Syrian reactor, N. Korean fuel, Israeli raid

by Mark Silva

There was a lot of noise on Capitol Hill yesterday about the Bush administration's revelation of information about a Syrian nuclear reactor built with the assistance of the North Koreans -- the reactor that was the target of a secretive Israeli air attack.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Republican, and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, complained that he felt "used'' by the White House and that the episode had undermined the six-party talks aimed at forcing North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. The White House acknowledged it faced some damage control.

It took some time for the administration to step forward with the information it had about this Israeli attack, and officials were attempting to explain just what they knew and why they had taken so long.

"Let me say that what we're going to discuss is a nuclear reactor,'' a senior intelligence official said in a background briefing. "It was constructed by the Syrians in the eastern desert of Syria along the Euphrates River on the east side. The Syrians constructed this reactor for the production of plutonium with the assistance of the North Koreans.

"Our evidence goes back an extended period of time,'' this official said, speaking under the cloak of administration anonymity that comes with much of what passes as insight here. "We have had insights to what was going on since very late '90s, early 2000, 2001 that something was happening.

"Our issue was pinning it down and being more precise. We had increasing appreciation for what was happening in the 2003, 2006 timeframe. But we still couldn't quite pin it down, as will become apparent to you when we show you more of the physical evidence that you'll see in just a moment.''

Another senior administration official said the U.S. did consult with Israel about the existence of this reactor, but did not authorize the attack -- and did not feel free to speak about the reactor until now, allowing some time to pass and defuse the tensions that could have surfaced in the aftermath of such an attack.

"Israel considered a Syrian nuclear capability to be an existential threat to the state of Israel,'' this official said. "After these discussions, at the end of the day Israel made its own decision to take action. It did so without any green light from us - so-called "green light" from us; none was asked for, none was given.''

See more of their accounting here:

"In the spring of last year, we were able to obtain some additional information that made it conclusive,'' the intelligence official said. "And so, we engaged in this policy process of now that we have the evidence, what do we do about it? The evidence concluded a nuclear reactor, as I mentioned, constructed by the Syrians, started probably in 2001, completed in the summer of 2007. And it was nearing operational capability.

Another official at this briefing presented some slides.

"Information we acquired since 2001 has indicated cooperation between North Korean nuclear entities and high-level Syrian officials,'' the official said. "And we went to the 2001 data - and I know this is true in you business - when you learn something, it doesn't just illuminate the future; it illuminates the past.

"And when we acquired information in 2001 and then were able to look backward on information that had been collected but not quite understood, it's clear to us that this cooperation between North Korean nuclear-related personalities and entities and high-level Syrian officials began probably as early as 1997, which - and now this is estimate now, all right, not court-of-law evidence - puts it into the Hafez al Assad regime in terms of the original decision to begin this cooperation.

"Now, as early as 2003, we judged that the interactions probably were nuclear-related, again, because of who it was we were seeing in these interactions. But we had no details on the nature or location of the cooperative projects. We assessed the cooperation involved work at sites probably within Syria. But again, we didn't know exactly where. So we had this body of evidence, kind of - almost like a cloud of, boy, there's something going on here but we can't get a whole lot of precision about it.

"We received indications in '05 that the Syrians and North Koreans were involved in a project in the Dayr az Zawr region of eastern Syria, but again, no specific information on the nature or the exact location of the work. But you can see, as evidence mounts, more confident there is cooperation, more confident it involves nuclear-related people. And now, we've got a fairly good sense as to where the center point of the cooperation might be.

I"magery searches of the region revealed a large unidentified building under construction in a remote area near the Euphrates River near a point that we call al Kibar. And there you see the photo. The first time we saw it was after this evidence - look out there - remember '05, '06 timeframe - take a look there. We identified the facility. And once again, sometimes the present illuminates not just the future but can illuminate the past. We looked back on historical imagery that found that the only high-quality imagery we had was of a building that looked pretty much like this. It was externally complete.

"And it's hard to figure out looking at that building what its purpose is. And it certainly didn't have any observable, externally observable characteristics that would say, oh, yeah, you got yourself a nuclear reactor here - things like a massive electrical-supply system, massive ventilation, and most importantly a cooling system. We acquired information, though, in the spring of '07 that enabled us to conclude that this non-descript-looking building in al Wadi, near the Euphrates River in eastern Syria was indeed a covert nuclear reactor. The information included photographs of the interior and the exterior of the building located in Dayr az Zawr showing key features of the reactor.

"Now, we carefully compared these photos, which are obviously handheld - and we've got a certain volume of them measured in the dozens - these handheld photos with the overhead photos. And I'm here to assure you that all the windows, doors, holes in the wall, and so on, matched up; i.e., these handheld photos are of that building we showed you in the overhead photo. And that's very important because the handheld photos reveal construction activity at the site in a period of time prior to the external completion of the building. Does that make sense? Okay, good.

"The reactor inside that building was clearly not configured to produce electricity. We saw no way and there are no power lines coming out of it, none of all the switching facilities that you would need, and frankly was less well-suited for research - I mean, obviously, we're holding up hypotheses here, right - less well-suited for research than some existing nuclear facilities that we and the Syrians know about and have been made public in Syria.

