NYT's
'Impossible To Verify' North Korea Nuke Claim Spreads Unchecked By
Media
29
April, 2017
Buoyed
by a total of 18 speculative verb forms -
five “mays,” eight “woulds” and five “coulds” - New York
Times reporters David E. Sanger and William J. Broad
(4/24/17) painted
a dire picture of a Trump administration forced to react to the
growing and impending doom of North Korea nuclear weapons.
“As
North Korea Speeds Its Nuclear Program, US Fears Time Will Run
Out” opens
by breathlessly
establishing the stakes and the limited time for the US to “deal
with” the North Korean nuclear “crisis”:
Behind
the Trump administration’s sudden urgency in dealing with the North
Korean nuclear crisis lies a stark calculus: A growing body of expert
studies and classified intelligence reports that conclude the country
is capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.
That
acceleration in pace—impossible to verify until experts get beyond
the limited access to North Korean facilities that ended years
ago—explains why President Trump and his aides fear they are
running out of time.
The
front-page summary was even more harrowing, with
the editors asserting there’s “dwindling time” for “US
action” to stop North Korea from assembling hundreds of nukes:
From
the beginning, the Times frames
any potential bombing by Trump as the product of a “stark calculus”
coldly and objectively arrived at by a “growing body of expert[s].”
The idea that elements within the US intelligence community may
actually desire a war—or at least limited airstrikes—and thus may
have an interest in presenting conflict as inevitable, is never
addressed, much less accounted for.
The
most spectacular claim—that North Korea is, at
present, “capable
of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks”—is backed
up entirely by an anonymous blob of “expert studies and classified
intelligence reports.” To add another red flag, Sanger and Broad
qualify it in the very next sentence as a figure that is “impossible
to verify.” Which is another way of saying it’s an unverified
claim.
When asked
on Twitter if
he could say who, specifically, in the US government is providing
this figure, Broad did not immediately respond.
Other
key claims are either not attributed or attributed to anonymous
“officials” (emphasis added):
Unless
something changes, North
Korea’s arsenal may well hit 50 weapons by the end of Mr. Trump’s
term, about
half the size of Pakistan’s. American
officials say
the North already knows how to shrink those weapons so they can fit
atop one of its short- to medium-range missiles — putting South
Korea and Japan, and the thousands of American troops deployed in
those two nations, within range.
To
offer a bit of outside perspective, Sanger and Broad interview
Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who directed the Los Alamos
weapons laboratory in New Mexico in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The only time he speaks directly to the threat, he does so in the
context of a nuclear accident:
At
any moment, Dr. Hecker said on a call to reporters organized by the
Union of Concerned Scientists, a live weapon could turn into an
accidental nuclear detonation or some other catastrophe.
“I
happen to believe,” he said, “the crisis is here now.”
Hecker
and other semi-neutral observers (Hecker worked for the Department of
Defense for several years) are understandably worried about more
nuclear weapons in the aggregate, especially in the hands of a
relatively poor country with a long
history of
botched missile attempts. But who, exactly, is making the article’s
most alarmist predictions? It’s unclear.
Naturally,
the specter of North Korea creating an assembly line of nuclear
weapons—by far the sexiest part of the story—was the lead in
subsequent write-ups. Within hours, this meme spread to a half-dozen
other outlets:
“North
Korea’s Growing Nuclear Threat, in One Statistic”
Here
is the most frightening thing you’ll read all day: Growing numbers
of US intelligence officials believe North Korea can produce a new
nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.
—Vox (4/25/17)
“North
Korea Will ‘Cross The Point of No Return’ With Sixth Nuclear
Test”
Defense
experts estimate that the North is capable of producing a nuclear
bomb every six or seven weeks, reports the New
York Times.
—Daily
Caller, 4/25/17)
“North
Korea Could Produce a Nuclear Weapon Every Six Weeks, Experts Are
Warning”
—Yahoo
News (4/25/17)
“Residents
of China Fear Radiation From North Korea Nuclear Tests”
Experts
say the country is capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or
seven weeks, the New
York Times reported
Monday.
—UPI (4/25/17)
“China
Warns North Korea Will ‘Cross the Point of No Return’ if It
Carries out a Sixth Nuclear Test, as Secretive Country Stages Its
‘Largest Ever Firing Drill'”
…amid
fears the secretive state can create a nuke every six weeks.
—Daily
Mail (4/25/17)
“North
Korea Is Capable of Producing a Nuclear Bomb Every Six or Seven
Weeks”
—News.com.au (4/26/17)
Even New
York Times columnist
Nick Kristof jumped on the meme, magically turning “capable of
producing” into “will soon be churning out”:
But
from whence did this meme come? Who, exactly, made this claim? Is
there any dissent within the community of “experts” on this
prediction? Is there an official document somewhere with people’s
names on it who can later be held accountable if it turns out to be
bogus?
Once
again, the essential antecedents of war are being established based
on anonymous “experts” and “officials,” and hardly anyone
notices, much less pushes back.
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