

U.S. spy satellites continued to photograph the test site, looking for a crater that might provide additional data about the test as well as signs that, in the face of the test’s partial failure, the North might be preparing for a second round. Undoubtedly, the NSA tried to glean whatever it could from North Korean communications. There was also an expectation that nuclear debris from the test could be captured because the strength of the detonation was not sufficient to melt and pulverize nearby rock into impregnable barriers, increasing the chances that radioactivity would leak into the atmosphere. One intelligence official noted that “over time, whenever the prevailing winds blow out over the Gulf of Japan, it will be more likely that we get some detection.”⁵⁶

A July 31, 2006, Orbview-3 image of the area north of Kilju, North Korea, where North Korea’s first nuclear test would take place on October 9, 2006.
GEOEYE

Detection of the xenon, krypton, cesium, and other radioactive isotopes associated with a plutonium detonation would provide the best confirmation of a test and the composition of the bomb, particularly since “it would be more difficult to mimic the radioactive isotopes you get from a nuclear blast” than to conduct an actual nuclear test, according to a nuclear expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. In the hopes of detecting those isotopes, AFTAC ordered the remaining WC-135 Constant Phoenix aircraft to launch from Kadena Air Base and fly over the Sea of Japan.⁵⁷

The first results from the air-sampling missions did not provide conclusive proof. The WC-135 did not appear to bring back any evidence of radioactive debris that would have been expected to be circulating in the atmosphere. A Chinese official confirmed that China had also failed to find radioactive evidence: “We have conducted air monitoring and found no radiation in the air over Chinese air territory so far.” According to Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, “Sampling devices may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the amount of radioactive material may have been too small to detect because this may have been a failed test of a small nuclear device.”⁵⁸

But by Friday, October 13, press reports stated that U.S. aerial sampling operations, guided by computer models that identified when the planes would have the best chance of gathering conclusive evidence, had produced evidence of radioactivity associated with a nuclear explosion. Analysts had also produced an estimate of the yield of the test—a mere 200 tons of TNT or 0.2 kiloton. But the U.S. government was not yet ready to officially confirm that North Korea had become the eighth nation to test a nuclear device. Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters that “when the intelligence community has a determination to present, we will make that public.”⁵⁹

While the United States was not willing to make an official statement that day or the next, it did vote for UN Security Council Resolution 1718, as did all other fourteen members of the council. Its primary provision prohibited the sale or transfer to North Korea of material that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. It also banned international travel and froze the overseas assets of individuals associated with Pyongyang’s weapons programs. The most debated component of the resolution permitted inspection of cargo to and from North Korea to detect prohibited material, a provision that was less than enthusiastically supported by China and Russia but was not as tough as the United States desired in that it didn’t include the authority to stop ships in international waters. Predictably, North Korean ambassador Pak Gilyon informed the council that his government “totally rejected” the resolution, and accused the group’s members of “gangster-like” action and of “double standards” that ignored the nuclear threat posed by the United States.⁶⁰

Two days later, the United States was willing to state officially that North Korea had conducted a nuclear test and to provide some information on when it had accumulated definitive evidence. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a one-paragraph statement: “Analysis of air samples collected on October 11, 2006 detected radioactive debris which confirms that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of P’ungyye on October 9, 2006. The explosion yield was less than a kiloton.”⁶¹

The statement did not mean that U.S. nuclear intelligence analysts were through exploring all the data on the North Korean test. Nor were the collectors at the National Clandestine Service, NRO, or NSA done gathering data. One question that remained for which a definitive answer was lacking was the cause of the test’s low yield. The analysts had reached three firm conclusions: the bomb’s fissile material was plutonium rather than uranium, it was extracted from its 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, and it was produced either during the administration of the first President Bush (1989–1993) or after 2003.⁶²

According to some nuclear experts the findings represented “good news” because they suggested that North Korea’s plutonium program was probably the only one currently capable of producing material for a bomb. In addition, according to Siegfried Hecker, they indicated that “we have a reasonably good idea of how much plutonium they have made.”⁶³

