>>4850439

U.S. and North Korean Spies Have Held Secret Talks for a Decade

Years of covert contacts with America’s bitter adversary helped pave the way for President Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un

President Trump with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, June 2018. anthony wallace/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By Michael R. Gordon and

Warren P. Strobel

Updated Jan. 21, 2019 1:29 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—U.S. intelligence officials have met with North Korean counterparts secretly for a decade, a covert channel that allowed communications during tense times, aided in the release of detainees and helped pave the way for President Trump’s historic summit last year with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The secret channel between the Central Intelligence Agency and spies from America’s bitter adversary included two missions to Pyongyang in 2012 during the Obama administration by Michael Morell, then deputy CIA director, and at least one by his successor, Avril Haines, say current and former U.S. officials.

The channel appears to have gone dormant late in the Obama administration. Mike Pompeo re-energized it while CIA director, sending an agency officer to meet with North Korean counterparts in Singapore in August 2017.

Secret Talks Between Adversaries

U.S. spies and North Korean officials kept a channel open for a decade.

U.S. intelligence officer and diplomat Joseph DeTrani meets North Korean officials in Singapore.

Former Pres. Clinton travels to Pyongyang, meets Kim Jong Il, secures U.S. journalists' release.

CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell travels to Pyongyang after Kim Jong Il's death.

Morell returns to Pyongyang; hopes he will meet Kim Jong Un aren't realized.

Avril Haines becomes CIA deputy director, travels to Pyongyang during 17-month tenure.

U.S.-North Korean tensions flare; CIA officer Andrew Kim travels to Singapore for meetings with North Koreans, reactivating intelligence channel.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo travels to North Korea, meets Kim Jong Un.

Pompeo, now Secretary of State, returns to Pyongyang with Andrew Kim, meets Kim Jong Un, secures U.S. detainees' release.

Former North Korean spy chief Kim Yong Chol meets Trump at White House, delivers Kim Jong Un letter.

Kim Yong Chol meets Pompeo and Trump in Washington; second summit announced.

By early 2018, a whirlwind of secret and public talks brought together Messrs. Trump and Kim in a pomp-filled Singapore meeting in June, and the intelligence channel played a role. The two sides are preparing for a second summit in late February.

A few details of the contacts have been previously reported. This article represents the most comprehensive description of how it worked.

The channel wasn’t the only factor bringing the leaders together. They took risks in pursuing the summit, the first between their countries. North Korea’s improving ties with South Korea helped.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Andrew Kim, left, in Pyongyang, July 2018.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Andrew Kim, left, in Pyongyang, July 2018. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

But the intelligence channel’s existence reveals a new dimension to what was known about U.S.-North Korean ties, adding texture to the public picture of mutual threats, stymied talks, and, more recently, a top-level summit.

Dating to at least 2009, the channel created relationships between the security apparatuses that provided a path to diplomacy. A key interlocutor was Gen. Kim Yong Chol, former head of Pyongyang’s Reconnaissance General Bureau spy agency. Now the senior North Korean negotiator, he met Friday with Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo.

Some of the intelligence meetings have been public. When North Korea in 2014 insisted a senior U.S. official visit Pyongyang to obtain release of two detained U.S. citizens, it was James Clapper, U.S. Director of National Intelligence then, who went. There, he met with Gen. Kim.

Mostly, the contacts have been hidden. 1/4 or 5

>>4851066

North Korea's Kim Yong Chol, center, in Washington after a meeting with Mr. Pompeo on Friday. Photo: michael reynolds/EPA/Shutterstock

A look inside the secret intelligence channel emerges from current and former Trump and Obama administration officials who describe how the administrations employed it and how the channel helped lead to the historic summit.

The CIA, State Department and White House declined to comment on the secret channel, as did a diplomat at North Korea’s U.N. mission in New York. Other officials mentioned in this article or their institutions were given an opportunity to comment.

The U.S. and North Korea have never had diplomatic relations and don’t maintain embassies in each other’s capitals. They have long exchanged messages through the North Korean U.N. mission in New York. Some U.S. officials have viewed that channel’s usefulness as limited, saying its primary purpose has been to pass messages to North Korea’s less influential foreign-affairs ministry.

In contrast, before the new era of summits, the intelligence channel was a way to communicate directly with regime hard-liners. U.S. officials sometimes called it the “goon channel,” referring to North Korean interlocutors the Americans found distasteful but important in deciding security matters. Some South Korean politicians accuse Gen. Kim of having overseen the 2010 sinking of a South Korean navy ship. The U.S. has accused the spy agency he ran of conducting the 2014 computer hack of Sony Pictures. North Korea has denied responsibility for both.

