A recent article in INSIGHT magazine, and an op-ed by Michael Kelly on MSNBC, cast extreme doubt on the "conventional wisdom" Josh Marshall and others are pushing on the North Korea crisis.
Namely:

1) that the Bush Administration blundered on North Korea, and

2) that the “Agreed Framework” of Oct. 21, 1994, was anything other than a cynical exercise in appeasement by the Clinton Administration

The Clinton Administration knew at the time (1994) from NK defectors that the North Koreans had no intention of honoring the 1994 Nuclear Agreement, according to Insight Magazine.

Two key passages from the INSIGHT article:

Publicly, experts disagree about the state of the North Korean nuclear-weapons program. Some estimates indicate that the Kim Jong-il regime could have a nuclear bomb within one year; others say it already has two. However, the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare (TFTUW) issued a report in August 1994 that said of the Agreed Framework, Washington is buying time while maintaining the charade that the DPRK [North Korea] does not have nuclear weapons. Consequently, the United States and its allies have settled into the 'do-nothing-for-now' mode, merely postponing the hour of reckoning." "

and

The TFTUW report quotes "high-level North Korean defectors," saying that the current leadership in North Korea will not give up nuclear weapons no matter how many agreements it enters into with the United States. One defector, Kang Myong-To, was quoted in the report as saying, "North Korea's nuclear development is not intended as a bargaining chip as seen by the Western world. ... [Pyongyang] sees nuclear development as the only means to maintain Kim Jong-il's regime." Bodansky tells Insight, "Nuclear weapons are the ultimate insurance policy of the ruling elite" in North Korea.

Read the full article for the above passages in context and for how the Clinton Administration made sure those dissenting from the agreement in DoD and State were suppressed.

An op-ed by Micheal Kelly over on MSNBC goes farther in taking down "conventional wisdom."

Kelly states that:

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM tends by its nature to get things wrong, but seldom this wrong and seldom this dangerously wrong. This is wrong to the point of divorce from reality.

The reality, in brief, is as follows (largely taken from reports by the Congressional Research Service, the Federation of American Scientists and the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control):

and

A 1990 KGB report to the Soviet Central Committee asserted, based on “available data,” that North Korea had “completed” its “first nuclear device” and in 1994, prior to the agreement, the director of the CIA said that the agency believed North Korea had already produced one to two bombs. Current U.S. intelligence assessments are that North Korea has probably produced at least one nuclear weapon.

and

In October 2002, after years of mounting evidence of North Korean violations, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly confronted North Korea with evidence that it was conducting a clandestine bomb-building program based on a process of enriching uranium. North Korea had begun this program only months after the signing of the 1994 Agreed Framework — and, note, seven years before George Bush called anybody evil. North Korea first denied the truth, then admitted it — and then unilaterally “nullified” the 1994 deal.

We were bound to end up at this point, no matter which president ended up holding the can kicked in 1994. North Korea never had any intention of living up the agreement, and it never did. Eventually, it was going to get caught, and it did.

Bush has reacted as probably any responsible president would. He has refused to back down. Well, what else? Would it be better that he “renegotiate” — that he give North Korea another seven years of bomb-building time?

If memory serves, Clinton's CIA director at the time was James Woolsey.

And please carefully note that the Clinton Administration's opposition to missile defense collapsed after the 1998 NK missile test over Japan. Many at the time attributed it to the accurate predictions of the Rumsfeld Commission on North Korean ballistic missile capabilities. Perhaps there was other knowledge involved, as Insight implied?

It will be interesting how the former Clinton Administration officials Josh Marshall's "always invaluable Nelson Report" mention will answer a line of "What Did you Know And When Did You Know It" questions from Republican Congressmen. Perhaps questions on the subjects of 1994 North Korean Defector reports on the NK nuclear program, the CIA's 1994 and 1998 North Korean nuclear capability and intentions estimates, and what role all three may have had in the Clinton Administration abandoning opposition to a National Ballistic Missile Defense.

Seeing former Clinton Administration officials in open Congressional session answering to those questions under oath will make for great television. Which why I don't expect it to happen.