The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (Modern War Studies) [Paperback]

Mitchell B. Lerner (Author)

Book Description

Series: Modern War Studies | Publication Date: October 2003

"Remember, you are not going out there to start a war," Rear Admiral Frank Johnson reminded Commander Pete Bucher just prior to the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Pueblo. And yet a war--one that might have gone nuclear--was what nearly happened when the Pueblo was attacked and captured by North Korean gunships in January 1968. Diplomacy prevailed in the end, but not without great cost to the lives of the imprisoned crew and to a nation already mired in an unwinnable war in Vietnam.

The Pueblo was an aging cargo ship poorly refurbished as a signals intelligence collector for the top-secret Operation Clickbeetle. It was sent off with a first-time captain, an inexperienced crew, and no back-up, and was captured well before the completion of its first mission.

Drawing on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents from President Lyndon Johnson's administration, along with dozens of interviews with those involved, Mitchell Lerner provides the most complete and accurate account of the Pueblo incident yet available. He weaves on a grand scale a dramatic story of international relations, presidential politics, covert intelligence, capture on the high seas, and secret negotiations. At the same time, he highlights the personal struggles of the Pueblo's crew--through capture, imprisonment, indoctrination, torture, and release--and the still smoldering controversy over Commander Bucher's actions. In fact, Bucher emerges here for the first time as the truly steadfast hero his men have always considered him to be.

More than an account of misadventure, The Pueblo Incident is an indictment of America's Cold War mentality. Lerner argues that had U.S. policymakers regarded the North Koreans as people with a national agenda, rather than as serving a global Communist conspiracy, they might have avoided the crisis or resolved it more effectively. He also addresses such unanswered questions as what the Pueblo's mission exactly was, why the ship had no military support, and how damaging the intelligence loss was to national security.

With North Korea still seen as a rogue state by some policymakers, The Pueblo Incident provides key insights into the domestic imperatives behind that country's foreign relations. It astutely assesses the place of gunboat diplomacy in the modern world and is vital for understanding American foreign policy failures in the Cold War.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The January 1968 North Korean seizure of the intelligence-collecting ship USS Pueblo came close to sparking a second Korean War. Lerner, an assistant professor of history, synthesizes newly available documents and a large number of participant interviews to attribute the crisis to the Johnson administration's unsophisticated interpretation of contemporary international relations as bipolar global rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Sending the Pueblo to monitor electronic communications and naval activity off North Korea's coast was regarded as a routine mission in the general context of the Cold War. The ship, its crew and captain were poorly prepared for any unexpected occurrences, able neither to resist nor escape the North Korean gunboats. Johnson and his advisers processed the seizure as having been orchestrated by the Soviet Union. U.S. responses focused on Moscow and on international agencies like the Red Cross and the World Court. Lerner, however, offers extensive documentary evidence that the U.S.S.R. was not involved in the Pueblo's seizure. Instead, he makes a convincing case that North Korea acted on its own and for domestic reasons. Kim II Sung, according to Lerner, was increasingly committed to structuring North Korea around the ideological principle of juche, or "self-identity." Juche required the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea to act in all areas without regard for external influence. Even in its early stages, attempts to apply the concept had generated economic shortages and political dissent sufficient to impel Kim to assert "self-identity" in another way: seizing a ship whose presence, even in international waters, was in any case provocative. American efforts to resolve the crisis, pointed as they were in the wrong direction, only exacerbated it. In the absence of North Korean documents, Lerner's argument cannot be regarded as definitively proven, but expect it to get serious (if quiet) play among historians and policy makers.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

The title of this study by Lerner (history, Ohio State Univ.) refers to the capture of the intelligence gathering ship, the U.S.S. Pueblo, by the North Koreans in January 1968. The Pueblo was nothing more than a made-over cargo vessel with the addition of an electronic shack for eavesdropping. It was prone to steering loss and engine failure, and its crew and captain were new and untrained. Unarmed except for two machine guns and some small arms, the ship was in no condition to attempt an intelligence mission off the North Korean coast. Unfortunately for the captain and crew, that is exactly where they were captured. Lerner does an excellent job of detailing the crew's torture and imprisonment for almost a year. He draws on interviews with those involved, as well as recently released documents relating to the Johnson administration, to show how badly the administration handled foreign policy challenges during the 1960s. This excellent read sheds light on the incident, which is still debated in some circles today. Recommended for both public and academic libraries. Mark Ellis, Albany State Univ. Lib., GA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700612963
• ISBN-13: 978-0700612963
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #984,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Story of the USS Pueblo!, September 27, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (Hardcover)

I decided to read this book after I saw the author on a Fox News special about the Pueblo. I had been stationed in Osan, South Korea, a few years after the incident, so I knew a little bit about the Pueblo, but not very much. This book answered all my questions, and more. I think anyone with an interest in American foreign policy should read it.

