Responding over a period of days to North Korea's first test of a nuclear bomb, Newsradio 850 KOA host “Gunny” Bob Newman asked at one point: “If we're attacked by North Korea, should [former President Bill] Clinton be held responsible?” Falsely suggesting that “Clinton gave [North Korea] the nuclear reactor” that produced the plutonium necessary to manufacture the weapon and “then took other steps that helped them get armed,” Newman also repeatedly claimed that North Korea deliberately completed the test when it did “to influence our election.” Newman then said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il “set the nuclear weapon off” with the belief that it “will upset even more Americans to think that President Bush isn't handling me right and they'll want to vote in a Democrat even more.”

In fact, while North Korea was promised two nuclear power plants under an agreement with the Clinton administration, those plants -- which were to include so-called light-water reactors (LWRs) -- never became operational and were not even expected to be completed until 2010. Furthermore, North Korea had a well-documented nuclear weapons program in place well before Clinton's 1993 inauguration.

The Clinton administration entered into what became known as the "Agreed Framework" with North Korea on October 21, 1994. As detailed in a 2002 report by the Congressional Research Service -- Congress' nonpartisan research arm -- that agreement allowed an international consortium to provide North Korea with “light water nuclear reactors totaling 2,000 electric megawatts,” suitable for civilian energy production as part of a “package of benefits in return for a freeze of North Korea's nuclear program.” The CRS report noted: “Instead of the original target date of 2003, it generally is estimated that completion of the light water reactors will not take place until well beyond 2010.”

As the Associated Press explained earlier this year, under the Framework the consortium agreed to “finance and build two light-water reactors, from which it is difficult to extract weapons-grade plutonium. Those reactors were to replace a graphite-cooled reactor that can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.” In return, North Korea agreed to halt operations at its Yongbyon facility, long identified as a plutonium reprocessing facility primarily geared toward the manufacturing of nuclear weapons. Yongbyon remained dormant and under close United Nations surveillance for about eight years, until it was revealed in October 2002 that North Korea had been working on a uranium enrichment program in violation of the Framework.

An October 10, 2006, article in The Los Angeles Times recounted the chain of events that followed the reaching of the Agreed Framework:

Republicans were particularly scornful of the agreement to give energy assistance to North Korea and looked for ways to void the pact.

The opportunity presented itself during the first visit by a Bush administration envoy to Pyongyang in October 2002. Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly was told by a North Korean official that the North was cheating on its nuclear freeze obligations by conducting secretive research into highly enriched uranium. As fuel for a nuclear weapon, highly enriched uranium is an alternative technology easier to keep hidden than a plutonium-based program, which requires a reactor such as the one at Yongbyon.

The Bush administration moved hastily to punish North Korea by cutting off shipments of fuel oil that had been pledged under the Agreed Framework.

Within weeks, the North Koreans put tape over the surveillance cameras at Yongbyon and broke the seals on their nuclear installations. By New Year's Eve, the U.N. inspectors were escorted out of North Korea.

The Asia Foundation's [North Korea expert Scott] Snyder said the Bush administration was justified in its actions. It was also evident that Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had been helping North Korea undertake a highly enriched uranium program on the sly. The Clinton administration, Snyder said, was sloppy in not following up on tips as far back as 1998 of North Korean efforts to procure uranium technology.

At the same time, the United States ended up in effect throwing away a deal that had kept the more immediately threatening plutonium production facility at Yongbyon in check.

“We wanted to catch them cheating. We focused on moral indignation at the expense of our national interests,” Snyder said.

As Media Matters for America has noted, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) was established in 1995 “to implement the key provisions of the Agreed Framework.” According to KEDO's website, however, its executive board “began serious discussions regarding termination of the LWR project” in November 2005, and KEDO “completed the withdrawal of all workers from the LWR project site in Kumho, DPRK” in January 2006, before the reactors became operational. According to a May 31, 2006, Associated Press article, the plan to construct the LWRs “was formally killed off [May 31] by the United States, Japan, South Korea and European Union.”

Contrary to Newman's suggestions, North Korea had a well-documented nuclear-weapons program well before Clinton's inauguration in 1993. As the CRS report conveyed, “a key purpose of the ... Agreed Framework [was] to address the North Korean nuclear program, especially the potential of that program to produce nuclear weapons.” The report identified three existing installations with nuclear-weapons implications, one of which was shut down for about 70 days in 1989. The report noted that “U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea removed fuel rods from the reactor at that time for reprocessing into plutonium suitable for nuclear weapons.”

