For Those Pesky Aluminum Tubes, It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator at the North Korean nuclear talks, noted last week that U.S. intelligence had learned North Korea had acquired aluminum tubes "entirely consistent" with a highly enriched uranium program.

The charge had a certain ring: In 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Iraq was seeking high-strength aluminum tubes to use in uranium enrichment centrifuges. That claim was later discredited when it was found that the tubes were most likely for rockets.

Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright noted that the North Korean intelligence assessment was done about the same time as the one on Iraq later found to by faulty. Today it was widely reported that U.S. intelligence officials were backing off their posture of "high certainty" that North Korea had a uranium enrichment program. One official testified on the hill that intelligence on the issue was at the "mid-conficence" level.

By Thomas Omestad