In My Time - Dick Cheney [252]
The North Koreans were supposed to provide a complete declaration of all their nuclear activities by the end of 2007, but they did not, and as we discussed their missing another deadline, Secretary Rice argued that North Korea’s final declaration need not include any mention of uranium enrichment. Although they had once admitted to such a program and although we knew they had one, she urged that we not require them to declare it.
I failed to see how accepting a false declaration from North Korea advanced the objective of complete, verifiable, irreversible destruction of the North Korean nuclear program, which had long been the Bush administration’s stated goal. To the contrary, by letting them avoid admitting their enrichment program in what was supposed to be a complete declaration, we were helping them hide what they were doing. And to make matters worse, we were promising rewards for their duplicity.
But Secretary Rice urged that we view a North Korean declaration that was solely about their plutonium program as a “first step.” She said there was no need to be concerned about their uranium enrichment program because in a side conversation between Chris Hill and his North Korean counterpart, the counterpart had admitted to the uranium program. There was no official record of this conversation, but the very fact that it had occurred, said the secretary, meant that it wasn’t necessary for the North Koreans to include the uranium enrichment program in their final declaration.
This was an approach to arms control I had never seen before. Not only were we going to accept a false declaration, but we were supposed to be reassured because the other side had whispered an admission of the declaration’s falsehood in Chris Hill’s ear. The secretary repeatedly assured the president that he shouldn’t worry. Everything was fine. But clearly it wasn’t.
BY DECEMBER 2007 I was not just concerned about where we stood on North Korea. We faced a number of critical foreign policy challenges at the very same time that the power of the president and the administration to solve them was waning. It is a natural phenomenon that most administrations face as they get down to the end of their time in office: The president’s ability to do big things diminishes on an almost weekly basis in the final year of his presidency.
The Iranians were continuing their nuclear efforts, and although we had been working to find a diplomatic solution, the president made it very clear that all options were on the table and that we could not accept a nuclear-armed Iran. Within the last few months, however, our commander in the Middle East, Admiral Fox Fallon, had been interviewed on the record criticizing what he called “bellicose” comments from Washington as “unhelpful” and suggesting that no planning for any military option was under way. A foreign diplomat posted in Washington said to me a few days later, “If you guys are going to take the military option off the table, couldn’t you at least have your secretary of state do it?” People expected the top diplomat to make such statements, he said, “but when the CENTCOM commander does it, they take notice.” After making similar comments again in early 2008, Fallon would resign.
A few months earlier, while Secretary Gates and Secretary Rice were on a visit to Saudi Arabia, I had received a panicked phone call from a member of their traveling party. Secretary Gates had apparently just informed the king that the president would be impeached if he took military action against Iran. The president had not decided what the next steps were on Iran, and it was inappropriate for key officials to suggest either publicly