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Arrested by Metropolitan Police a the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange was taken to a jail in London. He appeared before a judge for breaching his bail conditions as Ecuador has been working for months to remove him for asylum where Assange has been living since 2012. Lenin Moreno, the President of Ecuador has been working with British officials since July of 2018 to terminate his asylum.
What has transpired since Wikileaks was founded in 2006, there have been several massive troves (10 million) of documents posted for public consumption. Assange began hacking in 1987 under the name of Mendax. It is not known officially how Julian Assange and Bradley Manning became acquainted, however during the court-martial of Manning, a volume of chat logs were presented as evidence between the two and included how Assange gave Manning the ability to reverse engineer passwords.
President Obama gave Manning a pardon while the matter of Assange could be that of a co-conspirator, espionage or aiding and abetting. The indictment does give rise to the evidence beyond the protections of Assange of just being a journalist. Assange is being prosecuted for violating the ‘computer fraud and abuse act’.
President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador, who became the country’s president in 2017, had looked for a face-saving way to get out of the arrangement. On Thursday in a Twitter post, he said that his country had decided to stop sheltering Mr. Assange after “his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols,” a decision that cleared the way for the British authorities to detain him.
The relationship between Mr. Assange and Ecuador has been rocky, even as it offered him refuge and even citizenship, and WikiLeaks said last Friday that Ecuador “already has an agreement with the U.K. for his arrest” and predicted that Mr. Assange would be expelled from the embassy “within ‘hours to days.’”
Mr. Moreno, in a video statement, said that Mr. Assange had exhausted the patience of his hosts, outlining of litany of grievances: the installation of electronic interference equipment, the blocking of security cameras, and attacks on guards.
“Finally two days ago, WikiLeaks, the organization of Mr. Assange, threatened the government of Ecuador,” Mr. Moreno said, an apparent reference to allegations from the organization that Mr. Assange had been subject to a spying operation. “My government has nothing to fear and doesn’t act under threat.”
In his video, Mr. Moreno singled out the recent release by WikiLeaks of information about the Vatican as evidence that Mr. Assange had continued to work with WikiLeaks to violate “the rule of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states.”
Alan Duncan, the minister responsible for Europe and the Americas at Britain’s Foreign Office, said in a statement that the arrest had followed “extensive dialogue” between the two countries.
In December 2017, Ecuador gave Mr. Assange citizenship, and was preparing to appoint him to a diplomatic post in Russia, but the British government made clear that if he left the embassy, he would not have diplomatic immunity.
The Ecuadorean government said in March last year that it had cut off Mr. Assange’s internet access, saying that he had violated an agreement to stop commenting on, or trying to influence, the politics of other countries. The government also imposed other restrictions, limiting his visitors and requiring him to clean his bathroom and look after his cat.
Well, we can for sure say that the Democrats side with the Communists, Marxists and Revolutionaries.
Hat tip to Glenn Beck and my buddy Ami Horowitz for the great foot work and investigations to determine where this illegal insurgency is really coming from. Beck pulled out his chalkboard again and his presentation is a good one.
So, while these democrats are not students of history while others have very short memories, there is a longer history to all of this immigration crisis. You see, a few years ago, I read a book titled From the Shadows, written by former CIA Director Robert Gates. Gates was also the Secretary of Defense as part of his long government service resume. He wrote that book in 1996. A particular page stayed in my memory and I did a search in my Book Nook today to find it.
Okay is there more? Yes.There are so many moving parts to the legacy immigration crisis today. Who is to blame? Too many it seems. But for context read on, history does repeat itself.
Going back to an article/summary from 2006, how did we get to this cockamamie asylum policy? It goes to a crisis that was born in 1980.
Citation: The year 1980 marked the opening of a decade of public controversy over U.S. refugee policy unprecedented since World War II. Large-scale migration to the United States from Central America began, as hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans fled north from civil war, repression, and economic devastation. That same year, in the last months of the Carter administration, the U.S. Congress passed the Refugee Act, a humanitarian law intended to expand eligibility for political asylum in the United States.
The Refugee Act brought U.S. law into line with international human rights standards, specifically the 1951 UN Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. The United States had ratified the Protocol in 1968, thus becoming bound by the Convention’s provisions. While the previous law recognized only refugees from Communism, the Refugee Act was modeled on the convention’s non-ideological standard of a “well-founded fear of persecution.”
The coincidence of the Central American exodus with the passage of the Refugee Act set the stage for a decade-long controversy that ultimately involved thousands of Americans. The protagonists in the controversy included, on one side, immigrants’ rights lawyers, liberal members of Congress, religious activists, and the refugees themselves. On the other side were President Reagan and his administration, the State Department, the Department of Justice (including the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), and conservative members of Congress. The first group invoked international human rights and humanitarian and religious principles, while the Reagan administration’s arguments centered on national security and the global fight against Communism.
