CIA chief jokes about North Korean leader 'disappearing'
WASHINGTON: The US Central Intelligence Agency thinks that North Korea's Kim Jong Un is a rational actor who is focused on staying in power and "waking up in his own bed" each day.
But if Mr Kim should suddenly not show up for work, well, don't ask United States spy chief Mike Pompeo about it.
"With respect to, if Kim Jong Un should vanish, given the history of the CIA, I am just not going to talk about it," the CIA director said yesterday, when asked what would happen if Mr Kim suddenly died.
"Someone might think there was a coincidence, 'You know, there was an accident.' It is just not fruitful," he said to laughs from a Washington audience full of national security officials.
The US agency has a dark history of involvement in plots to overthrow or eliminate leaders in countries such as Iran, Cuba, Congo, Vietnam and Chile.
North Korea alleged earlier this year that the CIA, working with South Korean intelligence, had tried to kill Mr Kim, 33, without offering any proof.
Mr Pompeo, speaking to a forum held by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stressed that US policy was to "diplomatically and economically challenge the North Korean regime" to convince Mr Kim to pull back on his emerging nuclear threat to the US.
"Kim Jong Un's mission is just to stay in power," he said.
Mr Pompeo, who became director of the CIA in January, added that he was revitalising the agency's field missions.
"We are going to become a much more vicious agency," he said.
Mr Pompeo also said the US should assume Mr Kim's regime is "on the cusp" of getting a nuclear missile capable of striking US targets and work to prevent this. - WIRE SERVICES
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