Don’t Ask Questions ‘if Kim Jong-un should vanish,’ CIA Chief Jokes
By Carl Samson
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo doesn’t want to be bothered if/when Kim Jong-un goes missing out of the blue.
It was his response at a forum held by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Thursday when asked what happens if the North Korean Supreme Leader suddenly died:
“With respect to … if Kim Jong-un should vanish, given the history of the CIA, I’m just not going to talk about it… Someone might think there was a coincidence. ‘You know, there was an accident.’ It’s just not fruitful,” Pompeo said to some laughs.
Pompeo, who took the agency’s top position in January, leans from the US’s dark history of involvement in overthrowing or eliminating world leaders, such as in Chile, Congo, Cuba, Iran and Vietnam, the South China Morning Post noted.
Vowing to become a “more vicious” agency, he said that the US should assume that North Korea is “on the cusp” of making nukes that could reach the country. He acknowledged that the regime’s missile expertise is growing too fast for them to specify when exactly it succeeds.
However, he pointed that there is a difference between having the ability to fire one nuclear missile and the capability to develop an arsenal of such weaponry, The Guardian said.
Pompeo added that everyone wants to solve the crisis without resorting to military means, but President Donald Trump is prepared to unleash such force when necessary to deter Kim from putting the U.S. at risk.
“Whether it happens on Tuesday or a month from Tuesday, we’re in a time where the President has concluded that we have a global effort to ensure that [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un does not obtain that capacity,” he said.
As per CNN, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test in September — the most powerful yet — which detonated a miniaturized hydrogen bomb that could be put on a missile.
Featured Images: Mike Pompeo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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