The public debate took place in a number of arenas and with several sets of participants. The federal courts were the venue for class-action cases contesting systemic INS violations of refugee rights, as well as for the criminal prosecution of religious humanitarians.
Unprecedented numbers of Americans became involved through their churches and synagogues, which proclaimed themselves “sanctuaries,” as well as in bar association efforts to provide pro bono representation to Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Throughout the decade, in hundreds of individual immigration hearings, lawyers for asylum applicants and INS lawyers waged a low-intensity struggle over the nature of the conflict in Central America and the rights of individual Central Americans to asylum status.
In Congress, members debated the war and laws aimed at helping Central Americans rejected as refugees. The refugees themselves became a voice in the U.S. public debate. They formed their own community assistance groups and advocacy centers, which worked with lawyers, religious groups, and the movement against United States involvement in Central America.
Cold War by Proxy and Human Rights in Central America
In El Salvador and Guatemala, civil war had been years in the making, as oligarchies supported by corrupt military leaders repressed large sectors of the rural population. In Nicaragua, the socialist revolutionary Frente Sandinista had ousted the brutal right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The civil war in El Salvador increased in intensity in early 1980. Government-supported assassins gunned down Archbishop Oscar Romero at the altar shortly after he had publicly ordered Salvadoran soldiers to stop killing civilians. In December 1980, four U.S. churchwomen were assassinated in El Salvador, an act of brutality that brought the violence “home” to the U.S. public.
The administration of President Ronald Reagan, who came to power in January 1981, saw these civil wars as theaters in the Cold War. In both El Salvador and Guatemala, the United States intervened on the side of those governments, which were fighting Marxist-led popular movements. In Nicaragua, however, the United States supported the contra rebels against the socialist Sandinista government.
During much of the early 1980s, international human rights organizations (such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch — later part of Human Rights Watch) regularly reported high levels of repression in El Salvador and Guatemala, with the vast majority of human rights violations committed by military and government-supported paramilitary forces.
In El Salvador, the military and death squads were responsible for thousands of disappearances and murders of union leaders, community leaders, and suspected guerilla sympathizers, including priests and nuns. In Guatemala, the army’s counter-insurgency campaign focused on indigenous communities, resulting in thousands of disappearances, murders, and forced displacements.
The Intersection of Foreign Policy and Asylum Policy
It is estimated that between 1981 and 1990, almost one million Salvadorans and Guatemalans fled repression at home and made the dangerous journey across Mexico, entering the United States clandestinely. Thousands traveled undetected to major cities such as Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York, and Chicago. However, thousands were also detained at or near the Mexico-U.S. border.
The Reagan administration regarded policy toward Central American migrants as part of its overall strategy in the region. Congress had imposed a ban on foreign assistance to governments that committed gross violations of human rights, thus compelling the administration to deny Salvadoran and Guatemalan government complicity in atrocities. Immigration law allowed the attorney general and INS officials wide discretion regarding bond, work authorization, and conditions of detention for asylum seekers, while immigration judges received individual “opinion letters” from the State Department regarding each asylum application. Thus the administration’s foreign policy strongly influenced asylum decisions for Central Americans.
Characterizing the Salvadorans and Guatemalans as “economic migrants,” the Reagan administration denied that the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments had violated human rights. As a result, approval rates for Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum cases were under three percent in 1984. In the same year, the approval rate for Iranians was 60 percent, 40 percent for Afghans fleeing the Soviet invasion, and 32 percent for Poles.
The Justice Department and INS actively discouraged Salvadorans and Guatemalans from applying for political asylum. Salvadorans and Guatemalans arrested near the Mexico-U.S. border were herded into crowded detention centers and pressured to agree to “voluntarily return” to their countries of origin. Thousands were deported without ever having the opportunity to receive legal advice or be informed of the possibility of applying for refugee status. Considering the widely reported human rights violations in El Salvador and Guatemala, the treatment of these migrants constituted a violation of U.S. obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
As word of the conditions in Central America and the plight of the refugees began to come to public attention in the early 1980s, three sectors began to work in opposition to the de facto “no asylum” policy: the religious sector, attorneys, and the refugees themselves.
Although a number of Congressmen and women were influenced by the position of religious organizations, the administration thwarted their efforts. In 1983, 89 members of Congress requested that the attorney general and Department of State grant “Extended Voluntary Departure” to Salvadorans who had fled the war. The administration denied their request, stating such a grant would only serve as a “magnet” for more unauthorized Salvadorans in addition to the hundreds of thousands already present. In the late 1980s, the House of Representatives passed several bills to suspend the deportation of Salvadorans, but none passed the Senate.
The Sanctuary Movement
The network of religious congregations that became known as the Sanctuary Movement started with a Presbyterian church and a Quaker meeting in Tucson, Arizona. These two congregations began legal and humanitarian assistance to Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees in 1980.