Collectors and analysts were also devoting attention to the possibility of a second North Korean nuclear test, perhaps fueled by the world’s perception that the first test had been a partial failure. Concern that Kim might be planning a second test was partly the result of new satellite images showing increased activity around two additional North Korean test sites. That activity had begun a few days earlier, and included ground preparation at one site as well as the construction of some buildings and other structures, according to a U.S. defense official. However, the imagery did not, a senior South Korean official noted at the time, indicate that a second test was imminent.⁶⁴

By the end of the month there had been no second test, and North Korea had agreed to rejoin the six-party disarmament talks, probably motivated to a great degree by the money crunch created by U.S. financial sanctions and China’s post-test order to some of its major banks to halt monetary transactions with the North. Assistant Secretary of State Hill said he expected “substantial progress” at the talks and they would take place without preconditions. Others were less optimistic, with one unidentified administration official asking, “Where’s the stick?” and adding, “We’re celebrating the six-party talks, but we’re back to endless chatter.”⁶⁵

IN THE FIRST half of 2007, developments with regard to the Iranian nuclear program unfolded in much the same manner as they had in the later part of 2006. The United States tried to persuade its European allies, Russia, and China to turn up the pressure on Tehran. China did urge Iran to give a “serious response” to the UN sanctions. But European governments initially resisted demands from the Bush administration that they move quickly to enforce the sanctions approved in December, citing technical and political problems related to Europe’s extensive economic relations with Iran and its oil companies.⁶⁶

President Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, pressed on, despite criticism from the nation’s most senior dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. In January, Iran barred thirty-eight inspectors from entering the country in retaliation for the sanctions imposed in December. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported that Iranian officials had told him that they planned to begin installing uranium enrichment equipment in their Natanz facility in February. And in early February, European diplomats reported that Iran had set up two cascades of 164 centrifuges at the facility. Later in February, Ahmadinejad characterized his nation’s nuclear program as a train “without brakes.”⁶⁷

During the first half of April Iran’s mercurial president claimed that his country had started enriching uranium on an industrial scale. In a nationally televised speech from Natanz, Ahmadinejad told his audience, “With great pride I announce as of today, our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.” Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, appeared to confirm to reporters that Iran had begun enriching uranium through a 3,000-centrifuge cascade.⁶⁸

Iran’s intransigence did result in additional penalties. In early February the IAEA board of governors suspended twenty-two of its fifty-five aid programs to Iran, including those designed to assist Iran’s development of nuclear power, to assist its radiation processing of metals and plastic, as well as to improve its nuclear management and strategic planning. In addition, European governments agreed to extend economic sanctions, resulting in a new UN Security Council resolution in late March that targeted Iranian arms exports, the state-owned Bank Sepah (already under Treasury Department sanctions), and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The resolution prohibited the sale or transfer of Iranian weapons to any nation or organization, and asked nations to “exercise vigilance and restraint” in providing weapons to Iran.⁶⁹

Russia also told Iran that it would not provide fuel for the nearly complete Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant unless it suspended its uranium enrichment program. But that came a month after Russia had threatened to slow work on the plant after a dispute with Iran erupted over Iran’s desire to pay its bills in euros rather than dollars, creating the suspicion that Russia was using the UN sanctions as a convenient excuse to pressure Iran.⁷⁰

Throughout the dispute there was, of course, a desire by both the IAEA and the U.S. Intelligence Community to find out exactly what Iran was doing—to determine the extent to which their boasts were backed up by actual deeds, and what they might be doing that they were not talking about. Certainly, both were interested in what might be gleaned from the tour of the Esfahan uranium conversion facility that Iranian officials gave to diplomats and journalists in early February, which included the claim from the officials that the facility had manufactured 250 tons of uranium hexa-fluoride. America’s spies also benefited from the IAEA disclosure in late February that Iran was operating or about to switch on approximately one thousand centrifuges.⁷¹

