ng northwest from Phoenix, Arizona, to Madison, Wisconsin." This threat is increased when taken into account the extensive friendship of Iran and North Korea. A calculated and combined attack could easily place nuclear ICBMs all over most of the continental U.S.. Even when the Taepo Dong missile was tested on August 31, 1998 an Iranian delegation was flown to North Korea bringing with them an entire plane load of telemetry equipment to monitor the test. Shortly after the test the delegation returned to Iran with the full results of the test.The very test of the North Korean Taepo Dong missile just goes to show how very clueless the United States is as to the development of ICBMs by foreign countries. The CIA’s national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, Robert D. Walpole, admitted that nobody in the intelligence community expected North Korea to develop an ICBM capability so soon. "Although the launch of the Taepo Dong 1 missile was expected for some time, its use as a space launch vehicle with a third stage was not. The existence of a third stage concerns us. We hadn’t anticipated it." Debris from the rocket’s third stage was found some 3,500 miles from the site of the launch, showing that North Korea has the ability to target Alaska and possibly America’s west coast, admitted Walpole. "Clearly if you can put something into orbit, you get awfully close to ICBM capability."(Timmerman) Mott 3During the Cold War the United States and Russia both rushed to stockpile as many nuclear missiles as possible, thus prompting each other to build a missile defense system. The very first interceptor missiles were developed in the early days of the Cold War. In 1958, the Army developed a long-range interceptor missile with a nuclear warhead, the Nike-Zeus. Due to doubts about the missiles’ radar, and the frightening danger of a low-altitude detonation over the U.S., the project was shot down....
