CIA chief: North Korea months away from being able to nuke United States
WASHINGTON — CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Thursday that North Korea is months away from perfecting its nuclear weapons capabilities.
“They are close enough now in their capabilities that from a U.S. policy perspective we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving” their objective of being able to strike the United States, Pompeo told a national security forum in Washington.
But he said there’s a difference between having the ability to fire a single nuclear missile and the capability of producing large amounts of fissile material and developing an arsenal of such weapons.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster, speaking at the same event, said, “We are in a race to resolve this short of military action.”
“We are not out of time,” he told the forum, organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “But we are running out of time.”
North Korea, which started its nuclear program decades ago, has accelerated its weapons tests. Twice in July, it launched a long-range missile that could potentially reach the U.S. mainland. In September, it conducted its most powerful atomic explosion yet.
Dire threats traded by President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have further stoked fears of war.
John Brennan, who was Pompeo’s predecessor as CIA chief, voiced concern late Wednesday about Trump’s tweets and said the prospects of a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula “are greater than they have been in several decades.”
“I don’t think it’s likely or probable, but if it’s a 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 chance, that’s too high,” Brennan said in New York.
Both of the Trump administration officials stressed that while military force was a last resort, the president was prepared to use it if necessary to ensure Kim is not able to put America at risk with a nuclear weapon.
Independent experts differ on just how advanced Pyongyang’s program is in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile and in mastering how to make a missile re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and strike a target.
“We are at a time where the president has concluded that we need a global effort to ensure Kim Jong Un doesn’t have that capacity,” Pompeo said.