Overview

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.

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9780700611713

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"The Pueblo Incident has found its biographer. Lerner tells the story well at the micro level, displays complete mastery of his sources, and fits his story compellingly into the context of the times. WILLIAM STUECK, JR., AUTHOR OF THE KOREAN WAR """"Expands our understanding of U.S. Cold War politics and its ideological trappings. I learned so much from this book."""" LARRY BERMAN, AUTHOR OF NO PEACE, NO HONOR: NIXON, KISSINGER, AND BETRAYAL IN VIETNAM """"Should sound a warning to anyone who seeks simplistic formulas to explain and defeat today's international terrorism."""" KENNETH J. HAGAN, AUTHOR OF THIS PEOPLE'S NAVY: THE MAKING OF AMERICAN SEA POWER """"A cautionary tale that resonates today."""" EDWARD J. DREA, AUTHOR OF MACARTHUR'S ULTRA: CODEBREAKING AND THE WAR AGAINST JAPAN, 1942-1945"

A detailed history and analysis of the U.S.S. Pueblo's capture by North Korean gunships in January 1968 and the American government's chaotic attempts to recover its crew. President Bush's recent declaration that North Korea is a key member of an axis of evil establishes this study as both timely and compelling. Lerner (History/Ohio State Univ.) argues that the Johnson administration's view of North Korea as a mere satellite of the Soviet empire was a dramatic miscalculation. He clearly connects the design and outfitting of the Pueblo to an American-Soviet paradigm that tolerated electronic eavesdropping in international waters. That assumption, Lerner asserts, failed to account for North Korean leader Kim Il Sung's nationalistic determination to remain as independent as possible from both Soviet and Chinese domination. This serious shortsightedness in American policy resulted in a confrontation: the North Korean navy crippled the Pueblo with automatic-weapons fire, killing one sailor and taking Commander Lloyd Bucher and his crew prisoners. Lerner details how growing public pressure to open up a new Asian conflict over the release of the crew caused Johnson to waver between hawkish bluster and timid placating of the North Korean government. While the administration stumbled towards a resolution with negotiators, he argues, the American sailors endured more than 300 days of systematic torture and abuse during which their captors coerced them into confessing to spying and other crimes against the North Korean people. Upon his repatriation to the US, the Navy pinned the blame for the incident on Commander Bucher, transforming him, according to Lerner, into a symbol of American Cold War blindness. Engrossing analysis of Vietnam-era diplomacy, naval history, and Cold War politics-embedded with fascinating parallels between the events of 1968 and today's crisis over terrorism. (21 photos, 1 map) (Kirkus Reviews)

The Pueblo Incident has found its biographer. Lerner tells the story well at the micro level, displays complete mastery of his sources, and fits his story compellingly into the context of the times. WILLIAM STUECK, JR., AUTHOR OF THE KOREAN WAR Expands our understanding of U.S. Cold War politics and its ideological trappings. I learned so much from this book. LARRY BERMAN, AUTHOR OF NO PEACE, NO HONOR: NIXON, KISSINGER, AND BETRAYAL IN VIETNAM Should sound a warning to anyone who seeks simplistic formulas to explain and defeat today's international terrorism. KENNETH J. HAGAN, AUTHOR OF THIS PEOPLE'S NAVY: THE MAKING OF AMERICAN SEA POWER A cautionary tale that resonates today. EDWARD J. DREA, AUTHOR OF MACARTHUR'S ULTRA: CODEBREAKING AND THE WAR AGAINST JAPAN, 1942-1945

The Pueblo Incident has found its biographer. Lerner tells the story well at the micro level, displays complete mastery of his sources, and fits his story compellingly into the context of the times. WILLIAM STUECK, JR., AUTHOR OF THE KOREAN WAR Expands our understanding of U.S. Cold War politics and its ideological trappings. I learned so much from this book. LARRY BERMAN, AUTHOR OF NO PEACE, NO HONOR: NIXON, KISSINGER, AND BETRAYAL IN VIETNAM Should sound a warning to anyone who seeks simplistic formulas to explain and defeat today's international terrorism. KENNETH J. HAGAN, AUTHOR OF THIS PEOPLE'S NAVY: THE MAKING OF AMERICAN SEA POWER A cautionary tale that resonates today. EDWARD J. DREA, AUTHOR OF MACARTHUR'S ULTRA: CODEBREAKING AND THE WAR AGAINST JAPAN, 1942-1945

Author Information

Mitchell B. Lerner is assistant professor of history at the Ohio State University in Newark, Ohio, and a Fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs.

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