Me vs. North Korea’s Nukes – Part One

Note: this podcast contains explicit content.

Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove

Guest

Robert Gallucci

Robert Gallucci attempted to negotiate an agreement with North Korea and was nearly undermined by Robert Gallucci's own colleagues.

Episode Summary

Ever wonder what—exactly—it is like, trying to get North Korea to agree to anything? You need to listen to Robert Gallucci tell it. And how his own people nearly wrecked everything.

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Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Kosinski: Hello, and welcome to this episode of One Decision, where we take you deep behind the scenes of the difficult decisions, at times really messy ones, that shape history, hopefully for the better, though not always. This week, we're heading to the hermit kingdom, the land of extreme facade for its leaders and just as extreme poverty for its people. North Korea. Our subject today is a man named Bob Gallucci, someone I have immense respect for. He's one of those people who spent a career at the State Department and did so much for his country, the vast majority of it entirely behind the scenes, working day in, day out on things like preventing nuclear war and stuff. But even more than that, he is one of the very few humans on this planet who not only negotiated hardcore head to head with North Korea, he actually got them to agree to something, something quite big. We'll let him tell it all in his words. But first, let's bring in our super spy and arguably most interesting man in the world, former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Greetings, good sir. Hi, Michelle. So we journey back in time to 1993, '94. What music was playing back then? Ah, good one. I feel it. So North Korea never ever keeps its damn word. It always changes the game. Yeah. I mean, it's a real pain to deal with.

Dearlove: You know, you're right, it sort of makes a partial agreement and then reneges on it. And this pattern of behavior is repeated again and again and again. But I think you have to understand, you know, this is ultimately for the North Koreans, I think about regime survival.

Kosinski: For sure. And you see it through the generations of leadership there. But every time they have an opportunity to improve things for their people, and one would think ultimately for the survival of the regime, they always fail to live up to it. Why?

Dearlove: Well, I think the nature of the regime is such that they just have not been successful in generating enough consistent economic wealth to satisfy the population or the aspirations of the population. So the alternative is to blackmail the international community and you do that by constant misbehavior. But in a way I see North Korea as a sort of absolutely obsessive attention seeker. They want to make absolutely sure we know that they're there and they're going to cause us a problem and they're going to use that as leverage over and over and over again.

Kosinski: Now you yourself have dealt directly with the North Koreans and right around the same time as Bob Gallucci's decision. So you probably do not envy the position he was in. Or maybe you do.

Dearlove: No. I wouldn't. I think I couldn't envy him for that. I negotiated with the North Koreans in Switzerland. At the end of this rather bizarre negotiation, they were incredibly worried and looking at me, one of them mentioned and said, Mr Dearlove, we're terribly worried you're going bald. Oh what the hell? Now in North Korea it's a catastrophe to be bald. I don't know whether you knew this, absolutely catastrophe. So they presented me with this ginseng lotion which costs nearly like £500 a bottle to rub on my head. NEWS CLIP [4:14]
Gosh.

Dearlove: As a present for negotiating with them. Oh, god. Maybe you're lucky that's all they gave you. It's so bizarre. Actually, what's interesting is that the guy I was negotiating with, I didn't realize it at the time, was the guardian of Kim Jong un who was at the school in Switzerland. And the reason that this very senior guy was there in Switzerland was to keep an eye on Kim Jong un as he attended the Swiss school. But actually in the end I got on with this one guy really quite well. Did you feel for him? Let's put it like this. He was sort of talkable to, if you see what I mean. He wasn't sort of off the map. And he clearly felt that he had this sort of authority and confidence to act with a certain amount of independence, which is pretty unusual for those types of officials.

Kosinski: I can only imagine. Thanks, Richard. Glad you survived, even if the hair tonic didn't exactly entirely work. Okay, to our decision. It's 1994, and North Korea is just revving up its nuclear program. They have two new reactors under construction and a smaller one, Yongbyon, already operational. North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong un's father, Kim Il sung, had been talking to the US, seeming to stay on that path, but then all of a sudden stopped complying and started concealing. Same old story by now, but at the time, tensions were on a knife's edge. Then US President Bill Clinton was ready to broaden economic sanctions on North Korea, which North Korea had already signaled that it would view as an act of war. NEWS CLIP [6:16]
In recent weeks, we have been consulting with our allies and friends on the imposition of sanctions against North Korea because of its refusal to permit full inspections of its nuclear program.

Kosinski: That's the mess that Bob Gallucci found himself in. He was at the State Department, the assistant secretary of political and military affairs, and he had been chosen to be the US's top negotiator with North Korea. So having been in meetings with them since 1991, trying to get them to disarm, he knew how bad the situation currently was. Okay, Bob, set the scene for us.

INTERVIEW

Gallucci: What do we know about North Korea? Dangerous, perhaps crazy, hermit kingdom. So we want to make sure that at the time we had the possibility of stopping this country before it got nuclear weapons. North Koreans now probably have 50 to 100 nuclear weapons. They didn't have any then. So the idea was keep the negotiations going. Well, something funny happens. The North Koreans tell us when we're about to go back for negotiations that they're going to, it's called, take the fuel out of the reactor.

Kosinski: Now that might sound like a good thing, but as is generally the case with North Korea, there was a twist. Taking the fuel out of a reactor is also what you do if you want to separate that plutonium and build yourself a nuclear bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, wanted to carefully oversee all of this to make sure that North Korea kept those fuel rods catalogable and do inspections. That's where everything broke down.

Gallucci: The North Koreans said, not happening. As soon as they said that, and they jumbled up fuel baskets, and the director general goes and says, irretrievable damage done to safeguards by the North Koreans. The president says essentially, well, we can't go back to negotiations like nothing happened. We are going to go seek sanctions. The North Koreans essentially say, what?

Kosinski: And they say sanctions means war. The US hears war and starts preparing on the Korean Peninsula, plans for Apache attack helicopters and more.

Gallucci: Something called counter battery radar so we can fire for effect at, in the first round, at dug in North Korean artillery. Alright. And North Koreans are gonna not like that. And third, gonna start putting in sexy ground stuff like Bradley fighting vehicles, and we're gonna increase our troop presence. As soon as we start doing all this, the North Koreans are gonna respond with their own readiness. And we are gonna be on the escalator that the secretary of defense described as Guns of August all over again. It's World War I, how it started, you know, like same process.

Kosinski: It felt very much on the brink. After years of trying to forge some agreement, it all just seemed to blow up in an instant. Who were you negotiating with? How did it work?

Gallucci: I mean, the guy that North Koreans picked was the principal deputy foreign minister, senior, senior guy. The guy that the United States of America picked was someone who was unknown to anybody who didn't live on his street in Arlington, right? So who is he? Is he an Asianist? No, we didn't wanna give the North Koreans that. We wanted to give the North Koreans kind of an insult. I was the insult. I love it, I love it. You have somebody nobody knows. I have to tell you the first meeting we had in '93 was at the US mission to the UN. We sat there and in come twelve, fourteen North Koreans with ill fitting suits. On our side, I've got this interagency team, 14 or 15 guys from defense, state, NSC, the intelligence community, all these people, and they all sit down in their Eastern European suits made by tailors with blindfolds. And they all got these little pins with pictures of Kim Il sung. I have to tell you, not one of us had a pin with a picture of Bill Clinton on it. No. The whole thing was very surreal. It was strange. Very strange.

Kosinski: What period of time are we talking about?

Gallucci: We started in around June of, actually May 1993. And we initially met at USUN, and then we moved to Geneva. Got it. Got it. We went through 1993 into 1994. In 1994, it was up and down. Negotiations are on, they're off. And then this thing happens with the fueling. And all of a sudden, instead of negotiations, it looks like it's gonna be war. Gosh.

Kosinski: What did you feel at this point?

