Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 1, 2003
David E. Sanger, New York Times

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. intelligence officials now think North Korea is developing the technology to make nuclear warheads small enough to fit atop the country's growing arsenal of missiles, potentially putting Tokyo and U.S. troops based in Japan at risk, according to officials who have received the intelligence reports.

In the assessment, which they have shared with Japan, South Korea and other allies in recent weeks, CIA officials said that U.S. satellites have identified a sophisticated new nuclear testing site, called Youngdoktong.

At the site, equipment has been set up to test conventional explosives that, when detonated, could compress a plutonium core and set off a nuclear explosion. Some intelligence officials think the testing range is evidence that the country intends to manufacture much more sophisticated weapons that would be light enough to put onto its medium-and long-range missiles.

Previously, U.S. officials had said they were uncertain whether North Korea had received enough outside technical help to even attempt to make such a "miniaturized" nuclear warhead.

The new testing capability does not mean North Korea can actually build a small weapon, but it suggests that the North Koreans are moving to combine their two most advanced weapons projects: nuclear technology and missile technology. The new intelligence reports suggest that they could develop such a weapon in less than a year, but some officials warn that that assessment represents what one called "a best guess rather than a solid estimate."

For months, Washington has been trying to convince Asian nations, especially South Korea and China, that the North Korean threat is so urgent that it requires a unified diplomatic front to force the country to give up its weapons. The new intelligence is apparently being marshaled to support the administration's argument.

Tests detected

According to officials who have been briefed on the U.S. reports, conventional explosions simulating a nuclear detonation have been set off at the testing site, near North Korea's main nuclear complex. North Korea has never tested a nuclear weapon, although the CIA long ago estimated that it manufactured two crude devices in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

North Korea has made no secret of its plan to develop nuclear weapons. Now administration officials say they fear that the country is on the verge of producing five or six new weapons, some of which might be miniaturized.

"This would give them the range they never had before, and the chance to spread their threat far beyond South Korea," said one senior Asian official, noting that about 60,000 U.S. troops are based in Japan.

The new intelligence estimates provided to Asian allies, however, left it unclear how quickly the North could produce the small warheads. The worst-case estimate, officials said, is that they could do so in less than a year.

U.S. satellites have been watching North Korean nuclear activity intently since late last year, when the North evicted international inspectors. Those inspectors had stood guard over 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, which can be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium.

In January, the country began to restart its nuclear reprocessing equipment, which had been mothballed for nearly a decade under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration. But according to U.S. officials, it now appears that North Korean engineers ran into technical problems in restarting the facilities. While intelligence officials have reached no consensus, they told allies last week that in the worst case, a few hundred of the 8,000 rods had been converted into plutonium. It would take 1,000 to 1,500 rods to make enough plutonium for a weapon, experts say.

Estimates in question

"What we are told is that it would take perhaps six months after that to produce a miniaturized warhead, and put it into one of the missiles," said one senior official who has recently reviewed the intelligence. "But after Iraq, who knows how good those estimates are?"

After the apparently overstated claims made about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, skepticism about the quality of U.S. intelligence is widespread. In the case of North Korea, as in Iraq, the immediacy of the threat depends on whose analysis seems most compelling.

So far, U.S. intelligence has picked up almost no sign of the telltale krypton gas that is released into the atmosphere when nuclear fuel rods are converted into weapons-grade plutonium. This has led some analysts to argue that the North Koreans may be further from producing a weapon than feared a few months ago.

Others note that trucks were seen carrying the rods out of their normal storage area months ago, and it is unclear where they are -- or even whether the United States is sniffing for the krypton gas in the right place.

"We don't believe that the main reprocessing facility has been very active," said one administration official. "But could there be a second reprocessor? No one knows for sure."

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