That’s kind of my sense of it. It wouldn’t be at all unusual for one of the service agencies, maybe NASIC, to push a maximum interpretation of ambiguous intelligence and for CIA and State to push back. DIA would in most cases kinda side with the service, or at least not outright oppose it; the NIC and DNI would go with the majority in most cases.

Thanks for weighing in. Based on what you’ve dredged up here, I’m starting to wonder if the IC isn’t divided on his question.

Some subsequent Musudan sightings have appeared in the open-source literature since the Sept. 2003 reports I quoted above. A good resource is the monograph by Daniel Pinkston that Jeff just pointed out:

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB842.pdf

On a related note, Pinkston seems to accept the Robert Schmucker account of the Nodong, which I find a little surprising. There’s a tremendous amount we don’t know about the North Korean missile program. But it is difficult to accept the idea of a previously unknown Soviet missile being reborn as the Nodong. By comparison, it is not as tough to believe that low-rate production and sales to Pakistan and Iran might follow from very little testing. These countries have done their own testing, which hasn’t been uniformly successful.

The broader idea of assistance by Russian engineers is not as hard to swallow. (Consider, for comparison, the example of German scientists and engineers who participated in Egypt’s military R&D programs.) Neither is it difficult to imagine North Koreans, Iranians, and others receiving training in Russia.

That’s my take, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

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http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48871

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6, 2008 – The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency gave the Senate Intelligence Committee an assessment of military threats confronting the United States during testimony before the panel yesterday.

Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples told the committee that several global military trends concern the U.S. armed forces. He then went on to delineate specific threats to the United States, its allies and its interests…

North Korea maintains its military might on the backs of its people, and the military has artillery and mobile ballistic missiles that can reach South Korea’s capital of Seoul and beyond. The country’s work on the Taepodong-2 missile continues, “as does work on an intermediate-range ballistic missile, a variant of which has reportedly been sold to Iran,” Maples said.

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armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2008/February/McConnell%2002-27-08.pdf
Annual Threat Assessment of the
Intelligence Community
for the Senate Armed Services Committee
27 February 2008

Talks about Nodong and Taepodong, no hint of Musudan or anything that might be it.

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