This is what it would look like.
Posted on 05/05/2005 11:20:22 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
WASHINGTON, May 5 - White House and Pentagon officials are closely monitoring a recent stream of satellite photographs of North Korea that appear to show rapid, extensive preparations for a nuclear weapons test, including the construction of a reviewing stand, presumably for dignitaries, according to American and foreign officials who have been briefed on the imagery.
North Korea has never tested a nuclear weapon.
Bush administration officials, when asked Thursday about the burst of activity at a suspected test site in the northeastern part of the country, cautioned that satellites could not divine the intentions of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, and said it was possible that he was putting on a show for American spy satellites. They said the North Koreans might be trying to put pressure on President Bush to offer a improved package of economic and diplomatic incentives to the desperately poor country in exchange for curtailing its nuclear activities.
"The North Koreans have learned how to use irrationality as a bargaining tool," a senior American official said Thursday evening. "We can't tell what they are doing."
Nonetheless, American officials have been sufficiently alarmed that they have extensively briefed their Japanese and South Korean allies and warned them to be prepared for the political implications of a test.
On Thursday morning, Mr. Bush spoke at length about North Korea with President Hu Jintao of China, who has been his main interlocutor to Mr. Kim's government. The White House refused to say whether the two men had discussed the new evidence, focusing instead on what officials said was Mr. Bush's determination to get North Korea back to the negotiating table in six-nation talks.
American intelligence agencies have debated for years over the extent of North Korea's technical abilities, and whether it has successfully turned its stockpile of nuclear fuel into warheads. That debate has become particularly fevered since Feb. 10, when the North publicly boasted that it had manufactured weapons.
The accounts of North Korea's activities have come from three American officials who have reviewed either the imagery or the intelligence reports interpreting them. They were confirmed by two foreign officials who have been briefed by the Americans, but who cautioned that their countries had no independent way of interpreting the data.
Officials at one American intelligence agency said they were unaware of the new activity.
Since October, American officials have periodically seen activity suggesting preparations for a nuclear test, chiefly at the site in the northeast part of the country, near an area variously called Kilchu or Kilju. But in recent weeks, that activity appears to have accelerated.
Several officials said they had never before seen Korean preparations as advanced as those detected in recent days, including the digging of a tunnel. That tunnel resembles the one used in Pakistan for nuclear tests in 1998.
One of the creators of Pakistan's program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, traveled to North Korea repeatedly and has admitted to Pakistani interrogators that he supplied nuclear technology to the North, American intelligence officials said.
But officials said Thursday that they had not seen any evidence that North Korea was getting outside help with its current activity. "What we're seeing is everything you need to test," said a senior intelligence official who has reviewed the evidence. "We've never seen this level of activity."
Asked if the intelligence agencies, which have often been sharply divided about North Korea's nuclear abilities, had differences of opinion about the satellite photographs, the official said: " This looks like the real thing. There is wide agreement in the community."
But another American intelligence expert noted that so far, intelligence agencies had not seen the telltale signs of electronic equipment that is often used to monitor the size and success of a test, leading to "some debate about whether this is the real deal."
The intelligence official who reviewed the imagery, and others familiar with the evidence, said it was entirely possible that the activity was an elaborate ruse by Mr. Kim, to strengthen his bargaining position with the five other nations in the talks that he has boycotted: the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
Mr. Kim is considered skilled at the art of escalating a crisis, and a senior diplomat said Thursday that the United States had not raised a public alarm "because we don't want to play his game."
In late 2002 and early 2003, North Korea threw out international inspectors and said it was preparing to reprocess 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into bomb fuel, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies have told Congress. In recent months, they have said that they believe all 8,000 rods were turned into bomb fuel.
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, went further last week, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea was believed to have the "capability" to mount a warhead on one of its long-range missiles.
Particular interest and concern was aroused in the White House by the construction of the reviewing stand, which appears luxurious by North Korean standards, several miles from the suspected test site.
An American official who confirmed that the images showed the reviewing stand recalled that in 1998, after Western intelligence was surprised by a North Korean missile launching, analysts went back over satellite imagery and other data to see if they had missed anything.
"What was interesting is they had built a reviewing stand for that launch, but that wasn't noticed," he said. "They had visitors from other countries in. We had seen movement, but we didn't know what for. The idea was that they invited other people to watch this other thing."
While satellite imagery is often hard to interpret, nuclear arms experts say it is easy to distinguish tunneling for a nuclear test site from, say, a mine. While both require the removal of vast quantities of rock, only a test site puts the rock and other sealing materials back into the hole after the weapon is installed deeply inside. The goal is to create a impenetrable barrier that keeps the powerful blast and radioactivity locked up tight inside the earth.
In this case, a senior intelligence official who specializes in nuclear analysis and has seen the images said, "you see them stemming the tunnel, taking material back into the mine to plug it up."
"There's grout and concrete that goes into the hole, and normally you don't see that in a mine. A mine you want as open as possible."
"There's a lot of activity," he added, "taking stuff in as opposed to taking it out."
He described the site as isolated and rugged, with enough of a mountain extending above the hole to contain a weapon equal in force to the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Beyond the technical debate over North Korea's nuclear abilities and what kind of help it got from Dr. Khan's network and other suppliers over the years, the United States government has also debated whether Mr. Kim would determine a test to be in his interest.
Many in the intelligence agencies, along with outside experts, long assumed that Mr. Kim benefited by keeping the world guessing. The absence of a test proving North Korea's weapons ability has allowed China, North Korea's major supplier of food and fuel, to argue that the country may simply be boasting, that there was still time to work out the problem, and that sanctions or quarantines of the country would only drive it into a corner.
But that thinking has begun to shift. A senior European diplomat deeply involved in the issue said this week that he suspected that North Korea was "now pursuing the Pakistani model."
Pakistan and India were both condemned and subjected to economic sanctions after their 1998 tests. But all of those were lifted after the United States determined it needed Pakistan's help immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"The North Koreans may be thinking that in two or three years, it too may be regarded as just another nuclear power, outside of the Nonproliferation Treaty, the way we now view Pakistan and India and Israel," the official said.
My bet is that, unless Bush gets scared and cave in now, which is unlikely, Kim Jong-il will go ahead with the test some time before Aug. 15.
Ping!
If they test it will be a Mag 4-5 (likely closer to 4) quake somewhere in North Korea....and once you look at the waveform it will be obvious it was a test (a BIG spike at the beginning rather than the longer trace of a normal quake.)
I check EMSC, Red Puma a lot and have a decent chance of catching it before the MSM does...
Sorry, to use irrationality as a bargaining tool, it has to be voluntary...
This is what it would look like.
Depends on how deep it is.....I think the Pakis didn't bury theirs that much so they had a bit more visual effect.
bttt
(I wonder what General MacArthur would have to say about all this...)
I don't think Dubya would back down Tiger
Actually I think Chia Pet probably do nuke test then we be "Shock" and we lay sanctions down LOL!
I wonder how many those ship are shipping drugs and other goodies
Now is not a good time to invest in China.
I know what the Thing would say ...
Paging Mr. Jong-Il, Paging Mr. Jong-Il, we are the voices in your head, you are immortal, you can prove it by standing directly on the bomb...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.