Secret Syrian Strike Solved?

One of the biggest mysteries in military and intelligence circles over the past year has been Israel's decision to bomb a bland-looking building in the Syrian desert. All sorts of theories have been floated about what the square-shaped structure held. Congressmen threatened to hold up classified projectsuntil they got some answers. Ace investigator Sy Hersh recently spent 6,000 words in the* New Yorker *looking into the issue -- and would up throwing up his hands.

Now, the nation's spies say they're ready to provide some answers.

A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea's nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.

The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel's decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.

Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core's design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows "remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon," a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video "very, very damning."

But it's not like Syria was about to get a nuke, the Washington Post explains.

Beginning today, intelligence officials will tell members of the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign relations committees that the Syrian facility was not yet fully operational and that there was no uranium for the reactor and no indication of fuel capability...

*David Albright, president of Institute for Science and International
Security (ISIS) and a former U.N. weapons inspector, said the absence of such evidence warrants skepticism that the reactor was part of an active weapons program.
*

*"The United States and Israel have not identified any Syrian plutonium separation facilities or nuclear weaponization facilities,"
he said. "The lack of any such facilities gives little confidence that the reactor is part of an active nuclear weapons program. The apparent lack of fuel, either imported or indigenously produced, also is curious and lowers confidence that Syria has a nuclear weapons program."
*

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