NYT’s
‘North Korea Nuke Claim Spreads Unchecked by
Media
By Adam
Johnson
April
27, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "FAIR"
- Buoyed by a total of 18 speculative
verb forms—five “mays,” eight “woulds” and five
“coulds”—New York Times reporters David
E. Sanger and William J. Broad (4/24/17)
painted a dire picture of a Trump administration
forced to react to the growing and impending
doom of North Korea nuclear weapons.
“As North Korea Speeds Its Nuclear Program,
US Fears Time Will Run Out” opens by
breathlessly establishing the stakes and the
limited time for the US to “deal with” the North
Korean nuclear “crisis”:
Behind the Trump administration’s sudden
urgency in dealing with the North Korean
nuclear crisis lies a stark calculus: A
growing body of expert studies and
classified intelligence reports that
conclude the country is capable of producing
a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.
That acceleration in pace—impossible to
verify until experts get beyond the limited
access to North Korean facilities that ended
years ago—explains why President Trump and
his aides fear they are running out of time.
The front-page summary was even more
harrowing, with the editors asserting there’s
“dwindling time” for “US action” to stop North
Korea from assembling hundreds of nukes:
From the beginning, the Times frames
any potential bombing by Trump as the product of
a “stark calculus” coldly and objectively
arrived at by a “growing body of expert[s].” The
idea that elements within the US intelligence
community may actually desire a war—or at least
limited airstrikes—and thus may have an interest
in presenting conflict as inevitable, is never
addressed, much less accounted for.
The most spectacular claim—that North Korea
is, at present, “capable of producing a
nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks”—is backed
up entirely by an anonymous blob of “expert
studies and classified intelligence reports.” To
add another red flag, Sanger and Broad qualify
it in the very next sentence as a figure that is
“impossible to verify.” Which is another way of
saying it’s an unverified claim.
When
asked on Twitter if he could say who,
specifically, in the US government is providing
this figure, Broad did not immediately respond.
Other key claims are either not attributed or
attributed to anonymous “officials” (emphasis
added):
Unless something changes, North
Korea’s arsenal may well hit 50 weapons by
the end of Mr. Trump’s term, about half
the size of Pakistan’s. American
officials say the North already knows
how to shrink those weapons so they can fit
atop one of its short- to medium-range
missiles — putting South Korea and Japan,
and the thousands of American troops
deployed in those two nations, within range.
To offer a bit of outside perspective, Sanger
and Broad interview Siegfried S. Hecker, a
Stanford professor who directed the Los Alamos
weapons laboratory in New Mexico in the late
’80s and early ’90s. The only time he speaks
directly to the threat, he does so in the
context of a nuclear accident:
At any moment, Dr. Hecker said on a call
to reporters organized by the Union of
Concerned Scientists, a live weapon could
turn into an accidental nuclear detonation
or some other catastrophe.
“I happen to believe,” he said, “the
crisis is here now.”
Hecker and other semi-neutral observers
(Hecker worked for the Department of Defense for
several years) are understandably worried about
more nuclear weapons in the aggregate,
especially in the hands of a relatively poor
country with a
long history of botched missile attempts.
But who, exactly, is making the article’s most
alarmist predictions? It’s unclear.
No
Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is
Independent Media
Naturally, the specter of North Korea
creating an assembly line of nuclear weapons—by
far the sexiest part of the story—was the lead
in subsequent write-ups. Within hours, this meme
spread to a half-dozen other outlets:
“North Korea’s Growing Nuclear
Threat, in One Statistic”
Here is the
most frightening thing you’ll read all day:
Growing numbers of US intelligence officials
believe North Korea can produce a new
nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.
“China Warns North Korea Will
‘Cross the Point of No Return’ if It Carries
out a Sixth Nuclear Test, as Secretive
Country Stages Its ‘Largest Ever Firing
Drill'”
…amid fears
the secretive state can create a nuke every
six weeks.
—Daily
Mail (4/25/17)
“North Korea Is Capable of
Producing a Nuclear Bomb Every Six or Seven
Weeks”
But
from whence did this meme come? Who, exactly,
made this claim? Is there any dissent within the
community of “experts” on this prediction? Is
there an official document somewhere with
people’s names on it who can later be held
accountable if it turns out to be bogus? Once
again, the essential antecedents of war are
being established based on anonymous “experts”
and “officials,” and hardly anyone notices, much
less pushes back.
Adam Johnson is a contributing
analyst for
FAIR.org.
You can find him on
Twitter
at
@AdamJohnsonNYC.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)