“You are not worth a good bullet,” snarled Super C. “Beat him to death!”
Every Korean in the room except the colonel set to viciously kicking, punching, and karate-chopping Bucher. They concentrated on his stomach, testicles, and the small of his back. When the captain tried to protect his middle, they went for his head and neck. When he tried to cover his upper body, they pummeled his crotch and kidneys. As he later wrote of the ordeal: “They drowned out my screams with furious curses and kept beating, beating, beating until I was a retching, winded wreck being whipped back and forth between them like a rag doll in the hands of a gang of frenzied psychotic children.” Mercifully, he blacked out.
The battered commander came to on the bed in his cell. His eyesight seemed tinged with blood; his kidneys and testicles felt swollen and raw. The slightest movement sent pain flaring through his body. He sensed some bones had been broken, but when he swung out of his rack he realized none were. The only part of his body not throbbing was his face.
Bucher staggered to his feet and called out, “Benjo!”—the Japanese word for toilet. A guard appeared and escorted him at rifle-point to the malodorous latrine. When he tried to urinate, more blood came out. On the way back to his room, the guard yelled at him to assume the penitential head-down position. Bucher still had enough moxie to holler back, “Fuck you, bud—leave me alone!”
He sat down heavily on the chair in his cell. His muscles and internal organs felt as if they were seizing up from all the blows they’d absorbed. About 30 minutes later a stocky communist lieutenant banged through the door and shouted, “Get up! Out now! Move quick!”
A pair of guards had to help the skipper down the stairs to the ground floor. At the bottom stood Super C, wrapped in his luxurious greatcoat, smoking a cigarette.
“Now we must show you how we treat spies in our country,” his interpreter said.
Ice-cold night air washed over Bucher, chilling his sweaty body. He was bundled into the back of a car between the two guards. The rear windows were covered and an opaque screen separated the backseats from the front.
Ten minutes later the car stopped outside a large concrete building similar to the one where the crew was being held. Bucher was ushered out of the vehicle and down a staircase into a barren basement.
Before him was a horrifying sight. The limp body of a man hung from a wall, held up by a leather strap around his chest. The man had been brutally tortured and looked barely alive. A welter of dark bruises covered his shirtless torso. One of his arms was broken and a jagged bone had sliced through the skin. His face was a bloody mush. An eyeball had been knocked almost out of his head; it dangled from its socket amid an ooze of dark fluid. In his agony the man had chewed his bottom lip to shreds. To maximize the shock value of the scene, the North Koreans had trained two spotlights on the unconscious man, who frothed at the mouth and occasionally twitched.
Revulsion coursed through Bucher. He thought the victim was one of his men until the interpreter announced he was a South Korean spy. “Look at his just punishment!” the interpreter trilled. The captain couldn’t take his eyes off the mangled creature. He felt trapped in a waking nightmare that just kept getting worse. His shock intensified until he lapsed into some sort of blackout.
The skipper had no memory of leaving the torture chamber. When he came to, he found himself back in the room where he’d first met Super C, staring into the communist’s unforgiving eyes.
“So now you have seen for yourself how we treat spies,” his interpreter said. “Perhaps you will reconsider your refusal to confess.”
Numbly, reflexively, stubbornly, Bucher replied that he would not.
Guards promptly bashed him out of his chair, kicked him across the floor, and rammed him into a wall. Super C ordered them to drop the reeling American back in the chair.
“You must be sincere,” he warned. “You must sign this confession as proof that you wish your crew to be treated leniently and humanely. The evidence is complete. Why do you not sign?”
“Because of all the lies it contains about my country,” the panting captain replied.
“The world must know about the United States’ imperialistic warmongering,” Super C declared. He sounded genuinely upset. Bucher figured he was desperate for a signature. Yet in spite of the universe of suffering that still could be inflicted on him, the skipper said no.
“We will see,” Super C snapped. His tone suggested that a sharp escalation of brutality was about to commence. “We will now begin to shoot your crew. We will shoot them one at a time, right here in front of your eyes so that you can see them die. We will shoot them all, starting with the youngest one first and so on, sonabitchi, until you sign confession.
