November 25, 2002: Secretary of State Powell Indicates He Believes Pakistan’s Assurances It Is Not Helping North Korea with Nuclear Weapons, CIA Intelligence Shows Otherwise

Secretary of State Colin Powell is asked a number of questions about Pakistan’s involvement with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and says that he believes Pakistani assurances it is not assisting North Korea. Powell first says: “[I]n my conversations with [Pakistani] President [Pervez] Musharraf in the recent months, I have made it clear to him that any, any sort of contact between Pakistan and North Korea we believe would be improper, inappropriate, and would have consequences. And he has assured me on more than one occasion that there are no further contacts and he guarantees that there are no contacts of the kind that were referred to in [a recent New York Times] article.” Powell then says that Musharraf “understands the seriousness of this issue,” but in conversations with Musharraf, Powell “reinforce[s] the point and there are laws that apply and we will obey the law.” However, when asked about a specific allegation of cooperation between Pakistan and North Korea, he says he has not “chased it down” and cannot comment. [US Department of State, 11/25/2002] However, the CIA has intelligence showing Pakistan’s assistance to North Korea is continuing. Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will later comment: “It [Powell’s response] was a mirror of the nonsensical relationship between [former Pakistani dictator] Zia ul-Haq and [former Secretary of State] George Schultz in the late 1980s, when Pakistan’s president had offered repeated denials that were accepted for the record by the secretary of state—although in private the CIA had unequivocal intelligence showing the opposite.” [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 339]