"Now, we assess that North Korea has assisted Syria with this reactor because, one, it uses North Korean-type technology. The building resembles North Korea's Yongbyon plutonium power reactor. That's Yongbyon on the left. That's that non-descript building in the eastern Syrian Desert before the curtain walls and false roof were put on the top of it to hide its shape, which, without those curtain walls and false roofs seem to carry the telltale signatures similar to the facility at Yongbyon.

"nternal photographs of the reactor vessel under construction shows that it's a gas-cooled graphite-moderated reactor similar in technology and configuration to the Yongbyon reactor. And you can see that more clearly in this photo that compares the control rods and the refueling-tube arrangements of both reactors. That's internal imagery of al Kibar on the left and Yongbyon on the right.

"And just to hit a point I said earlier, you see the kind of crawlspace back there? If you have access to the wealth of photographs that we had, you can work from the crawlspace to the wall to the windows to the ventilation duct to the duct coming out the window, and now you're looking at the overhead photography of that window in the right place with the duct coming out of it. See what I'm trying to describe for you - that we are very confident that that on the left is inside that building that we showed you in the overhead imagery.

"Our information also indicates involvement of nuclear-related North Koreans in a project somewhere in the area. And we also have evidence of cargo being transferred from North Korea, most likely tot his reactor site in 2006. The reactor was destroyed in an Israeli air strike early in the morning of 6 September 2007 as it was nearing completion but before it had been operated and before it was charged with uranium fuel.

"Shortly after the attack, the Syrians began - this is mid-September now - a massive effort to destroy the ruined reactor building and to remove all potentially incriminating nuclear-related equipment and structures. Much of the work was done at night or was hidden by tarps in an attempt to conceal it from our overhead observation.

"The Syrian efforts to dismantle and destroy the building revealed features of the internal arrangements and structure that corroborated what we saw before and were consistent with the ground photos that we had obtained. If you understand what we're doing here, you have the building. There were real hard reinforced concrete things in there like the sarcophagus around the reactor and as you can see heat exchanges and so on. The Israeli strike make it inoperable; Syrians decide, okay, we've got to take it down. As you begin to blow it up, what remains - the hard, reinforced concrete structures, which are the guts of the reactor. And that's what you're seeing. This is after the Syrians had begun to dismantle what the Israelis destroyed and the telltale signs of it being a nuclear reactor become even more visible as they go about the destruction.''

. The other, senior administration official added this:

"One of the questions you may have is why are we making this disclosure now and why not before. Our first concern was to prevent conflict and perhaps an even broader confrontation in the Middle East region. We were concerned that if knowledge of the existence and then destruction of the reactor became public and was confirmed by sources that the information would spread quickly and Syria would feel great pressure to retaliate. And, obviously, that would have been a threat to Israel and risked the possibility of a broader regional confrontation which we hoped to avoid.

"As time has passed, our assessment is that that risk has receded. We have an obligation to keep Congress informed with matters such as this. We had briefed 22 members of Congress in positions of leadership and chairs and ranking members of key committees last September and October. We wanted and Congress wanted us to brief more widely within Congress.

"We also felt that we could - and we also felt that we could use public disclosure to advance a number of policy objectives. So the calculation was the risks of greater discussion and disclosure had declined and were now acceptable and that, for a number of reasons, timing was good now to advance some policy objectives

"We are at the point in the - for example, first let me take North Korea. We are at the point in the Six-Party talks where we believe going public will strengthen our negotiators as they try to get an accurate accounting of North Korea's nuclear programs. We believe and hope that it will encourage North Korea to acknowledge its proliferation activity, but also to provide a more complete and accurate disclosure of their plutonium activities and their enrichment activities as well.

"With respect to Iran, the Syrian episode reminds us of the ability of states to obtain nuclear capability covertly and how destabilizing the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East would be. And obviously everyone is concerned about that with respect to Iran, and we hope that disclosure will underscore that the international community needs to rededicate itself to ending Iran's nuclear enrichment activities, and needs to take further steps to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons. And countries can start by the full implementation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions already dealing with Iranian nuclear activities, which are not being implemented as aggressively and fully as they should.

"Finally, with respect to Syria, at the present time there are major initiatives underway to advance the cause of freedom and peace in the Middle East: There are talks between Israelis and Palestinians; there is progress in building a stable and democratic Iraq; there are efforts in Lebanon to consolidate its sovereignty after a long period of foreign occupation. Actions by the Syrian regime threaten progress along each of these tracks. Disclosure of Syria's nuclear activities, we hope, will help us in convincing other nations to join us in pressuring Syria to change its policies.

"One of the things that I'm sure also people are wondering is whether there was any discussion between us and the Israelis about policy options and how to respond to these facts. We did discuss policy options with Israel. Israel considered a Syrian nuclear capability to be an existential threat to the state of Israel. After these discussions, at the end of the day Israel made its own decision to take action. It did so without any green light from us - so-called "green light" from us; none was asked for, none was given.

"We understand the Israeli action. We believe this clandestine reactor was a threat to regional peace and security, and we have stated before that we cannot allow the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the world's most dangerous weapons. ''