He went over each new “intrusion” in excruciating detail for the assembled media. One set of coordinates placed the Pueblo in downtown Wonsan. Another set had her sailing six miles inland on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Still more coordinates had the boat traveling up mountains to a point 32 miles inland from the North Korean coast. While the communists seemed clueless, Bucher knew Navy analysts back home would realize the coordinates were faked.
The conference droned on and on. Bored by the Americans’ formulaic rhetoric and puppetlike performances, the correspondents began to tune out. An African fell asleep. Robot angered some of those who stayed awake by refusing to take questions. “I wonder how much longer this shit’s going to last,” a Bulgarian muttered loudly in English. A diminutive Indian reporter hopped up and down in the back of the room, shouting that he couldn’t hear. Watching on TV, the rest of the sailors tried to keep from cracking up.
Newsmen dozed, smoked, chatted with one another, and stared out windows. The well-rehearsed media event was fast degenerating into a circus. The more it unraveled, the more Bucher and his men loosened up. They started to ad-lib their lines, larding them with as much attitude and atrocious syntax as possible.
Asked what message he wanted to convey to the Johnson administration, CT Ralph McClintock, a Massachusetts resident, switched on his thickest Boston accent:
“Oh, how I long to walk down the quiet, shaded streets of my hometown, to swim again in the rolling surf of old Cape Cod Bay, and to indulge in the sumptuous feast of one of Mom’s famous apple pies,” he said. “I swear on my life that if I am ever allowed to return to my home and family, I will never again commit such a naughty crime as espionage against such a peace-loving people as these.”
By now the Americans were openly enjoying themselves. They smoked and grinned as Robot struggled to maintain order. The sleepy African suddenly awoke and realized he’d missed a big chunk of the action. Super C signaled Robot to stop the conference, but the sudden halt set off an uproar.
Martin, the American correspondent, jumped to his feet and declared he had a statement to make. Reporters and TV cameramen rushed toward him, shoving and tripping over the tangle of cables on the floor. “I’d like to say that I’m convinced that the Pueblo crew has been treated humanely here, after hearing the testimony, the declarations of the members of the crew,” he said. “It is quite evident from the testimony of the officers and men that they were violating Korean territorial waters. I think the proof is irrefutable.”
The sailors laughed as journalists pushed and elbowed one another to get close to Martin. Robot gave up trying to control the mob and resignedly cupped his chin in his hands. Seeing his distress, Tim Harris tried to imagine what a North Korean court-martial was like.
Not to be outdone, Bucher climbed atop his chair and gave his own speech. The media horde abandoned Martin and swarmed toward the captain, shouting for him to repeat what he’d said.
The press conference was a shambles. As Robot pounded his gavel in futility, even the guards had embarrassed grins on their faces. For several minutes Bucher talked about how his men missed their families and hoped they’d all be home for Christmas. The sailors cheered.
The North Koreans invited the reporters to visit the crew in their living quarters, and the delighted Americans headed back to the Country Club. In minutes Bucher’s room filled with newsmen. Among them was Martin, who wanted to know what “slogan” the skipper wished to send to the people of the United States.
“Remember the Pueblo, sir!” he replied jauntily. “Home for Christmas!”
Before Martin’s arrival, Bucher had scribbled a note on a piece of toilet paper, denying everything he and his men had said. He could easily slip it to Martin with a handshake. But now, as he stood face-to-face with him, the captain’s instincts told him Martin wasn’t a CIA agent. He was exactly what he seemed to be: a left-wing ideologue with a notepad.
The toilet paper stayed in Bucher’s pocket.
Later, the Pueblo officers agreed that the press conference had been an unruly fiasco. They were certain Super C would punish them with a furious purge. But that night they learned that, on the contrary, the colonel regarded the day as an unqualified success.
So pleased was he with his prisoners’ performance that he rewarded them all with a ration of beer.