In addition, in February the IAEA reported that satellite imagery indicated that the heavy-water production plant at Arak was still in operation, imagery that might have been obtained from commercial sources or provided by the United States. Certainly, U.S. imagery satellites would have photographed that site and every other nuclear site in Iraq, and the IAEA would (or did) gladly accept such images. The international agency was apparently, however, less enthralled with other information provided by the United States. According to one report, “U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran.” It quoted an anonymous senior diplomat at the IAEA: “Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us has proved to be wrong”—a statement that might have been more a testament to the unreliability of human intelligence than to failures unique to the U.S. Intelligence Community since it also applied to the intelligence provided by other Western intelligence services.^72*

But in April the IAEA had an opportunity to gather data on Iran’s uranium enrichment activities firsthand—which would help inform not only the IAEA but a variety of national intelligence agencies, including the CIA. During a visit to Riyadh, during the first half of April, IAEA chief ElBaradei questioned Iranian claims to be operating 3,000 centrifuges, suggesting that only several hundred were in operation.⁷³

However, that assessment did not survive the inspection carried out a few days later, on April 15 and 16—inspections that required only a couple of hours notice and had recently been agreed to by the Iranians. The inspectors verified that Iran was indeed operating 3,000 centrifuges at the newly opened underground facility at Natanz, although they were not in position to determine how efficiently they were running.⁷⁴

In another short-notice inspection of Natanz, on May 13, the IAEA inspectors found that Iranian engineers had apparently overcome their difficulty in keeping the 1,300 centrifuges spinning at the enormous speeds needed to enrich uranium suitable for nuclear reactors. The inspectors also reported another 300 centrifuges were being tested and could become operational within a week. In contrast to his statements of a month earlier, ElBaradei viewed the Iranian claims of progress less skeptically, observing that “we believe they pretty much have the knowledge about now to enrich. From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge.” Matthew Bunn, assistant director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs commented that the new information meant that “whether they’re six months or a year away, one can debate. But it’s not ten years.”⁷⁵

IN LATE DECEMBER, while the UN was approving sanctions against Iran for its nuclear activities, the talks that would hopefully reverse or halt the North Korean nuclear program were going nowhere, concluding with no “tangible progress” and Pyongyang threatening to “improve its nuclear deterrent.” But private talks in Berlin between Christopher Hill and North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan led to an action plan in February that was endorsed by China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia.⁷⁶

Under the terms of the agreement, North Korea promised to shut down and seal the Yongbyon facility, including its reprocessing component, within sixty days, and invite IAEA inspectors to return “to conduct all necessary monitoring and verifications as agreed.” Eventually the facility was to be abandoned entirely. Pyongyang pledged to discuss with the other participants in the six-party talks all of its nuclear programs, including the extraction of plutonium from fuel rods, that would be abandoned in accord with the agreement. A list of those activities was to be provided by the time Yongbyon was shut down. The United States and North Korea would also begin bilateral talks aimed at “resolving pending bilateral issues” and moving toward full diplomatic relations. The United States also agreed to begin the process of removing from Kim Jong Il’s regime the designation of state sponsor of terrorism. The agreement also specified that North Korea would receive an initial shipment of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel, beginning within sixty days, with another 950,000 tons to follow.⁷⁷

The agreement was criticized by former Bush administration ambassador to the UN (and before that State Department nonproliferation chief) John Bolton, for “rewarding [the] bad behavior of the North Koreans by promising fuel oil” and giving up financial leverage by agreeing to lift banking sanctions. Bolton’s successor in the State Department, Robert Joseph, resigned, in part because of his discomfort with the agreement. It was not long before it appeared there might be no agreement after all, as delays in transferring $25 million in frozen North Korean funds led Pyongyang’s delegates to refuse to take part in the joint meetings in Beijing concerning implementation of the action plan. But during the first week of April, the United States announced that it had found a way around the legal and technical problems that had prevented return of the money—one week before the target date for shutting down Yongbyon.⁷⁸ But when the deadline arrived in April, North Korea claimed it could not access the money and refused to shut down the reactor. NRO spy satellites continued to monitor the facility. Near the end of April one U.S. official noted, “There is no evidence to indicate, nor is there reason to believe, that it has shut down.” By mid-May the North Koreans had still not halted operations at Yongbyon.⁷⁹

But should Yongbyon actually be shut down and talks eventually progress beyond the shutting down of that facility and on to issues such as the declaration of all the North’s nuclear programs, and delivery of all the fissile material produced by Kim’s regime, the U.S. Intelligence Community will be asked to provide its estimate of whether the regime can be counted on to keep its word.

