Secret trip to N. Korea for Trump emissary
CIA Director Mike Pompeo made a top-secret visit to North Korea over Easter weekend as an envoy for President Trump to meet with that country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, according to two people with direct knowledge of the trip.
The extraordinary meeting between one of Trump’s most trusted emissaries and the authoritarian head of a rogue state was part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the highly classified nature of the talks.
The clandestine mission, which has not previously been reported, came soon after Pompeo was nominated to be secretary of state.
“I’m optimistic that the United States government can set the conditions for that appropriately so that the president and the North Korean leader can have that conversation (that) will set us down the course of achieving a diplomatic outcome that America so desperately — America and the world so desperately need,” Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week during his confirmation hearing.
Speaking at his Mar-aLago resort on Tuesday, Trump appeared to allude to the extraordinary faceto-face meeting between Kim and Pompeo when he said the United States has had direct talks with North Korea “at very high levels.” The president didn’t elaborate.
Trump said that he would sit down with Kim probably in early June, if not sooner.
Pompeo has taken the lead on the administration’s negotiations with Pyongyang. His meeting with Kim marks the highest-level contact between the two countries since 2000, when thensecretary of state Madeleine Albright met with Kim Jong Il, the current leader’s late father, to discuss strategic issues. Then-director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. visited the country in 2014 to secure the release of two American captives and met with a lowerlevel intelligence official.
The CIA declined to comment. The White House declined to comment as well. Diplomats at the North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York, which is the main conduit for messages between Washington and Pyongyang, declined to comment.
The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, but U.S. diplomats have visited and Washington has used several channels to communicate with Pyongyang.
Trump also said he has given his “blessing” to planned discussions between South Korea and North Korea about bringing a formal end to the Korean War, as fast-moving diplomatic developments surrounding nuclear-armed North Korea came into view.