David Albright: North Korea’s Latest Apologist?
by Richardson ~ February 22nd, 2007. Filed under: Axis of Evil, Fiskings, History, Nuclear Proliferation, Six-Party Talks.Update 3: North Korea has admitted - for the second time - to having an HEU program. It will be interesting to see what the apologists have to say now.
Update 2: Donk Kirk comments on Albright’s assertions:
Now Albright, back from Pyongyang, which he visited along with Joel Wit, another Washington think-tanker and former State Department expert on North Korea, is saying official US claims about the existence of North Korea’s HEU program are about as bogus as were the US claims of any Iraqi nuclear program at all. As in the case of the rationale or pretext that that precipitated the invasion of Iraq, he says, the US view of the North Korean HEU program may be “another case of lack of evidence”.
Not that Albright really knows. Although he’s regarded as a physicist on the basis of master’s degrees in physics and math from Midwestern US universities, neither he nor Wit was able to use their expertise while in Pyongyang in the run-up to the latest six-party talks that culminated in the deal for North Korea to give up its nukes, eventually, in return for a vast infusion of energy aid.
Instead, they were treated to a great briefing at which they heard North Korea’s envoy to the talks, Kim Kye-gwan, deny, for the umpteenth time, that North Korea had an HEU program - the message on which Albright embellished this week.
Update: Joshua – who selected option “c” below, has much complimentary information on this, even more damning for Albright.
Original post: Classifying David Albright’s recent comments about North Korea’s uranium program pose a challenge; is he a) correct, b) a simpleton, c) merely an intellectually dishonest academic, or d) a partial amnesiac?
The United States should reexamine a questionable charge that North Korea has a covert uranium enrichment program… [Albright] said on Wednesday.
Physicist David Albright… told a news conference “it may be another case of lack of evidence” because there has been no recent data to support the claim and the North may not have built the plant.
“It’s long overdue for the United States to revisit that assessment,” added Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security. (emphasis added)
Clearly the implication is that the U.S. is in fact wrong about North Korea’s uranium program. The article doesn’t articulate what is “questionable” about the charge of the DPRK HEU program, nor is the relevancy of “no recent data to support the claim” explained. It is unlikely that Albright has access to classified U.S. information on the subject, making his own claims, “questionable.”
Albright also made the all too easy comparison of the charge of North Korean highly enriched uranium (HEU) program to the faulty intelligence on Iraq’s WMD programs. The problem with the comparison is that a North Korea official admitted the existence of the program to James Kelly in October 2002, and Pakistan has made an official and detailed confession to assisting North Korea’s HEU program in February 2004. This is what Khan confessed to:
The founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has signed a detailed confession admitting that during the last 15 years he provided Iran, North Korea and Libya with the designs and technology to produce the fuel for nuclear weapons, according to a senior Pakistani official and three Pakistani journalists who attended a special government briefing here on Sunday night.
[…]
Officials detailed how Dr. Khan had presided over a network that smuggled nuclear hardware on chartered planes, had shared secret designs for the centrifuges that produce the enriched uranium necessary to develop a nuclear weapon, and had given personal briefings to Iranian, Libyan and North Korean scientists in covert meetings abroad.
Dr. Khan said he shared the technology because he thought the emergence of more nuclear states would ease Western attention on Pakistan, the senior official told journalists. He also said he thought it would help the Muslim cause.
Why is Albright making this claim?
Albright said that during recent talks in Pyongyang, senior North Korean officials continued to deny the enrichment program but told him and Asia expert Joel Wit they were willing to resolve the issue because it soured relations with Washington.
Well of course the North Korean’s are innocent – they told him so.
U.S. intelligence analysts have closely tracked suspect purchases by North Korea that they believed were intended for use in a uranium facility. . . In June 2004, U.S. negotiators presented the North Koreans with a lengthy list of items that U.S. intelligence believed North Korea had acquired overseas for the suspected uranium program. North Korea responded that U.S. intelligence was wrong – a stance that officials maintained in conversations last week with Albright and Joel Wit, a former State Department official. “The intelligence has not held up from their point of view,” Albright said. (emphasis added)
Similar to an incident in 1992:
On November 11 the IAEA announced that it had “indisputable” evidence that North Korea had created and concealed a trench between the Yongbyon reprocessing plant and an undeclared building believed to be a nuclear waste storage facility. . . At a closed session of the IAEA board on February 22, 1993, several U.S. intelligence satellite photos showing North Korean nuclear installations and attempts at concealing them were revealed. North Korea representative Ho Jin Yun declared the photographs to be “fakery…” (emphasis added)
This is the same North Korea that denied even having nuclear weapons – until they conducted a nuclear test in October
North Korea has also denied Khan’s confession from the beginning:
North Korea, too, has denied the admission by Khan that he sold nuclear-weapons technology to the state. A statement by a Foreign Ministry spokesman described the claim as “false propaganda” spread by the United States…
[…]
“This is nothing but mean and groundless propaganda,” the North Korean spokesman said. “This is aimed to scour the interior of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] on the basis of a legitimate mandate and attack it, just as what it did in Iraq in the end, and invent a pretext to … scuttle the projected six-way talks,” the Korean statement said.
