The Pueblo Surrender: A Covert Action by the National Security Agency

by Robert A. Liston

In this fascinating, exhaustively researched reexamination of the ‘Pueblo Incident,’ Robert Liston comes to a remarkable the Pueblo was purposely surrendered in a secret mission planned by the National Security Agency. The operation was the subject of a total cover-up—from the White House, the Pentagon, Congress, and the American public. Liston states The Pueblo was controlled by NSA operatives planted aboard the ship without the knowledge of the Navy; and the Chinese and the Soviets were after information they were led to believe was on board the Pueblo—information that was vital to both for intelligence purposes

But what was this deadly information? It was part of an NSA operation, in which a rigged U.S. code machine was secretly planted aboard the Pueblo to induce the North Koreans to capture and use the rigged code machine, thus permitting the U.S. to break the Soviet system of codes. The North Koreans used the machine to radio Vladivostok for instructions. The Soviet codes were broken almost immediately.

Liston maintains the Pueblo surrender was the greatest intelligence coup of modern times, preventing a major U.S. defeat in the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, foiling Soviet plans to invade China in a potentially nuclear conflict, and leading directly to the rapprochement between China and the U.S. Because the Soviets knew their codes were broken, the KGB began a massive overhaul of their entire intelligence operation. To gain time for that, the Kremlin launched its policy of détente with the West.

Liston masterfully organizes his material to expose the many inconsistencies in all previous accounts of the surrender, and carefully details the roles of the major players. Drawing on published accounts and interviews with crewmen and informants, Liston logically compiles the facts and details to reach a devastating conclusion. What emerges is not only an eye-opening revelation of the risks taken by the NSA in the power play of espionage, but a chilling portrait of an unimpeachable intelligence apparatus that threatens the very foundations of American democracy.

Genres: History

312 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1988

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Remember the Pueblo!" was a bumpersticker commonly seen in the suburban community of Park Ridge, Illinois, where I lived from 5th through 12th grades. Ownership of the car bearing such sentiments was indicative of communal solidarity, virulent opposition to socialism and communism being allied to strong support of the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia. A decade before the rallying call had been to "Unleash Chiang Kai-shek", a few years later it was flags about POWs still supposedly held in Vietnam.

What we believed back then in 1968 was that a U.S. navy ship had been seized off the coast of North Korea, its crew being held until the U.S. government apologized eleven months later. Personally, I suspected it was a spy ship in their territorial waters, but most of my neighbors, while possibly acknowledging the reports that it was a spy ship, would have said it was in international waters. In any case, once the crew was released in December of that year, most everyone forgot about it, but for the perdurant stickers, and moved on to other issues.

Now, decades later, I find this book by journalist Liston, a book which detailed, twenty years after the fact, the many discrepencies and impossibilities of the official stories and such interviews with the principals as had been conducted in the meantime. The tentative conclusions drawn by the author are truly startling, even for one as skeptical of "official" stories as myself.

Rather than spoil the book by summarizing its arguments and conclusions I will note that its point is to question the operation of the U.S. National Security Agency, that governmental agency which ran the Pueblo's spying activities. Liston is no left-winger, nor is he a knee-jerk opponent of official lies and secrecy, but even from his perspective from well within the Establishment important questions and concerns are raised.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a fascinating, though somewhat improbable, premise. The author's contention is that the USS Pueblo incident was, in fact, an operation by the NSA to feed false data to the North Koreans (and by extension, the Soviets). It makes for a great read, and it would have been a great operation had it come about the way he describes, but my own knowledge of naval procedures makes it seem a little unlikely to me. For example, the author claims that skipper Lloyd Bucher was not cleared to know about the operation, and was little more than a taxi driver for the real heads of the operation - the Chiefs who ran the code room. Even the operations officer, one of Bucher's lieutenants, was just there to make sure the Chief Petty Officers in the code room got what they needed to do their jobs. That does not sound like the Navy I know.