NBC's Today Despairs Team Bush Ruined Clinton Progress in North Korea

As they padded for time waiting in the 9:30am half hour of Monday's Today for a live statement on the North Korean nuclear test from President Bush, NBC's Andrea Mitchell scolded that Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright were building reconciliation between North and South Korea, but Bush came in and ruined it, overruling his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, "cutting him off at the knees." Typically, Today co-host Matt Lauer insisted the North Korean nuclear test was just the latest in a string of bad news for Bush, from Iraq and Iran to the Mark Foley page scandal.

[This item, by Tim Graham based on a transcript provided by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Monday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     Matt Lauer led into the Clinton-praising section: "Andrea, I have to say as David [Gregory] mentioned a second ago, when I was there a few years ago it was surprising to me that there is starting to be this communication and actual physical contact between South and North Korea. This, there's a super highway being built that really connects the two."
     Andrea Mitchell: "Exactly. Well that and the rail connections. All of this as the new Sunshine policy that David alluded to but that came right up against the Bush administration's decision to cut off the connections. You know Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright were progressing in October and November of 2000 towards the restoration of diplomatic relations and if the Democrats had won that election that probably would've happened. Colin Powell recommended very strongly as the new Secretary of State in 2001 that, that policy be pursued. But it was cut short in March of 2001 by President Bush, overruling his new Secretary of State, some people said, cutting him off at the knees. That was the first real setback for Powell and then telling South Korea, the South Korean ally on the first visit in March 2001 that they would not support, the Bush administration would not support, re-engagement with North Korea. So there've been a lot of starts and stops but as David was, was pointing out and as you point out the South does want to re-engage. They have every reason, politically, to want to do that but this is not something this administration has really been comfortable with."
     Lauer: "Alright Andrea thank you very much. Tim Russert is NBC's Washington bureau chief, of course, moderator of Meet the Press and let's talk about the timing of this, Tim. It's been a bad few weeks for the administration. We've got problems in Iraq that seem to be getting worse. We've had the situation with Iran and the whole UN situation a couple of weeks ago, then the, the page scandal and the email scandal in Congress and now the administration wakes up to this nuclear test from North Korea."
     Russert: "Well Matt it is very important issue. Obviously back in May of 2003 President Bush said, quote, 'We will not tolerate North Korea having nuclear weapons.' And so he has drawn the line and now three years later North Korea is very much testing George Bush. It is ironic when they tested their long range rockets it was on the Fourth of July and now they've chosen Columbus Day to undertake this nuclear test. So it's very much a symbolic poke in the eye at the U.S. basically saying, 'we're gonna do what we want to do and you said we couldn't, what are you gonna do about it?' And this puts the President in a very difficult position."
     Lauer: "Well what does he do about it? I mean what can he say today, what tone should he strike to send a proper message?"
     Russert: "Well if you talk to military people Matt, they believe that the war in Iraq is one that is very much a strain on our assets. I don't find any one who believes that, at this time, a military action against North Korea is something that is being considered in a serious way. I think the President's first attempt will be at sanctions and the difficulty there, of course, is getting China and other countries to go along with them and so I expect some very strong words, some strong rhetoric, if you will, as the administration tries to buy time and figure out exactly what to do."

It's not exactly like the Clinton "engagement" strategy made them peaceful. Why can't NBC acknowledge that the North Koreans made a deal with the Clinton team, and then cheated on it? Oh, they did. David Gregory noted the cheating, and then moved on. A tyranny like North Korea's doesn't find it difficult to cheat, and yet still stay in the good graces of global public opinion, as Western reporters see only diplomatic and military paralysis as the options:
"He wants his regime to stick around and he has sought, before, security guarantees from the West. And you go way back to 1994 and the Clinton administration they negotiated an agreement with North Korea that said basically, 'Stop your weapons program, cold.' And the North Koreans started cheating on that toward the end of a 10 year period. So then President Bush comes to power, doesn't like the idea of negotiating with the North Koreans because he doesn't think that they negotiate in good faith and they cheat. And so you had a kind of freeze on diplomatic activity and then all of a sudden you have the so-called Six Party talks where you had regional players including the U.S. and Russia putting that pressure on to say, 'You can't continue a nuclear program.' And then finally North Korea has just pulled out of that process as well. So there's been all of this dancing going on."

Clinton’s North Korea Legacy

“North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb.”— Bill Clinton, Nov. 7, 1993

A recent ad on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee website opened with the words, “Security Under Bush and GOP?” It claimed “North Korea has quadrupled its nuclear arsenal,” and included footage of a tank and North Korea President Kim Jong Il. The ad ended, “Feel safer? Vote for change.” Democrats have been hoping we’ll all completely forget history. Yes, North Korea is an incredibly dangerous nuclear member of the axis of evil, and for that we can thank Bill Clinton:

In the spring of 1992 brutal North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung allowed International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] inspectors, led by none other than Hans Blix, into his country. Kim claimed they had “a tiny quantity [of plutonium] … far from the amount you need for a weapon,” reported Blix, according to The Washington Post. But covert tests showed that the North Koreans had actually reprocessed massive amounts of plutonium — enough for several bombs, reports Jasper Becker in the definitive Rogue Regime (Oxford University Press). When the IAEA asked for access to nuclear waste sites to investigate further, the North Koreans balked.