When, after two years, none of the refugees they assisted had been granted political asylum, Rev. John Fife of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson announced — on the anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero — that his church would openly defy INS and become a “sanctuary” for Central Americans. The Arizona congregations were soon joined by networks of religious congregations and activists in Northern California, South Texas, and Chicago.
At the Sanctuary Movement’s height in the mid 1980s, over 150 congregations openly defied the government, publicly sponsoring and supporting undocumented Salvadoran or Guatemalan refugee families. Another 1,000 local Christian and Jewish congregations, several major Protestant denominations, the Conservative and Reform Jewish associations, and several Catholic orders all endorsed the concept and practice of sanctuary. Sanctuary workers coordinated with activists in Mexico to smuggle Salvadorans and Guatemalans over the border and across the country. Assistance provided to refugees included bail and legal representation, as well as food, medical care, and employment.
The defense of the Salvadorans and Guatemalans marked a new use of international human rights norms by U.S. activists. Citing the Nuremberg principles of personal accountability developed in the post-World War II Nazi tribunals, religious activists claimed a legal precedent to justify their violation of U.S. laws against alien smuggling. Other activists claimed that their actions were justified by the religious and moral principles of the 19th-century U.S. abolitionist movement, referring to their activities as a new “Underground Railroad.” Many U.S. religious leaders involved in the Sanctuary Movement had prior experience in the 1960s civil disobedience campaigns against racial segregation in the American South.
The Department of Justice responded by initiating criminal prosecutions against two activists in Texas in 1984, followed by a 71-count criminal conspiracy indictment against 16 U.S. and Mexican religious activists announced in Arizona in January 1985. The Texas trials resulted in split verdicts, one conviction and one acquittal.
The Arizona trial became a major focus of organizing and publicity for the Sanctuary Movement, attracting a stellar team of volunteer criminal defense attorneys. Although the Department of Justice maintained the case was an ordinary alien-smuggling prosecution, the general counsel of INS attended sessions of the lengthy trial.
Despite the judge’s order barring the defense from presenting evidence of conditions in El Salvador or Guatemala, the Sanctuary Movement managed to turn the publicity surrounding the trial into an indictment of the Reagan administration’s war in Central America and its treatment of the refugees. All the Arizona defendants were convicted, but none were sentenced to jail time. After the Arizona trials, the movement continued to attract more congregations.
The Department of Justice did not bring any more criminal indictments of sanctuary activists after the Texas and Arizona cases.
The Lawyers
Along the U.S.-Mexico border, from the Rio Grande Valley to San Diego, local lawyers and religious activists set up new legal services projects to help detained refugees. In Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Chicago, and other cities, existing nonprofit legal services projects and lawyers in private practice started representing individual refugees. Pro bono panels put together by local and national bar groups — including the National Lawyers Guild Immigration Project, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the American Bar Association — supplemented their work.
Through coordinated strategies in individual cases, these lawyers began to address detention conditions as well as develop the new case law of the Refugee Act. In California and Texas, civil rights lawyers filed class-action cases to establish basic due process rights. While some of the cases (regarding work authorization, translation assistance, and transfer of detainees between facilities) were not successful, other decisions established national standards for the treatment of detained Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers.
The refugees and their lawyers faced enormous challenges in asylum hearings, as the required opinion letters from the Department of State, which greatly influenced immigration judges, uniformly denied the existence of human rights violations in El Salvador and Guatemala. However, in some cases, attorneys won important victories before the Board of Immigration Appeals and in the federal circuit courts that established precedents helpful to all asylum applicants. Other efforts, such as an attempt to establish that all Salvadoran civilian young men were a social group persecuted by the government, were less successful.
Finally, a group of lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations brought a major, national class-action case on behalf of religious organizations, legal services projects, and Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees, claiming that the administration’s wholesale denial of political asylum claims and prosecutions of those who assisted refugees violated their constitutional, statutory, and internationally recognized human rights.
In the case, known as American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh, the federal courts had dismissed religious organizations’ claims. However, in 1991 the U.S. District Court in San Francisco approved a settlement that allowed the reopening of denied political asylum claims and late applications by refugees who had been afraid to apply. The decision also granted class members work authorization and protection from deportation.
The settlement agreement between the plaintiffs and the government (by that time the Bush administration) included language stating that government decisions on political asylum cases would not be influenced by foreign policy considerations.
The Refugees
In many cities, Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees formed mutual assistance organizations. Projects such as Casa Guatemala, Casa El Salvador, Comite El Salvador, and others gave the community the ability to get legal advice and information about conditions back home as well as to learn about local health care and food assistance. These groups also worked with local lawyers’ organizations and religious and antiwar activists, who assisted in decisions regarding class-action litigation and supported individual asylum applicants.
