The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  On April 21, the North announced with great fanfare that it was forgoing further nuclear and ballistic-missile testing because it was already a nuclear power. The credulous media took this as a major step forward, and Trump called it “big progress.”8 I saw just another propaganda ploy. If the necessary testing were now concluded, Pyongyang could simply complete the work necessary for weapons and delivery-system production capability. Chung returned on April 24 before Moon’s inter-Korean summit with Kim at the DMZ. I was relieved Chung contemplated that the leaders’ “Panmunjom Declaration” would only be two pages, which meant whatever it said about denuclearization could not be very specific. I sensed that South Korea believed Kim Jong Un was desperate for a deal because of the pressure imposed by sanctions, and that economic development was the North’s top priority, now that it was a “nuclear-weapons state.” I did not find this reasoning comforting. Meanwhile, Pompeo was narrowing the options on timing and location for the Trump-Kim meeting, probably June 12 or 13, in either Geneva or Singapore.

  The April 27 Moon-Kim festival at the DMZ had everything but doves with olive branches flying around but was actually almost substance-free. On Friday morning Washington time, I gave Trump a copy of a New York Times op-ed by Nick Eberstadt,9 one of America’s most astute Korea watchers, which rightly called the summit “P. T. Barnum–style, a-sucker-is-born-every-minute diplomacy.” I didn’t think Trump would read it, but I wanted to emphasize my view that South Korea’s agenda was not always ours, and that we needed to safeguard our own interests. Fortunately, the Panmunjom Declaration was remarkably anodyne, especially on the nuclear issues. Moon called Trump on Saturday to report on his talks. He was still ecstatic. Kim had committed to “complete denuclearization,” offering to close their Punggye-ri nuclear test site. This was just another sham “concession,” like blowing up the Yongbyon reactor’s cooling tower under Kim Jong Il. Moon pushed hard for the Trump-Kim meeting to be at Panmunjom, followed immediately by a trilateral with both Koreas and the US. This was largely a Moon effort to insert himself into the ensuing photo op (as we would see again in June 2019). Trump seemed swept up in the rapture, even suggesting advancing the Kim meeting to mid-May, which was logistically impossible. Fortunately, Moon conceded that Kim preferred Singapore, which helped nail down the venue. Trump said finally that Pompeo and I would work with Moon on the dates, which was reassuring.

  Moon had asked Kim to denuclearize in one year, and he had agreed, agreeably close to a timeframe I had suggested.10 Ironically, in the months that followed, it was harder to get State to agree to a one-year schedule than to persuade Kim. The two leaders strategized about how to proceed, and Trump asked Moon to specify what we should request from North Korea, which was quite helpful. This was clever diplomacy, because whatever Moon wrote, he could hardly object if we asked for it, and if we were tougher than Moon, he had at least had his say. Moon complimented Trump’s leadership. In turn, Trump pressed him to tell South Korea’s media how much Trump was responsible for all this. He then spoke with Abe, to strategize further about the Trump-Kim Summit in light of Moon’s report on his meeting with Kim. Abe repeated all the key points he had made at Mar-a-Lago, in contrast with Moon’s over-optimistic perspective. Not trusting Kim, Japan wanted concrete, unambiguous commitments, on both the nuclear and the abductee issues. Abe stressed to Trump that he was tougher than Obama, showing clearly that Abe thought it necessary to remind Trump of that point.

  I spoke later with Pompeo, then traveling in the Middle East, who listened to the Abe and Moon calls from there. The Moon call especially had been “a near-death experience,” I said, and Pompeo responded, “Having cardiac arrest in Saudi Arabia.” After a few more gyrations, we settled on Singapore for the summit meeting on June 12 and 13. On Monday morning, Trump called me about my appearances on two of the Sunday talk shows, where much of the discussion concerned North Korea. I had been “very good on television,” he said, but I needed to praise him more because “there’s never been anything like this before.” After all, Moon said he would recommend Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump said, however, that he didn’t like my reference to the “Libya model” for denuclearizing North Korea because of Muammar Qaddafi’s overthrow seven years later during the completely unrelated Middle East Arab Spring. I tried explaining that the “model” for nonproliferation analysts was completely removing Libya’s nuclear program, not Qaddafi’s subsequent unpredictable demise.

  History showed that I didn’t get through. Trump failed to understand that the unforeseen Arab Spring, which swept dramatically through the region beginning in 2011, was the reason for Qaddafi’s subsequent downfall, not his 2003 renunciation of nuclear weapons. This was not Trump’s error alone. Many engaged in the classic logical fallacy of “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” (“after this, therefore because of this”), exemplified in this sentence from a 2019 New York Times story: “Libya’s dictator, Muammar el-Qaddafi, was killed in 2011 after relinquishing his country’s nascent nuclear program.”11 Nonetheless, Trump ended the conversation by saying, “Great job.” Ironically, Trump himself said at a later press conference that when he referred to “the Libya model” he meant the “total decimation” of Libya: “Now, that model would take place [with North Korea] if we don’t make a deal, most likely.”12 A few minutes after Trump made those remarks, the Vice President gave me a high five and said, “He’s got your back!” Trump himself said, “You’re clear, I fixed it!”

