Donald Trump has pushed back against the nation’s top intelligence officials after they offered international threat assessments to Congress that contrasted sharply with the US president’s own views.
On Tuesday the head of US intelligence said that North Korea is “unlikely to give up” its nuclear weapons because its leadership sees them as “critical to regime survival”.
Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, made his assessment in a written statement on “worldwide threats” to the Senate, which was noteworthy for the many ways it differed from the rhetoric favoured by the president and his top aides.
The gaps were not only evident on North Korea, but also on Iran’s nuclear programme, the continuing threat of the Islamic State in Syria and on the importance of climate change. The distance between the White House and its intelligence agencies was highlighted further in verbal testimony to the Senate intelligence committee by Coats, alongside the heads of the CIA, DIA and NSA who also testified.
In a series of early morning posts on Twitter on Wednesday, Trump said Isis “will soon be destroyed,” and that there “decent chance of denuclearization” with Pyongyang.
Coats’s assessment on North Korean intentions had particular impact as it comes in the run-up to a planned second summit at the end of February between Trump and Kim Jong-un.
Trump has rejected repeated reports that although Pyongyang regime halted nuclear and missile tests since the first summit in Singapore last June it has not paused its production of nuclear weapons and may have stepped it up.
...Time will tell what will happen with North Korea, but at the end of the previous administration, relationship was horrendous and very bad things were about to happen. Now a whole different story. I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un shortly. Progress being made-big difference!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2019
In his written testimony, however, Coats said: “We continue to assess that North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear weapons and production capabilities, even as it seeks to negotiate partial denuclearization steps to obtain key US and international concessions.”
He said: “North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival.”
Coats pointed out that Kim Jong-un’s pledge in Singapore to pursue the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” – which Trump and Pompeo portrayed as a historic breakthrough – was no more than “a formulation linked to past demands that include an end to US military deployments and exercises involving advanced US capabilities”.
That assessment of North Korea was echoed by the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt Gen Robert Ashley. He told the Senate committee: “The capability and threat that existed a year ago are still there.”
