Biggest intelligence failure in American history? Read the last highlighted line of this article.
Government Releases Images of Syrian Reactor
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
April 25, 2008
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration released detailed photographic images
on Thursday to support its assertion that the building in Syria that Israel
destroyed in an airstrike last year was a nuclear reactor constructed with
years of help from North Korea.
The administration said it withheld the pictures for seven months out of
fear that Syria could retaliate against Israel and start a broader war in
the Middle East.
The photographs taken inside the reactor before it was destroyed in an air
raid on Sept. 6 clearly show the rods that control the heat in a nuclear
reactor, one of many close engineering similarities to a reactor halfway
around the world where North Korea produced the fuel for its nuclear
arsenal.
While the photographs were not dated, some taken on the ground seemed to go
back to before 2002.
But after a full day of briefing members of Congress, two senior
intelligence officials acknowledged that the evidence had left them with no
more than "low confidence" that Syria was preparing to build a nuclear
weapon. They said that there was no sign that Syria had built an operation
to convert the spent fuel from the plant into weapons-grade plutonium, but
that they had told President Bush last year that they could think of no
other explanation for the reactor.
Among the photographs shown to members of Congress and reporters on Thursday
was one of the manager of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plant with the
director of Syria's nuclear agency. A car in the background has Syrian
license plates.
When asked about North Korea's motivation for the project, one of the senior
intelligence officials said simply, "Cash." He refused to say how much.
The revelation of the plant's existence is not new; The New York Times
reported in mid-October that Israel had brought the United States evidence
that the Syrian building was a partly constructed reactor. But no more than
a handful of lawmakers had ever been briefed on the attack.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters with the help of the
two senior intelligence officials, said for the first time that the White
House had extensive discussions with Israel before the airstrike in
September. The official said the White House had raised the possibility of
confronting Syria with a demand that it dismantle the reactor or face the
possibility of an attack.
But that idea apparently never gained traction with the Israelis or some in
the administration, and in the end, the official said, Israel cited
satellite evidence to declare that the Syrian reactor constituted "an
existential threat" to Israel because it might soon be ready for operation.
The senior administration official, who was a central player in Mr. Bush's
deliberations, added that Israel's attack proceeded "without a green light
from us."
"None was asked for, none was given," the official added.
While one of the senior intelligence officials said that the United States
agreed that Syria was "good to go" in turning on the reactor, it would have
been years before it could have produced weapons fuel.
It is unclear how the Syrians planned to get the uranium they needed. Once
they got it, the reactor would have had to run for roughly 18 months before
the fuel was "cooked." And then to turn it into weapons-grade plutonium, it
would require reprocessing, presumably outside the country unless Syria
found a way to build its own plant.
The announcement on Thursday closes one chapter of a secretive intelligence
and military operation and opens several others that will play out over the
remainder of the Bush presidency.
The crucial question now is how the North Koreans will react. Some officials
said that they hoped the announcement would embarrass the North into
admitting to nuclear proliferation activities, while others said it could
prompt the North to walk away from the negotiating table - and collapse the
deal Mr. Bush was hoping to reach by the end of his presidency. In return
for North Korea's declaration of all its nuclear activities, the United
States would lift sanctions and begin to negotiate the North Koreans' reward
for turning over their fuel and weapons.
The announcement also raises the possibility of new tensions with Syria, as
the White House on Thursday accused the Syrian government of a "cover-up"
consistent with a government that "supports terrorism, takes action that
destabilizes Lebanon" and allows militants to enter Iraq.
Last year, Mr. Bush ordered that knowledge of the Syrian project be limited
to a few crucial officials, and he put the C.I.A. in charge of marshaling
the assets of other intelligence agencies.
Still, the Americans were somewhat blindsided. By their own account, they
suspected that North Korea and Syria were at work together in Syria, but
only identified the plant at Al Kibar, named for the nearest town, after
they received photos of the interior of the plant last spring from Israel,
American and Israeli officials said last year.
Only selected pictures were released by the intelligence agencies on
Thursday, including a video that combined still photos and drawings, and had
a voice-over that gave the presentation the feel of a cold-war-era newsreel
about the Korean War. In fact, it was intended in part, officials said, to
try to draw that war - in which the United States and North Korea never
signed a peace treaty - to a close.
But inside the administration, the battle over whether to try to strike a
deal with North Korea or keep it under sanctions in hopes of setting off the
collapse of its government continues into the last months of Mr. Bush's
term. Representative Peter Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan, expressed
annoyance on Thursday that the administration waited seven months to brief
Congress.
"I think many people believe that we were used today by the administration,"
he said.
At the C.I.A., Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the agency's director, told employees
on Thursday that they should "take heart because our team effort on the Al
Kibar reactor is a case study in rigorous analytic tradecraft, skillful
human and technical collection, and close collaboration."
But even this victory, some experts note, raises questions about the
agency's focus. The reactor was built within 100 miles of the Iraqi border
yet never identified even though the administration was searching for any
form of such arms programs in Iraq.
Moreover, even some senior officials of the administration acknowledge that
they are likely to leave Mr. Bush's successor with a North Korea with
roughly 10 nuclear weapons or fuel for weapons, up from the one or two
weapons it had when Mr. Bush took office in 2001.
"I'd say the score is Kim Jong-il eight, and Bush zero," said Graham
Allison, a Harvard professor and author of "Nuclear Terrorism," who was in
Washington on Thursday to testify about Iran's nuclear program. "And if you
can build a reactor in Syria without being detected for eight years, how
hard can it be to sell a little plutonium to Osama bin Laden?"
www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/world/middleeast/25korea.html