  There were also significant developments on the hostage front, where we were getting increasing indications that North Korea would release three US prisoners if Pompeo personally flew to the North to receive them and return them to America. He and I didn’t like the idea of his going to Pyongyang, but freeing the hostages was sufficiently important that we decided to swallow it. (Trump cared nothing about who picked up the hostages, not seeing it as an issue.) Chung came to see me a third time on May 4, providing more details on the Panmunjom meeting. He stressed that he had pushed Kim hard to agree to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization,” which had long been our formulation going back to the Bush 43 Administration,13 and would be an important rhetorical step for North Korea. According to Moon, Kim had seemed amenable, in the pre-Singapore context, but Kim never made the commitment publicly. Moon urged Kim to reach “a big deal” with Trump, after which specifics could be discussed at working levels, stressing that whatever benefits the North might receive would come after accomplishing denuclearization. Kim, said Chung, said that he understood all this. Moon wanted to confer with Trump in Washington in mid to late May before the Trump-Kim summit, which we ultimately agreed to. Later that day, Japan’s Yachi also came to my office to discuss the Moon-Kim summit, showing just how closely Japan followed the entire process. Yachi wanted to counter the euphoria emanating from Seoul, not that I was overcome by it, stressing we should not fall for the North’s traditional “action for action” approach.

  Pompeo left for Pyongyang on Tuesday, May 8, picked up the three American hostages, and returned with them to Washington, arriving at Andrews after two a.m. on Thursday morning. Trump greeted the returning men in an incredible, hastily arranged, middle-of-the-night, broadcast-live arrival ceremony. The three released Americans were understandably exuberant, raising their arms in celebration when they exited the plane into the bright spotlights. They loved speaking to the press and were the hit of the night, enjoying, thankfully, a return from North Korea far different from that of the fatally tortured and brutalized Otto Warmbier. The Marine One flight back to the White House, passing very near the illuminated Washington Monument, was almost surreal. Trump was on cloud nine, even at three thirty a.m., when we landed on the South Lawn, because this was a success even the hostile media could not diminish.

  Maneuverings for the Trump-Kim meeting continued apace. In particular, we worried about what China was doing to influence the North Koreans, and closely followed what key Chinese players like Yang Jiechi, China’s former Ambassad
or to Washington during Bush 43, former Foreign Minister, and now State Councilor (a position superior to Foreign Minister in China’s system), were saying to their counterparts and in public. I had concerns that Beijing was setting the stage to blame the United States if the talks broke down, warning that North Korean “hardliners” were undercutting Kim Jong Un for releasing the American hostages without any “reciprocity” from the US. Under this scenario, there was no consensus within the system in the North, and that strong resistance from Pyongyang’s military meant that the talks were in jeopardy before they even began. The answer? More preemptive concessions by the United States. This was one of the oldest games in the Communist playbook: frightening gullible Westerners with tales of splits between “moderates” and “hardliners” so that we accepted otherwise unpalatable outcomes to bolster the “moderates.” Chung did worry about the North’s recent announcement that only journalists would attend the “closure” of the Punggye-ri test site, not nuclear experts, as they had previously committed to. Pyongyang might just as well invite the Bobbsey Twins. While this ploy was “destroying” something rather than “building” it, Grigory Potemkin’s ghost was nonetheless undoubtedly celebrating his continued relevance.

  Chung and I were on the phone constantly over the following week preparing for Moon Jae-in’s visit to Washington and the Trump-Kim Singapore meeting. We spoke repeatedly about the Punggye-ri “closure,” which was pure fluff, starting with the lack of any US or international site inspections, particularly examining the tunnels and underground facilities before any preparations for or detonations closing the adits (the tunnel entrances). By precluding such inspections, North Korea was concealing key information. Nuclear forensics experts, as was common practice, could have extrapolated significant conclusions about the size and scope of the nuclear-weapons program, other locations in the North’s nuclear gulag that we wanted disclosed and inspected, and more.14 We knew from the IAEA’s experience in Iraq in 1991 and thereafter, which I had lived through personally during the Bush 41 Administration, that there were enormous amounts of information that could be very effectively concealed without adequate, persistent on-site inspections before, during, and after any denuclearization. Subsequent international monitoring, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency’s taking soil samples outside the adits, was no substitute for inspections inside Punggye-ri mountain, as the North fully understood. This propaganda charade was evidence not of Pyongyang’s good faith but of its unmistakable bad faith. Even CNN later characterized North Korea’s approach as “like trampling on a crime scene.”15 Chung thought the issue could be raised at an inter-Korean meeting at Panmunjom later in the week, but the North canceled the meeting at the last minute, another typical Pyongyang gambit. They then expressly threatened to cancel the Trump-Kim meeting, complaining about an annual US–South Korean military exercise called “Max Thunder.” This was another propaganda ploy, but it and later complaints about these military exercises, absolutely vital to our joint military preparedness, turned out to influence Trump beyond the North’s wildest expectations.