In 1993, North Korea declared it would withdraw from the Non- Proliferation Treaty [NPT] unless certain demands were met: “U.S. diplomatic recognition, the end of economic sanctions, one million tons in grain, half a million tons of fuel oil per year … and the delivery of two light-water reactors worth over $4.5 billion. The Koreans were quite specific about the sort of reactors they wanted and only these would do.” notes Becker. Absurd.

By 1994, tensions between North Korea, South Korea, the IAEA, the UN, and the U.S. were mounting; actual military conflict loomed. But then, a savior appeared. Yes, the Clinton Administration sent in none other than Jimmy Carter, who Kim Il Sung once referred to as “a man of justice,” to take a swing at peace — but only as a private citizen. (Clinton was worried about looking “weak” with the ex-presidential help.)

From June 16 to 19, 1994, Carter rubbed elbows with Kim for a few days and then “dropped American demands that UN inspections resume and that North Korea surrender its spent fuel rods … [Carter] even said that the U.S. was dropping its support for sanctions at the UN, which wasn’t true,” writes Stephen Hayward in The Real Jimmy Carter (Regnery). Without the Clinton Administration’s knowledge, Carter then popped up on CNN declaring he sweettalked Kim into going back to the negotiating table in Geneva.

It was at the Geneva talks that the Clinton Administration bent over and grabbed the ankles, despite the death of Kim Il Sung on July 8, 1994 (at which time his wacko son Kim Jong Il inherited “supreme power”). The “Agreed Framework” was signed by the United States and North Korea on Oct. 21, 1994 in Geneva. The Framework promised, as Becker put it, “to reward Pyongyang’s breaches of international nuclear safeguards by giving it more nuclear power stations.” Yes, the Clinton Administration gave in to the demands of a deceiving, nefarious, nuclear-hungry, gulag-building, peoplestarving, Communist regime.

Not only were the nuclear reactors pledged; Clinton also agreed to supply the North with 500,000 metric tons of fuel oil annually, as well as tons of grain — all in return for a promise to “freeze” all nuclear-weaponry ambitions. Clinton even provided the North Koreans, writes Becker, “with a written assurance that the United States was not contemplating launching an attack [or] seeking the destruction of North Korea.” Kim was home free.

How could North Korea experience one of history’s deadliest famines during the 90s while receiving tons of grain/aid from America? The U.S., as Newsweek reports, “did not know where most of the food was going after military trucks hauled it away.” Turns out, most of the food went to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea [DPRK] army, and Clinton happily looked the other way, eager to shore up his reputation for “diplomacy” and “engagement” with adversaries.

The Clinton Administration’s 1995 National Intelligence Estimate flatly stated that “no country, other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that could threaten the contiguous 48 states and Canada.”

By Feb. 1997, Madeleine Albright had officially shrugged off any concerns about North Korean deception, bragging: “The Framework Agreement is one of the best things the [Clinton] Administration has done because it stopped a nuclear weapons program in North Korea.”

On Aug. 31, 1998, North Korea launched a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 rocket, with a range of 1,500-2,000 kilometers, over Japan, landing off the Alaska coast.

During a 1999 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing, Albright made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it admission that things weren’t rosy in Agreed-Framework-land: “We are also engaged in direct talks with North Korea on ways to resolve concerns regarding suspicious underground construction activities and long-range missile programs.”

In 2000, mounting evidence at the underground Kumchang-ri site forced the Clinton Administration to actually confront the possibility that their Agreed Framework was, well, a load of poppycock. They asked Kim Jong Il to allow inspections. Kim refused. So Clinton sent him 600,000 tons of grain. In June 2000, the Japanese and Chinese were able to confirm reports of another underground uranium processing plant in Choma, about 17 miles away from Kumchang-ri. The final Clintonian gesture was to send Albright herself over to Pyongyang in Oct. 2000 on a first-ever official U.S. visit (granting Kim Jong Il his long-sought-after legitimacy). Nothing was actually accomplished, but Kim and Maddy clinked wine glasses and exchanged starry eyes. As Albright told PBS’s Jim Leher: “Basically, you know, we’ve had such weird stories about him, but it turns out that we had very good discussions…. And he seems pragmatic … not hostile.” Guess what the North Koreans admitted to in 2002? “[P]ursuing a secret nuclear weapons program using enriched uranium in violation of its 1994 pledge to freeze its nuclear program,” reported The Los Angeles Times. “A senior official later acknowledged that the Communist nation was pursuing the nuclear weapons program ‘and more.’” But don’t expect the Clinton crowd to take responsibility for nuking up one of the world’s most evil regimes. Here’s a Sept. 12, 2004 exchange between Albright and Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: Russert: But didn’t North Korea develop a nuclear bomb on Bill Clinton’s watch? Albright: No, what they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating … The worst part that has happened under the Agreed Framework, there was [sic] these fuel rods, and the nuclear program was frozen. Those fuel rods have now been reprocessed, as far as we know, and North Korea has a [nuclear] capability.” Cheating? The North Koreans? Who’da thunk?

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