Will State Dept. Nominee Get Through the Senate?

Journalist Claudia Rossett, who covered foreign policy at the time, tells me, “Among panderers to the North Korean regime, she earned herself a place in the group portrait that used to hang on the wall of the KEDO [a joint venture by the United States, China and North and South Korea] consortium office in New York which was in charge of giving Kim Jong Il free food, fuel and nuclear reactors.” She continued, “Wendy Sherman was part of the Clinton team that brought us some of the worst appeasement of N Korea, at the point where it was clear that North Korea was cheating on the already grossly misconceived Carter-Clinton 1994 Agreed Framework nuclear freeze deal.” Rossett and other analysts agree that the ill-fated agreement actually helped Kim maintain his grip on power as he helped Syria build a nuclear plant, starved and brutalized his own people and lobbed missiles.

And yes, Sherman was along on the stomach-turning trip to Pyongyang when Albright yucked it up with her hosts. Who can forget the NBC News report by Andrea Mitchell that concluded, “As Albright and Kim say goodbye at a farewell dinner, she tells him to call anytime; he asks her for her e-mail address. And her gift to this reclusive leader? An autographed Michael Jordan basketball. Clearly, say U.S. officials, Kim, an avid basketball fan is a lot less isolated than his people. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Pyongyang, North Korea.”

So to recap, as Rossett wrote in 2004:

Even back in the 1990s, U.S. intelligence was already estimating that Kim had a bomb or two, or at least the makings thereof. That was during the Clinton era, in which Jimmy Carter pioneered the practice of unofficial trips to arrange nuclear “peace” deals with Pyongyang, and came prancing home as father of the 1994 Agreed Framework. The way that worked was, the U.S. and its allies paid nuclear extortion in the form of food and fuel for Pyongyang, propped up Kim’s regime, and began building him $4.6 billion worth of nuclear reactors.

In return, Kim lied and cheated on his promise to give up nuclear weapons; launched a program to enrich uranium for more bomb fuel; built, tested and sold missiles; and along the way starved to death some two million of his fellow North Koreans. When confronted by the Bush administration in late 2002 about his nuclear cheating, Kim’s regime bragged about it, pulled out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, announced it would go into overtime producing yet more bombs, and for good measure had a spokesman proclaim last March that “North Korean missiles can reach any part of the United States of America.”