How Bill Clinton's secret trip bought freedom for pair

WASHINGTON — The negotiations that led to former President Clinton's secret mission to North Korea began as soon as two U.S. journalists were seized, and the trip was spurred on by the Obama administration's hope that it might help restart disarmament talks, according to people close to the process.

The goal was a specific deal: If the United States showed respect by dispatching a high-level emissary to the isolated Stalinist state, North Korea would pardon journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, arrested after wandering across the border on March 17 and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and "hostile acts."

"This has been an orchestrated diplomatic process, carefully calibrated in both capitals," said a person close to the exchanges. He asked for anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue.

The mission reached a successful conclusion Tuesday, when North Korea freed the two women.

A large number of respected figures volunteered to be the envoy, including Clinton: former Vice President Al Gore, who is co-founder of the media company that employs the two women; Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass.; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Clinton became the highest-ranking American to visit North Korea since former President Carter's visit in 1994.

Clinton was eager for the role. He had been urged to take on the mission in May, when he met in Seoul with Kim Dae Jung, the former South Korean president who had worked with Clinton during his presidency to carry out a "sunshine policy" with the north.

"He was a perfect choice, and a safe choice," said Charles Pritchard, a former U.S. negotiator with North Korea. "He'd handled tough North Korea issues before, and he wasn't going to go off and do something that the secretary of state wouldn't like."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made repeated public appeals for the women's release, but negotiations were handled primarily — like much of the Obama administration's foreign policy — by senior White House aides. They included retired Gen. James Jones, the national-security adviser; Thomas Donilon, one of Jones' deputies; and Jeffrey Bader, the top National Security Council expert on the region.

Tuesday's action by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, ailing and rarely seen in public, represents a public turnabout after months of belligerent behavior, including an underground-nuclear test and multiple missile launches.

Throughout the day Tuesday, the White House and State Department made virtually no public comment on the mission, fearing anything officials said could jeopardize its success. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted again that the visit was a private, strictly humanitarian undertaking.

Yet White House officials kept tight control of the negotiations, said people close to the process. The officials wanted to be sure that the former president wouldn't depart for North Korea in a chartered jet unless there was a very good chance that the North Koreans would release the women.

Many administration officials are skeptical that North Korea officials, who repeatedly have denounced six-country nuclear-disarmament talks, will return to the negotiating table. Yet some officials hope Clinton's mission could provide North Korea with a face-saving way to move back toward negotiations.

Those might start, for example, with country-to-country talks between the U.S. and North Korea, possibly followed by international talks — in a new format, if not in the current so-called Six Party Talks.

U.S. officials publicly have ruled out any new deal that would reward North Korea for doing what the United States and its allies already have paid it for doing, such as dismantling its aging Yongbyon nuclear reactor. But North Korea might be rewarded if it takes new steps toward disarmament, these sources said.

One of the important messages that the United States sent North Korea came July 10, when Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a televised public meeting that the two U.S. journalists and their families had expressed "great remorse" for entering North Korea. She requested "amnesty."

North Korea sent a positive message back on July 27, when state-run media said North Korea might be open to a resumption of dialogue.

The state-controlled Korean Central News Agency reported that Clinton had passed a message to Kim from President Obama. The White House denied that, however, in one of its few public comments about the mission. "That's not true," Gibbs said.

Even if Obama didn't give Clinton a letter to pass on, several people close to the talks said Clinton certainly would have communicated the administration's views. They said they expected he essentially would tell the North Koreans what the administration has been saying publicly — that they should return to negotiations and will be rewarded if they take additional steps toward giving up their small nuclear arsenal.

Although North Korea's leadership is believed to be embroiled in an internal dispute about who will succeed Kim, the people close to the talks said the communications made it clear that "Dear Leader" still was making the key decisions.

McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.