In My Time - Dick Cheney [256]
In Senate testimony the next week, Hill acknowledged that the North Koreans had purchased key components for enriching uranium, but again emphasized that they had showed us examples of their using the components for nonnuclear purposes. “More work will be done on that,” he said, “so that we can clearly say at some point in the future that we can rule out that they have any on-going program for uranium enrichment.” Getting to that point would prove to be impossible, however. Months later, when the North Koreans began to deliver documents to us concerning activities at their plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, the documents themselves contained traces of highly enriched uranium.
There was a period in the spring when it looked as though we might be able to get off the path that Rice and Hill had put us on. Hill was in Geneva negotiating what would be in the North Korean declaration, and Steve brought a draft of the proposed language into the Oval Office during our morning meeting on March 14, 2008. The president said he didn’t want to see it. “I’m not going to sign anything until the vice president has signed off on it,” he said. “You go over it with Dick. When he’s happy with it, I’m happy with it.”
Steve came back to my office, and we looked at the document. “Steve,” I said, “this just isn’t going to fly.” It had the United States presenting information about North Korea’s enriching uranium and efforts to build a nuclear reactor in Syria. And it had the North Koreans saying they understood the concerns—not admitting to enriching or proliferating, but saying they understood that the idea they might have troubled us. This was not by any stretch the full and complete declaration the North Koreans were committed to making, which was, I suspected, why Rice and Hill were calling it a “sideletter” and advising that it not be made public.
Concerned that it would damage the six-party talks, Secretary Rice was also still working to keep what we knew about the North Korean–built Syrian nuclear reactor from being made public, long after the period during which the Israelis had expressed concern. She successfully delayed an announcement for several months. Finally, at the end of April, senior intelligence officials conducted a briefing, complete with video, telling the story of al-Kibar.
By late May, Secretary Rice had decided that she ought to go to Pyongyang to meet with North Korean President Kim Jong Il. At one of our small group meetings in Steve Hadley’s office, Steve said the president had asked him to solicit the views of the group about this idea. Condi argued that if we wanted to keep the North Koreans at the table in the six-party talks, we had a choice between lifting the terrorism designation or sending her personally to Pyongyang. Steve asked if anyone had any response to this suggestion. I signaled that I did, which I’m sure was no surprise to Steve. I said this would be yet one more example of our responding to North Korea’s refusal to keep their commitments by making another preemptive concession. The North Koreans still hadn’t provided a full and complete declaration of their nuclear activities, I pointed out, and now, suddenly we would be sending the secretary of state to Pyongyang? It was a bad idea. A much better option would be to insist they keep their commitments.
Steve called on Secretary of Defense Gates, who didn’t come down one way or the other. Gates called on Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, who was sitting slouched in his chair, listening to all this with his head in his hand. He didn’t say a word, just pointed at me, signaling that he was signing on with my view. I think a number of us were getting tired of refighting the same battles in meeting after meeting where it seemed we had to argue against yet another misguided approach from the State Department.
Steve brought the meeting to a close and said he and Condi would report the group’s views back to the president. A short while later, I was