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http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2002/02/20.html

Is North Korea a Terrorist State?
By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
February 20, 2002

In a Washington Times column, its editor-at-large Arnaud DeBorchgrave criticized President Bush’s depiction of North Korea as evil. He claimed that, "North Korea hasn’t engaged in terrorism in several years and the glacier between North and South Korea continues to melt perceptibly. To call Pyongyang evil at this juncture can only jeopardize South Korea’s diplomatic efforts." In a follow-up story by David Sands, the Washington Times said that, "Mr. Bush’s ‘Axis of evil’ remark also did not play well in many foreign press accounts. The London Independent, in one typical remark among Europe’s mostly leftist press, called the president’s speech ‘distinctly disturbing.’" It’s not clear why the views of European leftists were so newsworthy.

In the report entitled, "Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999," submitted to the U.S. Congress in April 2000, the State Department said North Korea "maintains links" to Osama bin Laden and his network. The report also alleges that the North still harbors some of the hijackers of a Japan Airlines plane in 1970.

The report explained that North Korea "continued to provide safe haven to the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction members who participated in the hijacking of a Japanese Airlines flight to North Korea in 1970… In 1999 [North Korea] also attempted to kidnap in Thailand a North Korean diplomat who had defected the day before. The attempt led the North Korean Embassy to hold the former diplomat’s son hostage for two weeks. Some evidence also suggests [that North Korea] in 1999 may have sold weapons directly or indirectly to terrorist groups."

The most recent State Department report on terrorism adds, "Some evidence also suggests [North Korea] may have sold weapons directly or indirectly to terrorist groups during the year; Philippine officials publicly declared that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front had purchased weapons from North Korea with funds provided by Middle East sources." Our troops are now on the ground in the Philippines battling these terrorists.

John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for arms control, said at a recent international conference that, "We are concerned that (bin Laden) could have been trying to acquire a rudimentary biological weapons capability possibly with support from a state." He said that Libya, Syria, Iran and Sudan as well as North Korea have germ weapons programs.

Balbina Hwang of the Heritage Foundation noted that North Korea has been included on the list of states that sponsor terrorism since 1988, after North Korean agents blew up a South Korean airliner, killing 115 civilians. She said North Korea could begin to demonstrate its opposition to terrorism by deporting those Japanese Red Army hijackers. She said North Korea should negotiate a permanent peace treaty, reduce its conventional military forces along the demilitarized zone and its weapons of mass destruction, and return the remains of U.S. military personnel missing in action during the Korean War. Clearly, North Korea deserves membership in the axis of evil. It’s troubling to see a conservative newspaper whitewash this communist regime.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2004 11:45:36 PM ]
Did Pak, N Korea conduct joint N-tests?
http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/525092.cms

WASHINGTON: The revelations about the international nuclear trading of the Pakistani scientist AQ Khan have rekindled a debate inside the American intelligence community over an unresolved but crucial strategic question from the last decade: did Pakistan conduct a secret nuclear weapons test in partnership with North Korea?

Startling clues were detected after underground tests that Pakistan carried out in May 1998, when ‘it proved to the world that its own efforts to build nuclear weapons had succeeded’. According to former and current American intelligence officials, an American military jet sent to sample the air after the final test in the wastelands of the Baluchistan desert picked up traces of plutonium.

That surprised experts at the Los Alamos national laboratory, because Pakistan said openly that all of its bombs were fuelled by highly enriched uranium, produced at Dr AQ Khan’s nuclear laboratories.

Among the possible explanations hotly debated after the tests was that North Korea perhaps in return for the help from Dr Khan might have given Pakistan some of its precious supply of plutonium to conduct a joint test of an atomic weapon.

****Seems like the US was constantly being surprised during the 90's.

Safe to say the Pakistanis seem to have run rings around Uncle Sam.

>>>>In a Washington Times column, its editor-at-large Arnaud DeBorchgrave criticized President Bush’s depiction of North Korea as evil. He claimed that, "North Korea hasn’t engaged in terrorism in several years and the glacier between North and South Korea continues to melt perceptibly. To call Pyongyang evil at this juncture can only jeopardize South Korea’s diplomatic efforts."

What are they smoking!

Nothingman, I don't know if you ever saw this thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/940575/posts
McCarthy Hearings Transcripts

These were actually very disturbing on how some of our men had personal affects taken, POWs brainwashed, and some have been harrassed since.

Worth a read.