Act of War

by Jack Cheevers

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  The president, meanwhile, decided it was time to speak directly to the American people about the crisis.

  Just before four p.m. on January 26, the three television networks cut to Johnson as he stood at a White House podium and called the Pueblo capture a “wanton and aggressive act” that “cannot be accepted.” He said he was doing everything possible to resolve the situation peacefully, but that “certain precautionary measures” were being taken to strengthen South Korea’s defenses. LBJ also announced he was taking the matter before the U.N. Security Council.

  That same afternoon, in New York City, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, presented the case against North Korea in an emergency session of the Security Council that was reminiscent of the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  A bit of international intrigue preceded Goldberg’s speech. American officials suspected that communist U.N. members were plotting to stymie him, and FBI men in Washington and New York hurriedly contacted sources in embassies and diplomatic missions of nations on friendly terms with North Korea. The agents discovered that the communist bloc was indeed planning to draw attention away from Goldberg’s address by challenging Taiwan’s right to a U.N. seat.

  But that skirmish never materialized, and the white-haired Goldberg rose to declare that North Korea had created a “grave threat to peace.” The United States, he said pointedly, “is exercising great restraint in this matter.” Using a large map to show the Pueblo’s movements, Goldberg vividly recounted the assault on the ship. Intercepted position reports from sub chaser No. 35 proved that the spy boat hadn’t violated North Korean waters on the day of its capture, he asserted. In fact, only minutes after the American vessel was boarded, communist seamen radioed their location as more than 21 miles from shore.

  The ambassador also decried North Korea’s “systematic campaign of infiltration, sabotage, and terrorism” against South Korea. Northern commandos had expanded their attacks far beyond the demilitarized zone, striking throughout South Korea and killing 153 soldiers and civilians in 1967—a more than fivefold increase over the previous year. The communist campaign had reached “a new level of outrage,” Goldberg said, with the attempt to assassinate President Park. When the Soviet representative retorted that Bucher’s recent admission demonstrated that the Pueblo had entered North Korean waters, Goldberg, a tough-minded former labor lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court justice, shot back that he was well acquainted with “the Soviet experience in coerced and fabricated confessions.”

  Goldberg finished by warning the Security Council that to ignore the Pueblo incident and communist depredations in South Korea was to invite catastrophe. But he was careful not to demand any specific action, such as a resolution demanding that North Korea return the ship and its men. The Soviets could veto that, abruptly cutting off debate in the U.N. and intensifying domestic political pressure on Johnson to mount a military attack. With no motion from Goldberg, the Security Council’s members scheduled more talks over the weekend.

  “What are they gonna do?” the president asked Goldberg in a phone call following the envoy’s speech.

  “Not a damn thing, just between us,” Goldberg replied. “They’ll fiddle around.”

  LBJ knew he’d bought himself some time, but not much.

  When the United Nations eventually did conclude its deliberations, he told Goldberg, “We going to have to do something.”

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  At 7:29 p.m. that evening, Johnson greeted two journalists in the Oval Office for an off-the-record “backgrounder” on the Pueblo.

  Hugh Sidey was a prominent columnist for Time magazine. Garnett “Jack” Horner was the White House correspondent for the Washington Star, a scrappy afternoon newspaper read by many on Capitol Hill. The president laid down strict ground rules for the interview.

  “There should be no attribution to anybody on this,” he said. “I do not want any stories attributed to the president or to the White House. Is that clearly understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” both newsmen answered.

  The background session gave LBJ the opportunity, with minimal political exposure, to address uncomfortable questions being raised in Congress, such as why the spy ship lacked protection during its mission. He told Sidey and Horner that neither the United States nor the Russians provided armed cover for surveillance ships, since doing so would require “navies and air forces enormously greater than their present forces.”

  Bucher probably waited before calling for help, said the president, because the harassment at first seemed routine. When he finally did request a rescue, it was too late. “Darkness was close at hand,” said Johnson, explaining why General McKee grounded his F-105s at Osan. “The [seizure] operation was evidently preplanned, with MiGs on station which might have endangered the aircraft we might have sent in.” The president said he could “find no fault” with field commanders who decided against engaging the hornet’s nest of enemy jets in the Wonsan area.

  Although McNamara had told him there was no proof that the Pueblo hadn’t strayed into North Korean waters while observing radio silence, Johnson asserted to the journalists that the ship had been in international waters “at all times.”

  The president said he was making diplomatic overtures, but also pledged gravely that the United States would “defend our allies from aggression.” To that end, American planes were being flown to South Korea starting that day. Horner posed the question that most bedeviled LBJ: What would he do if diplomacy failed?

  “I hope it will not be necessary to use military force,” Johnson said. “I am neither optimistic or pessimistic about this. It may be that we will lose the ship and the men, although I do not want to even think about that.”

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  Acting on the president’s demand for an in-depth background probe of Bucher, Navy detectives knocked on the doors of his friends and acquaintances in Bremerton, San Diego, and Japan.