Over 20 years later, a number of these immigrant-led projects, including Centro Presente in Boston, Centro Romero in Chicago, and El Rescate in Los Angeles, still exist as full-service, nonprofit legal and community services centers. Many of the leaders of these efforts remain active in the immigrants’ rights movement, as well as in other social justice projects in the United States, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
Congress
In 1990, after its earlier frustrations to address the Central American asylum seekers, Congress finally passed legislation allowing the president to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to certain groups in need of a temporary safe haven. The first TPS legislation contained one provision (never codified as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act) explicitly designating Salvadorans for TPS.
Through the early 1990s, Salvadoran and Guatemalans who had arrived in the 1980s were able to stay in the country under a series of discretionary measures and under the terms of the 1991 settlement in the American Baptist Churches litigation. It was not until the late 1990s that their status was finally settled in a legislative agreement with the supporters of the anti-Sandinista Nicaraguans. The passage of the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act finally allowed Salvadorans and Guatemalans protected under the American Baptist Churches settlement to apply for permanent residence.
Conclusion
What spurred the activism of the Sanctuary Movement and Central American refugees and their lawyers was the manner in which the Reagan administration linked the fate of individual asylum seekers to its foreign policy interests. Today, the use of immigration enforcement as a “magic bullet” for national security concerns requires close examination by the U.S. public.
Immigrant communities, members of Congress, policy analysts, religious leaders, and legal experts must determine whether the human rights of individual immigrants and asylum seekers are being trampled in a rush to create a public perception of effective security.
The development of a stronger anti-immigrant grassroots movement in certain areas of the country presents new challenges. Similarly, restrictions on access to the federal courts for review of certain immigration decisions create new obstacles for advocates to overcome. However, at the same time, immigrant-led organizations and immigrants’ rights coalitions have become more sophisticated in their lobbying and public education efforts.
The proimmigrant religious sector (particularly the Catholic Church) is vocal once again, as humanitarian assistance to the undocumented may be criminalized in proposed legislation. Whether the current decade will end with even limited victories for the human rights of immigrants is as yet unknown.
Remember the panic Americans went through of the annual exercises called Jade Helm? It was an Obama operation where his military was practicing to impose martial law across the country so Obama would remain a forever president. Then Alex Jones bought into that notion and the message spread for months. It was a Russian troll operation, a very successful one. The Russians have made a fine art form of disinformation such that even government officials and media cannot make the distinctions.
Then of course there was/is the whole election interference operations not only in the United States but, Britain, Ukraine, France and even Mexico.
Among other disinformation campaigns is the whole vaccination thing. Well, the anti-vaccination thing set in and Americans have in countless cases refused to get their children vaccinated as any of them would or could cause autism.
The United States was not the only target for the Russian troll operation(s). Going back as far as 2014, the fake Tweets began. Even the World Health Organization as well as the American Journal of Public Health bought into the issue and Britain paid the price. But, some savvy media types at least did the digging and research once again proved that pesky Internet Research Agency was the culprit. Russia caused a panic and it has worked. Today, there is a measles outbreak around the country due to this anti-vaccine mission. Beyond Britain, even Russia targeted Ukraine.
We are now in a state by state policy matter over the spread of measles and some towns have quarantine programs for people without vaccines or making laws demanding vaccines be administered. Will it end with measles? Likely no. This will affect international travel and visa programs including approvals.
Russia has effectively weaponsized health systems.
A 2018 report by the American Public Health Association, titled “Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate,” came to a similar conclusion.
“Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated antivaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination,” the report said.
“Health-related misconceptions, misinformation, and disinformation spread over social media, posing a threat to public health. Despite significant potential to enable dissemination of factual information, social media are frequently abused to spread harmful health content, including unverified and erroneous information about vaccines,” it continued. “This potentially reduces vaccine uptake rates and increases the risks of global pandemics, especially among the most vulnerable.”
Measles was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 because of vaccines against measles, mumps, and rubella. Nevertheless, cases have increased in the U.S. Public health professionals have called the disease a leading cause of death among children.
The World Health Organization has said that fear of vaccines has become one of the top threats to global health as previously eradicated diseases make a comeback.
“Vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines—threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease—it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved,” a World Health Organization report reads. “Measles, for example, has seen a 30% increase in cases globally.” Read more here from Newsweek.
We, for example, visited a shelter in northern Mexico – in Nogales, Sonora, the Mexican state of Sonora – where one woman said her entire trip north was effectively a sexual assault. She was brought across the border by a man under false pretenses, taken to the city of Atlanta and, she says, used as a prostitute for years. Now, she’s back in northern Mexico. That’s where we found her.
Under Speaker Pelosi’s leadership, the House votes to block Trump’s national emergency declaration. She said it is a binary choice, either vote for the block out of patriotism or vote with Trump. Even if this passes the senate, Trump will veto. So….we have to wonder if those House democrats have this report or read it.
