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Rumsfeld link to sale of reactors to North Korea

By Randeep Ramesh
Sydney Morning Herald
May 10 2003

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, sat on the board of a company that three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts of build nuclear weapons.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $US200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. He sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $US190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush Administration.

www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/09/1052280441337.html


The two faces of Rumsfeld

2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea
2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

Randeep Ramesh
May 9, 2003
London Guardian

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration.

www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,952289,00.html


Rummy's North Korea Connection

What did Donald Rumsfeld know about ABB's deal to build nuclear reactors there? And why won't he talk about it?

By Richard Behar
CNN Money
Fortune Magazine
May 12, 2003

Rumsfeld declined requests by FORTUNE to elaborate on his role. But ABB spokesman Bjorn Edlund has told FORTUNE that "board members were informed about this project." And other ABB officials say there is no way such a large and high-stakes project, involving complex questions of liability, would not have come to the attention of the board. "A written summary would probably have gone to the board before the deal was signed," says Robert Newman, a former president of ABB's U.S. nuclear division who spearheaded the project. "I'm sure they were aware."

FORTUNE contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he's convinced that ABB's chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. "This was a major thing for ABB," the former director says, "and extensive political lobbying was done."

ABB, which was already building eight nuclear reactors in South Korea, had an inside track on the $4 billion U.S.-sponsored North Korea project. The firm was told "our participation is essential," recalls Frank Murray, project manager for the reactors. (He plays the same role now at Westinghouse, which was acquired by Britain's BNFL in 1999, a year before it also bought ABB's nuclear power business.) The North Korean reactors are being primarily funded by South Korean and Japanese export-import banks and supervised by KEDO, a consortium based in New York.

Even so, ABB tried to keep its involvement hush-hush. In a 1995 letter from ABB to the Department of Energy obtained by FORTUNE, the firm requested authorization to release technology to the North Koreans, then asked that the seemingly innocuous one-page letter be withheld from public disclosure. "Everything was held close to the vest for some reason," says Ronald Kurtz, ABB's U.S. spokesman. "It wasn't as public as contracts of this magnitude typically are."

Given the Republican outcry over the reactor deal, Rumsfeld's public silence is nearly deafening. "Almost any Republican was complaining about it," says Winston Lord, President Clinton's assistant secretary of state for East Asian/Pacific Affairs.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/05/12/3423
16/index.htm

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
America has been the source of nukes for EVERY country that has them, that's nothing new. *sighs in dismay all the same*

But the President of South Korea committed "suicide?"

Oh shit. o.o

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
America has been the source of nukes for EVERY country that has them, that's nothing new. *sighs in dismay all the same*

But the President of South Korea committed "suicide?"

Oh shit. o.o

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EX-President. I notice PN likes to leave out such annoying things as "facts"...

This has all the global impact of Ronald Reagan dying - which is to say, none at all.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
America has been the source of nukes for EVERY country that has them, that's nothing new. *sighs in dismay all the same*

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Anyhows, if you wanna know where China got the bomb, look no further than our so called allies and treacherous "friends" over there in Tel Aviv.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
It's not the American government exactly, but blackmarket dealings through the weapons manufacturers, often with the knowledge of government officials.

Perhaps to say we have given ALL the nukes out there isn't correct, and I don't have the proof to back that up anyway. But the American government and it's associated industrial military complex have a long history of supplying and arming people they really shouldn't have been. Russia I'll grant was probably independent, and they probably helped China, but the others, I have my doubts. China is the biggest influence on North Korea, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of our technology has made it there.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
The Israelis either stole, or were given by sympathetic folks in our Gov, the W88 diagrams, but were unable to produce or assemble them, and as such turned to China to do so in exchange for the information itself, and despite them sabotaging the designs before they handed em over (being that they could then put the things back together correctly when they got them) the Chinese are not stupid, and using information obtained via other means and an understanding of the basic principles, had no real problem building their own warheads soon thereafter.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I'm not saying it's a direct thing, but I think America has been majorly to blame with a number of developing and rogue nations getting the atomic bomb.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
America has been the source of nukes for EVERY country that has them, that's nothing new. *sighs in dismay all the same*

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The French (allegedly French-Israeli) Nuclear program was independent (with some help from the British, but without American knowledge or consent), America's Manhattan project was actually a joint American-British project, India's nuclear program was independent as was Pakistan. Same with South Africa. Soviet Russia may have gained some information through spying on the Manhattan project, but they're program was still independent similarly I don't see how North Korea or China could have gotten Nuclear Weapons from the States either.

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
and the American bomb...

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The W88 was designed in the 1970's, China's first Thermonuclear test was in 1967, thereby pre-dating the existence of the W88 design program, let alone blueprints for the weapon, by some years.

They did gain W88 design information, which allowed them to improve their own designs in the 1980's.

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