The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

by Fred Kaplan

In any case, by the early fall of 2002, signs of an impending enrichment program were unambiguous. On October 4, James Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, flew to Pyongyang to confront officials with the evidence. To his surprise, they admitted the charge was true. But then, to the North Koreans’ surprise, for the next two weeks the Bush administration kept the meeting—and the evidence—secret. The Senate was debating a resolution to give Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq. The public rationale for war was that Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction. If it was known that North Korea was also making WMDs—and nuclear weapons, at that, not chemical or biological weapons, as was asserted (mistakenly, it turned out) about Saddam—it would have muddied the debate. Some would have asked why Bush saw a need to go to war against Iraq but not against North Korea. The Senate passed the Iraq war resolution on October 11. The Bush administration publicly revealed what it had known for months about North Korea’s enriched-uranium program six days later, on October 17.