Based on how the democrats support live birth abortions and Planned Parenthood, it is obvious they have little regard for sexual exploitation unless it suits them under that #MeToo hashtag…where is Senator Kirsten Gillibrand or Cory Booker on this? Anyone?
Frankly, this sounds precisely like all the sexual predator scandals across the globe by United Nations peacekeepers.
So, read on.
Thousands of migrant youth allegedly suffered sexual abuse in U.S. custody
Thousands of allegations of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors (UAC) in the custody of the U.S. government have been reported over the past 4 years, according to Department of Health and Human Services documents given to Axios by Rep. Ted Deutch’s office.
Data: Dept. of Health and Human Services; Note: The type of perpetrator is only known for cases ORR reported to DOJ; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios
Allegations against staff members reported to the DOJ included everything from rumors of relationships with UACs to showing pornographic videos to minors to forcibly touching minors’ genitals.
By the numbers: From October 2014 to July 2018, the HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement received 4,556 complaints, and the Department of Justice received 1,303 complaints. This includes 178 allegations of sexual abuse by adult staff.
What they’re saying: Deutch said these documents were included in HHS’ response to a House Judiciary Committee request for information made in January.
“This behavior — it’s despicable, it’s disgusting, and this is just the start of questions that HHS is going to have to answer about how they handle these and what’s happening in these facilities,” Deutch told Axios.
HHS’ response, per spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley:
“The safety of minors is our top concern when administering our unaccompanied alien children program. Each of our grantees running standard shelters is licensed by the respective state for child care services. In addition to other rigorous standards put in place by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, background checks of all facility employees are mandatory.”
“These are vulnerable children in difficult circumstances, and ORR fully understands its responsibility to ensure that each child is treated with the utmost care. When any allegations of abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect are made, they are taken seriously and ORR acts swiftly to investigate and respond.”
Details: One of the documents given to Axios, embedded below, gives some detail about the allegations, although it only includes descriptions of the incidences for fiscal years 2015 and 2016. We also don’t know what happened to the accused staffers in fiscal years 2017 and 2018.
Based on the information provided in the documents, it’s unclear whether there’s overlap between allegations reported to ORR and those made to DOJ. Axios assumed that some OOR allegations are referred to DOJ, so the numbers included in our chart are conservative.
All allegations referred to DOJ are also referred to HHS, according to the documents.
In many cases, the staff members were removed from duty and ultimately fired.
So, in Hanoi, Vietnam, President Trump is meeting for two days with Kim Jung Un.
The White House said Trump would meet Kim at Hanoi’s French-colonial-era Metropole Hotel at 6:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) and have a 20-minute one-on-one conversation before a dinner scheduled to last just over an hour and a half.
Meanwhile, the democrats are telegraphing that Trump is going to give up too much in order to get a deal with North Korea. How do they know? Further, the mainstream media is also broadcasting that Trump will not get anything accomplished during this second summit. Which is it exactly?
Well, it is worth looking at archived documents going back to at least 1991-1992. Remember the U.S. had a different president and military leaders, while North Korea did not have lil Kim. The issue with North Korea and the nuclear program goes back at least 25-30 years. At least under the Trump administration, there are direct talks, summits that did not happen with the top leaders of the two countries…..has the mainstream media explained any of this or for context, the previous action plans and why?
This briefing book provides an invaluable and detailed look at how the Bush I administration deliberated over the critical next steps in confronting the North Korea nuclear program, as well as concerns held by the Pentagon about the approach recommended by the State Department. This briefing book was prepared for a NSC/Deputies’ Committee meeting to be held on December 17. The Deputies’ Committee was composed of high-ranking representatives below the Cabinet level from the State Department, the Secretary of Defense and JCS, the CIA and ACDA, as well as other agencies as required, and met to discuss policy issues that cut across the agencies’ briefs. The level of detail found in this briefing book regarding the various negotiating goals and approaches defies easy summarization, and the materials should be read closely to capture all the nuances and factors entering into the U.S. diplomatic efforts aimed at halting Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The contents of the briefing book, with comments on significant points, include: (page numbers refer to the PDF copy):
A) Cover memo, table of contents and agenda (pages 1-3)
B) Meeting objectives memorandum (page 4)
The purpose of the meeting was to consider a “gameplan” to bring North Korea’s nuclear weapons program under control. Specific steps to be considered included preliminary contact with North Korea at the deputy assistant secretary level. This would be accompanied by an approach by Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy in Beijing to invite North Korea to send a high-level official to meet with a U.S. counterpart in New York before President Bush visited Seoul in early January. Also under consideration were talking points for these meetings and demarches to countries with relations or potential influence in Pyongyang informing them of the U.S. concerns about the DPRK nuclear program.
