Countries' Underground Missile Sites Foil U.S. Intelligence Efforts

Countries' Underground Missile Sites Foil U.S. Intelligence Efforts

WASHINGTON (July 28, 1998 11:58 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -- Several countries, including North Korea and Iran, are concealing their ballistic missile systems from U.S. spy satellites by using huge underground labs and factories to build and test the weapons, say members of a bipartisan commission.

The Washington Post reported in Wednesday's editions that the elaborate underground construction is one factor in what the panel members called the "erosion" of U.S. intelligence agencies' ability to monitor weapons proliferation. The panel was appointed by Congress to determine the threat of ballistic missiles.

The panel's unanimous report July 15 criticized U.S. intelligence gaps, concluding that "the technical means of collection now employed will not meet emerging requirements."

The panel chairman, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, told the House National Security Committee that North Korea, Iran, Russia and China "have made extensive use of the underground construction, which enables them to do things such as development and storage and, indeed, even launching from underground hidden silo areas."

The North Koreans have created "an underground city" to hide the development of its No Dong missile, according to one panel member who has listened to extensive highly classified briefings given the commission over the last six months.

William Graham, another panel member and former science adviser to President Reagan, said at a congressional hearing that the No Dong "was operationally deployed long before the U.S. government recognized that fact."

Although the Soviet Union, Libya and Iraq in the past have hidden facilities in the mountains, North Korea "has done the most extensive work underground," another source told The Post.