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A. The key question is nuclear, and how much plutonium they have separated from the spent reactor fuel. We don't really know. But once they have the requisite plutonium, they can have a weapon in from as little as a few months to two years. We believe Pyongyang is close, perhaps very close, to having a nuclear-weapon capability.
Q. You took a beating during your Senate confirmation hearings on the charge that intelligence estimates were politicized when you were deputy director of the CIA.
A. There were problems with communications between managers and analysts, of managers explaining to analysts the changes that are made in a product as it goes from being the views of the single individual to being an institutional view of the CIA. I want to see a more collegial approach, in which people's motives aren't questioned and there can actually be give and take on issues of political sensitivity.
Q. You have proposed focusing more on human intelligence.
A. Many of our new requirements can be satisfied only by human intelligence. Our problem in estimating Iraqi nuclear progress was that we had to depend primarily on technical intelligence, and that's why we underestimated. This is true for a lot of areas -- narcotics, terrorism. But we know human intelligence is very difficult in terms of the recruitment of agents, staying in touch with them and assuring that their information is valid.
Q. You are planning to set up a sort of CIA cable network to get intelligence reports to key officials. Why?
A. We have spent tens of billions of dollars for technical collection systems that will return information to us on almost a real-time basis, and then in Washington we revert to a 19th century approach to dealing with that information by holding it overnight before we can present it to policymakers. We can never compete with CNN and don't intend to, but I want an arrangement where we can provide updated intelligence information throughout the day to policymakers.
Q. You speak of a new openness in the CIA. Are you going to declassify old files?
A. I've created a new organization to do historical declassification, bringing in people with more of a historical perspective and less of a "well, how do we protect every single line?" attitude.
Q. Such as?
A. I've committed to declassifying all of the national intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union that we can that are older than 10 years. We'll pay special attention to the J.F.K. assassination papers, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis and the events of the early 1950s in Iran.
Q. Pressures mount for the CIA to spy on foreign commercial firms as their intelligence agencies spy on ours. Is that in the wind?
A. We will not do commercial spying. Period. But we can be helpful on economic intelligence, by identifying foreign governments that are involved in unfair practices, or where they are violating agreements, either bilateral or multilateral, with the U.S., or where they are colluding with businesses in their country to the disadvantage of the U.S. We are following high-technology developments around the world that may have national security implications: computers, telecommunications, new materials. Counterintelligence is also going after those foreign-government intelligence organizations that are targeting American businesses.