By JOHN BENNETT
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency finding that North Korea possesses nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles was thrust into public by a senior U.S. House staff member who was merely doing his job, congressional sources say.
In a new twist, a House source tells Defense News that a DIA congressional liaison told a senior House Armed Services Committee aide that while the finding was unclassified, the Obama administration wanted to keep it under wraps.
House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., sent ripples around the world Thursday when he read this passage from a sensitive DIA intelligence report: “DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles. However, the reliability will be low.”
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was visibly unsettled and shocked after Lamborn shared the finding during a public hearing about the Pentagon’s 2014 budget request. Dempsey told Lamborn, “I haven’t seen it,” and added that since the report had not been publicly released, he did not feel comfortable discussing it in an open session.
Dempsey’s admission that Lamborn’s reading was the first he had heard of the DIA finding, which Lamborn and congressional sources say was unclassified, raised several questions.
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