  Agents of the Naval Investigative Service examined the captain’s financial records and made a “discreet inquiry” into rumors that he drank to excess. One informant said he thought Bucher had been drunk one afternoon at the Bremerton shipyard; the captain had red eyes and smelled of alcohol. But the yard superintendent, who’d clashed so often with Bucher, came to his defense, denying he was ever intoxicated during duty hours.

  The NIS gumshoes also contacted several officers who’d served with Bucher in Submarine Flotilla Seven. Captain Henry Sweitzer, Bucher’s commanding officer at the sub base, praised him as “a very fine officer” who put in 12- and 13-hour days and usually spent Saturdays and Sundays at the office as well. Sweitzer said he had “nothing but good things to say” about Bucher’s professional performance, adding that he was a loyal Navy officer and dedicated family man.

  Bucher’s immediate supervisor at SUBFLOTSEVEN, Captain Maurice Horn, didn’t hold him in such high esteem. While Bucher generally was hardworking and dependable, Horn said, he fell short on occasion. For instance, he might forget an important detail when drafting an operational order for one of the squadron’s subs, or abruptly leave the office “when he felt he had worked long enough.” Horn rated him as merely “a good sailor.” Off duty, added Horn, Bucher was “a hard-charger party type” who “knew virtually every bar-girl in Yokosuka.”

  Investigators found a large kernel of truth in Horn’s exaggeration. They delved deeply into Bucher’s nocturnal rambles through Yokosuka, a garish bluejacket’s paradise that featured some 250 nightclubs and bars teeming with receptive Japanese “hostesses.” The women earned a percentage of the money customers spent on drinks for them. Their paychecks averaged $110 a month, and many supplemented that meager income with prostitution. Some hostesses took drugs or dealt in black-market goods, while others worked in the bars in hopes of finding an American to marry. Those with criminal records often supplied information to Navy and Japanese police; some
were reputed members of the Japanese Communist Party.

  The NIS men grilled hostesses, bartenders, and old Navy buddies, asking bluntly about Bucher’s “morals.” One ex-shipmate, Lieutenant Phil Stryker, grew so incensed at the questions that he threw a punch at his interviewer. Nonetheless, the agents soon discovered Bucher had done his share of philandering in his SUBFLOTSEVEN days. Two bar girls confided having had sex with the captain, one on “several occasions.” A third implied that she’d had a serious affair with him in 1964, when his wife, Rose, was still in the States.

  The detectives also interviewed an “attractive” 42-year-old bar owner who often accompanied Bucher to officers’ clubs. Their relationship apparently was purely social; indeed, the bar owner also became friendly with Rose after she moved to Japan, describing her as a “very personable woman who appeared devoted to [Bucher] and their children.” The bar owner and virtually everyone else the NIS bloodhounds spoke to characterized the captain as an intelligent, engaging man who drank steadily but never lost control or blabbed military secrets to whoever happened to be sitting on the next bar stool.

  Bucher had, however, invited several Japanese civilians aboard the Pueblo, according to the NIS dossier. That may have been his way of thumbing his nose at Steve Harris and his spook superiors, but it was still a potential security breach. In addition, the captain had escorted an inebriated bar girl to the wardroom late one night for coffee. She stayed overnight but claimed she didn’t have intercourse with Bucher. On another occasion he assigned Gene Lacy to give three Japanese university students a tour of the Pueblo, again creating a security problem.

  As Navy investigators made their rounds, the CIA was delivering a secret psychological assessment of Bucher to the White House.

  The Agency profilers apparently limited their research to reading the skipper’s fitness reports and medical records and interviewing one former commanding officer. His early performance in the Navy, they said, was only average; Bucher seemed to need “somewhat more supervision” than others of his rank. He drew his lowest ratings in the categories of “military bearing, cooperativeness and personal conduct of his affairs.” The psychologists were especially interested in why he’d signed the North Korean confession. They didn’t believe a seasoned naval officer like Bucher would crack “even under intense psychological coercion.” It evidently didn’t occur to them, sitting in their comfortable stateside offices, that much of the coercion might have been brutally physical. The only possible explanation, they felt, was that Bucher had signed the statement “without realizing its significance”—a deduction that defied credibility in view of the captain’s intelligence.

  The CIA analysts concluded that there was no reason to think Bucher was anything but a loyal American. However, they couldn’t resist pointing out what they seemed to regard as a significant character flaw: the captain’s “strong inclination to become too involved with his men.”

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  By the end of January, the American buildup in South Korea was in full swing. So many fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance aircraft poured into Osan, Kunsan, and other air bases that an overcrowding problem arose. Ground crews worked around the clock to accommodate the new arrivals; airmen slept on cold hangar floors for lack of barracks space.

  Two more aircraft carriers—the USS Yorktown and the USS Ranger—joined the Enterprise in the Sea of Japan. The flattops and their accompanying cruisers, destroyers, and supply vessels formed a powerful battle group: about 25 warships in all. On the Enterprise flight deck, two jets bearing nuclear bombs sat ready for instant takeoff, pilots in their cockpits at all times. In addition, nine submarines kept an eye on both North Korean coasts.

