Presidents comment was the latest occasion in which he appeared to side with an adversary over US intelligence
Donald Trump has said he would not have allowed the CIA to have recruited Kim Jong-un's relatives as informants to collect information on the North Korean dictatorship.
Trump told journalists on Tuesday he had received a new “beautiful” letter on Monday from Kim, who he insisted had” kept his term” on suspending nuclear and missile tests. He rejected recent North Korean missile tests as short-range and therefore not relevant.
Asked about new reports that Kim's half-brother, Kim Jong-nam- who was murdered with VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017– had been a CIA informant, Trump said he would not have allowed that to happen.
” I ensure the information about the CIA with respect to his brother, or half-brother, and I would tell him that would not happen under my auspice that's for sure. I wouldn't let that happen under my auspices ,” Trump said.
It was the latest occasion on which Trump has appeared to side with an adversary over US intelligence. In July last year, he made clear he believed President Vladimir Putin's refusals over US intelligence assessments that Russia had intervened in the 2016 US presidential elections.
A new biography of Kim published in the US on Tuesday said Kim Jong-nam, who lived in exile most of his life, had been recruited by the CIA.” Kim Jong-nam provided information to them, usually meeting his handlers in Singapore or Malaysia ,” Washington Post journalist Anna Fifield wrote in The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny for Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong-un.
The book, quoting” someone with knowledge of the intelligence”, reports security camera footage from Kim Jong-nam's last journey to Malaysia proved him in a hotel lift with an Asian-looking man who was reported to be a US intelligence agent. It said his backpack contained $120,000 in money, which could have been payment for intelligence-related activities, or earnings from his casino businesses.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Kim Jong-nam travelled to Malaysia in February 2017 to meet his CIA contact, although that may not have been the sole purpose of his trip-up. He was on his way back to his home in Macau when he was killed.
Two women, told that they were taking part in a TV prank demonstrate, are also available $ 100 each to smear liquid on the victim's face. North Korean agents devoted each of the women a binary ingredient to VX, a banned chemical weapon. The assassination was part of an extended purge carried out by Kim Jong-un against potential rivals and their supporters, as he consolidated his power.
Timeline
The deaths among Kim Jong-nam
The eldest son of Kim Jong-il when his father takes control of North Korea in 1994, Kim Jong-nam is assumed to be employment equity designated successor.
Kim Jong-nam is deported from Japan after trying to enter the country on a fake passport. He is subsequently removed from the succession in favour of his younger half-brother Kim Jong-il. He goes into exile, occasionally criticising the North Korean regime.
Kim Jong-nam dies on his style to hospital after seeking assist at an information desk in Kuala Lumpur airport because he felt dizzy. CCTV footage emerges which appears to show him being attacked as a woman approaches him and places something over his face from behind.
A 28 -year-old woman, Doan Thi Huong, who holds a Vietnamese passport, is arrested by authorities in connection with the death. Images from the airport show that she had been wearing a white jumper with ‘LOL' emblazoned upon it at the time of Kim's death. An Indonesian, Siti Aisyah, 25, is arrested the following day.
After Siti Aisyah's boyfriend, Muhammad Farid bin Jalaluddin, is also arrested, Ri Jong-chol becomes the fourth person to be picked up by examiners, and the only suspect from North Korea.
North Korea demands that Malaysia stop investigating the death, with the country news agency insisting Kim died of a heart attack , not poisoning, and blaming South Korea for a' conspiratorial racket'.
Malaysian police announce that Kim was killed with the banned VX nerve agent, classified by the UN as a weapon of mass destruction. Malaysia's health pastor later says the dose was so high it killed him ‘within 15 to 20 minutes‘.
Siti Aisyah says she was paid $ 90 to take part in what she believed was a prank.
The diplomatic row over the demise intensifies to tit-for-tat travel banningsbeing enforced between Malaysia and North Korea. Previously Malaysia had been one of very few countries to allow easy travel to North Korea.
Kim Jong-nam's body is repatriated. The same airplane carries three North Korean men initially named by Malaysian police as suspects in his murder.
Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong plead not guilty at the start of their trial. Three days later the court hears how traces of the banned VX nerve agent were found on both women.
There are chaotic scenes at Kuala Lumpur airport as suspects Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong, handcuffed and wearing bulletproof vests, are walked around the alleged crime scene in a re-enactment. Halfway through the visit, the distressed women cannot continue on their own, and are then pushed around in wheelchairs.
The court is told that Kim Jong-nam was carrying an antidote to the nerve agent that killed him in his container at the time of his death. Before his death he was said to be paranoid that the North Korean regime would strike against him.
As the women's trial continues, the Malaysian prosecution argues that the pair must have been developed as assassins, alleging that footage show them heading to the bathrooms shortly after the attack indicates that they knew they had to remove the lethal nerve agent from their skin.
Two years after her initial arrest, and 17 several months after her trial began, charges are unexpectedly dropped against Siti Aisyah, and she is released.
After accepting a lesser charge of ‘causing hurt by a dangerous weapon', she is sentenced to three years and four months in prison, and was released on 3 May 2019.
