CIA’s Hayden: Syria was on verge of becoming nuclear power
The U.S. intelligence community, in an about-face from an assessment of less than a year ago, has concluded that Syria was close to becoming a nuclear power.”In the course of a year after they got full up they would have produced enough plutonium for one or two weapons,” director Michael Hayden said.
The new assessment was that Syria was weeks away from operating a North Korea built plutonium production plant near the Turkish border. That facility, the intelligence community assessed, could have produced up to two bombs in the first year of operation.
On April 28, Hayden said the Syrian reactor could have begun producing sufficient amounts of plutonium for an atomic weapon. Speaking to reporters after an address at Georgetown University, the CIA director said information of the North Korean-designed nuclear reactor came from Israel and could not be shared with the IAEA until mid-April.
World Tribune — CIA’s Hayden: Syria was on verge of becoming nuclear power
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