However the confession is compelling:
Last Wednesday, Khan publicly confessed on Pakistani national television to transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea during the 1980s and 1990s. Khan, who last week received a full pardon from Musharraf, said his activities were not authorized by Islamabad. “I also wish to clarify that there was never, ever, any kind of authorization for these activities by the government. I take full responsibility for my actions and seek [the Pakistani people’s] pardon,” he said.
[. . .]
Gary Samore, a weapons-proliferation expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, described the suspected Pakistan-Iran nuclear link this way: “I think it is generally accepted that Pakistan provided centrifuge technology - which is a technique for producing weapons-grade uranium - to Iran back in the late 1980s, and that, on that basis, Iran has subsequently pursued its own centrifuge program. The unknown question is whether or not Pakistan also provided nuclear-weapons-design information to Iran.”
Samore said the question of whether Iran acquired additional nuclear secrets from Pakistan arises because it is known that Khan sold such information to Libya. “Now we know, in the case of Libya, because the Libyans have acknowledged it, [that] they paid US$50 million to A Q Khan and company for a nuclear-weapons design,” he said. “Whether Iran received a similar design is something that is not publicly known and, hopefully, the Pakistani government - having investigated A Q Khan’s activities - will be in a position to share that kind of information with relevant governments, including the United States, as well as international agencies like the IAEA.” (emphasis added)
Of particular significance is the known and verified fact that Pakistan sold equipment and technology to Libya for substantial personal gain, which can only add credence to the portion of the confession related to North Korea.
The article continues about the problem with Khan’s confession:
The nuclear expert notes that it remains far from certain whether Khan operated independently. Khan - who is highly regarded at home as the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb - headed a key government nuclear laboratory until he was forced to retire by Musharraf in early 2001. In an interview with the New York Times this week, Musharraf said he forced Khan to retire from his post as head of Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) to prevent him transferring any more nuclear secrets. That is the first time the general has cited Khan’s nuclear activities as the reason for his departure. Previously the dismissal was attributed to US pressure over feared KRL links to al-Qaeda.
[. . .]
“Musharraf is in a bind. On one hand, it is very unlikely that A Q Khan carried out these activities over the last 15 years without senior members of the Pakistani military and the intelligence service being aware of it, although they might not have known about every detail,” Samore said.
He continued: “But, on the other hand, if Musharraf conducts a full investigation, he is very likely to create domestic political problems for himself - not only because of A Q Khan’s popularity but also because Musharraf would be forced to investigate all of his predecessors as army chief of staff, which is likely to cause trouble in the Pakistani army, and that is Musharraf’s principal power base.” (emphasis added)
The portion of his confession where he says he acted alone is questionable, but evidence supports that he did in fact proliferate nuclear weapons technology. Again, the U.S. had suspected this since the 1990s:
Unfortunately, one of the 12 suspect sites that the intelligence community tried but failed to convince Clinton officials to get Pyongyang to open up was Mount Chun Ma, which a North Korean defector to China revealed was “processing” uranium. Undaunted, the intelligence community, in March 1999, formally notified Clinton officials that North Korea was developing a covert uranium enrichment program, probably with help from Pakistan.
Even Albright’s fellow apologist Selig Harrison does not doubt the existence of North Korea’s HEU program, or that that Pakistan aided that program. Harrison’s own bizarre theory is that North Korea, “did import centrifuges from Pakistan to process fuel from its abundant supplies of natural uranium in readiness for the Light Water Reactors promised under the Agreed Framework.” Divorced from reality comments like that make posts like this a lot easier.
For Albright to be correct (option “a” above) about North Korea’s HEU program, some or all of the following must be true:
- U.S. intelligence is completely wrong on this issue
- James Kelly is a liar
- That Kelly is not a liar, but that Kang Sok-ju falsely admitted an HEU program to Kelly (one of them lied - who do you trust?)
