As Congress debated a resolution in early October to provide President Bush the authority to take military action against Iraq, the White House kept secret for 12 days a North Korean admission that it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program. But when the administration publicly responded to North Korea's nuclear project with a call for quiet diplomacy, critics raised questions about the consistency of U.S. policy -- contrasting Bush's measured approach to Pyongyang with his demand for "regime change" in Baghdad through military force.

George W. Bush came into office openly hostile to a 1994 agreement between the U.S. and North Korea which provided western energy assistance to the impoverished nation in exchange for a pledge from leader Kim Jong II to freeze his government's effort to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea admitted to maintaining a covert nuclear program only after U.S. officials confronted them with evidence that they were in violation of the agreement. But Pyongyang, labeled by Washington as part of the "axis of evil," placed the blame on the U.S. for taking steps which forced them to nullify the accord.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with David Wright, co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, who examines the Bush administration's response to North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the effectiveness of U.S. policies on limiting the global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Contact the Union of Concerned Scientists at (617) 547-5552 or visit their Web site at www.ucusa.org.

On Oct. 10, senior veterans of the Cuban missile crisis arrived in Havana for a historic 40th anniversary conference. Among the attendees were former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, CIA analyst Dino Brugioni, and JFK counsel and speechwriter Theodore Sorenson. Russian veterans also arrived from Moscow, including deputy foreign minister Georgi Kornienko and former defense minister Dmitry Yazov.

Thousands of documents have recently been declassified from the Cuban government, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Soviet Foreign Ministry Politburo, Mexico, Canada and Great Britain, providing for the first time, a multinational perspective on the crisis.

During the conference, it was revealed that President John F. Kennedy, in meetings with Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev's son-in-law Adzhubei in January 1962, compared the U.S. failure at the Bay of Pigs to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Kennedy also assured Adzhubei that the U.S. "will not meddle" with Cuba, while at the same time, Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing "cover and deception plans" that included pretexts for the U.S. invasion of the island nation.

Peter Kornbluh is the director of the National Security Archive's Cuba Project. He spoke with Between The Lines' Denise Manzari about the significance of recently declassified documents and the role the conference could play in helping to prevent a future nuclear crisis.

For more information on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the National Security Archive, call (202) 994-7000 or visit their Web site at www.nsarchive.org.