there is a u.n. mission here of the north koreans, and they do have officials who are sometimes used as interlocutors. mostly these officials are communications officers, really. they are they have different titles, but these are not negotiators. and what happens is that they basically get used to pass messages back and forth. while that mission and that contact and that channel is open, we re told that it is not one that is producing any kind of movement on this crisis. not a lot of movement. i m just curious, though, with this sort of back and forth, are there any inherent problems with back channeling? well, it is not so much whether back channeling is a problem, it is always good to have a channel open. but all the experts who i ve talked to say, you know, once one gets beyond this particular crisis, which most people believe will be some kind of a missile launch, probably not
you were say iing that you were working hard moving around from spot to spot to keep this river channel deep enough and wide enough for the barges. you were tell iing me that the real challenge is in the ports. correct, john. the corps of engineers takes that debris off the bottom and transports it to keep the channel open. the river is naf gatable. but the real issues are the ports. they are suffering tremendously with some of them even closing. reporter: closing because the water is so shallow. it s so shallow they can t get the barges and vessels in and out. we re using other vessels to dredge those. it s very difficult and shallow. reporter: and talk about the traffic on the river are there areas where the barges have to have less of a load so the
are trying to signal is, leave us alone, don t try to coerce us, because if you do, we have ways in making your life uncomfortable. and that has always been their normal response to external pressure, to sort hunker down and say, whatever you can dish out, we can dish out just as much. at the same time, are there some dangers that come with the south and the u.s. carrying out these military drills? absolutely. the danger here is that there s no channel open for diplomacy or dialogue with north korea. you ve got muscle flexing on the south korean and u.s. side, you ve got bellicose rhetoric and threats on the north korean side, and nobody is talking about how to get back to negotiations. in the end, the north koreans don t want a war because they ll be destroyed. but they know that the u.s. bogged down in iraq and afghanistan, can t really afford things to get out of control on the korean peninsula, and the danger, with all of this muscle flexing and all of these military exercises
it doesn t make sense you call the cia director to give him a heads-up that the president had overstepped in a serious ray in a meeting with senior russian officials, calling the nsa director. those two officials are the ones dealing most directly with this partner. they re the ones that would have to deal with this partner to try to keep this intelligence channel open, to try to protect it and try to contain whatever damage was caused by this disclosure. david ignatius, as somebody who covers the intel community and has for a long time, can you explain why this is so troubling, even if it s one nugget that the president let slip to the russian ambassador and foreign minister, why this could be such a problem? the intelligence business works on trust and works on the confidence that intelligence partners have, the information they provide, information often obtained through very risky collection methods, will be properly held, that it will not be disseminated at a whim.