“And if you have not signed when they are all dead, then we still have ways of making you do it, and all your crew will be dead for nothing. You are not sincere. We now bring in the crew member Bland to be shot.”
A guard departed, presumably to get Howard Bland, a ship’s fireman from Arizona who’d recently turned 20. Was Super C bluffing or would he actually kill the young sailor before Bucher’s eyes? The confession, the captain knew, was filled with clumsy English and blatant propaganda. No one in America would believe he’d voluntarily written it. Was it worth gambling Bland’s life to withhold his signature from a collection of obvious lies?
The skipper turned around. Bland stood just outside the door. Bucher couldn’t bring himself to roll the dice.
“All right,” he said resignedly. “I will sign.”
CHAPTER 6
A MINEFIELD OF UNKNOWNS
President Lyndon Baines Johnson sat in a high-backed chair of gleaming dark leather, his forehead creased with apprehension. Arrayed around him at a long conference table in the White House Cabinet Room were a dozen of his brightest, most experienced advisers. With the Pueblo crisis less than 24 hours old in Washington, Johnson and his men were struggling to find a way to address it without making it worse.
Several of these men were holdovers from the Kennedy administration, whom Johnson had persuaded to stay on after he ascended to the Oval Office following his youthful predecessor’s assassination. They’d been at LBJ’s side through the euphoria of his landslide 1964 victory over Barry Goldwater, the devastating inner-city riots of 1967, and the long, bloody frustration of Vietnam. There was Dean Rusk, the Georgia farmer’s son who rose to become president of the Rockefeller Foundation and John F. Kennedy’s surprise pick for secretary of state, and who now served Johnson in the same role. There was Walt Rostow, the diminutive former MIT history professor turned Vietnam hawk who advised Johnson on national security. And there was Robert McNamara, the iron-disciplined, data-crunching defense secretary who Johnson feared might be headed for a nervous breakdown—even suicide—under the murderous stresses of running the American military effort in Vietnam. A key architect of the war, McNamara had come to believe it was futile and immoral.
The president’s counselors fell silent as he read aloud from a wire-service account of a purported confession by the Pueblo’s commander, Lloyd Bucher.
North Korean radio had broadcast the statement earlier that day, January 24. A voice the communists identified as Bucher’s claimed the Pueblo had “intruded deep” into North Korean waters while engaged in espionage. The captain condemned his own actions as “criminal” and “a sheer act of aggression,” adding that he and his men hoped they’d be “forgiven leniently” by the government of North Korea. He said the CIA had promised that if the mission went well, he and his men would pocket “a lot of dollars.”
The “confession” was clearly a propaganda sham, reminiscent of forced declarations by U.S. servicemen captured during the Korean War. Besides his fractured grammar, Bucher also had misstated some key facts. He gave his age as 38, not 40, and claimed that the CIA, not the Navy, had sent his ship into the Sea of Japan. But the captain otherwise described his mission acc
urately and in remarkable detail, noting that the Pueblo had tried to disguise itself as an oceanographic vessel and had eavesdropped on communist military activities near Wonsan, Chongjin, and other ports. Coerced or not, his statement gave the North Koreans a convenient, after-the-fact rationale for seizing his ship: It had violated their territorial waters in order to spy. And they’d wasted no time in broadcasting Bucher’s admission to the world.
Johnson and his men were taken aback by the captain’s damaging words. Had the communists drugged him? Had they threatened to kill him or his crew? LBJ and his advisers knew from the Pueblo’s radio messages that it hadn’t fired a shot. Was it possible that its skipper was a traitor who gave up his ship for money or ideological reasons?
“I frankly do not see how they could get a U.S. Navy commander to make statements like that,” said Rusk.
“Look very closely at his record,” the president ordered. McNamara assured him that an intensive background investigation of Bucher was under way.