C) Memorandum for ASD/ISA James R. Lilley, Subject DC Meeting on North Korea Nuclear Program, ca. December 12, 1991 (pages 5-6)
This memorandum summarizes the key points in the gameplan and lays out the Pentagon’s concerns that the talking points are too “forward-leaning” with respect to offering the prospect of normalized relations with North Korea at this early point in the process. The Pentagon was already concerned that South Korea had rushed ahead in talks with North Korea about a non-aggression agreement while putting the nuclear issue off to the side. ACDA Director Ronald Lehman in his recent visit to Seoul (see 5 and 6 below) had sought to bolster South Korea’s determination to press Pyongyang on this issue by agreeing to the idea of a North-South inspection regime. The Pentagon agreed with the key point of the gameplan, which was a high-level meeting to make sure Kim Il Sung knew directly about U.S. concerns regarding North Korea’s nuclear program and that, for real progress, signing the IAEA safeguards agreement was not sufficient but the DPRK should reciprocate Roh Tae Woo’s November 8 non-nuclear declaration foreswearing the development, including reprocessing and enrichment, of nuclear weapons. But the Pentagon strongly held that the U.S. side should not offer too much by way of a possible normalization of relations in these early contacts. In its view, the mere fact that these two meetings might take place were carrot enough, and the U.S. should make any second meeting conditional on North Korea signing and implementing safeguards, and agreeing to a reciprocal non-nuclear policy with Seoul and to at least trial inspections.
This memorandum has the following attachments:
1) Suggested Talking Points for Mr. Lilley (page 7) – This paper summarizes the main points Lilley should make in the Deputies’ Committee meeting to drive home the Pentagon’s concerns: keep the pressure on South Korea to push North Korea on the nuclear issue in its bilateral talks and to avoid prematurely raising the prospect of normalized relations in the initial meetings with North Korea, which should focus on making clear the U.S. concerns and benchmarks for progress on the nuclear issue.
2) Strategy for Dealing with North Korean Nuclear Issue (Gameplan paper) (pages 8-15) – This is the State Department paper laying out the diplomatic, political, and economic steps the U.S. should adopt as it works to resolve the North Korea nuclear problem, along with a timeline. The basic components of the plan were: continued international efforts to press North Korea; ensuring that Seoul press Pyongyang at the North-South talks on the nuclear issue; and clearly stating the U.S. position on a peninsula-wide ban on reprocessing and enrichment, both to the world and especially to the DPRK in proposed initial and follow-up, high-level meetings. While there were current signs of movement and success in building international pressures on the DPRK, the paper also sounded a number of warnings, noting that “there is a well-established history of Pyongyang raising expectations . . . only to back off at the last minute with additional demands,”
The paper acknowledges that the odds may be against the U.S. in pursuing the gameplan. It was entirely possible that North Korea had no intention of changing course, and would aim to “delay, diffuse international pressure, and use any opportunity to seem forthcoming, without making meaningful concessions.” Adding to the uncertainties were the gaps in intelligence regarding North Korea’s processing of nuclear material at Yongbyon. There were also signs that North Korea might try to move and hide its processing facilities before agreeing to inspections. The proposed plan for the next few months was to combine increased international pressure with concrete incentives for North Korea to take the steps needed to rein in its nuclear program. The international campaign would be waged on a number of fronts, including with Japan, China, Russia, the IAEA, and the UN. The latter posed particular issues, such as possibly inviting “invidious comparisons” to other unsafeguarded nuclear programs, such as Israel’s. China also posed its own set of possibilities and concerns. The U.S. hoped Beijing would provide more reliable information about the North Korean nuclear program as well as exert its influence. But the U.S. could not be “absolutely certain of PRC motives … and it is unlikely they would be prepared to take any measures they perceived as putting the survival of the Pyonguang regime in question.”
These efforts needed to be coordinated with two other key arenas of discussion: the North-South dialogue and bilateral U.S.-DPRK contacts. The North-South channel was crucial to solution of the nuclear issue and other Korean problems. A meeting to discuss a ROK/DPRK non-nuclear agreement that incorporated a ban on reprocessing and enrichment as well as a bilateral inspection regime was planned for December 20. In support of this initiative, Secretary of Defense Cheney had told Seoul that the U.S. could consider inspections of U.S. bases in South Korea under the right circumstances; i.e., inspections must be reciprocal, simultaneous and involve both civil and military facilities, and should come after the public commitment from both Koreas to a non-nuclear policy. ACDA Director Lehman had elaborated on this position during his visit to Seoul. The North/South talks also carried the risk that South Korea might not be willing to pay the political price of taking tougher steps towards North Korea if needed.
The bilateral U.S.-DPRK dialogue raised the points at issue in the NSC/Deputies’ Committee meeting regarding what should be said at these sessions. They would provide a venue for sending a critical message to the top North Korean leadership: should the U.S., at any point, “learn the DPRK is developing nuclear weapons or producing weapons-usable nuclear material, we would be unable to proceed further in the direction of dialogue and normalization.” This stick would be paired with the carrot of a possible easing of tensions and moves towards normalization of relations in a step-by-step fashion as North Korea met specific benchmarks in bringing its nuclear program under international safeguards and inspections. Another potential stick was explicitly taken off the table, however: Cheney had told South Korean and Japanese leaders that the U.S. should not consider “military measures” as such discussion could jeopardize the current diplomatic strategy.
