Pyeongyang caught in another lie?

THIS ARTICLE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST suggests that the North Koreans might have been outsmarted:

U.S. scientists have discovered traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing provided by North Korea, apparently contradicting Pyeongyang’s denial that it had a clandestine nuclear program, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources.

The article notes the tubing could have been contaminated by exposure to other equipment, but North Korean credibility is not such that it can automatically claim it was an honest mistake. Here’s the interesting part:

David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said…that several Energy Department laboratories have highly sophisticated methods of detecting the nuclear material from items that had been thoroughly decontaminated.

Did the North Koreans decontaminate the tubing before submitting it to remove the evidence?

If so, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve been caught out by advanced technology. As proof that a younger Japanese man whom they had abducted had later died while in North Korea, they submitted what they said were his cremated remains to the Japanese government.

A Japanese analysis discovered the bones were those of an old woman. Pyeongyang claimed the Japanese were lying, but it turned out they had burned the bones twice to foil identification. They were unaware that advances in technology had rendered that particular subterfuge obsolete.

How much longer does the world have to wait for their discovery that their political, governmental, and social systems are obsolete as well?

For background, here is a report from the same newspaper dated 10 November saying that the North Koreans would be providing evidence they weren’t enriching uranium. Now the possibility emerges that they were being too clever by half.

Based on the amount of space they devoted to the possibility, the Washington Post seems to have been laying the groundwork in this article to discredit Bush administration policy. Why they would take the word of Pyeongyang over Washington is another issue entirely.

Naturally, they saved the critical information for last in a 17-paragraph article.

David Albright…said in a report this year that there is “ample evidence” that North Korea was trying to put together a small-scale research program involving a few dozen centrifuges but that claims of a large-scale effort were flawed.

Albright said yesterday that the tubes acquired by North Korea needed to be cut in half and shaped in order to be used as the outer casings of centrifuges. If Pyongyang proves that the tubes were untouched, he said, it could “shatter the argument” that they were meant for a uranium program.

But Albright said it is difficult to see how North Korea could explain away a set of centrifuges that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said a Pakistani nuclear-smuggling network provided to Pyongyang. “I think the North Koreans are making a big mistake” if they deny they had any interest in uranium enrichment, he said. “They are going to create a lot of trouble if they stick to this.”

What trouble is created by the latest discovery remains to be seen.

NOTE: A commenter has pointed out that the bones analyzed by the Japanese government were supposedly those of Megumi Yokota, rather than a man. I regret the error.