- A.Q. Khan made a false confession
- Musharraf also falsely admitted his nation aided North Korea
- North Korea is telling the truth about HEU
If you haven’t guessed, option “a” is not really an option.
February 22nd, 2007 at 6:29 pm
[…] I’ve been e-mailing my confederate blogger Richardson today to ask when I could expect his complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of David Albright (bio), who plays ventriloquist to Carol Giacomo of Reuters in this one-source […]
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:16 pm
The NorKs will continue to deny these things as long as they have reason to believe that there are idiots on the other side of the negotiating table.
… and the ‘idiots’ fall for this stunt every time.
The negotiating equivalent of slapstick comedy. Yup, the Three Stooges have never really left us have they?
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
The thing is, they believe the claims of the North Koreans, who have repeatedly shown to be ‘unreliable’ (to put it mildly), while implicitly insisting that James Kelly is a liar.
They - the apologists - should have terminal cases of cognitive dissonance.
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:20 am
Didn’t read all but read then skimmed most.
Did you see where William Perry is quoted as having praised Kaesong and Kim Jong Il’s leadership in dealing with the others in this new deal?
This is the same guy who is said to have advocated bombing NK in 1993-94 and repeated it several times since then, right?
The fact he was touring Kaesong with at least one businessman makes the conspiracy theorist in me want to check his bank records…
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Am I the only one who thinks that reading Donald Kirk’s article is akin to witnessing the Mad Hatter’s tea party as depicted in Walt Disney’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’?
February 24th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
[…] - So who is the latest North Korea apologist? Find out here. […]
April 8th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Donk Kirk and others have misquoted me. I was clearly talking at these briefings about the CIA and Bush Administration claims about a scaled up centrifuge plant. If you are interested in the truth, please look at the ISIS website at http://www.isis-online.org. There is also an ISIS report on the fallacious claim in late 2002 about a large centrifuge plant under construction made by the CIA and hyped up by senior Bush Administration officials. With regard to the petty and immature comments about my credentials and access to information, I would also refer you to our web site for accurate information about myself and ISIS’s work on North Korea.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Albright, I see your comment at OneFreeKorea is a bit more direct about me than the one here. If you’ve something to say to me – and since you left a comment on my site it seems you do – I suggest you do so directly. From OFK comments:
I challenge you to specifically:
• Point out which quotes are not correct, and what you claim to actually have said.
• Point out where I seem to have gone astray on what a, “centrifuge program is and how it must develop.”
You’re making the claims, it’s only fair to ask you to prove it. In response to a few items;
First, I did not misquote you; I took direct quotes from Reuters (Carol Giacomo) and the Washington Post (Glenn Kessler), aside from the Asia Times (Don Kirk) – have you taken up these “misquotes” with any of them or their organizations? The quotes, appearing in more than one source, are of what you said at a conference and in other interviews, not what you may have meant to say. This does make your caution me on attention to detail and “facts” a bit confused.
Second, the ISIS website (URL to your bio) is referenced in my original post above for anyone who cares to follow it. However, I suggest if you want anyone to actually follow the link you provided in your comment, for what you call the “truth,” you might want to use links to specific pages or documents. Offering up the front of a site and inviting others to search out what you consider proof of something is an exceedingly weak approach and will be recognized as such by my usual readership.
Third, I’ve not questioned your credentials, but certainly have and continue to doubt your access to the larger body of available information in possession of U.S. intelligence in this matter, and find suspect your apparent disregard for any information contrary to your opinion. But more importantly, I question your understanding of North Korean strategic and tactical intentions; your contention that they were ready to “take the first step” displays a certain level of naivety.
Fourth, on centrifuge programs. I freely admit I’m not a “physicist” and do not claim to be any sort of nuclear expert. But understanding what it takes to put together a centrifuge program for HEU production, in a general sense, is not that difficult; specific high-grade materials for centrifuge construction, certain numbers of centrifuges operating for a certain amount of time to create the amounts of HEU needed for weapons, etc. Do not attempt to shroud that basic information as something difficult to comprehend; it is not.
Finally, I agree with Joshua that rather than a blanket denial you should attempt to refute some of the direct points made against you in our respective posts. Again, pointing to your website front is unconvincing.
