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The Pueblo Surrender: A Covert Action by the National Security Agency
Liston argues that the 1968 seizure of the USS Pueblo was part of a National Security Agency-run operation, in which the ship & its unsuspecting crew were offered as bait. The centerpiece of the plot, according to his scenario, was a rigged code-machine placed aboard the ship for the North Koreans to "capture" & use, leading to the breaking of Communist-bloc military codes. Liston, novelist & jounalist, doesn't claim to have proven his case, but the documentation & material obtained in interviews render his theory shockingly plausible. The book carefully reconstructs the ship's seizure, & the Chinese & Soviet military involvement in its aftermath. His primary focus, however, is directed toward the NSA, which he compares to the Soviet KGB in its ability "to manipulate the actions of our civilian & military leaders." (Pueblo's commanding officer, Command Lloyd Bucher, is presented as an honorable dupe.) From the agency's viewpoint, the operation was a brilliant success, maintains the author, helping prevent US defeat in the Tet Offensive, causing the Soviets to abandon a military adventure in Red China & opening the way for a Beijing-Washington rapprochement.--Publishers Weekly
- GenresHistory
312 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 4, 2013
"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.
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.
August 10, 2012
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.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews