CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Thursday warned North Korea may be only months away from being able to launch a nuclear-tipped missile at the United States.
“They are closer now than they were five years ago. And I expect they will be closer in five months than they are today, absent a global effort to push back against them,” he said Thursday at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ conference in Washington, D.C.
He was seconded by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who said the U.S. is running out of time for a peaceful resolution. "We are in a race to resolve this short of military action,” he said at the same event.
The stark warnings by two top Trump officials show the White House wants Pyongyang to take the threat of U.S. military action seriously, even as U.S. officials insist publicly and privately that it’s a last resort.
Since President Donald Trump’s entry into the White House, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has stepped up nuclear bomb and ballistic missile testing as he faces both increased sanctions and the president’s inflammatory “fire and fury” rhetoric.
Pompeo also launched verbal missiles of his own at Obama administration-era intelligence officials, who’ve publicly aired their suspicions Russian election interference helped Trump get elected.
"There are an awful lot of former CIA talking heads on TV, and I just urge everyone who has sworn to protect this information to understand that their obligation far extends beyond the day that you turn in your badge at the CIA,” Pompeo said.
It was a not so oblique broadside at former CIA chief John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, who have both expressed concern about possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russians.
Clapper went so far as to say the intelligence community’s investigation of Russian interference, “cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory in the election.”
Pompeo insisted Thursday that the intelligence community’s investigation backed up the Trump victory.
“The intelligence community’s assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election,” he said.
The problem is, the declassified intelligence assessment released in January, specifically did not look at that issue.
“The IC has neither the authority nor the resources to do that,” Cipher Brief Network Member Jim Clapper wrote in an email, responding to Pompeo’s remarks. “The only thing we did say was that we saw no evidence of interfering with voter tallies.”
CIA spokesman Ryan Trappani said Pompeo misspoke. “The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed, and the Director did not intend to suggest that it had,” he emailed The Cipher Brief.
Clapper still believes the interference mattered. “Given the scope and magnitude of what they did, it defies logic that it didn’t have impact.”
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