Though North Korea maintained nuclear facilities throughout the 1990s, as the Los Angeles Times noted, during the later Clinton years, “North Korea's main nuclear center at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, was monitored 24 hours a day by U.N. surveillance cameras. International inspectors lived near the site. Seals were in place over key nuclear installations and a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon was gathering dust.” An October 12 New York Times article quoted former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stating: “During the two terms of the Clinton administration, there were no nuclear weapons tests by North Korea, no new plutonium production, and no new nuclear weapons developed in Pyongyang.”

Similarly, The Washington Post reported October 12 that by the “account” of Robert L. Gallucci, the chief negotiator of the Agreed Framework and now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, “North Korea may have produced a small amount of plutonium for one or two weapons before Clinton came into office -- during the administration of Bush's father -- but 'no more material was created on his [Clinton's] watch.' ”

As Media Matters for America noted, after the breakdown of the Agreed Framework in 2002, North Korea returned to plutonium production for nuclear weapons. According to an April 29, 2005, article in The New York Times, “government officials, in interviews off the record, have estimated that North Korea's arsenal has increased by six weapons' worth of plutonium since the North threw international inspectors out of the country in early 2003, and began turning a stockpile of 8,000 spent fuel rods into plutonium.” According to recent estimates by the Institute for Science and International Security, the country has since accumulated 20-43 kilograms of the fissile material, enough for at least four nuclear weapons.

As The New York Times pointed out in a July 29, 2005, article, “North Korea has long admitted to turning spent plutonium fuel from its nuclear reactors into bomb fuel.” This program, the Times clarified, “is centered at the Yongbyon complex.” And in an October 14 New York Times op-ed, Jon B. Wolfsthal, who “monitored North Korea's nuclear program for the United States” and “is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,” asserted that, indeed, “North Korea produced the plutonium for its first nuclear test” at “the Yongbyon nuclear center” where Wolfsthal had “served as an 'on-site monitor' under the 1994 ... Agreed Framework.”

From the October 10 broadcast of The Gunny Bob Show on Newsradio 850 KOA:

Bill brought us 9-11 retroactively and now an apparently atomic North Korea or darn close to it, with one of the world's most brutal and dangerous regimes in charge of those nukes. Well, way to go Bill; fine job. What else are you going to do for your country today, Bubba? Stalk a teenager with a cigar?

If we're attacked by North Korea, should Clinton be held responsible?

[...]

It took Harry Reid minutes, possibly hours, to come out and use this as a political football, saying that President Bush allowed the North Korean regime to become nuclear armed, when it was Bill Clinton who gave them the reactor, and Bill Clinton who allowed A.Q. Khan, via the destruction of our intelligence system, to peddle his weapons technology to Kim Jong Il. And the Democrats say, “Bush did it.” Like, wait a minute, OK; let's get our facts straight. First, Clinton is the one who gave them the nuclear reactor and then took other steps that helped them get armed.

[...]

And not only did Clinton give them the nuclear reactor, but then trusted them with it -- didn't bother to verify anything about what they're doing with the plutonium that came out of it.

From the October 11 broadcast of The Gunny Bob Show on Newsradio 850 KOA:

And yesterday's poll question, “Should Bill Clinton apologize for giving a rogue terrorist regime a nuclear reactor and accept responsibility for what happens because of that move?”

[...]

They're rewriting history trying to say that it was President Bush that got us into this trouble, even though it was Clinton that gave him the dadgum nuclear reactor.

From the October 12 broadcast of The Gunny Bob Show on Newsradio 850 KOA:

The North Koreans would love to have Hillary or another Democrat in there rather than George Bush, and for obvious reasons -- because of the way they were able to get stuff out of Bill Clinton -- you know, little things like a nuclear reactor and a whole gigantic pile of money --

[...]

When you look at the Clinton administration and North Korea, they gave them the nuclear reactor, walked away.

[...]

There's no evidence -- we don't have anything saying, oh, he's definitely got these -- this may have been -- he may have one or two ready for testing -- one may have failed and now they're digging it back out, you know, to retrieve the plutonium etcetera, which -- and plutonium that he got from what? From the light water reactor that President Clinton gave him.

[...]

North Korea is trying to influence our election. He set the nuclear weapon off -- or tried to, at least -- in order to, as his theory was, “OK, this will upset even more Americans to think that President Bush isn't handling me right and they'll want to vote in a Democrat even more.”