CHAPTER 12
AN UNAPOLOGETIC APOLOGY
With the U.S. presidential race picking up summertime momentum, the Pueblo standoff was becoming a distinct liability for the Johnson administration and its Democratic allies in Congress.
LBJ had declared he wouldn’t run for reelection, but both his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and a prominent Democratic senator, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, were eager to succeed him. (Another high-profile Democratic senator, Robert F. Kennedy of New York, was fatally shot while campaigning in Los Angeles on June 5.) Republicans, meanwhile, realized they could use the spy-ship incident as a political tire iron against Democratic candidates for the White House and Congress. In speeches from Capitol Hill to their hometowns, GOP politicians criticized the administration’s response to the seizure as yet another example of Democratic shilly-shallying in the face of communist aggression. “After a brief period of hand wringing,” sniped Republican Representative Bob Wilson of San Diego, “our State Department has settled down into a rut of defeatism, puny protest, and wishy-washy talk-a-thons with the North Koreans.”
Newspapers in the Republican-friendly Copley chain, including Wilson’s hometown San Diego Union, printed boxes on their front pages showing the number of days the sailors had been held hostage. Editorial cartoonists at the zealously Republican Chicago Tribune showed little mercy. One Tribune caricature depicted a frightened Democratic donkey trying to run away from a pursuing skunk labeled “Pueblo Disgrace.”
To Republicans as well as many conservative Democrats, the seemingly easy capture of the ship represented a devastating blow to American pride and prestige. “When the time comes that respect for America has sunk so low that a fourth-rate naval power can hijack an American military vessel from off the high seas, it’s time for new leadership,” declared Richard Nixon, soon to be the GOP’s presidential nominee. Two thousand Republicans at a fund-raising dinner jumped to their feet and applauded when California governor Ronald Reagan warned, “Stealing the Pueblo and kidnapping our young men is a humiliation we will not tolerate.” U.S. Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois contrasted President Johnson’s cautious reaction with the derring-do of Commodore Stephen Decatur, who used his naval squadron’s cannon to force the bey of Algiers to free American bluejackets captured during the Second Barbary War.
LBJ had no retort for his critics. The Panmunjom meetings had produced nothing but stalemate. The communists still were demanding an unconditional apology; the United States still refused to acquiesce. A rumor was circulating that Bucher had killed himself in prison, and no one in Washington knew whether it was true or not. Intelligence sources reported that North Korean divers had recovered material thrown from the boat, and captured eavesdropping equipment had been taken apart and analyzed with the aid of “foreign experts,” presumably the Soviets.
While rhetorical brickbats flew in the United States, tensions on the Korean peninsula kept rising. As President Park had predicted, warmer weather attracted more infiltrators from the north, and communist saboteurs were again active in Seoul. In less than four weeks in June and July, allied forces killed 26 commandos.
On June 4, an F-4 Phantom jet, taking photos near the demilitarized zone, accidentally flew about five miles into North Korean airspace. Though the communists didn’t react, the episode was unsettling enough to come to President Johnson’s attention. Such mishaps, he told his new defense secretary, Clark Clifford, had to stop. On June 22, the North Koreans attacked and apparently sank a small South Korean reconnaissance boat as it tried to slip into a northern harbor in the middl
e of the night. Seoul hadn’t notified General Bonesteel in advance of the operation, and he complained to the South Korean defense minister that it “could not have been better planned, timed, or executed to enable maximum exploitability [by] the North Koreans.”
Reports filtered out of Pyongyang that Kim Il Sung still was fanning war fever, telling his people during mass rallies to prepare to “wipe out” potential American invaders. But a fresh CIA assessment of Kim’s intentions came to the same conclusion American analysts had reached shortly after the Pueblo was taken: The dictator was more interested in fomenting a guerrilla-style “people’s war” in South Korea than in launching a conventional invasion. Kim might be tempted to carry out a major raid or even to seize a piece of southern territory, according to the CIA. But no concentrations of troops or armor could be seen near the DMZ, and the north wasn’t stockpiling food and medicine, as would be expected in the run-up to an actual war.
