Free Republic

Ex-U.S. envoy makes mystery visit to Pyongyang November 04, 2010 A former U.S. nuclear envoy who flew into Pyongyang earlier yesterday did not carry any message from the Obama administration, the State Department said. “No,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters when asked if Jack Pritchard, president of the Washington-based Korea Economic Institute, carried any message from the U.S. government. “Jack Pritchard is there on a private trip.” Pritchard, who also served on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, visited North Korea earlier this year to exchange views with officials there on six-party talks for the North’s...

When experts from the US and the IAEA came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found themselves caught between gravity and pettiness. The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan's bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger, particularly since the Libyans...

So long, Jack Charles L. "Jack" Pritchard dropped one on the Bush administration this week by quitting his job as special envoy on North Korea to join the liberal Brookings Institution, days before the next round of talks on the North Korean nuclear dispute. The implicit message in the abrupt departure was that Mr. Pritchard disagreed with the current policy. The special envoy was viewed within the administration as a "Clintonista" who favored the former president's appeasement approach to North Korea. He even went on the now-infamous October 2000 visit to North Korea by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright,...

The Seoul government is skeptical about the role of former U.S. president Bill Clinton as a potential mediator in the stalled Washington-Pyongyang relationship, officials said yesterday. ``The Bush administration doesn't trust Clinton,'' a Seoul official said on condition of anonymity. ``Therefore, it is very unlikely for President Bush to give his go-ahead to Clinton as a mediator and any progress the former president would make, should he go to North Korea, would not likely affect present U.S. policy.'' The official also noted a different set of circumstances between former U.S. president Jimmy Carter's Pyongyang visit and the notion of Clinton...