Leaked to OFK: Internal House Memo on N. Korea’s Support for Terrorism
Update: Link fixed, sorry.
A reader and friend has provided me with an unclassified memo (thank you) summarizing a more detailed report by Larry Niksch of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The memo is addressed from Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to fellow House Republicans.
The memo reveals details that do not appear in this December 2007 CRS Report. Although the links to the Japanese Red Army are old news, there is some alarming information about the extent of North Korea’s alleged connections with the Tamil Tigers, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, which is running rampant in the streets of Beirut this very day. Here’s the entire text:
A sample:
Three current top Hezbollah officials were said to have received training in North Korea: Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general and head of Hezbollah’s military organization; Ibrahim Akil, the head of Hezbollah’s security and intelligence service, and Mustapha Badreddine, Hezbollah’s counter-espionage chief. According to Paris Intelligence Online, the North Korean program reportedly expanded after 2000 when Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah forces occupied the area. North Korea is said to have dispatched trainers to southern Lebanon where they instructed Hezbollah cadre in the development of extensive underground military installations (North Korea is believed to have constructed extensive military facilities inside North Korea) One such North Korean-assisted facility in southern Lebanon reportedly was a 25 kilometer underground tunnel that Hezbollah used to move troops. Hezbollah’s underground facilities, according to reports, significantly improved Hezbollah’s ability to fight the Israelis during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.
Now, I make no judgments about Paris Intelligence Online, and Moon Chung-In counts for little with me, but I would also say that it would be the height of recklessness to let questions this grave lie unresolved without a detailed report from the Directorate of National Intelligence.
No doubt, the usual suspects will say that all of this must be discounted and mistrusted. No doubt, some would still say the same if DNI and CIA concluded that much of it is true. I look forward to their detailed, point-by-point refutation.
This is pretty credible… I have seen (and been in) some of North Korea’s tunnels… When I visited Pyongyang I got the standard tour of the tunnels that the Great Leaders built and lived in during the war. Pretty impressive.