Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [198]
Even without the possible Syria connection, the 2007 nuclear agreement with North Korea poses other intelligence issues. Under the terms of this agreement, North Korea will seal and eventually dismantle its Yongbyon nuclear facility and account for its nuclear activities. Although the Yongbyon facility can be verified easily by imagery, there will be no definitive way to know if North Korea has accounted for all of its nuclear activity. As with arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, an assessment must be made between the gains made by the parts of the agreement that can be monitored and verified with high confidence and the uncertainties faced by those activities about which the intelligence monitoring confidence will be less certain. It is important to note that in arms control intelligence parlance, “high confidence” means a certainty of around 90 percent. This is high but it still leaves open a 10 percent chance of some activities going unnoticed.
Pakistan’s nuclear weaponry has increased concerns about the stability of the Pakistani government. Two factors are at play: the fractious internal politics of Pakistan and the internal political effects of Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States against Muslim terrorists, including the presumed presence of bin Ladin and other al Qaeda leaders in western Pakistan, where the government has virtually no authority. According to press accounts, the United States has given Pakistan technical equipment and assistance designed to help safeguard the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, although this effort has been made more difficult by Pakistan’s reluctance to provide details about the nature and location of its weapons.
The loose nukes aspect of the issue adds a new and more difficult complication. The Soviet Union agreed with the goal of nuclear nonproliferation, recognizing that it could be a target of would-be proliferators. But far more daunting is the prospect of tracking unknown quantities of weapons-grade material (which even Russian and other authorities have been unable to account for with accuracy) and the international movement of experts from former Soviet states. The collapse of the post-Soviet economy and the end of the privileged status that scientists once enjoyed are incentives to would-be proliferators.
CW and BW proliferation require much less expertise and technical capability than nuclear proliferation does. CW and BW weapons are far less accurate than nuclear weapons, but the random terror they portend is part of their appeal to nations and terrorists. Such programs are more difficult than nuclear programs to identify and track. The anthrax scare of late 2001 underscores these points and also indicates how difficult it is to detect this type of attack in advance or to stop it once under way.
The intelligence experience in WMD is mixed. In Iraq, the analysis did not bear out. The exposure of A.Q. Khan’s network points out the importance of years of determined analysis and highly successful operations to penetrate the network until enough intelligence had been established to make the case incontrovertible. The Libyan surrender also owes much to years of collection, analysis, and some highly successful operations. Reactions to the 2007 Iran nuclear NIE indicate the continuing controversial nature of proliferation intelligence. As noted, the 2007 NIE reversed the 2005 judgment that Iran was determined to build a nuclear weapon. According to the new NIE, this reversal in Iranian policy came in 2003, within the timeframe of the earlier estimate. Thus, a logical first question would be why this earlier view was held if it postdated the Iranian decision? According to press accounts and background briefings by intelligence officials, the change