  I told Trump about this North Korean eruption at about six thirty p.m., and he said our press line should be, “Whatever the situation is, is fine with me. If they would prefer to meet, I am ready. If they would prefer not to meet, that is okay with me too. I will fully understand.” I called again at about seven o’clock and listened at length to Trump criticize the South Korean–US military exercise: he had been against it for a year, couldn’t understand why it cost so much and was so provocative, didn’t like flying B-52s from Guam to participate, and on and on and on. I couldn’t believe that the reason for these exercises—to be fully ready for a North Korean attack—hadn’t been explained before. If it had, it clearly hadn’t registered. Competent militaries exercise frequently. Especially in an alliance, joint training is critical so that the allied countries don’t cause problems for themselves in a time of crisis. “Fight tonight” was the slogan of US Forces Korea, reflecting its mission to deter and defeat aggression. A decrease in readiness could mean “fight next month,” which didn’t cut it. As I came to realize, however, Trump just didn’t want to hear about it. The exercises offended Kim Jong Un and were unnecessarily expensive. Case closed.

  In the meantime, we were working on logistics for Singapore; on one critical point, Pompeo suggested that he, Kelly, and I be with Trump whenever he was around Kim, to which Kelly and I readily agreed. I also worried how cohesive we could be given the daily explosions everyone became inured to in the Trump White House. One such bizarre episode in mid-May involved disparaging remarks by Kelly Sadler, a White House communications staffer, about John McCain. Her comments, dismissing McCain and how he might vote on Gina Haspel’s nomination as CIA Director because “he’s dying anyway,” leaked to the press, immediately creating a storm. Trump wanted to promote Sadler, while others wanted to fire her, or at least make her apologize publicly for her insensitivity. Sadler refused and got away with it because Trump, who despised McCain, allowed her to. Sadler turned her own insensitivity into a weapon by accusing others of leaking, a frequent offensive tactic in the Trump White House. In an Oval Office meeting, Trump rewarded her with a hug and kiss. Although this debacle was hardly my issue, I went to see Kelly at one point, figuring that surely rational people could get an apology out of this insubordinate staffer. After a brief discussion, with just the two of us in his office, Kelly said, “You can’t imagine how desperate I am to get out of here. This is a bad place to work, as you will find out.” He was the first to see Trump in the morning and the last to see him at night, and I could only conjecture how many mistakes he had prevented during his tenure. Kelly attacked the press, fully justifiably in my view, and said, “They’re coming for you, too,” which I didn’t doubt.

  North Korea continued to threaten canceling the Trump-Kim meeting and attacked me by name. This was nothing new, dating to 2002 under Bush 43, when North Korea honored me by calling me “human scum.” They attacked my citing the Libya model of denuclearization (I wondered if they had a source inside the White House who knew Trump’s reaction), saying, “We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feelings of repugnance toward him.”16 Of course, it was clear to everyone on our side of the negotiations that they were really denouncing the very concept of “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.” South Korea remained concerned about the North’s efforts to scale back the joint military exercises. Even the dovish Moon Administration understood full well the exercises were critical to their security and worried this was yet another Pyongyang effort to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. Chung said the North was clearly trying to split Trump away from me, relating that at the April 27 Moon-Kim meeting, several North Korean officials asked about my role in the Trump-Kim meeting. I felt honored once again. But more important, North Korea continued denouncing the joint military exercises, now attacking Moon: “The present South Korean authorities have been clearly proven to be an ignorant and incompetent group…”17 Such attacks were the North’s not-so-subtle way of intimidating Moon into doing the North’s work for it by pressuring us, a ploy we were determined wouldn’t succeed.

  More seriously, Kim’s chief of staff did not arrive in Singapore as scheduled on May 17. Preparations for the North’s paranoid leader were formidable, even if dwarfed by what it took for a US President to make such a journey. Delay in laying the groundwork could ultimately postpone or even cancel the meeting itself. By Monday, May 21, no North Korean advance team had arrived, hence there were no meetings with our team in Singapore. Trump began to wonder what was up, telling me, “I want to get out [of Singapore] before they do,” which sounded promising. He recounted how with the women he had dated, he never liked to have them break up with him; he always wanted to be the one doing the breaking up. (“Very revealing,” said Kelly when I told him later.)18 One question was whether to cancel Singapore just as Moon Jae-in came to town or wait u
ntil he departed. I urged Trump to act now, because doing so after Moon left would seem like an explicit rebuff of Moon, which was unnecessary. Trump agreed, saying, “I may tweet tonight.” At Trump’s request, I spoke with Pence and Kelly, who both agreed he should tweet away. I reported this back to Trump, and Trump started dictating what his tweet might say. After several drafts (suitably retyped by Westerhout), it (or they) emerged as:

  Based on the fact that dialogue has changed pertaining to North Korea and its denuclearization, I have respectfully asked my representatives to inform North Korea to terminate the June 12th meeting in Singapore. While I very much look forward to meeting and negotiating with Kim Jong Un, perhaps we will get another chance in the future. In the meantime, I greatly appreciate the release of the 3 Americans who are now at home with their families.

  A follow-up tweet would say:

  I am disappointed that China has been unable to do what is necessary, primarily at the border [meaning sanctions enforcement], to help us obtain peace.