Reactor project in N. Korea to be delayed by 6 yrs: paper

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Index:



Reactor project in N. Korea to be delayed by 6 yrs: paper

US to Help Russia on Nuclear Control

Guilty Plea in Nuclear Trigger Case

Accused spy Wen Ho Lee's wife aided CIA, FBI -book

========================================



Reactor project in N. Korea to be delayed by 6 yrs: paper

  

TOKYO, Dec. 29 (Kyodo) - Construction work on two light-water reactors in North Korea 

will be delayed for around six years and will be completed in 2009 at the earliest, a 

Japanese daily reported Saturday, quoting Japanese government sources close to the 

project. 



Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), a New York-based 

international consortium established to carry out the project, informally conveyed the 

delay to North Korea, but Pyongyang has expressed strong opposition to it and has 

demanded compensation, the Tokyo Shimbun quoted the sources as saying. 



The first reactor was initially planned to be completed by 2003 and the second the 

following year under the $4.6 billion project, based on a 1994 pact between North Korea 

and the United States. 



Under the agreement, Pyongyang agreed to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear 

development program, suspected of being used for nuclear weapons production, in 

return for the reactors. 



According to the Tokyo Shimbun, North Korea also expressed its intention to restart its 

nuclear development program which it had frozen. 



Japan was set to contribute $1 billion for the construction of the reactors, but with the 

delay in the KEDO project, it is expected that Japan's financial contribution will increase, 

according to the paper. 



Coordination over the financing will be difficult for Japan, however, following a recent 

incident in which an unidentified ship, most likely a North Korean spy vessel, sank in the 

East China Sea after a shoot-out with Japanese patrol boats, according to the paper. 



The delay in the project is due to North Korea's withdrawal of its workers involved in the 

construction of the reactors after the KEDO rejected demands to raise the workers' pay, 

the paper added. 

------------------



US to Help Russia on Nuclear Control

  

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House said Thursday it would expand programs to 

help Russia keep nuclear weapons material under control and to speed up installation of 

detection devices at U.S. and Russian border posts. 



The results of a Bush administration review reflect rising concern that terrorists might 

acquire nuclear material from loosely managed Russian stockpiles, then smuggle it out 

of Russia and into the United States for terror attacks. 



Some analysts have questioned whether Russian officials know exactly how many 

nuclear weapons and how much weapons-grade material are stored in Russia. 



More than 30 U.S. programs, with a combined budget of about $750 million, were 

reviewed, and a summary of the conclusions was released by the White House. Most of 

the programs were found to work well, the statement said. 



However, the review proposed that the State Department and Energy Department find a 

less costly and more efficient way to help Russia dispose of excess plutonium, a key 

element of nuclear weapons. 



The current program was expected to cost about $2 billion by the time it is completed 

several years from now. 



The project to end Russian production of weapons-grade plutonium will be transferred to 

the Energy Department from the Defense Department and several programs to help 

Russia shutter nuclear weapons factories and install nuclear detection devices at border 

posts will be merged. 



At the same time, programs to find jobs for Russian nuclear weapons scientists are to be 

expanded. The aim is to limit any incentive to sell dangerous material to suspect groups 

or nations. 



And the United States will work with Russia to destroy tons of nerve gas at Shchuch'ye. 



The decisions from the administration's review will be implemented vigorously, the 

statement said. 



In a separate development, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said the results of 

a review of U.S. nuclear weapons programs would be announced next week. 



He said it would lay the groundwork for a new approach to strategic deterrence - one 

that will include ``truly deep reductions'' in U.S. arsenals combined with deployment of 

an anti-missile defense capable of protecting the United States, allies and friends from 

attack. 

------------------



Guilty Plea in Nuclear Trigger Case

  

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A physicist accused of exporting potential nuclear triggers to 

Israel pleaded guilty to two federal counts as part of a deal with prosecutors. 



Richard Kelly Smyth, a fugitive for 16 years until his July arrest in Spain, entered the 

plea Friday after prosecutors said they would drop the 28 other counts against him. 



Smyth, 72, was first charged in 1985 with exporting devices known as krytrons to Heli 

Corp. in Israel. The two-inch devices can be used in photocopying machines, but 

because of their potential as nuclear triggers, they cannot be shipped without State 

Department approval. 