The book really has 3 parts. In the first section, Lerner looks at the background of this intelligence program (operation clickbeetle), the history of the program, the specific preparation of this ship and mission, the background of the men who operated the ship, and the situation in Korea. Then, in the next part, he looks at the mission itself, focusing mostly on the events the day that North Korea captured the Pueblo on the high seas, and what that meant for the US and the Cold War. Finally, he looks at the way the Lyndon Johnson administration decided to turn to diplomacy rather than a military response, and how that developed over a year of negotiations, until the men were finally released just before Christmas in a somewhat bizarre solution in which the US signed an apology letter that they had already publicly denounced. The ship, shockingly, still is in North Korea, serving as a tourist attraction.

This is really a good book. First of all, Lerner writes beautifully. This book reads so smoothly, and the story is so intense, that you almost can't put it down. His research is also very impressive. It looks like he has been to every archive, and talked to every person, related to the event. And he looks at every aspect of the incident. There is a look at the military side of the story, a lot about the diplomacy, a chapter about the public reaction in the US, details about the treatment of the men in captivity (one year in North Korean prisons--just brutal stuff), even a discussion of the intelligence loss involved here.

There are a few things that I liked particularly. He brings North Korea into the picture, showing how they were not simply taking orders from the Soviets but were a nation struggling with their own problems, and in order to distract the people from his failed communist leadership, Kim Il Sung tried to show them how tough he was by going after America. Lerner also shows how Americans everywhere: in the government, in the military, in the general population, in congress, saw this as part of the cold war, and refused to recognize that North Korea mattered. So I was shocked to see how Johnson immediately tried to solve the problem by going to the USSR, and the UN and China, but not to North Korea. He also does a good job showing how the Navy let the men down, and then tried to scapegoat the officers by blaming them for not going down with the ship, when Lerner shows that the Navy had let the men down on so many support levels. For example, the condition of the ship was horrible, it didn't even have a reliable steering system or a good self-destruct system or a working communication system, the Pueblo was slow and unstable, had bad navigation equipment, and almost no guns. Pre-mission trials showed this to everyone in the Navy, but still, they ignored the commander's requests to fix anything. Finally, as a former soldier, I was really impressed by his discussion of the crew. He shows how the Navy let them down by not giving them the right support, training, and information. He also shows how they hung together in North Korea, despite some pretty rough times.

There are a few problems I should mention. Some maps would have been helpful. The military details were fine for me, but people without a military background might find some of it tough reading. And I did wonder if Lerner could have told us more about the views of the common soldier who was wondering if we were going to go to war over this, especially the grunts in Vietnam. Still, this is overall a really, really, good book. It shows how the US during the Cold War sometimes overlooked the complexity of the world, and just looked for easy answers that saw everything as part of a Soviet conspiracy. I would recommend it highly to anyone.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive Debut, October 29, 2002

By 

Evan Thompson (St. Helena, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (Hardcover)

Mitch Lerner has written an impressive debut work on the North Korean seizure of the U.S.S. Pueblo that reads like a spy novel. This book is even better, because it really happened and is no boring academic treatise. Lerner is a gifted writer and is able to bring his subject alive.

As someone who has lived and traveled to Korea many times, I am amazed at how ignorant Americans are about that country. In 1950 two regimes went to war to determine which one of them would be the sole government of the entire nation. The Korean War was a civil war that settled nothing. To this day, both capitals claim to be the only government of Korea, want unification on their terms, and are still willing to use force to reach their goals. Lerner shows that policy makers in the 1960s were ignorant of these basic facts and looked at Korea from the perspective of the American-Soviet confrontation that was the Cold War. Simply put, Americans looked at North Korea as a Soviet puppet rather than as a free agent that might take actions without telling their "friends" in Moscow.

Lerner gives the reader an even-handed account of the various players that influenced the course of events. He gives President Lyndon Johnson good marks for handling a difficult crisis in which he had a weak hand and the North Koreans held all the aces. He explains the North Korean perspective without offering apologies for the nasty fellows that govern the northern half of the peninsula. He also does justice to the crew of the Pueblo, recounting the beatings and torture they endured at the tender hands of their hands.

Many people in the U.S. Navy will not like this book. The Pueblo was sent out on a fool's errand. The Navy provided no escorts or air cover to protect this ship. The admirals expected that as long as the ship stayed in international waters, the North Koreans would respect the unwritten rules of the Cold War that allowed the Soviets to send "fishing boats" to sail off the coast of Florida and Virginia. The only problem was that the North Koreans were not the Soviets. In the two years before the Pueblo sailed, North Korea was waging an undeclared border war with the South, attacking and killing American and South Korean soldiers. The Joint Chiefs of Staff considered Korea a war zone and were giving out hero medals for combat engagements with the enemy. The Navy apparently thought nothing of this little war and sent the Pueblo out without any protection. In a covering exercise, the Navy tried to court martial the captain of the ship to cover up the fact that the service had failed to provide any protection or even any means to destroy all the sensitive material on board. Lerner stays balanced as he covers this disgraceful period and refuses to blast the high command of the Navy for its shameful treatment of the crew. Still, there is no hiding who the heroes are in this story. Read this book; it is a good story; it is an important story.

