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North Korea: Missile Can Reach U.S. West Coast, Intelligence Says North Korea can reach the West Coast of the United States with a long-range ballistic missile, top U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 13). The untested three-stage version of the Taepodong 2 missile can reach the western United States and possibly points further inland, according to Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. CIA Director George Tenet, joining Jacoby in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, concurred with Jacoby’s assessment. North Korea has threatened to resume flight tests, but without such tests the reliability of a missile is dubious, the Associated Press reported (John Lumpkin, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Feb. 13). A potential ballistic missile carrying nuclear weapons from North Korea has been discussed in U.S. intelligence reports since the late 1990s, the Los Angeles Times reported. The 2001 National Intelligence Estimate said that a three-stage Taepodong could carry several hundred pounds about 9,000 miles, which is sufficient to reach all of North America, the Times reported (Richter/Rubin, Feb. 13, Los Angeles Times). “This old news is why it’s important to proceed with deployment of missile defense and also why the president is focused on multilateral diplomatic talks to deal with North Korea,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (Lumpkin, Associated Press/Yahoo.com).
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