Congress Briefed On Syrian Facility

By Cernig

I have to eat crow today, it seems. I was one of those vocally sceptical that the "Box on the Euphrates" (BoE) bombed by Israel back in September was any kind of nuclear facility - I felt it most likely (as did experts like Jeffrey Lewis) that the facility was housing a program to mate Syrian chemical weapons to North Korean missiles. But today, U.S. intelligence agencies have presented evidence to Congress that the BoE was indeed a nuclear reactor.

A top member of the House intelligence committee said classified information being shared with members of Congress Thursday shows that an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor built with North Korean help and destroyed last year by Israeli jets threatened to spread nuclear weapons technology.

"This is a serious proliferation issue, both for the Middle East and the countries that may be involved in Asia," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.

The Syrian reactor was similar in design to a North Korean reactor that has in the past produced small amounts of plutonium, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information. The reactor was not yet complete but was far enough along to demonstrate a resemblance to the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon.

The official said no uranium - the fuel for a reactor - was evident on site.

CIA Director Michael Hayden and other intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill to brief Congress on the evidence related to the bombed Syrian facility, scheduling appearances before the House and Senate armed services, intelligence and foreign affairs committees.

Hoekstra and Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, told reporters after the closed meeting that they were angry that the Bush administration had delayed briefing the full committee for eight months.

"There's not a clear and compelling case as to why this information is being made available to the committee today. There has been no change in circumstances as to the reasons why we were not told eight months ago," Hoekstra said.

I think I can answer that one for Hoekstra. The revelation has been timed by Cheney and others who have always been opposed to any deal with North Korea - the same people who kept this information secret for eight months simply because they are secrecy-obsessed - to derail attempts to get negotiations with that country back on track.

(Steve Clemons - "someone somewhere should ask why John Bolton is not being punished for trafficking in secrets that he no doubt got from Cheney's apparatchiks in government." Me - "what about the administration insider who has been feeding him those secrets?")

The Financial Times provides some detail on what kind of evidence is involved.

The CIA will show politicians a video that brings together a compilation of still images, including satellite imagery, ground imagery, and photographs taken inside the facility.

One photograph shows a North Korean nuclear scientist named Chon Chibu standing beside a person believed to be his Syrian counterpart. Mr Chon has worked at North Korea�s Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which produced the material for the bomb North Korea tested in 2006, and has dealt with US officials in the past. The US official said the date of the meeting was unclear, but said the vintage of a car that appears in the background suggests it was sometime after 2005.

The official said North Korea appeared to have provided the designs for the Syrian reactor, which he said was a �dead ringer� for Yongbyon. North Korea is currently disabling Yongybyon as part of the six-party talks on dismantling the country�s nuclear weapons capability.

We're all very aware of "slam dunk" intelligence this administration has presented to the world in the past which proved to be entirely fictitious (and if we had forgotten, Syrian officials are busy reminding everyone today) so the bar for credibility is going to be very high. I want to see independent experts assess this evidence, not just rely on Congressmen being convinced. They were convinced by the administration's dog-and-pony show on Iraq, after all. But tentatively, as i say, I'm eating crow today on the nature of the BoE.

That's not to say I'm backing down on my belief that what israel did by bombing the thing was entirely the wrong thing to do, however. As the FT points out:

While US and Israeli intelligence suggests Syria was very close to completing the physical reactor, they have no evidence that Syria had obtained plutonium to feed into the reactor.

�The US does not have any indication of how Syria would fuel this reactor, and no information that North Korea had already, or intended to provide the reactor�s fuel,� said David Albright, a nuclear expert at The Institute for Science and International Security.

�This type of reactor requires a large supply of uranium fuel. The lack of any identified source of this fuel raises questions about when the reactor could have operated, despite evidence that it was nearing completion at the time of the attack,� Mr Albright said.

The US official conceded that Washington did not know whether Syria was close to obtaining fuel for the reactor. But he said the intelligence would show that the facility had �all the earmarkings of a reactor that was going to be used to produce fissile material�.

But sat-photos publicly available show no separation facility to turn spent fuel into bomb fuel. Most reactors can produce bomb-grade fissiles but whether that's what they are intended to do is a different matter best judged from a distance by the ancillary buildings - which in this case appear to be absent. More, even if the BoE was part of a nuclear weapons program it was unable to function without fuel. No Syrian enrichment facility has been found so fuel would have had to come from abroad - and there's no sign even the North Koreans were ready to provide that fuel.

So Irsael's bombing the BoE under conditions of such secrecy was entirely the wrong knee-jerk response. Israel and the U.S. should have taken their findings to the IAEA (as the IAEA itself said at the time) and the UN. Diplomacy and sanctions should have been tried. International consensus should have been sought.

That's the way civilised nations do things. And there's another thing Israel should do if it wants to be a part of the club of civilised nations...

As Steve Clemons writes:

Israel's 200 warheads become an important part of the picture as Israel alone enjoys a nuclear, massive retaliation monopoly in the Middle East -- and this fact may be driving rival states to decide that they need covertly to acquire nukes to balance Israel's portfolio.

This is a huge problem, not easily solved.

Jeffrey Lewis and others have argued that the site that was bombed did not provide the space or capacity to capably service a real nuclear reactor. If the videotape that will be shown to Congress shows otherwise, it will be important for other commentators to get access to this material -- or at least access to those with access -- to see if their assessments stand or whether they flubbed up.

But the mere prospect that lots of small, underdeveloped states may be out to covertly build nukes should scare us all -- and we have a real collapse of the nuclear non-proliferation regime that must be addressed first among many other contending priorities.

Before it goes around unilaterally bombing sovereign nations, Israel should man up to its own nuclear weapons program and allow IAEA inspections and verification. Combatting rogue nuclear states shouldn't involve being another rogue nuclear state.

Update No matter that the New York Times wants me to be "contrite", I'm not certain I'm fully ready to eat crow over what Fester describes as being "powerpoints of mass destruction" rather than the slam dunk case anonymous officials had been using the usual suspects (Sanger at the NYT for instance) to trumpet.

NBC Nigfhtly News has posted the video. I'm struck by how much is asserted without evidence and by how some key claims are qualified as probable rather than set out in detail with evidence. Watch it and see what you think. (hat tip to reader "BT")