Naval War College Review Volume 55 Article 19 Number 4 Autumn

2002 The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy Daniel J. Brennock

Mitchell B. Lerner

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Recommended Citation Brennock, Daniel J. and Lerner, Mitchell B. (2002) "The ueP blo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy," Naval War College Review: Vol. 55 : No. 4 , Article 19. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol55/iss4/19

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not the U.S. sponsorship of such activi- the North Korean–Soviet Union ties is apparent or later to be acknowl- relationship. edged publicly.” More along these lines Lerner asserts that the intelligence col- would perhaps reveal that policy makers lection effort, code-named Operation have quite a bit more flexibility in re- CLICKBEETLE, was the idea of the Na- sponding to overseas events and that tional Security Agency and that it had covert action is not the only option be- been patterned after the efforts of the tween inaction and the overt use of Soviet Union’s intelligence-collection force. But this is a mere quibble. ships (AGIs) off the coast of the United In sum, Lowenthal has written an out- States. Deciding that the Navy should be standing primer on intelligence, the in- the operational commander for this stra- telligence process, and the intelligence tegic tasking, the National Security community. Agency turned the program over to it. Converting tired, old, and slow cargo W. H. DALTON Department of Defense ships into intelligence collection plat- Associate Deputy General Counsel, Intelligence forms with insufficient money, inade- quate self-defense, little more than fresh coats of paint, minimal training, and in- adequate safeguards for the sensitive in- telligence equipment on board, the Navy Lerner, Mitchell B., The Pueblo Incident: A Spy mismanaged the effort from the outset. Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy. The maladies that befell the USS Liberty Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2002. 320pp. in 1967 off the coast of Israel were re- $34.95 peated in the preparation and tasking of Finally, an author has done a hard- Pueblo just seven months later off the hitting analysis of the USS Pueblo inci- Korean Peninsula. dent of January 1968. Mitchell B. Lerner, The USS Pueblo had been tasked to collect an assistant professor of history at Ohio signals intelligence in the Sea of Japan us- State University, does not exonerate the ing the “cover” of conducting hydro- commanding officer of the Pueblo, Com- graphic research. The operation had been mander Lloyd M. Bucher, for giving up deemed to be of minimal risk, based on the ship and crew, and the intelligence it the analogy of the Soviet AGIs. Lerner had gathered. However, of all those who contends that whenever an AGI violated may have been culpable, Commander territorial waters, the U.S. Navy would Bucher emerges a hero and is no longer turn it around with an admonishment the scapegoat his superiors made him and no more. Would not the North Ko- out to be. Exhaustive research, including reans do the same? Herein rested the access to new information released from Navy’s greatest miscalculation. The Ko- the Lyndon Johnson White House files, reans were not the puppets of the Soviet leads Lerner to place blame evenly on the Union or its foreign policy executors. shoulders of the Navy chain of command, Lerner goes to great lengths to take the the intelligence community, and Johnson’s reader inside the mind of Kim Il Sung foreign policy advisors, due to their mis- and his vision of communism and the understanding and underestimation of greater glory of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2002 1 122 NAVAL WAR COLLEGENaval War REVIEW College Review, Vol. 55 [2002], No. 4, Art. 19

Shortly after the operation got under Meanwhile, President Johnson could not way, the North Korean navy reacted negotiate the return of the crew without with surprise and precision. Com- considering a host of broader interna- mander Bucher, armed only with a few tional considerations, most notably the .50-caliber machine guns aboard his war in Vietnam. Lerner concisely weaves slow vessel, surrendered the Pueblo after together the competing national foreign stalling his pursuers for only sixty-five policy objectives to ensure that South minutes. Inadequate destruction equip- Korea remained an active ally in South ment and too much unnecessary classi- Vietnam while simultaneously keeping the fied material on board led to an United States out of another conflict on intelligence coup for North Korea. One the Korean Peninsula. U. S. sailor lost his life during the short While negotiations dragged on, there resistance. The defensive cover that was was little interest from the American to have been provided by the Navy and public: the increasingly unpopular Viet- the Air Force in response to calls from nam War, the struggle for civil rights, the Pueblo never came. The Navy and the campaign for the equal rights for the Johnson administration missed all women, two political assassinations, and the indications and warnings that such a the decision of the incumbent president fate could befall the Pueblo, even after to forgo a second term all diverted the recognizing that the Pyongyang regime attention of the American public and had violated the demilitarized zone more relegated the Pueblo negotiations to the than fifty times, ambushed U.S and al- back pages of the newspapers and in lied ground forces, attempted to assassi- most cases erased them altogether. nate the president of the Republic of Lerner presents such a thorough expla- Korea (with a secondary target to be the nation of the entire incident that it is American embassy), and in the preced- unnecessary to belabor here the findings ing nine months seized twenty South of the Navy’s court of inquiry. This im- Korean fishing vessels for “entering portant historical analysis provides the North Korean territorial waters.” reader with a better understanding of the Lerner then brings the reader briefly into impact of seemingly harmless operations the brutal interrogation rooms of the on the conduct of foreign policy. More communist regime and the eleven- importantly, the book demonstrates the month negotiations that finally resulted critical importance of intelligence collec- in the release of the crew in December tion, analysis of indications and warn- 1968. Kim Il Sung used the captured ves- ings, and the effects that ignoring such sel and its crew to further his domestic crucial information may have on not agenda and drive for greater national- only fighting forces but the nation’s ism. His negotiators remained steadfast interests. in their demands that the United States admit that the Pueblo had violated North DANIEL J. BRENNOCK Captain, U.S. Navy Korea’s territorial waters—it had not— and that the American government apologize to the citizens of North Korea and assure Kim Il Sung that the viola- tions would never happen again.

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