Thomas Daschle: “Unfortunately, little in Dr. Rice's letter addresses our policy concerns. Rather, the bulk of her comments are dedicated…”

“Unfortunately, little in Dr. Rice's letter addresses our policy concerns. Rather, the bulk of her comments are dedicated to rebutting a claim in our letter that Congress has not been adequately consulted about some explosive findings revealed in a January 31 New York Times article. The article stated that the U.S. Government has evidence North Korea had begun moving spent fuel rods out of a secure storage area, a development that was subsequently confirmed by the administration. Movement of spent fuel rods would either suggest that North Korea was getting ready to reprocess that fuel to build new weapons or was trying to hide the spent fuel from the international community. In either case, this is a very significant finding that we believed then and still believe deserves to be brought to the Congress's attention. While Dr. Rice rightly points out that Congress has been briefed on North Korea issues generally, including a briefing by Deputy Secretary Armitage on January 16, we are not aware of any administration briefing that provided us with information on this specific development prior to the New York Times story. And in recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Secretary Armitage implicitly acknowledged that fact.”