Where Have You Gone, Jackie Robinson?
TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. The World Lead. North Korea collapses. The country is in chaos, and American forces drop the ball on locking down the regime's nuclear stockpile. Good thing. It was only a game. The Sports Lead: a new movie about Jackie Robinson's life is opening on Friday. He cleared the way for African-Americans to play Major League Baseball, but these days fewer and fewer actually want to. How Major League Baseball is trying to change that. The Pop Culture lead. He's been to places you only heard about and eaten things you would never dream of. Chef Anthony Bourdain joins us to talk about what's next on his plate: his new show on CNN. The World Lead: it could be bombs away any minute now in North Korea with the latest intel indicating multiple missile launches may be planned. Defense secretary Chuck Hagel said today Kim Jong-un is coming close to a very dangerous line.</s>CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Our country is fully prepared to deal with any contingency, any action that North Korea may take or any provocation that they may instigate. And we have contingencies prepared to do that.</s>TAPPER: Prepared for any contingency? Really? That's not exactly what the military found during a recent war game exercise.</s>TAPPER: Imagine this. The North Korean regime is toppled. Either because the U.S. or South Korea take it out or because of a coup. And the U.S. now has to surge troops to secure the country's nuclear stockpiles to make sure they don't fall into the wrong hands. It's a frightening scenario played out recently at the U.S. Army War College, one that did not end all that well. The military set the scene for their war game in the fictitious land of North Brownland, essentially an alias for North Korea.</s>PAUL MCCLEARY, DEFENSE NEWS: It was a family regime, had nuclear weapons, lost control of nuclear weapons. The population was considered to be essentially brainwashed.</s>TAPPER: Paul McCleary, a writer for Defense News, was present as the military officials debated the plans. U.S. troops, he says, had immediate problems surging into the North Korea-like country. B-22 Ospreys zoomed U.S. soldiers deep beyond the border, but with reinforcements so far behind, they are quickly surrounded by the enemy and need to be pulled out. American troops eventually make it over the border, but with nuclear sites located in populated areas, their mission grows more difficult. U.S. forces make humanitarian aid drops to draw people out of the cities.</s>MCCLEARY: They made the game as difficult as possible to really test their capabilities. They have not spent a lot of time or money modernizing their nuclear and chemical troops. So that's a big concern. It takes the U.S. a staggering 56 days and a huge force of 90,000 troops to secure the country's nuclear weapons. Seen by many as way too long and way too many troops.</s>BRUCE BENNETT, SENIOR DEFENSE ANALYST, RAND CORPORATION: We're not very well prepared to deal with a collapsed North Korea.</s>TAPPER: North Korea expert Bruce Bennett says his numbers for containing the regime's nuclear arsenal run much higher. 200,000 troops. That's larger than the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan at its peak.</s>BENNETT: We would have to send perhaps a third of our army to South Korea in order to deal with the weapons of mass destruction.</s>TAPPER: It's thought that North Korea has 100 sites linked to their nuclear and missile program, but with a black tarp shrouding intelligence on the locations, U.S. troops would likely have to fight their way through the country to find and secure them.</s>BENNETT: North Korea has about 1.2 million people in the military. That's a very large military for us to deal with. But they also have according to the South Korean defense ministry about 200,000 special forces. And those special forces would be prepared to fight you like Taliban or the Iraqi insurgents.</s>TAPPER: The Army today was quick to remind CNN that the fictional North Brownland in the war game may not expressly be North Korea per se but any one of any 28 countries that have weapons of mass destruction capabilities. General Walter "Skip" Sharp was commander of U.S. forces in Korea until 2011. Thank you for being here, General.</s>GEN. WALTER "SKIP" SHARP, FORMER CMDR. IN KOREA (RET.): Good to be here.</s>TAPPER: So you just received a briefing at the Pentagon. In terms of the war game that we just saw, it took a long time for U.S. troops to secure the various weapons of mass destruction that the North Koreans are thought to have: nuclear, chemical, biological. Why? Why did it take so long?</s>SHARP: We obviously know of some sites, some of the bigger sites we're able to see from imagery. We suspect where there's other sites. But we also clearly believe that with the great underground facilities that they have in North Korea there are many, many other sites of weapons of mass destruction. And when you look for, you know, six to 12 rounds of nuclear capability that could be hidden anywhere in that country, it's going to be very difficult.</s>TAPPER: How different is this from what we thought we knew about, for instance, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program that turned out not to be correct? How do we know this information is right?</s>SHARP: In this case, the leader, Kim Jong-il and now Kim Jong-un, have said they are developing this nuclear capability and have this nuclear capability.</s>TAPPER: And intelligence has picked up evidence that -</s>SHARP: We've seen the nuclear tests, and we believe that they have been at least partially successful in the nuclear test. And I mean, this is not new. They have been trying to develop this nuclear capability for many, many years. So, the idea is, and what we have planned for and exercised is you form a task force that has the experts out of the United States and Republic of Korea to go in and do site surveys when you forcefully get into North Korea to the known sites. You very quickly look at the documents. You try to determine where are there some others. You do interviews, and you try to very quickly secure the sites, exploit them, and then move to other sites that hopefully some of the intelligence has been able to garner, either through the documents or talking to people that you think there could be actual nuclear weapons.</s>TAPPER: The amazing thing is from this war game just from my own reporting, there's so much we do not know about what's going on in North Korea. So you met with officials at the Pentagon. You obviously as former commander in the region know a lot about this. They are concerned at the Pentagon and the national security apparatus. They think this is different from previous episodes with North Korea. How it is different?</s>SHARP: In the past, especially before 2010, these provocations would be met by, we would like to talk, you stop doing this we'll give you food and we'll give you aid. That is totally different after the artillery attack in 2010.</s>TAPPER: Well, after 2010, just to remind our viewers, the North Koreans attacked a South Korean ship, killing 46 South Koreas sailors. And they also shelled an island, killing four South Koreans. And there was some small response but not anything major and not anything by the U.S. You think it's different now. You think the U.S. military and the Obama administration, they are not likely to let something like that happen again.</s>SHARP: The first -- when you get attacked, the first self-defense response try to kill what's trying to kill you is all going to be from South Korea. We'll provide some intelligence from our intelligence assets that we have to help more accurately target. But the actual kinetic response going back will be from South Korea. And we'll work this as an alliance. It will take a presidential decision to go beyond, OK, the immediate self-defense. But that's what this -- this provocation plan is lined up.</s>TAPPER: All right. General Walter "Skip" Sharp, former commander of U.S. forces in Korea, thank you so much for joining us.</s>SHARP: Thank you.</s>TAPPER: Next in our Money Lead: I know the rules for a peaceful dinner party. Don't talk money or politics. Good luck with that tonight, Mr. President, as the Republicans head to the White House to dine and discuss his new budget.