Director of U.S. National Intelligence James Clapper speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York March 2, 2015. 
 
 WASHINGTON U.S. spy chief James Clapper said that when he made a secret visit to North Korea in November to bring home two jailed Americans he was first given a 12-course banquet and then later told by his hosts that his security could not be guaranteed. 
 
 Clapper gave details of his trip, made at the behest of President Barack Obama, for the first time during a forum on Monday at the Council on Foreign relations. 
 
 He said that after his arrival in the isolated country's capital, a North Korean four-star general hosted what Clapper called a "marvelous" 12-course meal at a restaurant above a bowling alley. 
 
 The next day, Clapper said, a representative of the state security ministry came to his guest house and told him the government no longer considered him a presidential envoy and could not guarantee his security and that of his party. 
 
 Clapper said they packed their bags and were taken to a room at a Pyongyang hotel where a delegation of Korean officials, led by state prosecutors, was waiting with the Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller, who were still dressed in prison uniforms. 
 
 After a denunciation of the prisoners was read out, the officials walked out of the room, leaving the Americans in the company of Clapper and his aides. The freed Americans changed clothes, and the party headed for the airport for a flight home. 
 
 Bae and Miller returned to a warm welcome in the United States on Nov. 8. 
 
 Bae, 46, a Korean-American missionary from Lynnwood north of Seattle, was arrested in North Korea in November 2012 and sentenced to 15 years' hard labor for crimes against the state. Miller, in his mid-20s, was reportedly convicted on an espionage charge and in custody since last April, serving a six-year hard labor sentence. 
 
 North Korea is under tough international sanctions for its nuclear and missile programs and was severely criticized for its human rights abuses in a United Nations report last year. 
 
 (Reporting by David Storey; Editing by Ken Wills) ||||| WASHINGTON — President Obama took the unusual step of sending the nation’s top spy, instead of a senior diplomat, to win the release of two American prisoners in North Korea, administration officials said Sunday, specifically to signal that he would not reward the North with sanctions relief or a new round of negotiations in return for the freedom of the latest Americans to be locked up during visits to the isolated nation. 
 
 “It was not to pursue any diplomatic opening,” a senior administration official said aboard Air Force One as Mr. Obama departed for China, and as the two Americans sentenced to hard labor in the North, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, were landing near Seattle. 
 
 The official said the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., was dispatched in response to the North’s request, made in backchannel communications with the administration, for a senior official of the United States government to oversee the release. But Mr. Clapper, a retired general whose career has spanned many conflicts with three generations of North Korean leaders, never met Kim Jong-un, the young dictator whose health, hold on power and progress in developing a deliverable nuclear weapon have all been sources of intense scrutiny to American intelligence officials. 
 
 As a matter of diplomatic tactics, the gambit worked: Mr. Bae, a 46-year-old missionary who had been held for two years, and Mr. Miller, 25, were reunited with their families at an Air Force base. But as a matter of strategy, it is unclear that Mr. Clapper made any progress: His message was that for a resumption of relations with the United States, North Korea had to deliver on its past promises to dismantle a nuclear program now believed to have six to a dozen weapons.
– The North Koreans are generous but perplexing hosts, according to National Intelligence Director James Clapper. According to Reuters, the spy chief says that during his secret mission to Pyongyang last November to bring two Americans home, a general treated him to a "marvelous" 12-course banquet at a restaurant that sat over a bowling alley—but the next day, officials told him that he was no longer considered a presidential envoy and his group's safety could no longer be guaranteed. Clapper says he was then taken to a hotel where Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller were handed over before the group headed to the airport. For those wishing to sample North Korean hospitality, Pyongyang says it has now lifted tough travel restrictions brought in over fears of Ebola, the AP reports.