3) State Department Talking Points – Preliminary Contact with DPRK (pages 16-17) – This and the following document provide talking points that address U.S. concerns about the North Korean nuclear program and the necessary steps to address them, as discussed in the document above. Notable are the marginal notes, assumed to be by a Pentagon official, that would underscore the need to discuss the nuclear issue, and that called for deleting the talking point about possible normalization of relations between the U.S. and North Korea.
4) State Department Talking Points for High-Level Meeting (pages 18-23) – Again, these talking points elaborate on the U.S. concerns and position regarding North Korea’s nuclear program, to be presented at a high-level gathering following the initial meeting. The points are familiar, taken from the gameplan document; of particular interest are the Pentagon marginal notes. The Pentagon remained focused on making it clear to North Korea that its nuclear program was unacceptable and on laying out the steps North Korea must take to bring this program under international review and inspection.
5) Memorandum, Col. Eden Y. Woon (OSD/ISA) for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Subject: ACDEA Director Lehman Visit to Korea on Nuclear Issue, ca. December 30, 1991 (pages 24-26) – This memorandum reports on the interagency team that ACDA Director Lehman took to Seoul on December 6-9. The team consisted of representatives from ACDA, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs, and the office of the Secretary of Defense. After stressing to the South Koreans that the North Korea nuclear issue should be “front and center” in the upcoming North/South ministerial meetings, the U.S. delegation then focused on revising serious problems with a draft joint declaration Seoul planned to propose to Pyongyang at these meetings. Key among these concerns was keeping North Korea’s international obligation regarding IAEA safeguards separate from bilateral nuclear agreements; insuring that a North/South inspection regime included both military and civilian sites, as IAEA inspections alone might not be able to detect a covert weapons program at Yongbyon and other suspected sites; and avoiding any statement that the purpose of a bilateral inspection regime was “to check on the presence of nuclear weapons.” The U.S. feared this would come too close to sounding like checking for U.S. weapons, whereas the purpose of the inspections should be to verify both Koreas are abiding by any joint nuclear declaration.
The U.S. team had to counter serious South Korean resistance to making changes to address these concerns, fearing it would make the joint declaration too tough for North Korea to accept. More worrisome for Seoul was that it would be hard to pressure North Korea on inspecting reprocessing facilities since reprocessing was legal. Fighting back against what the Americans saw as a reversion to old thinking, which the U.S. thought had disappeared with Roh’s November 8 announcement of non-nuclear principles, the U.S. delegation spent the better part of the meeting explaining the inadequacies of IAEA inspections alone, the need to press North Korea to stop reprocessing and the requirement for persuading North Korea to reciprocate Roh Tae Woo’s powerful non-nuclear policy.
In the end, the U.S. delegation persuaded the South Koreans to make the necessary changes in the draft joint declaration. Looking ahead, it was clear Washington needed to do more to reassure South Korea that international pressure on North Korea would not ease once the DPRK signed the IAEA safeguards agreement. To this end, the U.S. would have to send out a “core demarche” cable to its friends and allies stating the American goal of persuading North Korea to reciprocate Roh’s non-nuclear policy and stop reprocessing, and declaring its position that merely signing the IAEA safeguards agreement was insufficient to address international concerns. Sending this cable would also serve to shield the United States from criticism that it was “moving the goalposts” in its demands on North Korea. And again, Washington needed to engage with China, possibly through high-level talks in the near future, to secure its role in putting pressure on North Korea, a role that would increase if the issue had to move to the U.N. Finally, the U.S. and South Korea needed to make a decision on whether to hold the 1992 Team Spirit joint military exercises, a matter on which South Korean views were divided.
6) Cable, Amembassy Seoul 13075 to SecState, Subject: Lehman Visit:
ROKG Proposal for a N/S Non-Nuclear Joint Declaration, December 9, 1991 (pages 27-30) – This cable summarizes the results of the U.S.-ROK meeting on nuclear issues that is the focus of the preceding memorandum. As noted above, these issues were distinguishing between IAEA inspections and any bilateral North/South inspection agreement, the need to include civil sites in any bilateral agreement, the U.S. opposition to having the stated purpose of bilateral inspections include checking for the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons, as well as the need to include trial inspections as a goal of the North/ South talks. The South Koreans accepted the U.S. changes, which would be incorporated into the draft Seoul would present to the DPRK at the ministerial discussions beginning on December 10. The cable reiterates the South Korean agreement that the nuclear issue should be “front and center” at these talks and that the draft joint declaration will be used to “attack” North Korea’s position on nuclear weapons. The South Koreans expected this strategy to lead to a “major confrontation” on the nuclear issue, with Seoul determined to come out of the fight this round as “top dog.” The rest of the cable gives the text of the revised draft joint declaration.