Washington used the intelligence encounters for multiple purposes. They expanded from a way to discuss detained Americans to a potential tool for crisis management, a means of reaffirming the U.S. was prepared to normalize relations in return for denuclearization, and a mechanism to discuss summit plans, culminating in a visit by Mr. Pompeo last Spring when he was CIA director.

A test missile launch in August 2017, in a North Korean government file photo.

A test missile launch in August 2017, in a North Korean government file photo. Photo: /Associated Press

“The rationale for using a channel between intelligence agencies would be that in the event of some sort of crisis it could provide a capability to reach people in their system with authority,” says Daniel Russel, a senior State Department and National Security Council official on Asia during the Obama administration. “Generally speaking, in countries like North Korea, the foreign ministry has limited influence, so you need to be able to speak to the guys with the guns.”

There are precedents for using spies for sensitive talks with authoritarian regimes. Officers from Britain’s intelligence service and the CIA initiated talks that ended with Libya’s abandoning its nuclear and chemical weapons programs in 2003.

Bombs AwayNorth Korean missile launches andunderground nuclear testsSource: Center for Strategic and InternationalStudiesNote: Full flight-tests of missiles

.launchesMissile testNuclear test19902000’100510152025

Secret talks begin

The secret intelligence talks began by 2009, when relations were frozen. President Obama’s White House asked Joseph DeTrani to reach out to the North. Nicknamed “Broadway Joe,” with a reputation for a gregarious manner, he was the North Korea “mission manager” for the director of national intelligence, coordinating U.S. spy agencies’ efforts to decipher the hermetic country.

Mr. DeTrani, who speaks Mandarin and who spent more than two decades at the CIA, was among the few American officials who had extensive interaction with North Korea. He was a negotiator during the ill-fated Six Party Talks, a multicountry effort from 2003 to 2009 to persuade North Korea to abandon nuclear ambitions.

“DeTrani thinks that under all circumstances it is worth talking to North Korea so at least we are in communication, we are not misinterpreting what is happening and there is the possibility to grab small openings,” says Dennis Blair, a retired admiral and director of national intelligence during the Obama administration’s first 16 months.

Mr. DeTrani’s mission was narrow. Mr. Obama wanted him to secure release of two U.S. journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. Mr. DeTrani held unpublicized meetings in Singapore under tense circumstances: Pyongyang carried out missile tests that Mr. DeTrani’s North Korean counterparts declined to discuss.

The talks helped lead to former President Clinton’s 2009 Pyongyang visit, when he brought back the journalists. 2/4 or 5

>>4851098

After assuming responsibility in 2010 for the U.S. intelligence community’s counter-proliferation efforts, Mr. DeTrani made a secret trip to Pyongyang, warning North Korea against proliferating nuclear and missile systems.

He passed the baton for secret meetings to Mr. Morell, the CIA’s No. 2. In April 2012, the two officials flew to Pyongyang in a U.S. aircraft from Guam, and Mr. DeTrani introduced the CIA deputy director to the North Koreans.

The moment was critical. The Obama administration had concluded the “Leap Day agreement” in February under which the North agreed to a moratorium on long-range missile tests and nuclear tests and to shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, including its uranium-enrichment plant there. The U.S. promised to provide food aid. But Washington said North Korea’s plans to launch a satellite would breach the deal.

Kim Jong Il, who ruled North Korea for 17 years, had died the previous December, transferring power to Kim Jong Un—making it crucial to keep the communication line open.

U.S. efforts to head off that launch failed. Mr. Morell, a career CIA officer with Asia experience, returned to Pyongyang the following August with the message that North Korea faced a choice. It could build its nuclear and missile arsenals and suffer diplomatic and economic isolation—or choose denuclearization and become part of the international community.

Michael Morell in 2012.

Michael Morell in 2012. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The trip ended in disappointment: He didn’t get the hoped-for audience with Kim Jong Un.

Glimpses of the secret channel have occasionally become public. In late 2012, a South Korean newspaper reported mysterious Americans had made two trips to North Korea. The Financial Times reported in January 2018 that Mr. Morell had made a secret trip to North Korea in 2012.

Mr. Morell was succeeded as CIA deputy director by Ms. Haines, whose path to a senior national-security post included a stint as owner of an independent book store. She traveled to Pyongyang during her tenure as the CIA’s No. 2 from August 2013 to January 2015.

Despite the paucity of breakthroughs, some former officials say it was useful to have contacts to hard-line elements of the regime, who were deemed to be influential and controlled the security apparatus holding U.S. prisoners. Keeping the channel secret also enabled the Obama administration to encourage international partners to isolate Pyongyang diplomatically and economically as part of a pressure campaign to denuclearize.

