Mid-Level Official Steered U.S. Shift On North Korea

The normally loquacious Hill declined to comment for this article, as did Rice. But when asked in a podcast last month about his dealings with "Cheneyland," he acknowledged the strain and marveled at the emotions North Korea provokes in the capital.

"I have never seen people around tables in Washington get so angry about this subject," Hill told Christopher Lydon, a fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute, in the podcast on April 25. "I understand why people get emotional about this. But my job is to try to stay on task here. . . . If giving speeches in Washington would solve this, we'd just stay in Washington and give speeches."

Hill added: "I've got to tell you, I don't feel abandoned by Secretary Rice and President Bush. They have been big supporters."

Rice speaks to Hill as many as seven times a day while he is negotiating, to keep close tabs on the precise language in draft documents. But Hill also has sometimes taken procedural shortcuts to leave his internal opponents out of the loop. And he has rebuilt his initial negotiating team, weeding out potential spies for his rivals by replacing them with a tightknit group of technical experts.

A Dealmaker at Heart

Hill has a wry sense of humor and a blunt, informal style that officials say appeals to Bush. He has spent three decades in the Foreign Service, and he caught Bush's eye when the Polish president, a favorite of Bush's, lavishly praised Hill's performance as ambassador to Poland. Later, as ambassador to South Korea, he eased tensions in U.S.-Korean relations through frequent speeches and debates with U.S. critics.

But Hill is at heart a dealmaker. During the Clinton administration, he was a key negotiator for the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the Bosnian war, and played an important role in dealing with the Kosovo crisis. His mentor in both jobs was former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who taught him how to handle the media and push the bounds of his official negotiating instructions to get a deal.

Cha noted that Hill became the chief negotiator for the complex North Korea dispute without much background or even interest in the subject, meaning he did not carry baggage from previous policy battles. "There was a real freshness in his view," Cha said. "He isn't Chris Evert, preparing meticulously for the next match. He is more like John McEnroe. He doesn't practice, but he is extremely talented and so he still wins."

Hill pressed Rice for permission to travel to Pyongyang as soon as he was tapped for the job in 2005, officials said, but she resisted. At the time, the Bush administration had strict limits on U.S. meetings with North Korean officials, frequently insisting they could occur only in the presence of a third party, such as the Chinese.

In July 2005, for example, the two sides agreed that negotiations would be reopened if Hill had dinner with his North Korean and Chinese counterparts in Beijing. When the Chinese did not show up, Hill went ahead with the meal regardless -- technically a violation of his instructions. An annoyed Rice complained later to the Chinese foreign minister, but Hill got his wish: The talks were restarted.

"I am not a freelancer. I am not a free agent," Hill said on the Brown University podcast. "When I go and talk to any of these people . . . I do it with a set of instructions. I don't come up with stuff on my own and claim it is U.S. policy. At the end of the day, we have what we have and I phone it in and then we see what the president decides."

But Cha and others say Hill has little use for formalities and sometimes neglects to clear things with other agencies. He perfected the technique of traveling to the region -- last year, for example, he went to the Pacific Island Forum in Tonga -- and of calling Rice to report a sudden opportunity to meet the North Koreans. Rice typically would just check with Hadley or Bush before approving.

'Cease and Desist'

An early setback occurred in 2005, when Hill struck a deal that went sour. For much of the next year, he struggled to rekindle the process, pressing to ease a U.S. crackdown on North Korean counterfeiting, according to U.S. officials. His luck changed after North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb in October 2006, when Bush decided to test whether a serious negotiating push would yield results.

To the dismay of conservatives, U.S. pressure on North Korea was suddenly eased, and Hill achieved a quick series of agreements -- and even began to travel repeatedly to Pyongyang. "We were told to cease and desist" all efforts to punish North Korea for its nuclear test, said Carolyn Leddy, a nuclear specialist at the National Security Council who left the White House late last year. "It was not a negotiation anymore. There were no more sticks."

But Hill so far has fought off his critics, partly by raising the possibility that the North Korean government might agree to a televised destruction of its nuclear facility's cooling tower.

In perhaps his biggest coup, Hill convinced Rice and Bush that the top priority is to get ahold of North Korea's stash of plutonium, and that other issues are secondary. In Bush's first term, the administration had accused North Korea of having an uranium-enrichment program, which led to the breakdown of a 1994 agreement that kept Pyongyang from separating plutonium to make nuclear warheads.

The uranium-enrichment issue has faded in importance because the original intelligence was overstated. In changing gears, the president has acknowledged that his previous approach was a mistake.

Leddy said that last fall, when China first proposed separating the plutonium issue from other concerns in North Korea's nuclear declaration, she saw a White House document describing the idea with the notation "President says No." But that is precisely the deal Hill struck last month.

An agreement with North Korea is "like the proverbial fifth marriage -- a triumph of hope over experience," Hill said in the podcast. "I certainly anticipate a lot of critics. But usually when I ask the critics 'Okay, what would you do?' . . . they usually change the subject. You always end up with people coming back to the idea you have got to sit down and negotiate."