The real danger on the peninsula was the same as it had been all along: miscalculation by one side about how the other would react to a serious provocation. Such a blunder might take the form of another North Korean raid on the Blue House, or an equally rash expedition by President Park against the north. The new CIA estimate speculated that Kim and his top commanders believed the Johnson administration was unable to back up South Korea because it was so mired in Vietnam. The report added candidly, “U.S. restraint in the Pueblo affair probably strengthened this view.”
Although American intelligence discounted the chances of a North Korean invasion, the Pentagon nonetheless drafted a set of apocalyptic plans to cope with such a contingency. One top secret scheme, eerily code-named “Freedom Drop,” envisioned American aircraft or land-based rockets incinerating communist forces with nuclear warheads. The attacks could be limited to a handful of military sites, but the president also had the option of going after “all significant North Korean offensive and logistical support targets.”
As LBJ groped for the right formula to defuse the Korean situation, he also kept searching for an escape hatch in Vietnam. Following months of preliminary discussions, Ho Chi Minh’s government finally agreed to meet U.S. delegates in Paris to negotiate a possible end to the war. Johnson selected veteran diplomat Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance, fresh from his arm-twisting mission to Seoul, as his representatives. But the Paris talks, which began in May, bogged down as quickly as had those at Panmunjom. The North Vietnamese demanded an unconditional halt to aerial and naval bombardment of their territory and a pullout of U.S. troops from the south as preconditions to any peace discussions. The possibility that communist forces would take advantage of bomb-free skies to kill more GIs haunted Johnson; he insisted on a communist pledge to engage in “prompt and serious” cease-fire talks if he grounded the B-52s.
The North Vietnamese ignored him and instead used the Paris sessions as a bully pulpit to appeal to the growing American antiwar movement. Johnson, however, refused to get discouraged and break off contact with Hanoi. Clark Clifford, who despite his reputation as a Cold War hawk was emerging as the administration’s leading Vietnam skeptic, advised the president there was no military solution to the war and the talks might well be the only way out.
President Park, too, was keeping a close eye on developments at Paris. But his interests were sharply different from those of his friend and protector LBJ. While the American leader was open to a political settlement in Vietnam, Park wanted nothing less than decisive military victory over the communists. His prime minister, Chung Il Kwon, told Ambassador Porter that if the Paris talks collapsed, the United States and South Korea should pour enough troops into South Vietnam to drive Ho Chi Minh from the battlefield in six months. Chung said he even favored transferring two more divisions from his endangered country to finish the job in Vietnam. With the North Vietnamese beaten, he believed, both South Korean and American units could be sent back to reinforce South Korea, ending Kim Il Sung’s adventurism there.
—
Near the end of August the Panmunjom talks were all but defunct.
American and North Korean negotiators hadn’t sat down together in more than six weeks. The smoke-blowing Admiral John Victor Smith had been succeeded by Army Major General Gilbert Woodward, a stern-faced West Point alumnus who’d once commanded the 2nd Armored Division in Berlin. One acquaintance described him as cynical and unpleasant, but also pragmatic and “unbelievably brilliant.” After just four sessions with General Pak, Woodward had lost patience with communist recalcitrance and delaying tactics. The two sides normally took turns setting dates for meetings, but the North Koreans had refused to call one since July 10. Woodward decided to get things moving. He sent word to Pak that he wanted to confer on August 27 and, without waiting for a reply, traveled from Seoul to the truce village.
Pak didn’t show up.
