CIA says North Korea won't give up nukes, but might open a burger joint

WASHINGTON — A new U.S. intelligence assessment has concluded that North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons any time soon, three U.S. officials told NBC News — a finding that conflicts with recent statements by President Trump that Pyongyang intends to do so in the future.
President Trump is continuing to pursue a nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even though the CIA analysis, which is consistent with other expert opinion, casts doubt on the viability of Trump's stated goal for the negotiations, the elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile.
"Everybody knows they are not going to denuclearize," said one intelligence official who read the report, which was circulated earlier this month, days before Trump cancelled the originally scheduled summit.
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake News NBC just stated that we have given up so much in our negotiations with North Korea, and they have given up nothing. Wow, we haven’t given up anything & they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, & no more testing!

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2018
In an odd twist, a list of potential concessions by North Korea in the CIA analysis included the possibility that Kim Jong Un may consider offering to open a Western hamburger franchise in Pyongyang as a show of goodwill, according to three national security officials.
It suggests Kim is interested in a peaceful gesture to an American president whose love of fast-food burgers is well known — and who, during the 2016 campaign, had said he wanted to talk nukes over a burger with the North Korean leader.
On the nuclear question, the analysis suggests that a more realistic immediate objective would be convincing Kim to walk back recent progress on the country's nuclear weapons program, the officials said.

But it's not clear that would pass muster with Trump — or America's allies.

"If the North Koreans don't agree in a joint statement that lays out denuclearization — that is, getting rid of their nuclear weapons, having them put under control by international elements — then I don't think we are going to go very far," Chris Hill, a former ambassador to South Korea, said Tuesday on MSNBC.

Trump cancelled the originally scheduled June 12 summit on May 24, but in recent days has suggested he may participate in the summit after all. A U.S. delegation met in recent days with North Koreans officials in the Demilitarized Zone, and a senior North Korean intelligence official is en route to New York City to discuss a potential summit.

The CIA report comes as a top nuclear expert argues in a new paper that the nuclear disarmament process in North Korea could take as a long as 15 years. Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford professor who once directed the federal government's Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico — and who has toured North Korean nuclear facilities four times--argues that the sprawling nature of the North Korean program means it will take a long time to dismantle. His analysis was first reported by the New York Times.

The CIA report described by three officials to NBC News lays out a series of incentives the U.S. and South Korea could offer North Korea to disarm, including infrastructure and agricultural aid.

The report, like nearly all intelligence products on North Korea, offered analysis at low or medium confidence — language intelligence agencies use to signal that analysts lack hard information to buttress their conclusions.

One of the world's most reclusive countries, North Korea is a notoriously difficult intelligence target. Human sources and communications intercepts are