As serious as it was, the Pueblo incident was just one of the burdens on Johnson’s shoulders. A few days earlier, a Strategic Air Command B-52 bomber had crash-landed on an ice-covered bay in Greenland, setting off an explosion that blew chunks of four hydrogen bombs around the crash site; U.S. specialists on dogsleds were hunting for radioactive fragments. Thousands of North Vietnamese troops were slowly encircling the isolated Marine firebase at Khe Sanh, in the mountainous northwest corner of South Vietnam. Topping it all off, U.S. intelligence had reports that the Vietcong planned major attacks throughout South Vietnam during the celebration of the lunar new year. The holidays—known as Tet—were just a few days away.
By 1968, the Vietnam War had become a conundrum that not even LBJ, with his legendary skills of political suasion, was able to solve. By turns compassionate and cruel, brilliant and boorish, painfully honest and infinitely devious, Johnson strode the American political landscape like a colossus in the wake of his overwhelming victory over Goldwater. With his volcanic energy and relentless drive, he rammed a head-spinning array of social programs through Congress: Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly and the poor; civil rights and voting rights for African-Americans; protections against air and water pollution; food stamps for the needy; measures to preserve land and expand housing; and numerous consumer protection laws. He created the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He drove his White House aides and an army of federal bureaucrats day and night to eradicate poverty and rebuild the nation’s slums. But, like a fast-growing weed siphoning nutrients away from an orchid, the Vietnam War was draining more and more money from Johnson’s cherished Great Society programs.
Now, the Pueblo, too, demanded the president’s attention. The sheer outrageousness of the seizure made it politically impossible to do nothing. On the other hand, carrying out a retaliatory strike against North Korea—bombing an air base or port, for example—was freighted with risk. Even a single blow could touch off a sharp reaction by Kim Il Sung, up to and including a communist invasion of the south. If that happened, the United States—with thousands of troops encamped along the demilitarized zone—would be quickly embroiled in a new Korean War. With Vietnam straining his military resources to the breaking point and creating combustible divisions in American society, the last thing LBJ needed was another war in Asia. His strong preference was to settle the Pueblo standoff by peaceful means. But he was well aware that, depending on how the situation unfolded, he might have to resort to force.
Shortly after the spy ship was taken, Navy commanders in the Pacific had ordered the Enterprise and the missile frigate escorting it to reverse course and head for Wonsan. Four destroyers scattered around Northeast Asia were told to join the carrier as soon as possible. This task force was to prepare for air strikes and other actions.
Informed of the capture during a dinner party at his Honolulu home, Admiral John J. Hyland Jr., commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, had been caught completely off guard. No one in the Navy had anticipated that the North Koreans would have the nerve to attack an American naval vessel—even one so alone and lightly armed—on the high seas. But Hyland and his staff soon cooked up a high-risk rescue plan that seemed like a throwback to the days of Commodore Stephen Decatur and the Barbary pirates.
The concept was simple: When the Enterprise battle group reached Wonsan, one destroyer was to dart into the harbor and lash the Pueblo to its side as carrier jets and naval guns pounded communist shore defenses. A raiding party of Marines and sailors would go ashore and try to free Bucher and his men, assuming they could be located nearby. If by some miracle the destroyer survived saturation attacks by North Korean MiGs and missile- and torpedo-firing patrol boats, it would literally rip the intelligence ship from its moorings and drag it back out to sea. The scheme, Hyland said years later, was “the only thing I could think to do.”
In Washington—14 hours behind Korean time—Walt Rostow woke the president at 2:20 a.m. on January 23 and told him what had happened in the Sea of Japan. LBJ needed time to think. If some overeager field commander made a precipitous move, the possibility of ending the crisis peacefully might evaporate. New orders went out to the Pacific; the Enterprise and its accompanying warships were halted in their tracks. Reconnaissance flights against North Korea were scrubbed. All U.S. forces were directed to stay well clear of Wonsan. The Enterprise began steaming in circles as Johnson and his advisers tried to figure out what to do.