  Concerned by the presence of this American armada relatively close to their shores, the Soviets made their own show of force. By February 7, more than a dozen Russian warships—including two cruisers and three guided missile destroyers—had taken up station near the U.S. carriers. One or two Russian submarines were believed to be in the vicinity, and more ships were steaming down from Vladivostok.

  A Soviet destroyer shadowed the Ranger, and a surveillance trawler, the Gidrolog, trailed the Enterprise. The crowded waters soon produced a collision. A Russian merchant ship, the Kapitan Vislobokov, ran into an American destroyer screening the Ranger. The USS Rowan suffered a three-foot gash in its hull above the waterline, but no one aboard either vessel was hurt.

  Early one morning, a squadron of Soviet jet bombers, flying just 100 feet above the sea to avoid radar detection, roared over the Yorktown before it had a chance to scramble its own fighters. Russian bombers flew over the Enterprise and other U.S. warships as well, closely tailed by American jets. With so many hostile planes and ships jockeying for position, the odds of a miscalculation multiplied.

  Intercepted radio traffic indicated that North Korea had fully mobilized its armed forces. American troops in South Korea were brought to full alert and their ammunition stocks replenished. General Bonesteel, the U.N. commander, worried about possible commando attacks on isolated Nike-Hercules missile sites, where tactical nuclear warheads were stored. His men hastily built bunkers to protect the missiles and threw up chain-link fences capable of stopping rocket-propelled grenades. Extra military police were brought in to guard the sites.

  The Pentagon didn’t advertise the buildup, although it transmitted relevant radio messages in the clear to make sure Pyongyang got the point. But the massive influx of weapons and men generated its own fearful momentum: The greater the preparations for war, the greater the chances war would break out, perhaps by mistake.

  At the same time, LBJ was trying to get a handle on the extent to which the loss of the Pueblo had jeopardized national security. Bucher’s final broadcast said he was destroying secret codes and as much surveillance equipment as possible. But how much had he actually gotten rid of? Even if he’d burned all the code material, the ship carried many other classified documents. Had the communists gotten their hands on them?

  McNamara informed the president that “some equipment had been compromised,” but that American units worldwide had switched to new codes immediately after the capture, so the intelligence loss probably wasn’t too bad. A few days later, however, General Maxwell Taylor, a top White House military adviser, told congressional leaders that “we have sustained a rather serious loss in the equipment, which has gone into the hands of the enemy.”

  That wasn’t the only issue Congress wanted addressed, however. The Pueblo affair marked the first time since 1807 that an American naval commander had surrendered his ship without a fight, and it raised a host of nettlesome questions. The prior episode involved the capture of the unprepared frigate USS Chesapeake off Cape Henry, Virginia, by the British man-of-war Leopard amid the Napoleonic Wars. But at least the Chesapeake had been taken by what was then the world’s preeminent sea power. A small communist country with a bathtub navy had picked off the Pueblo. How had this national mortification come to pass? Why hadn’t the ship been rescued? Did the potential gains of seaborne surveillance justify the risks?

  Indeed, at a closed-door hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 26, Secretary Rusk had been raked over the coals for excessive risk taking by Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota. Though a Republican, Mundt was a strong supporter of President Johnson’s Vietnam policies. Rusk tried to explain that a recent sharp rise in armed clashes along the demilitarized zone made it imperative for the United States to acquire fresh intelligence about North Korean military capabilities and intentions. But Mundt rejected that rationale, saying the risk of igniting another Asian war far outweighed the “very small amount of information” the Pueblo might collect.

  “This is a very serious blunder on the part of the government in these times when we have got this [Vietnam] war on our hands,” said the senator. “I just don’t see any value at all of sending a ship close enough to provoke the enemy to do what it did.”

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sp; Johnson, himself a veteran of Congress, knew what to expect next on Capitol Hill: a high-visibility hunt for those responsible for the fiasco, complete with public hearings and embarrassing questions in the glare of TV lights. “All of the committees will begin investigations of this incident once it cools down,” he warned aides.

  In an attempt to forestall such probes, LBJ repeatedly called ranking members of key congressional committees to the White House for detailed private briefings by McNamara; Army General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and others. The president’s experts explained that no U.S. warships had been close enough to help the Pueblo, no planes could have arrived in time to make a difference, and the costs of combat ships escorting spy ships were prohibitive.

  But some Republican congressmen were deeply angry over the hijacking, which they saw as prima facie evidence of colossal bungling by the administration. “All of you seem to have a good reason for not doing something,” House Minority Leader Gerald Ford of Michigan snapped at LBJ and his top men during one briefing.

  Johnson also promised to appoint international lawyer George Ball to get to the bottom of the Pueblo incident and report his findings to Congress. Ball, who’d once served as LBJ’s under secretary of state, was widely respected in Washington for his persistent internal criticism of the administration’s Vietnam policies. But the president, speaking to congressional leaders on January 31, pointed out an unpleasant truth underlying all covert intelligence operations: The men who carried them out were expendable.

  “When you send out a spy,” said LBJ, “he sometimes does not come back.”

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  With American reinforcements almost completely in place in South Korea, the president faced his most important decision: What should be done with them?