Gallucci: We have, as you know, US forces deployed, under a force commander. He said, you know, we're thinking this is the balloon's gonna go up, we are gonna go to war. And, you know, you can't have a small military engagement with the North Koreans. It's gonna be a messy ground war just like the first Korean war was. We're talking, you know, a million and a trillion. You know, a million casualties, and a trillion is what the bill is gonna be when you're done. How often were you speaking to the North Korean side on this? Was it, like, several times a day or every day? It was never every day. We would meet for, like, ten days on and off in Geneva, then we'd break and go home, and then we'd come back and do some more.

Kosinski: When your people were saying, we are ready for war, did it also feel like that in the room staring at each other across the table? I think we got it. I think both sides got it.

Gallucci: This must have been awful. I can tell you super weird stories. I mean, there was one that I've always liked. I'm saying, look, your agreement to language, to direct bilateral contacts with the South Koreans, they're our ally. It's called North South dialogue. Kang Seok Joo, who's not a big guy, little guy, has an interpreter who's even littler. So they're the two opposite me. And Kang Seok Joo slams the table and starts screaming at me. And his interpreter, after he's finished, slams the table and starts screaming in English. So I now know what he's screaming about. He's, you will never use the phrase North South dialogue again, as long as we are negotiating. It is unacceptable. It's an insult to us and to our history and blah blah blah. Never again do I want to hear that phrase spoken. So as soon as he finishes, I say, so what I take from this is that you don't want to hear me say North South dialogue anymore. Is that right? Because you don't like North South dialogue. Whereas we think north, so I say North South dialogue about 9,000 times. My interpreter who's got to go next, he says, I can't do this. You can't do this to him. He said, You know Jay, I'm a negotiator, you're gonna interpret. Keep it clear, exactly what I said. Oh man. So he starts saying this and you could see smoke coming out of their ears while he's interpreting. And then all the guys on their side, 12 guys slam their briefing book closed, right? And they all stand up and my guys start closing their briefing books. I say, No, no, don't anybody move. Just sit there, open a bottle of water, start drinking, sit back, relax. They're not going anywhere. We're in their mission. What's he gonna do? He's gonna walk out and leave us here? So after a few minutes, they sit down again. They open their briefing book, and we go back to negotiations. Show. Show.

Kosinski: A lot of this is show. By the way, you spent so much time with their negotiators. Did you ever feel like you got to know them at all?

Gallucci: I thought I got to know Kang Seok Joo a bit. The vice foreign minister. I thought he was a smart guy. He was abrupt and I would say not particularly diplomatic. But then, you know, I'm not a, I wasn't a foreign service officer. I mean, I'm called a diplomat because that's what I worked for the State Department. But I don't, you know, I never went to diplomacy school, and that's been noted by a number of people. But, hey, you're an Italian guy. You're an Italian American. What else do you need? That's my argument.

Kosinski: Did you ever see moments of their humanity or their fear that this would go to, you know, a combat situation?

Gallucci: I thought we both understood, he and I, that we needed to succeed. And neither of us, I think, would have bet our own money that we were going to succeed. But we both saw the stakes the same way. What was at stake at this point? There's a phrase I like and the phrase is the second Korean war. Grueling, awful, conventional, traditional conventional war on the ground.

Kosinski: But things turn even weirder and messier still. Former president Jimmy Carter decides he is going to go to North Korea and try to sort all this out on his own, which puts the White House in a very odd position.

Gallucci: They didn't like the image of Jimmy Carter negotiating for us, and they didn't like the image of us saying that we can't have the peacemaker go to North Korea, and instead we gotta pick going to war. They were kinda caught.

Kosinski: Their way of slicing the salami, as Bob puts it, was to let Jimmy Carter go on that trip. But first, he would have to be briefed by Bob and his team. The former president did not exactly relish being schooled on how to handle North Korea. He said, Well, then why should I believe anything you have to say?

Gallucci: I'll tell you when I get back what it's like. And we all were thinking the same thing, though. How worried were you that his trip was gonna somehow screw things up even more? All of us were worried about that.