Many war-weary Americans applauded the president’s restraint. But others, infuriated by the spectacle of a small communist country attacking and capturing a commissioned ship of the United States Navy, called for vengeance. Declaring the seizure “an act of rank piracy and an insult to the American flag,” Republican Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina urged a military response if the ship and crew weren’t returned by a specified deadline. A columnist for the New York Daily News said the situation amounted to “a test of national honor and prestige” not matched since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Telegrams recommending swift—in some cases extreme—action against North Korea piled up at the White House. “Drop the atomic bomb like Harry Truman did,” demanded a Skokie, Illinois, man. GOP Representative Bill Brock of Tennessee cabled that the president should “employ any and all means that may be necessary to secure the immediate release of the USS Pueblo.”
Some citizens seemed more angered by the White House’s reluctance to use force than by the capture itself. “Our government handling of the Pueblo seizure is the most gutless unpatriotic act this government has ever perpetrated,” a Madison, Wisconsin, man wrote to Johnson. The Milwaukee Sentinel sarcastically suggested that a chicken replace the eagle as America’s national emblem.
So upset was a Montclair, New Jersey, man that he could only spit out a one-word telegram to the president: “Coward.”
Gathered now in the Cabinet Room, LBJ and his men tried to fathom the meaning of the seizure and devise a suitable response. They faced a minefield of dangerous unknowns. Why had North Korea grabbed the spy ship in the first place? Were the Russians involved in planning or executing the operation? And now that the North Koreans had the vessel and its crew, what were they likely to do?
CIA Director Richard Helms saw Moscow’s fingerprints on the hijacking. He believed the Soviets had colluded with North Korea to divert Washington’s attention from Vietnam. Kim Il Sung had publicly proclaimed that all socialist nations had a duty to help Ho Chi Minh in his struggle against American imperialism, and Helms noted that Kim had backed up his rhetoric by sending some MiG jets and pilots to North Vietnam. More ominously, a Romanian source had told the CIA that the North Koreans wanted to open a “second front” on the Korean peninsula to tie up U.S. forces that otherwise could be deployed in Vietnam.
“This is a very serious matter,” Helms told the president.
A
related North Korean goal, the CIA chief speculated, was to scare the South Koreans into withdrawing their troops from Vietnam. One of America’s staunchest allies, South Korea had nearly 50,000 soldiers in Vietnam, and LBJ was leaning on Seoul to send more. But the Blue House raid had left South Korea trembling, and the Pueblo episode only heightened the national sense of dread. Some South Korean politicians and journalists were calling for their troops to be brought home in case they were needed to repel another, larger North Korean attack, maybe even a full-fledged invasion.
For the men in the Cabinet Room, the possibility of Soviet involvement sharply raised the stakes. Helms and McNamara believed the Russians at a minimum had known in advance of the seizure; Rostow suggested they wanted to get their hands on the Pueblo’s advanced electronics. He later informed LBJ that a North Korean plane had taken off for Moscow laden with “792 pounds of cargo”—possibly surveillance hardware stripped from the ship.
But firm evidence of the USSR’s culpability was sparse. Asked by Johnson to back up his theory of Soviet foreknowledge, McNamara could only cite the Russians’ reaction when the U.S. ambassador to the Kremlin, Llewellyn Thompson, solicited their help, just nine hours after the seizure, in persuading the North Koreans to disgorge the Pueblo. An official of the Soviet foreign ministry told Thompson his nation couldn’t act as intermediary and brusquely turned him away. McNamara argued that the Russians couldn’t have prepared such a quick rejection unless they’d known of the capture beforehand. But a plausible alternative explanation—that Moscow didn’t want to be seen publicly lending a hand to its capitalist archrival—wasn’t considered.
While the president hoped to avoid using military force against North Korea, he wasn’t pleased by the Pentagon’s anemic initial reaction to the seizure. Apart from General McKee’s audacious launch of his F-105s from Okinawa, no Pacific commander had lifted a finger to help the besieged spy ship. LBJ wasn’t overly impressed even by McKee’s actions; he wanted to know why the general’s fighter-bombers had been held on the ground in South Korea. McNamara replied that the Air Force commander hadn’t wanted his pilots to have to face an unbeatable number of MiGs over Wonsan. Johnson nevertheless demanded a report giving the “full story in detail,” as well as a copy of McKee’s order halting his aircraft at Osan.
Act of War Page 13