One issue will be whether the North’s declaration of its stockpile of nuclear weapons and the quantity of fissile material produced is accurate or even close to accurate. Given the debate that took place within the U.S. Intelligence Community in the early 1990s concerning the veracity of South Africa’s declarations to the IAEA, it is not hard to imagine that it might be difficult, if not impossible, for the CIA and other intelligence agencies to establish with high probability that North Korea’s claims are not duplicitous.⁸⁰

The second issue will be the status of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program, which the United States first accused North Korea of operating in 2002. Whereas a North Korean representative apparently acknowledged the program, Pyongyang representatives have since denied the existence of such an effort. The United States reached the conclusion that North Korea was pursuing such a program, a violation at the very least of the 1991 denuclearization agreement, based on the North’s purchase of twenty centrifuges from Pakistan (in exchange for No Dong missiles) as well as its massive purchase of aluminum tubes. Even agencies such as the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research that had challenged the assertion that Iraq’s purchase of such tubes was linked to nuclear ambitions were in agreement that the North’s acquisition of the tubes was related to uranium enrichment. According to John Bolton, “There was no dissent at the time, because in the face of the evidence the disputes evaporated.”There was also some tentative intelligence that the North was building a factory to produce centrifuges.^81*

In March 2007, some news reports suggested that the Intelligence Community’s confidence in the overall existence of the program had dropped from high to moderate—while there was high confidence that North Korea had pursued uranium enrichment in the past, there was only moderate confidence that it was still doing so. In response to suggestions that the Bush administration had not been on solid ground in challenging North Korea on the uranium enrichment issue in 2002, North Korea mission manager Joseph De Trani issued a press release noting that “the intelligence in 2002 was high quality information that made possible a high confidence judgment about North Korea’s effort to acquire a uranium enrichment capability. The Intelligence Community had then, and continues to have, confidence in its assessment that North Korea has pursued that capability.” He went on to state that “we have continued to assess efforts by North Korea since 2002. All Intelligence Community agencies have at least moderate confidence that North Korea’s past efforts to acquire a uranium enrichment capability continue today.”⁸²

That the Intelligence Community has moderate rather than high confidence in this judgment apparently stems from a dearth of information on the North’s current activities, which may be a product of North Korea’s lack of progress in the area, its complete cancellation of the program, or the type of successful operational security measures that have kept other nuclear weapons programs hidden from U.S. intelligence.⁸³ That also raises the question of how well the Intelligence Community will be able to assure U.S. national security officials that North Korea’s claims concerning its uranium enrichment program, or lack thereof, are actually true.

THROUGHOUT 2006 and early 2007, America’s spies continued to monitor the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, including collecting and analyzing data on the North Korean test of October 9. As with the tests of other nations—from the Soviet Union in 1949 to India and Pakistan in 1998—the intelligence on the North Korean nuclear test collected and analyzed by U.S. intelligence organizations was intended to produce a better understanding of the North’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

The results of the intelligence effort directed against all aspects of the Iranian and North Korean programs (supplemented by the data provided by the IAEA with respect to Iran) might give the president and other senior officials the information they need to intelligently guide their actions among policy options—whether verifying or challenging North Korean compliance with nuclear disarmament agreements or using military force against Iranian nuclear facilities—and to persuade the public, legislators in the United States, and foreign governments of the wisdom of their actions.⁸⁴

