'Intelligence Fiasco' Stirs Up the Korean Peninsula

By Barbara Demick

Times Staff Writer

March 24, 2005

Some in the South believe U.S. officials overstated the North's nuclear activities. The flap roughly parallels the disputes over Iraq.

SEOUL — At a sensitive time when the United States is trying to build a consensus on North Korea, South Koreans are in a furor over allegations that Washington hyped intelligence about the North's nuclear activities.

The flap, which roughly parallels some of the disputes over Iraq, concerns a trip by National Security Council officials through Asia this year to present evidence to Chinese, Japanese and South Korean officials about North Korea's alleged role in supplying Libya with uranium hexafluoride. The gas is used to make weapons-grade uranium.

In a Washington Post report Sunday, two U.S. officials were quoted as saying the U.S. had covered up a key role played by Pakistan as middleman to bolster the case against North Korea as a dangerous proliferator of nuclear material.

North Korea and Pakistan are known to have exchanged weapons technology for years, so a transaction between them would not have been particularly shocking or new intelligence.
"Another Intelligence Fiasco," is how the English-language Korea Times referred to it in an article Wednesday.

The conservative newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, has demanded an investigation.
"If the U.S. administration really offered false information … Washington's credibility and morality would be in tatters," the Chosun editorialized under the headline, "Did Washington Lie to Seoul?"