US intelligence doubles down on tracking North Korea: Report
The US intelligence community has doubled down on tracking North Korean activities ahead of a possible meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, according to a report.
The Pentagon spy agency along with other branches of the US intelligence are briefing the White House and senior policy makers on North Korea “almost every day,” National Geospatial Intelligence Agency director Robert Cardillo told CNN.
The agency, which uses satellites, drones, maps, analysis, and other methods to watch the earth's surface from the sky, is playing a significant role in tracking North Korean activity.
Just last week, NGA secretly asked companies to provide a detailed data-set of all the military facilities in the Asian country over the next year beginning at the end of May, using satellite imagery, sensors, and other technology.
Since North Korea is often cloudy, it is difficult to rely on overhead photos alone, therefore, companies gain data from remote sensors which can penetrate clouds, as well as underground sensors to monitor subterranean changes like buried objects, sources familiar with those contracts told CNN.
What they monitor often include airfields, ammunition storage facilities, training areas and vehicles traveling in and out of military facilities over time.
"I can tell you with confidence that there's no topic that ends up more in [the Oval Office] than North Korea," Cardillo told CNN at the 2018 GEOINT Symposium, an annual intelligence conference hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation in Tampa.
According to Cardillo, NGA has a key role providing material for the President's Daily Brief. The daily sensitive intelligence report aims to keep the president up-to-date with the world's threats, present and future.
"We're providing a lot more [geospatial intelligence] to those kinds of audiences," Cardillo said, noting information about North Korea for the Daily Brief is top priority for Trump and his advisers.
This comes as Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed a joint declaration on Friday, dubbed, “the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula,” which could lead to the complete denuclearization of the peninsula.
Trump said Friday that Americans should be "proud" of the progress being made towards establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula.
He also said Saturday that he had a "long and very good talk" with Moon and that preparations were being made for a meeting with Kim.
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