27 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Questionable Perspective on this Infamous Incident, August 4, 2002

By 

C. Ryan (Winthrop, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (Hardcover)

As a former Navy spook who served in the Korean Theater during 1969-71, I hoped this book, published on the eve of the 35th anniversary of the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo, would provide useful new insights into this infamous incident. Unfortunately it does not. More or less consistent accounts of the details surrounding the ship's capture and the crew's imprisonment, and the policy and operational shortcomings up to the senior levels of the US Navy and the National Security Agency, have been published elsewhere over the years. This account adds little of significance in this area.

Instead, Professor Lerner focuses on the "failure of American policy" and the notion that the "Cold War mentality directing (United States) policy decisions" caused the United States to incorrectly focus on the Pueblo seizure as part of the international communist conspiracy. Professor Lerner assets, unconvincingly in my opinion, that North Korea's attack on the Pueblo was motivated solely by an indigenous ideological concept called "juche", an extreme form of "self-reliance" which Lerner says North Korea espoused from 1955 onward.

In other words, the attack on the Pueblo was just North Korea's way of asking to be left alone so they could build a peoples' paradise based on "having an attitude of a master toward the revolution and construction of one's own country"(??). Professor Lerner further asserts that despite the Pueblo attack occurring just eight days before the launch of the Tet offensive in Vietnam, any notion that North Korea ever participated in a concerted effort to support North Vietnam's imposition of totalitarian socialism on South Vietnam was just the result of a tendency by the United States' military to see pro-North Vietnamese adversaries behind every tree. "Other evidence (none of which Professor Lerner specifically cites) suggests a lack of cooperation between (North Korea) and Vietnam." Also, Professor Lerner argues that the Russians certainly had no involvement because a former KGB officer told him so in an interview (!) and "Soviet complicity might also have threatened ... superpower rapprochement" that was allegedly occurring. Finally, he says North Koreans would never act in concert with other totalitarian socialist regimes because such an action might backfire and result in "strengthening the position of American 'hawks'".

The arguments and theories in The Pueblo Incident - A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy are unconvincing.

First, Korea practiced "juche" for hundreds of years as evidenced by the 19th Century characterization of Korea as the "Hermit Kingdom" for its tendency to attack foreign ships that entered its harbors as well as execute shipwrecked sailors who washed ashore. So what? South Korean society evolved from their isolationist tradition, and even socialist states like Albania and Romania practiced forms of "juche" from the 1950s through 1990s without attacking, everyone who ventured near their borders. "Juche" doesn't explain the North Korean need to attack and murder 31 men on a US Navy plane more than 90 miles off their coast in April 1969, their large-scale commando raid on a South Korean island hundreds of miles south of the DMZ, stepped up North Korean aggression that caused more than a 1,000 U.S. and South Korean casualties along the DMZ from 1967 -69, etc. etc.

Second, North Koreans have publicly and proudly announced that they collaborated with the North Vietnamese in the 1960s. Their most significant involvement was sending North Korean pilots to fly MIG jet fighters in opposition to American pilots in Vietnam, just as Russians had flown against American pilots in Korea 15 years earlier. There really is evidence to refute assertions of non-involvement by North Korea in Vietnam.

Third, no doubt North Korea was something of a renegade to the Soviets and the Russians probably did not know in advance about the attack on the Pueblo. Nevertheless, supporting North Korea was clearly an element of Soviet policy. When the U.S. Navy assembled carrier battle groups in the Sea of Japan the USSR positioned 16 of its surface warships between the US fleet and the North Korean coast, as well as deployed a number of submarines in the area.

Yes, the record shows that in many instances the United States misjudged the intention and capability and motivation of our Cold War adversaries (as they did ours). In the aftermath of the attack on the Pueblo the United States assembled a large naval task force and deployed additional Air Force units in the Korean theater which was a prudent response given our commitment to protecting South Korea and Japan and the fact that a state of war still existed in Korea. Once it was determined the Pueblo attack was not a prelude to greater hostilities, the United States withdrew most of those forces and patiently sought the crew's release through diplomacy and negotiation. Was that a foreign policy failure?

This book has a few interesting photographs I hadn't seen before. I recommend it to people interested in the Cold War and the ongoing Korean conflict history as long as they consult other sources to get a more balanced and complete view of the incident.