US Official States N. Korea Can Arm Ballistic Missiles

The Pentagon's top military intelligence officer said yesterday that North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device, stunning senators he was addressing and prompting attempts by other defense and intelligence officials later to play down the impact.
The statement by Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby before the Senate Armed Services Committee marked the first time that a US official had publicly attributed such a capability to North Korea.
Although US intelligence authorities have said for years that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and could probably reach the United States with its long-range rockets, they had stopped short of asserting that North Korea had mastered the difficult task of miniaturizing a nuclear device to fit atop a ballistic missile.
Later in the day, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which Jacoby heads, issued a statement seeking to portray the admiral's assessment as nothing new and still largely theoretical. It cited his testimony last month before the same committee, where he said North Korea is developing a missile that could deliver a nuclear warhead to parts of the United States.
But those comments dealt with the ability of the North Korean missile, known as the Taepo Dong 2, to go the distance with a nuclear warhead -- not whether North Korea could mount such warheads on its missiles.