“It’s been the only reliable channel of communications for the most basic of issues,” says a senior Trump administration official. “That is where the North Koreans have been comfortable.”

Back-channel skeptics

Key officials at the State Department, which continued on a parallel track to work though North Korean diplomats in New York and sent envoys on rare trips to North Korea, were aware of the back channel. Still, skeptics among some former administration officials have questioned whether the covert channel diminished the State Department’s traditional negotiating role.

“Keeping channels of communication open is always important, but the messengers and the messages also matter,” says Joel Wit, a former State Department official now at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “Intelligence officers are not trained diplomats, and if they don’t convey the right message it can backfire.”

Joseph DeTrani, bottom right, in Singapore in 2015.

Joseph DeTrani, bottom right, in Singapore in 2015. Photo: Wong Maye-E/Associate Press

Use of the covert channel appears to have waxed and waned. After 2016 intelligence reports showed North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs were making headway, Washington ratcheted up economic sanctions, including on Kim Jong Un. There appeared to be a hiatus in high-level visits, though it isn’t clear if the channel went dormant entirely.

As tension rose in August 2017, the channel was re-energized. That month, Mr. Trump threatened North Korea’s leaders with “fire and fury,” U.S.-South Korean annual war games resumed and Pyongyang responded by testing a ballistic missile over Japan.

Andrew Kim, a veteran CIA officer and head of the agency’s new Korea Mission Center, traveled to Singapore to meet North Korean officials. Mr. Kim, former chief of several CIA overseas stations, was born in South Korea and had longstanding ties to its top national-security officials. 3/4 or 5

>>4851140

Separate efforts, apart from the intelligence channel, also show Mr. Trump’s interest in establishing a dialogue. In September 2017, North Korea’s foreign minister invited Jeffrey Feltman, a former American diplomat serving as U.N. undersecretary general for political affairs, to Pyongyang for a dialogue.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told him to first run the idea by other interested countries, Mr. Feltman says, and Trump administration officials advised against the trip. But when Mr. Guterres raised the issue with Mr. Trump during an Oval Office meeting in October, the president said Mr. Feltman should go, Mr. Feltman and a U.N. spokesman say. Mr. Trump’s personal role in approving the trip hasn’t previously been disclosed.

Mr. Feltman made the trip publicly. During four days of meetings in December 2017, he says, he told the North Koreans the U.S. wasn’t the only country alarmed at its nuclear and missile tests. He gave North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho a copy of “The Sleepwalkers,” a book about how European nations stumbled into World War I.

Jeffrey Feltman, center, in Pyongyang in 2017 during a four-day visit.

Jeffrey Feltman, center, in Pyongyang in 2017 during a four-day visit. Photo: Jon Chol Jin/Associated Press

In a November speech, Kim Jong Un had boasted his country had finished building its nuclear and missile forces. Citing that speech, Mr. Feltman urged the North Koreans to redirect their efforts to the coming Winter Olympics in South Korea to seek an opening with South Korea and the West, an idea that officials in Pyongyang may have already had.

Kim Jong Un’s 2018 New Year address hinted at change: While underscoring his nuclear capabilities, he offered to send a delegation to the Winter Olympics.

Adding to the momentum, South Korean officials began encouraging the idea of a top-level meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim, and the idea was explored in the covert channel as well.

In March, South Korean officials visited the White House and relayed the North Korean leader’s invitation to meet with Mr. Trump. The plan had been for then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and top officials to confer with the South Koreans, discuss the offer and have the South Koreans meet with Mr. Trump the next day.

Instead, Mr. Trump decided to meet the South Koreans then and there, and he immediately agreed to the summit, saying: “Tell them I’ll do it.”

The administration still wanted direct confirmation from North Korean leadership that they wanted a summit. The intelligence channel had been active since the August meeting in Singapore, and the U.S. used it to confirm Pyongyang’s summit invitation came from the top and to advance plans for the meeting.

At the end of March, Mr. Pompeo, then CIA director, flew to Pyongyang. Six weeks later, as Secretary of State, he went again, accompanied by Andrew Kim, and returned with three American detainees.

Less than a month later, Messrs. Trump and Kim met in Singapore.

U.S.-North Korean diplomacy is now largely in the open and occurring at the highest levels. Intelligence contacts continue. In Washington on Friday, Gen. Kim met unannounced with the CIA’s deputy director, Vaughn Bishop.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-and-north-korean-spies-have-held-secret-talks-for-a-decade-11548091335

there's more than one way to archive an article

4/4 no 5