But the events of 2006 and early 2007 also illustrated that America’s nuclear intelligence efforts concerning Iran and North Korea might well have a limited impact in terms of shaping international responses, no matter how successful the efforts. A blind-faith belief in negotiations often cannot be undermined by intelligence reporting, since it can always be argued that if only the United States and other nations offer the right package of inducements (possibly including overlooking such matters as a nation’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency), the offending party’s behavior can be changed. Thus, one writer for a major newspaper wrote, in the aftermath of North Korea’s nuclear test, that “moral suasion and sustained bargaining” were “the proven mechanisms of nuclear restraint,” while a former U.S. CIA official and ambassador to South Korea wrote that “the only path to success with North Korea is negotiation.”⁸⁵

Such a worldview may be ill equipped to accept the idea that certain regimes and leaders are incorrigible and negotiate only as a stalling tactic until they have attained a deterrent capability against the United States and other nations that might act against their nuclear programs. Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rouhani told his nation’s Supreme Cultural Revolution Council in September 2005 that Iran, in dealing with the IAEA, had agreed to suspend activities only in areas where it was not experiencing technical problems and that the Esfahan uranium conversion facility was completed while negotiating with the EU-3. Rouhani informed the council that “while we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the facility . . . by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work.”⁸⁶

Intelligence data may also fail to persuade nations who claim they are opposed to sanctions, or seek to weaken them, because they would not accomplish the stated objective, when the actual reason for their opposition is based on their calculation of their national interest—in terms of their trade relations with the offending nation or their desire to undermine American power and influence—or simple cowardice. It is hard, after all, to take seriously Russian and Chinese claims that they are opposed to the use of coercive measures and threats in international diplomacy, given their policies toward some of the former Soviet states and Taiwan, respectively. And even if one understands a South Korean reluctance to intercept North Korean ships because of a fear that such action by the South could escalate to war, it is hard to be charitable about the South’s reluctance to invoke any significant economic penalties for the North’s test.⁸⁷

Nevertheless, the more accurate U.S. nuclear intelligence analysts can be about the status of the nuclear programs of nations like Iran and North Korea, the better the chance of minimizing the threat from such nations—by keeping decisionmakers apprised of those nations’ nuclear progress, monitoring compliance with agreements and treaties, and watching for transfers of nuclear technology, particularly to terrorist groups.

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* Some experts were more skeptical about the contents of the laptop. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace raised the question of whether the work was an uncoordinated effort by an ambitious sector of the rocket program or part of a step-by-step effort to develop a nuclear weapon within a decade. A European diplomat claimed, “I can fabricate that data,” and stated, “It looks beautiful but is open to doubt.” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, stated that the information concerned a reentry vehicle for a missile rather than a warhead—although given the other information reported, it would seem that the reentry vehicle in mind was a nuclear warhead. See William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran’s Nuclear Aims,” New York Times, November 13, 2005, pp. 1, 2; David Albright, “To Whom It May Concern,” n.d., www.isis-online.org, accessed December 2, 2005.

* Some of the specific claims about the status of the Iranian program made in the report were challenged by the IAEA. See Vilmos Cserveny, Director, Office of External Relations and Policy Coordination, Letter to Hon. Peter Hoekstra, September 12, 2006; David E. Sanger, “Nuclear Agency for U.N. Faults Report on Iran by U.S. House,” New York Times, September 15, 2006, p. A3; Jacqueline Shire and David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security, “Iran’s Nuclear Program: Flawed House Intelligence Report Should Be Amended or Withdrawn,” November 9, 2006.

* The report also again raised the question of the validity of the documents found on the laptop computer, quoting a UN official as stating, “We don’t know. Are they genuine? Are they real?” See Bob Drogin and Kim Murphy, “U.N. Calls U.S. Data on Iran’s Nuclear Aims Unreliable,” Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2007, pp. A1, A9.

* For a challenge to the argument that the 2002 data provided persuasive evidence that North Korea was pursuing uranium enrichment, see David Albright, “North Korea’s Alleged Large-Scale Enrichment Plant: Yet Another Questionable Interpretation Based on Aluminum Tubes,” February 23, 2007, www.isis-online.org.