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Partial transcript of Defense Department Briefing, 17 September, 1998:

Kenneth Bacon, Presenter:

(Initial Announcements)

With that, I'll take your questions.

Q: Could you clarify for us, there are reports out of Japan that part of this North Korean missile might have landed near Alaska. Do you have any information about that?

A: I have no information about it. First of all, as I understand it the only way we have to trace the debris of this missile is through radar tapes, and there is considerable disagreement within our own intelligence community as to how to interpret these tapes. We are continuing, our analysts are continuing, to meet to try to reach a consensus position on this and other questions stemming from that August 31st missile launch.

Q: Is there any evidence that there was a warhead that might have gotten...

A: I'm not aware that there is any evidence of a warhead.

Q: On the same point, I guess I'm confused about your statement that there is considerable disagreement in our own intelligence community because the State Department I believe has already publicly said they believe it was an attempted yet failed satellite launch, and I believe this Department said the same thing.
A: I'm talking about the dispersion of the debris. The question Susanne asked dealt with the dispersion of the debris from the missile.
Q: But there's no disagreement about what it was.

A: We believe that they tried and failed to launch a satellite. That hasn't changed.

Q: Will you then just explain a little bit further the question of the disagreement over the dispersal of the debris field. Can you quantify the ranges where the disagreement is? Nautical miles versus nautical miles?

A: No, I don't choose to do that. It's a disagreement on interpreting data at this stage. It could well be resolved. But I don't think whether it went X or X plus 1,000 kilometers is really relevant. What's relevant here is what I stressed last Tuesday and what the State Department has stressed as well, is that that three stage missile with a solid fuel third stage was an advance that shows they have greater capability to fire payloads over longer distances. That is worrisome to us. We are engaged in missile talks with the North Koreans, and we hope that we can succeed in those talks, in convincing them not to continue. But North Koreans are not easy to deal with on these issues.

Q: Is there disagreement about whether this third stage actually reentered the atmosphere or whether it simply burned up and never reentered?

A: That, I believe, is part of the disagreement -- exactly what happened to the third stage.

Q: Whether there was reentry?

A: Well, whether any debris actually reached the ocean.

Q: You said Tuesday that based on the information you had, you estimated the capability of the North Korean missile at 4,000 to 6,000 kilometers which would put it in the range of Alaska going in that direction. So I'm a little confused as to what the disagreement is about the debris field near Alaska. What's the disagreement...

A: I didn't say anything about anything near Alaska. I didn't talk about Alaska. Depending on the path the missile took, where it was aimed, it would go different places.

Our belief is that they attempted to launch a satellite and failed.

I was asked a specific question about dispersion of debris and I said that that is still being analyzed by the experts who pay attention to this stuff.

The dispersion of the debris is not necessarily an indication of what the reach of this or any other missile would be. The reach of a missile is a combination of a number of factors. One is the amount of fuel it carries, which determines how quickly it accelerates, what velocity it attains. The second is the weight of the missile, specifically the weight of the payload. There's also consideration of what that might be, how much the payload might have weighed in this situation. It takes a huge engine, a large rocket to launch a large payload, and a much smaller rocket to launch a smaller payload over whatever your distance range is.

I suppose you could make an analogy to a race car. There are three considerations. You could have a huge engine on a heavy race car that would be slower than a comparably sized engine on a much lighter race car, so the size of the engine, the propulsive unit and the weight of the vehicle are both factors. A third factor would be the solidity or strength of your vehicle. If you had a huge engine on a very light race car, it would go very fast but it would fall apart if it weren't strong. It would shake apart. So another aspect is the strength of the vehicle and its ability to withstand pressures, both going up and coming down.

So there are a number of considerations here that come into play in determining what the capability of this missile or rocket would be and the effectiveness of its payload.

Suffice it to say it is our conclusion, and we've said this many times, that what they attempted to do was a failure. They attempted, by their own admission, to launch a satellite and we believe they failed.

Q: Does the Pentagon believe that the solid fuel capability was indigenously developed or acquired?

A: I think that we do not have a theory on that at this stage.

Q: Is there still any evidence that the North Koreans, any evidence of activity around that launch site that could indicate preparation for another launch?

A: Not that I'm aware of. No.

Q: Is this missile and the dispersion patterns and all of that the reason for Mr. Hamre's sudden trip...

A: No. That trip I believe had been planned before. He's going to both Japan and Korea. He's meeting with troops in both places. As you know, we have 100,000 troops forward deployed in Asia, about 100,000 troops, and he's going to meet with some of those troops.

Methinks the Clinton regime concealed this little bit of information for the future President to fix too.