Woodward had few cards left to play. The North Koreans already had rejected several U.S. settlement proposals. In February, Admiral Smith promised the United States would conduct an “impartial inquiry” when the crew was released and, if the results warranted, express its regrets. When the North Koreans failed to take that bait, Smith offered to let an “international fact-finding body”—made up of an American delegate, a North Korean, and a mutually agreeable chairman—undertake the investigation. Pak refused. Increasingly desperate for a deal, Washington floated the extraordinary idea of transferring the sailors to the USSR or some other North Korean ally so they could testify, supposedly without coercion, before the international panel. That, too, was unacceptable. The communist negotiator refused to budge from his original demand for “three As”: Washington must admit to violating North Korea’s waters, apologize for the transgressions, and assure Pyongyang such acts were never to be repeated.
Running out of diplomatic alternatives, the Johnson administration in mid-May turned once again to Moscow for help. Secretary of State Dean Rusk met in his private dining room with the urbane Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and the USSR’s deputy foreign minister, Vasily Kuznetsov. Washington had “gone as far as it is possible for it to go,” said Rusk, who’d made sure the Russians received transcripts of each and every dead-end powwow at Panmunjom. He reiterated that the United States had no intention of humiliating itself by apologizing for acts it was reasonably certain it hadn’t committed. North Korea, he said, still was sending commandos into the south and threatening a “possible resumption of hostilities” with Seoul. Rusk warned that the situation “could become explosive” and asked for Moscow’s assistance in trying to “keep things cool.”
The Soviet diplomats were noncommittal. Kuznetsov said he could give Rusk no formal reply. Dobrynin said the Soviets had seen a film in which Pueblo sailors seemed to corroborate North Korea’s allegations of intrusion and spying. When it became clear his visitors would do little or nothing to help, Rusk made sure they understood the stakes. If Kim Il Sung was foolish enough to invade, he said in measured tones, the United States would respond with “maximum violence”—a clear signal that nuclear weapons would be used to hold back onrushing communist divisions. Perhaps taken aback by the gravity of the secretary’s threat, Kuznetsov said the Soviets “strongly favor détente” in Korea and that the two superpowers should work together to prevent further exacerbation of the situation. A good first step, Rusk replied, would be the release of the Pueblo and its crew.
Still, North Korea didn’t back down. As weeks and months ticked away with no movement at Panmunjom, LBJ’s men concluded there was no way to get around Pyongyang’s implacable insistence on an admission of guilt. They were surer than ever that Bucher hadn’t crossed into North Korean waters. Navy analysts had taken a close look at the position logs released by the communists—the ones Murphy doctored—and realized that they placed the Pueblo “over 30 miles from shore on dry land” at two different points. But righteous denials of wrongdoing weren’t working at Panmunjom. In utmost secrecy, Johnson’s advisers began t
o discuss giving Kim Il Sung what he wanted—without appearing to do so.
The vehicle they talked of using was an “overwrite.” There was nothing fancy about it: On a document of apology drafted by the North Koreans, a U.S. representative would write that he’d taken custody of the crew, and sign his name. Washington could then claim it had only signed a “receipt” for the men, while North Korea could crow that it had extracted an official mea culpa. “Both sides would understand this ambiguity,” Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach explained in a memo to the president.
It was diplomatic legerdemain that sounded somewhat crazy, but something similar had worked in the case of the captured Army helicopter pilots. In May 1964, a U.S. Air Force general publicly signed a statement that the pilots had been spying on North Korea and no such “criminal acts” would be committed in the future. In exchange the chopper pilots were freed. The next day, the United States officially denounced the general’s affidavit as “meaningless,” since the pilots, as uniformed servicemen performing a military mission, couldn’t be considered espionage agents under international law.
Some Americans viewed the recanted “confession” as an unpleasant expediency. But others—including some top Washington officials—regarded it as a disgraceful dodge that undercut American prestige by calling into question the trustworthiness of government pronouncements. “The feeling is that this was not an honorable course for a nation of the stature of the U.S. to pursue,” an anonymous administration official told journalist Joseph Albright. General Woodward was among those who didn’t think such a maneuver was a legitimate way to resolve the Pueblo impasse. “This country cannot indulge in lies,” he firmly told his father, who’d suggested a “meaningless admission” to bring the sailors home.
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