7) Cable, Amembassy Seoul 13322 to SecState, Subject: Prime Ministers Sign Joint Agreement on Reconciliation and Nonaggression: “The Most Comprehensive North-South Document Since the Division of the Peninsula, December 13, 1991 (pages 31-33) – This cable reports that on December 13, North and South Korea’s prime ministers signed the “Joint Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Cooperation and Exchanges,” and provides details on a briefing that Assistant Foreign Minister Lee See Young gave the diplomatic corps on the agreement and the negotiations leading to it. Lee said that Seoul had put strong emphasis on the nuclear issue throughout the negotiations, pressing the DPRK to accept nuclear inspections and halt nuclear weapons development, and calling for agreement to end all reprocessing and enrichment to insure nuclear weapons would not be produced on the peninsula. South Korea had also pushed for North Korea to accept that trial inspections of military and civilian facilities, one of the confidence-building measures, be carried out within the month. Regarding the ROK draft declaration on a non-nuclear Korean peninsula, North Korea had initially responded by repeating its call for a nuclear-free zone, but Seoul had pushed to have further talks on a joint nuclear declaration work from the South Korean draft. Lee also noted the “unexpectedly flexible” North Korean stance at the talks, but felt that Pyongyang may need more concrete proof of progress in the North/South dialogue as a step towards improving its international standing and ending its political and economic isolation. For its part, Seoul held that further moves towards normalizing relations with North Korea should wait to ensure the DPRK followed through on implementing the agreement and its continued stand on the nuclear issue. Summing up, Lee asserted that the joint agreement was the most comprehensive North-South document since the division of the peninsula,” which could bring about “a major change in North-South relations.”
“Our basic policy remains that nuclear weapons in North Korean hands are intolerable.” The state of play in avoiding this outcome is the focus of this memorandum, prepared for a meeting of the North Korea Deputies’ Committee. It was a “testing period” for the DPRK, in which the U.S. and its allies waited for Pyongyang to carry out its promise to ratify the IAEA safeguards agreement reached in January, having already failed to meet a commitment to do this in February. While there were promising signs that North Korea might still ratify the IAEA agreement in April, and talks were underway to establish a Joint Nuclear Control Commission (JNCC) to monitor the North-South non-nuclear agreement, the North’s intentions remained unclear. There were signs of an internal debate possibly slowing decisions, as the DPRK might see some political advantage in delay, or it might be playing for time so that it could “destroy, dismantle, or convert sensitive facilities,” even to hide its nuclear weapons program or produce and then hide “significant amounts of plutonium before allowing inspections. Or perhaps it might plan not to accept meaningful inspections at all.
South Korea and Japan agreed with the U.S. that improved political relations with North Korea were off the table until the nuclear issue was resolved. Seoul had made progress on this issue a prerequisite for movement in other North-South talks, going so far as to postpone a summit meeting and would likely postpone the next round of prime ministerial talks in May absent real progress. Even if the DPRK did ratify the IAEA safeguards agreement and negotiated a bilateral inspection regime, the next test would be the completeness of North Korea’s declarations to the IAEA. A further complicating factor was the willingness of some countries, especially China and Russia, to give the DPRK the benefit of the doubt for “plausible delay.” Absent undeniable proof that the DPRK did not intend to carry out its promises, it would be difficult to mobilize international pressure in the near term. A “worst case” scenario in which North Korea delayed action on its IAEA commitments until October was attached to the memorandum.
For the moment, the U.S. had to walk a fine line between accepting that North Korea would meet its obligations and maintaining international concern, while at the same time laying the basis for action that could enable it to narrow North Korea’s freedom of action and tighten international pressure. The key challenge was “to minimize DPRK “wiggle room,” by building international support for a reasonable deadline for initial IAEA inspections at all the DPRK’s nuclear facilities, which would in turn lay the basis for international action if it became necessary to coerce Pyongyang. A best case scenario (also attached) would find the DPRK submitting its nuclear inventory in late May, laying the basis for initial inspections in early June. Future U,S. diplomacy needed to focus on bolstering support for the best-case scenario, while not giving North Korea grounds to charge the U.S. was “pressuring” it. A critical target of this diplomacy would be China, which had the most influence with North Korea. Washington was to stress with Beijing that the U.S. timetable was “critical” and urge the Chinese to “make it happen,” emphasizing China’s national interest and the U.S. determination to pursue tough international steps, which Beijing should support, if Pyongyang “fails to perform.” Other venues at which the U.S. should press its case were the IAEA, the UN and in U.S.-DPRK counselors talks in Beijing. Should coercive steps be needed, these could be pursued through economic sanctions under the UN aegis, in concert with like-minded nations, or unilaterally if need be.
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