Looking forward to your responses.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:50 am
[…] Comments • David Albright: North Korea’s Latest Apologist? 6 Richardson, David Albright, Michael Sheehan […] • Surprise! Dog Meat Popular in […]
April 8th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
There is much of the typical academic-type speech here and from the start. It is all about hedging your bets…
“should reexamine a questionable charge” and “it may be another case of lack of evidence” and “to revisit that assessment”
The conclusion or mental frame of mind he wants listeners to come away with is that the Bush administrations is drumming up false charges using weak intel, but at least in what is quoted, he will not come out and directly make such a claim.
Instead of saying something clear like, “He is a liar” — you get in typical academic-speak, “He may not be telling the whole truth…”
“may” not and “whole” truth being the typical bullshit.
Kind of like the non-hypothetical quote here: “a scaled up centrifuge plant”
I hate academia and think-tank talk….
This is what I remember from television news reports early after the latest deal — prepping the world for accepting North Korean backtracking by insisting that the US government had said back in 2002 the HEU program was either a fully operational or close to being so but that now the US can’t back those claims up with solid evidence.
Or, as Richardson said, set up a strawman.
As to “With regard to the petty and immature comments about my credentials and access to information…..”
Welcome to blogging….
It sure would help put all your petty detractors in their place if you would use the access to information and knowledge behind the creditials to lay out your case specifically (and try to avoid the “maybes” and “might haves”…)
At least Richardson went to the trouble to lay out specific claims and attempt to justify them with quotes and info.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Albright’s response via email posted here.
Perhaps we are beneath an actual, direct response to specific questions and points.
April 8th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I don’t know….If you look at the quotes from the press conference, he doesn’t actual make real claims. It is typical academic speak I dislike so much…….a lot of innuendo and half or 1/4th claims — all leading to a firm conclusive statement against the US (Bush) government that all the not-really-claims are supposed to support.
Much of it is simply saying —- their are “questions” about what the US “really” knew for sure —- that the US gov “needs to answer”.
April 8th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
[…] here and here with the DPRK Studies […]
April 8th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I am not going to respond to unqualified slander and bizare venting. Most of Richardson’s responses to what I wrote are aimed at him avoiding doing the real and honest work of correcting his many mistakes. By the way, why do you need to be anonymous? Is Richardson your real name? What is your full name and where are you located? I’m sure usinkorea is not his name. I would not trust anything these people say.
April 8th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Quick correction. I should have left out unqualified in the first sentence. I already know from the comments and questions that Richardson and Joshua know little about centrifuges and the North Korean nuclear program. By the way, if you want to attend ISIS briefings on North Korea, please feel free to contact intern@ISIS-online.org and we will invite you to the next one.
April 8th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Geez, Louise!
I certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of slander by calling ‘David Albright’ (if that’s his real name) a [edit]-wad … but he might not come across as one if he were to avail himself of a spell checker … and possibly brush up on his English usage.
Pitiful … really.
April 8th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Here is the earlier e-mail I sent to Richardson: The misquote I am talking about is from Kirk, which you used prominently. I have never challenged whether North Korea got assistance from Khan or tried to procure aluminum tubes. I laid this case clearly at two briefings and in numerous interviews. You must have learned that at some point, since you referenced the piece I did on the issue. Did you deliberately ignore what I wrote?
For your information, the flaw is the CIA extrapolation to both the construction of a large-scale centrifuge plant under construction and a time-scale for this plant’s completion. This dramatic jump in capability was hyped up by the Bush Administration in 2002 to kill the Agreed Framework. That this is was a flawed analysis is now widely acknowledged by administration officials and in the media.
You complain about what I do not say to you directly. Yet you attack me in an unfair manner without seeking any comment from me at all and then “challenge” me when I defend myself. You should have checked the quote in the first place from Kirk’s piece. Kirk’s piece was shallow, agenda driven, and filled with mistakes.
You may also want to spend some more time learning about centrifuges, if you plan to write about them. Knowing the difference between a few dozen centrifuges from Khan and a program to produce HEU is important and you do not seem to understand it. I will repeat. You suffer from a lack of information and a poor understanding of the underlying technical facts of centrifuges, as well North Korea’s nuclear program.
I and others at ISIS do have a wide variety of inside information about North Korea’s nuclear program. I have studied and written technical reports on this program since the early 1990s. I am also writing a trade press book on the Khan network, so I also have collected a large body of information on the relationship between Khan and North Korea.
With regard to being naïve, time will tell who is naïve and who is just blinded by biases.
