Opinion | Dennis is far from a menace

There are some things you have to hear twice before you can believe them, like Dennis Rodman in North Korea. The proverbial loose cannon meets the quintessential loose cannon. Rodman in North Korea, as a guest of state no less. At first blush, it seems so bizarre. But then the more you think about it the more you realise there are few families more bizarre than the Kim dynasty in North Korea and there are few athletes in the history of sports more bizarre then basketball Hall-of-Famer Rodman.

So in that context, this meeting makes perfect sense. Far more disorienting than the sight of Rodman sitting next to the country's young leader Kim Jong-un at a basketball game was the footage of Rodman being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Sunday news show This Week. Traditionally, the Sunday morning new shows on the US networks are drier than the Gobi Desert. Both the ponderous hosts and their guests swell with Washington-style significance as they discuss issues like national security and fiscal cliffs. But here was a smiling Rodman, his face full of ornate piercings wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses and a jacket decorated with dollar bills, being grilled by a suddenly aggressive Stephanopoulos.

Because he is a Beltway insider, boyish George has been known to go easy on some of his cronies in the past. But with Rodman, he was a veritable pit bull, attacking him for not calling Kim out on his regime's atrocious record on human rights and its constant threats against the US. "Do you think you have a responsibility to ask him about that so you aren't perceived as propping up his regime?" Stephanopoulos asked. Rodman said he obviously did not condone or approve of those things but claimed it was just a friendly encounter. "The one thing he did was treat me like a friend," he said.

The truth of the matter is Rodman had no idea he was going to meet Kim. He was with the Harlem Globetrotters on a goodwill mission and unwittingly, according to him, found himself in the middle of it all because Kim was a huge fan of basketball and in particular of Rodman's old Chicago Bulls team.

The condemnation was swift and furious. NBA commissioner David Stern was livid and called Rodman's favourable comments on Kim ridiculous while adding he should have only done the trip "in conjunction with the State Department with an agenda". Pious political commentators were much more outraged. "There is nobody at the CIA who could tell you more personally about Kim Jong-un than Dennis Rodman," according to former deputy assistant secretary of state Colonel Stephen Ganyard. "And that in itself is scary."

Well, it's certainly not Rodman's fault. If a washed-up basketball player personally knows more about the dangerous leader of a rogue nation than a powerful, multibillion-dollar government intelligence agency, then it's time for a massive shake-up at the CIA.