North Korea is technically capable of building a long-range missile that can hit the United States despite a test failure last year, a senior US military intelligence official said Tuesday. Lieutenant General Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said North Korea has probably learned from the failure of its Taepodong-2 missile during a test in July, and made changes to its other missiles. "I believe they have the technical capability, as we saw by the Taepodong, but they have not successfully tested it yet," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.| Range of 6,000 miles, accuracy ± 6,000 miles. |
| Having one that's reliable might take a while longer. Especially since we'll knock down the first one that flies farther than the Sea of Japan. |
North Korea agreed on February 13 on steps toward disabling its nuclear program in return for US supplies of fuel oil or other economic assistance. Michael McConnell, the national director of intelligence, said US intelligence was unable to monitor North Korea compliance with the agreement "at the level we would like."
"We can verify many of the conditions from external observation, but not at the level you're asking about in terms of detail," he said. "There's some open questions, but so far the indications are in the positive direction," he said.
| Which should raise a few questions about why we signed onto the new agreement. |
Another intelligence official, Joseph Detrani, said US intelligence had high confidence in 2002 that North Korea was acquiring equipment for a uranium enrichment program. US intelligence still believes the program exists, but its confidence in that assessment is now "mid-level."