April 8th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
That email is posted and responded to in this post: “David Albright Responds, sort of.” Now more aptly names, “David Albright
Responds, sort ofCannot Backup His Claims”Albright, the direct challenge remains:
• Point out which quotes are not correct, and what you claim to actually have said.
• Point out where I seem to have gone astray on what a, “centrifuge program is and how it must develop.”
If you’re going to make the charges, you should back them up.
So far you have only protested everyone’s ignorance and your superior knowledge. Logical fallacies aside, please detail where you were misquoted, and point to some specific text written by me to back up your claim.
For someone protesting slander, you’ve dug yourself quite a hole. There is a word for that.
April 8th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Albright; you are invited to point out my “many mistakes.” Quote them, and correct me. That would be great if you could do that. Thanks.
April 8th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I had a comment eaten…
The short version was to point out that since Hill testified in Congress that NK purchased items that “had no other use” other than in a HEU program —-
—-the idea that what we were really arguing about - what really broke the Agreed Frame work — was NOT NK having a secret HEU program but how far along the program was in development —- doesn’t make much sense —- unless Hill is as big an idiot on these matters as Albright is saying Richardson is.
By the way - a quick google search for a citation of the US government position on “no other use” material and its importance led to Onefreekorea being the first hit —
http://freekorea.us/?p=6594
See how the citing thing works?
So…
As noted, this implies that everybody knew NK had a HEU program and was fine with it up to the point the Bush administration decided to wreck the show by exaggerating it….
Albright needs to email Christopher Hill and make sure he understands that before he goes in front of Congress again.
Because I can’t make heads or tails of why Hill would make a “no other use but” claim if what we are arguing about is how close the HEU program was to churning out enough nuke material for a uranium based bomb.
Can somebody explain that to me?…
April 9th, 2007 at 1:00 am
First of all, this sounds suspiciously like ad hominem — as in, I can’t argue the substance with you, so I am going to 1) make an issue of your name and, furthermore, 2) call upon my super-secret inside knowledge, which you cannot refute since I won’t tell you.
Now I can assure Mr. Albright that Richardson is very real. He has an excellent reason not to advertise his name or his job.
I might add that people with real access do not constantly tout their “access” and constantly hint, but never specify, “inside” information they claim to have.
And such people always base their public utterances on publicly available information… as Richardson does on this blog.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
North Korea’s very pursuit of an HEU program, the purchase or receipt of any related item, violated the spirit of the 1994 Agreed Framework and the letter of the North-South non-nuclear agreement of 1991. That’s an open and shut matter, and, to me, everything else is superfluous to this particular argument.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Yes, and notice that DPRK Studies routinely — I mean daily — provides quotes and links and builds an argument —- on a blog —- where everything is so petty and immature….
…..but when the career people go in front of the world in a press conference in the US —– basically to lay a foundation for a Pyongyang defense of why they have not shut down the reactor per agreement or won’t admit they have any HEU program at all —-
….offers us…..
A blogger, who doesn’t make a dime for the effort, takes the time to lay out a case with sources we can all go and check, and has to scrape together a readership on the internet month-by-month where tits and ass rule, not global policy items about how many tubes Kim Jong Il bought and what that means….
but a man whose career is based on giving accurate information and has influence in the world via quotes in the big time press —-
—–can’t get specific——-can’t make a real claim——–saying “should” and “maybe” and “it needs to be revisited” —–
—–all in an effort to convince people Bush is a liar and blame the whole 2nd Nuke Crisis on his neocon administration —- thus excusing Kim Jong Il’s regime….and worst of all, making it so much easier for Pyongyang to break deals.
It’s frankly depressing.
I never thought I would hear myself say this —- but maybe the dreams some people have for an Ohmynews-led journalistic world should actually come about. Maybe it could be a good thing…
Maybe the world needs to be influenced by media outlets that quote material like that presented here —— instead of by the New York Times quoting wishy-washy think-tank experts who won’t risk making plain, declaritive statements they back up with specifics which they are then willing to defend
with more than a “I was misquoted.”April 9th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
I went to the web site mentioned (http://www.isis-online.org).
Their logo comprises:
1) A hieroglyphic symbol, depicting a reed-sheltered field, translated into English as the letter ‘H’.
2) The mnemonic ‘ISIS’, which might be intended to represent ‘Isis’, the Egyptian mythical ‘Queen of the Thrones’.
3) Name:’INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY’
4) Catchy jingle: “Employing science in the pursuit of international peace.” (By the way, just why IS there a period at the end of a phrase?)
