Intelligence Chief: Lawmaker Revealed Secret Assessment on N. Korea
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Mark Wilson/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — A Republican lawmaker who revealed last week that North Korea may be able to arm its long-range missiles with nuclear warheads should have kept his mouth shut, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
While he didn’t exactly use those words while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Clapper said that a small section of a secret report read last week by Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn should have stayed classified.
At the time, Lamborn told Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Defense Intelligence Agency assessed “with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles however the reliability will be low.”
The DIA is the Pentagon’s top intelligence arm.
However, Clapper repeated his assertion that the evaluation made by the DIA is its own and that U.S. intelligence agencies overall “lack uniform agreement on assessing many things in North Korea. Its actual nuclear capabilities are no exception.”
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