On Friday, Smyth pleaded guilty to making false statements or false documents by 

signing or approving invoices to send the material to Israel in 1982. He also pleaded 

guilty to exporting the devices without a license. 



He will be held without bail until his sentencing on Feb. 28. He faces a maximum 

sentence of seven years in prison and a $110,000 fine. 



Smyth's attorney, James D. Riddet, refused to comment on his client's motives for 

shipping the devices, saying he would address the issue during sentencing. 



At the time of the illegal exports, Heli Corp. was owned by Arnon Milchan, an Israeli-

born arms trader who became a successful Hollywood film producer. His credits include 

``Pretty Woman'' and ``L.A. Confidential.'' 



In an interview on television's ``60 Minutes'' last year, Milchan denied any involvement 

in the krytron deal but said he had allowed the Israeli government to use his company 

as a conduit for trading with the United States. 



Israel returned most of the krytrons after Smyth's indictment and claimed they were 

never intended for use in a nuclear weapons program. 

------------------



Accused spy Wen Ho Lee's wife aided CIA, FBI -book

  

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wen Ho Lee's wife, an employee of Los Alamos National 

Laboratory, worked as a valuable informant for the CIA and FBI in the years before the 

U.S. government began investigating her husband for alleged spying, according to a 

new book. 



"A Convenient Spy, Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage," by journalists 

Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman, also reports that while Lee was mistreated by prosecutors 

who jailed him on spying charges with scant evidence, he was a security "nightmare" 

who brought some problems on himself. 



The book paints the U.S. government's probe of Lee as bumbling and often motivated 

by politics, and suggests that Lee -- a Taiwanese-born naturalized U.S. citizen -- was 

targeted at least partly because of his race. 



The book, to be published on Jan. 14, was made available Friday by publisher Simon & 

Schuster. Lee's own account is due to be published in January. 



Lee was arrested in 1999 and charged with 59 counts of mishandling classified nuclear 

data and spent nine months in solitary confinement before pleading guilty to a single 

count and was sent home with an apology from a federal judge. 



A U.S. Department of Justice report issued two weeks ago concluded that the FBI 

conducted a "deeply and fundamentally flawed" investigation into Lee and also was 

critical of the Justice and Energy Departments. 



The book said that Sylvia Lee, who began working at Los Alamos as a secretary in 

1980, began acting as an informant for the FBI about five years later while acting as a 

translator for Chinese scientists and students who visited the lab. 



At the same time, the book says, Sylvia Lee was -- like her husband -- copying classified 

materials onto an unclassified network and arousing the suspicions of authorities 

because of her contacts in China and difficulty in getting along with co-workers. 



Sylvia Lee was so at odds with her boss that at one point, according to the book, she 

destroyed important and classified  files out of anger and might have lost her job at Los 

Alamos if her CIA handlers had not intervened. 



Later, according to the authors, prosecutors used Sylvia Lee's dealings with the Chinese 

in an effort to prove that she, too, might be a spy. 



The book said Wen Ho Lee became the target of an investigation largely on 

circumstantial evidence. He suddenly became a household name after a New York 

Times story quoted sources as describing him as a probable spy for China and as bad 

as executed Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. 



But Stober and Hoffman also report that Lee's activities have never been fully explained 

and that by lying to investigators, his bosses, friends and even his own family, he 

brought suspicion on himself. 



Stober and Hoffman, who covered the story for their respective papers, the San Jose, 

Calif.,  Mercury News and the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Journal, said Lee had 

"connections" to foreign scientists for 18 years before his arrest and assembled a 

private collection of nuclear secrets for reasons that have never been explained. 



The authors report that Lee often exaggerated his position at the Los Alamos National 

Laboratory, which might have made him vulnerable to foreign scientists hunting for 

information and lied to FBI agents during their investigation of another spy suspect. 



Once the investigation of Lee began, the book reports, Lee kept notes about the 

investigators personalities in a journal, suggesting that he was trying to manipulate 

them. 



"A Convenient Spy" says that the investigation was repeatedly botched, starting with FBI 

agents failure to investigate Lee's computer until well into their probe of him and his 

wife. But even one of Lee's supporters called him a "walking security nightmare." 



**************************************************************************

Sandy Perle				Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  

Director, Technical			Extension 2306 			

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service	Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                

ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc.		E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 	

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue  	E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com          

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/