Comments on the above:
Re 1 and 2: A-h-h, the mystique of the Nile of long ago … with hieroglyphic symbols and goddesses! What pubescent teenager could ask for more!
Re 3: Kinda smarmy, doncha think?
Re 4: Please, tell me you’re kidding. (But, hey, who wouldn’t salute this pabulum?) This reminds me of countries whose names contain words like: ‘democratic’, ‘peoples’ and ‘republic’. East Germany, North Vietnam and North Korea come to mind. The 60’s are forever for some people.
My last comment (hopefully) in this thread is:
Either some unsupervised intern at ISIS’s office is playing an April Fool’s joke or this ‘David Albright’ has some serious and deep-seated problems that need professional attention.
April 9th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
pabulum: food for the mind —– cool word….thanks..had to look it up…..hope to use it in the future….
April 9th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Albright appears to have been making the (false) statement that as long as North Korea doesn’t have enough centrifuges to produce HEU on the scale needed for a few nukes per year (thousands vs. the dozens they are publicly known to have), that it’s no big deal and the Bush administration is at fault – that’s the implication, not any exact phraseology (and if I’m wrong about the implication I see there, he can correct me).
As Slim points out (and as I did here) the mere existence of any uranium program, and whatever level or stage, is verboten by numerous agreements.
But to twist the stake a bit, the fact of the matter is that we know North Korea tried to obtain aluminum tubes suitable for centrifuges (proper strength of aluminum), and that purchased 150 tons of tubes in 2002 and another 22 tons in April 2003. Albright argued that some of these shipments were, “the relatively weak aluminum tubes were suitable only for stationary outer casings — not central rotors, which have to be very strong to keep from flying apart while spinning at tremendous speeds.” If true, and considering that there could be many more shipments we don’t know about, that tells me that North Korea could have/be looking for a like number of tubes for the rotors. That is, they got the casings for the rotors, or they’re planning to get the rotors. Either way, a clear violation. I’m sure some know the actual details of what was purchased, delivered, and the grade of material, but Albright is not one of them. He would have spoken up, as he’s already touted his “inside information” we’re all so impressed with.
And as James notes, everything here is referenced with publicly available information, on the web, in journals or books, or otherwise identified in some manner.
——
I’ll add that Albright’s stirring the pot has been great for traffic. On the down side for him, that many more will see his refusal to answer valid questions concerning his accusations.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:50 am
[…] answer…..We get one of the best blog fights I have seen in a long time. We get to see charges of (among other […]
April 11th, 2007 at 9:42 am
You forgot to add that David Albright is a total [edit].
April 11th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Hey, ‘onemore’!
Betcha just love the anonymity of the Internet.
What a slug!
April 12th, 2007 at 10:07 am
[…] • Surprise! Dog Meat Popular in North Korea 15 James Na, Joshua, James Na […] • David Albright: North Korea’s Latest Apologist? 24 Michael Sheehan, onemore, Richardson […] • Democratic National Committee […]
April 12th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
While I don’t normally jump in between folks who are shooting at each other:
Mr Albright, I too have a couple of degrees (maybe not as shiny as yours; but mine were earned by my sweat, not my parents’… Since joining the ranks of those employed outside government and NGOs, I’ve taught a variety of professional people on three continents how to do what I do… As a fairly sophisticated person, I have read your web pages and understand your socialist beliefs… These apparently allow you to make any statement that you believe advances your cause (and call it the truth)…
But PLEASE stop whinging like a little girl and either back up your claims with data other than “KJI told me he wasn’t building any nukes” or “man up” and admit you were wrong. Right now you just look like a damned fool.
The internet is not a place for those unable to defend their statements. If you are one of those, may I suggest you develop a thicker skin or learn to document your work?
September 18th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Bump: Update 3: North Korea has admitted - for the second time - to having an HEU program. It will be interesting to see what the apologists have to say now.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Mr. Albright rears his, um, ugly … head again:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/12/sources-and-methods.html
“Bush has made a big mistake, and he’s not responding in a way that gives confidence that he’s on top of this,” said David Albright, a former weapons inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency and president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “He isn’t able to respond because he’s not able to say he’s wrong.”
Wow. David Albright, yet again, ’speaking truth to power’. Just one egregiously gratuitous cheap-shot after another.
Ya just gotta luv the guy!
December 6th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
The hypocrisy is mind blowing.
December 21st, 2007 at 6:16 pm
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