Word: pueblos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...than duty, no matter how vague or irrational the mandate may be in a particular crisis. Commander Lloyd Bucher chose nature and common sense when his test came. Rather than let his crew be slaughtered for no other purpose than to maintain Navy custom, he chose to surrender U.S.S. Pueblo to the six North Korean vessels that had him encircled and hopelessly outgunned...
Though they agree on all their major conclusions, Bucher and Armbrister confront Pueblo's story from different perspectives. Bucher views events through two narrow apertures: his own experience as a thoroughly conventional officer, and his status as the new skipper of a small, unimportant ship. Armbrister, who traveled and interviewed widely on the Pueblo story, provides a less intimate but much broader account...
...Honolulu headquarters, it was a young ensign in the intelligence section who passed on the low-risk appraisal; an experienced specialist in North Korean affairs had been shunted aside for opaque reasons. In Washington, representatives of the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, White House and National Security Agency approved Pueblo's excursion. One ranking NSA official warned that the North Koreans had turned pugnacious and implied that the Pueblo should have protection. The message caromed around the Pentagon but never reached Japan...
Before setting out from Japan, Bucher asked Rear Admiral Frank Johnson, his boss, for TNT charges to scuttle the Pueblo in an emergency. The request went to a supply officer, who offered thermite instead. Bucher realized that carrying thermite, an incendiary substance, was both dangerous and contrary to Navy regulations. He could have made a fuss but decided against doing so. "All I could accomplish by pressing it further," he writes as apologia, "was to upset Admiral Johnson and his staff by giving them the impression they had a skipper on their hands who seemed obsessed with the capability...
...converted Army cargo vessel was ill prepared in other respects. Though assigned to cruise near hostile coasts in poor weather, it had an antiquated steering mechanism that kept breaking down. Pueblo was crammed with highly classified material and devices. Yet it possessed only rudimentary equipment for destroying its secrets in an emergency. The Pentagon had authorized Pueblo to carry a relatively large, 3-in. 50-cal. cannon. But tiny, overloaded Pueblo had neither the deck space for it nor qualified gunners to man it. Bucher settled for two ineffectual .50-cal. machine guns mounted in exposed positions...