HONOLULU -- As the United States moves closer to taking Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, President Barack Obama said he will "review" whether to return North Korea to the list, part of a broader government response to a damaging cyberattack on Sony's Hollywood studio.
"We have got very clear criteria as to what it means for a state to sponsor terrorism, and we don't make those judgments just based on the news of the day," Obama told CNN in an interview broadcast Sunday. "We look systematically at what's been done."
North Korea was removed from the list six years ago, but the government has again drawn the ire of the United States after the FBI said it had extensive evidence that linked the North Korean government to a cyberattack on Sony Pictures.
The hack on the studio's computers, in response to a comedy called The Interview, about a plot to assassinate the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, started as the stuff of Hollywood gossip but quickly escalated into an assault on an important industry -- and the right to freedom of expression.
In a news conference Friday, Obama said the United States "will respond proportionately" but declined to give details.
Obama is currently on the second day of his two-week vacation in Hawaii.
"The president is always briefed on appropriate national security matters. Hawaii is no different," said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. He added: "We're not going to release any details on our internal briefing process."
Sony canceled the Dec. 25 release of The Interview after computer hackers threatened violence against theaters that show the film. Those hackers, who called themselves the Guardians of Peace, had previously released private emails from Sony.
David Boies, a Sony lawyer, said The Interview is "going to be distributed, and what Sony has been trying to do is to get the picture out to the public" while protecting the rights of company employees and moviegoers.
Boies said theaters "quite understandably" decided not to show the film as scheduled because of the threats. "You can't release a movie unless you have a distribution channel," he said.
Obama expressed sympathy for Sony, but he told Candy Crowley of CNN that he did not consider the cyberattack to be an act of war.
"I think it was an act of cybervandalism that was very costly, very expensive," Obama said. "We take it very seriously."
Republicans pushed back at Obama's characterization of the attack as only cybervandalism.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CNN that the president "does not understand that this is a new -- this is a manifestation of a new form of warfare," and he proposed reimposing sanctions that were lifted during President George W. Bush's administration.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called it "an act of terrorism" and favored reimposing sanctions and adding North Korea to the terrorism list. The U.S. needs to "make is so hard on the North Koreans that they don't want to do this in the future," he said.
North Korea spent two decades on the list until the Bush administration removed it in 2008 during nuclear negotiations. Only Iran, Sudan, Syria and Cuba remain on the list, which triggers sanctions that limit U.S. aid, defense exports and certain financial transactions.
But adding North Korea to the list could be difficult. To meet the criteria, the State Department must determine that a country has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, a definition that traditionally has referred to violent, physical attacks rather than hacking.
In the CNN interview, taped Friday in Washington before Obama left for Hawaii, the president renewed his criticism of Sony's decision.
Obama suggested he might have been able to help address the problem if given the chance. "You know, had they talked to me directly about this decision, I might have called the movie theater chains and distributors and asked them what that story was," he said.
Sony's CEO has disputed that the company never reached out, saying he spoke to a senior White House adviser about the situation before Sony announced the decision. White House officials said Sony did discuss cybersecurity with the federal government but that the White House was never consulted on the decision not to distribute the film.
The North Korean government has insisted it was not involved in the attack and in a message on the government's state-run news service Pyongyang warned of "serious consequences" if the United States retaliated.
North Korea on Saturday proposed a joint investigation with the U.S. to determine the culprit. The White House rejected the idea and said it was confident North Korea was responsible.
Malicious software in the Sony attack bore links to malware previously used by North Koreans, according to the FBI. The hacking tools used were also similar to those used in a March 2013 attack on South Korean banks and media organizations, it said.
But the next decision -- how to respond -- is hanging over the president as he vacations.
Obama's options are limited. The U.S. already has trade penalties in place, and there is no appetite for military action.
"I think we've got to recognize that this is not a Sony security problem. This is a national security problem," Boies said.
The U.S. is asking China for help as it considers how to respond. A senior Obama administration official says the U.S. and China have shared information about the attack and that Washington has asked for Beijing's cooperation.
The official was not authorized to comment by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
China wields considerable leverage over North Korea, but Obama has accused China of carrying out cyberthefts, too.
"That's the problem," said Fran Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to Bush who spoke on ABC's This Week program Sunday. "It's not clear that the Chinese will help us here."
In his final interview before heading to Hawaii, Obama also defended his decision to restore relations with Cuba, denied that he has been outmaneuvered by Russia and Iran, and vowed to "do everything I can" to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
"Cuba offers us an example of an opportunity to try something different," said Obama, who last week announced plans to ease travel and trade rules and restore diplomatic relations. "For 50 years, we've tried to see if we can overthrow the regime through isolation. It hasn't worked. If we engage, we have the opportunity to influence the course of events at a time when there's going to be some generational change in that country."
He also said he will review whether Cuba should remain on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism. When asked if it would be hard to have relations with Cuba while it remains on the list, Obama said, "I think so."
While pledging to pursue his efforts to close Guantanamo, which now holds 132 suspected terrorists, Obama acknowledged there are still prisoners there who can't be tried in federal courts because of a lack of evidence and who shouldn't be released because they're still considered dangerous.
"We're going to have to wrestle with that," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Amy Chozick of The New York Times; by Josh Lederman of The Associated Press; and by David Lerman, Simon Kennedy, Angela Greiling Keane, Chris Strohm and Richard Rubin of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 12/22/2014