Kosinski: It goes as bizarrely as you might expect. Jimmy Carter comes back with what he thinks is an amazing deal. Big problem, though. The main part of that deal was that North Korea had agreed to allow nuclear inspectors back into the country, except the inspectors had never actually left. It was kind of confused. Any deal was supposed to be about denuclearization, yet no sign of that here. What's your reaction to this?

Gallucci: I did not say, Mr. President to Carter, you screwed up. You know, you got a deal we didn't need. I didn't do any of that. After he told me, he said, what do you think, Bob? I said, well, Mr. President, I don't think it matters much what Bob thinks, so I'm not gonna share that with you. I will debrief this to the president. Are you just like, oh, shit, like what do we do now? At the end of my conversation with Jimmy Carter, I think I mentioned to you, he said, well, I brought CNN with me, and you know, I'm going to go on CNN. So when I debrief, I say, oh, and he's going on CNN, and he's going to tell everybody this. And Tony Lake leans forward. He's on the other side of Clinton along the table. He leans forward and says, Bob, you told him not to do that, right? And I said, No, he wouldn't have listened to me. And Tony said, But you tried, right? And I didn't say that. And then the President of the United States said, What did you say to him? You protested? You didn't say don't do this? And the last cruelest cut of all, the Secretary of State who was a sweet person interpersonally, and my boss, my direct boss said, Bob, you did tell him not to do this. Tell me you did. No. So everybody is looking at me and they're going, an idiot. We've got an idiot who's our negotiator. And then somebody says, he's going on CNN. Let's go watch it. So everybody gets up in the cabinet room and goes next door where there's a TV. NEWS CLIP [19:09]
He's given me assurance that as long as this good faith effort is going on between the United States and North Korea, that the inspectors will stay on-site and the surveillance equipment will not be interrupted.

Gallucci: And there's a great picture, and it's of all of us, Gore and Clinton and the secretary of state, secretary of defense. And there's one person sitting on the floor cross legged with his head in his hands, and that's me watching Jimmy Carter, because I had not told him not to do this. Now, that wonderful woman who was a press secretary comes in and says that you got to talk to the press, Mr. President, tell him what's going on. He said, I'm not doing that. I'll go in and introduce Bob. So he grabs my arm, and we go into the White House Press Room, and he pulls me aside, and he says, Bob's going to tell you what's going on. And then two hands on my shoulders, puts me in front of the microphone and walks out. And the press corps is, I mean, you know your colleagues, are screaming.

Kosinski: Did they get the joke here? Like, did they realize that this Carter thing is not what you were looking for?

Gallucci: Trust me. When I say this, you'll recognize. Nobody among the press that I could see, they're all screaming, waving their arms. Nobody cares about war and peace. But their interest, the story here is, is Jimmy Carter mad at Bill Clinton? Is there a Carter Clinton breakup here?

Kosinski: Gosh. Yeah, yeah, that sounds so familiar.

Gallucci: I call on the person, somebody waving in the back of the room, and they said, Jimmy Carter went on CNN, said he had made a deal. Did you try to talk him out of going on CNN? I said, Nope. He said, You didn't even protest? I said, Nope. That was their first question. That was their first question. That's all they cared about. I bet one of your guys told their pal in the press corps to ask that question. I mean, the air went out of the room. I walked out, and Tony Lake was sitting on a desk outside the briefing room. And as I walked by, he said, you know, man, you are a lucky son of a bitch. And I said, well, told the truth. So it kind of all worked out.

Kosinski: But the politics was awful, kind of. So Bob, lead negotiator with North Korea, now has to make a big decision with potentially enormous implications. What the hell to do about this? Accept a deal that essentially does nothing for the current nuclear situation? Or go and tell North Korea that suddenly the US is now raising the bar on what they need to do. In the next episode, we will tell you what Bob does and says, how it all goes down, and how he feels about it now.

Gallucci: When he found out that the message we sent back to the North Koreans was not, yep, we'll see you in Geneva, it was, if you give us through diplomatic channels, not through Jimmy Carter, but through diplomatic channels, that you will agree you're not going to produce any more plutonium in that reactor as long as we're negotiating, we'll go back to the negotiating table with him. He was pissed.