De Borchgrave: Obama Administration 'Totally Blind' In Confronting North Korea

Foreign policy expert and Newsmax columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave says that U.S. intelligence agencies were “totally blind” to the death of North Korea leader Kim Jong Il – a huge failing in confronting one of the most unstable regimes in the world.

Despite the massive resources of the United States’ 16 intelligence services, with 100,000 employees and a combined annual budget of about $80 billion a year, the Obama administration didn’t know about Kim’s death until North Korea finally announced it on Dec. 18.

Kim died of a heart attack while traveling through his country on a train, according to the state-controlled media in North Korea. Other sources in South Korea have suggested that he may have been murdered to ease a transition to a government ostensibly headed by his son backed by a cadre of generals.

The U.S. State Department finally acknowledged the press reports many hours after the official North Korean announcement.

North Korea should be high on U.S. intelligence radar, especially with its nuclear capability and open enmity toward U.S. ally South Korea.

The border between the two countries is considered one of the three or four most dangerous flashpoints in the world – a place where hundreds of thousands of people could die in a matter of minutes if war erupted.

Nonetheless, the U.S. intelligence agencies missed “something as easy to spot as a train . . . the only train moving around North Korea, with the boss on board, and somebody stops and there’s a flurry of activity . . . You’d think somebody would have spotted something,” said de Borchgrave, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

His comments echoed other criticism in the media since the death of the North Korean dictator, who ruled over what has been dubbed “the hermit kingdom” because of its extreme isolation from the rest of the world.

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