US denies intelligence failure on NK rocket launch

WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- The U.S. government on Thursday dismissed widespread speculation that it had lost track of North Korea's final preparations for a rocket launch earlier this week.

Critics accuse U.S. intelligence authorities of having failed to detect signs that the secretive nation's rocket launch was imminent.

"I would reject that," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a press briefing. "We have been warning against this launch and we have been preparing a response if the North Koreans did the wrong thing, as they did."

It took hours to issue the formal response to the North's move due to the necessity of assessing the situation, according to Nuland.

"We were evaluating exactly what had happened and trying to gather information," she said. Nuland referred reporters to other agencies like the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) for technology-related questions.

As usual, she would not talk about intelligence matters, effectively giving no specific information.

Despite the State Department's denial, a diplomatic source said that internal evaluations are under way to determine whether North Korea deliberately disguised its launch plans or whether the U.S. intelligence community missed the final preparations.

A Japanese newspaper even reported, citing unidentified Tokyo officials, that the U.S. had not provided South Korea with satellite information on the North's finishing touches on the rocket launch work.

South Korean officials refuted the claim, saying Seoul and Washington had shared real-time information on Pyongyang's rocket activity.

The North initially announced that it would fire a multi-stage rocket between Dec. 10 and 22.

But it later extended the launch window by a week until Dec. 29, saying some unspecified technical glitches were found.

Just a day before the launch that took place on Tuesday (Washington time), there were multiple media reports that the North removed the rocket from the launch pad for repair work expected to take at least several days.

Some experts here said Pyongyang had "deceived" the world.

"Evidently, its earlier public announcements about some 'technical problems' and 'extension of the launch period until Dec. 29' were a part of a deliberate campaign to mislead the world, to lull it into complacency and present it with the fait accompli," said Alexandre Mansourov, a specialist in Northeast Asian security at the U.S.-Korea Institute of Johns Hopkins University.