“Everybody on your feet!”: Bucher, Bucheri My Story, op. cit., 191.
A sharp kick in the rear: Bucher, op. cit., 189.
“Answer the fucking phones!”: Author interview with Lloyd M. Bucher.
“I’m going to have to get busy”: Ed Brandt, The Last Voyage of USS Pueblo (W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1969), 48.
“A wild-eyed look”: Bucher, op. cit., 191.
Three pounds of paper at a time: Murphy, op. cit., 139.
A slab of human flesh: Bucher interview.
“AIR FORCE GOING HELP YOU”: Inq, 671.
Afraid he’d burst into tears: F. Carl Schumacher Jr. and George C. Wilson, Bridge of No Return: The Ordeal of the U.S.S. Pueblo (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1971), 99.
Strike aircraft: Inq., op. cit., 898.
“Creature-comfort admiral”: Reminiscences of Vice Admiral Kent L. Lee, U.S. Navy (Retired), Vol. II (U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland, 1987–88), 479.
Port city’s air defenses: Inq, op. cit., 916.
“No overt action”: Inq, ibid., 1672.
McKee fired question after question: Author interview with Seth McKee.
But only four planes were available: It’s unclear exactly how many U.S. fighters were in Japan that day, and how many were flyable. Although General John McConnell, the Air Force chief of staff, told President Johnson there were 24 planes, General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put the figure at 77. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara told congressional leaders “40-odd” aircraft were in Japan at the time. General Seth McKee indicated in congressional testimony that, in any event, none of the planes were combat-ready and immediately available.
Configured for nuclear bombs: NA, RG 59, General Records of the Department of State, Office of the Executive Secretariat, Entry 5192, Korean Crisis (“Pueblo Crisis”) files, 1968, Lot file 69D219, stack 150/69/17/07, box 1.
Tip South Korea into war: AMHI, General Charles H. Bonesteel interview, Senior Officers Oral History Program, 1973, Vol. 1, 342.
“The goddamn Navy”: Author interview with John Wright.
“What’s happening to them?”: McKee interview.
CHAPTER 5: WE WILL NOW BEGIN TO SHOOT YOUR CREW
“I protest this outrage!”: Lloyd M. Bucher and Mark Rascovich, Bucher: My Story (Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, New York, 1970), 208.
“Tell your colonel”: Bucher, ibid., 213.
“Share the wealth”: Ibid., 216.
“Inside my rectum”: CA, Vol. III, 1312–29.
He, too, bravely refused: Stephen R. Harris and James C. Hefley, My Anchor Held (Fleming H. Revell Co., Old Tappan, New Jersey, 1970), 13.
“You have no military rights”: Bucher, op. cit., 220.
“Compromised for ten years”: Author interview with John Wright.
“Captain, you first”: F. Carl Schumacher Jr. and George C. Wilson, Bridge of No Return: The Ordeal of the U.S.S. Pueblo (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1971), 9.
Sterile and lonely: Harris, op. cit., 16.
“How you feel?”: Bucher, op. cit., 229.
“You will be shot this afternoon!”: Details of the tribunal were drawn from memoirs by Bucher, Murphy, Steve Harris, and Schumacher.
“Sign this confession!”: Bucher, op. cit., 237.
“Without more unpleasantness”: Ibid., 239.
No ejected dud hit the floor: Details of the mock execution are drawn from Bucher: My Story and the Bucher interview.
A horrifying sight: Bucher: My Story, op. cit., 243.
“I will sign”: Details of this scene are drawn from Bucher: My Story and the Bucher interview.
CHAPTER 6: A MINEFIELD OF UNKNOWNS
Bucher’s admission: The full text of the captain’s “confession” was published in the January 25, 1968, edition of The New York Times.
“Look very closely at his record”: LBJ, Tom Johnson’s Notes of Meetings, Jan. 24, 1968, 1 p.m., Pueblo II, National Security Council, container #2. Johnson did not take verbatim notes of what was said at LBJ’s meetings, but instead paraphrased participants. The author has chosen to quote short sentences from his notes as the closest reconstructions of President Johnson’s otherwise unrecorded words during Pueblo crisis meetings that are ever likely to be available.
“The only thing I could think to do”: “The Capture,” Naval History, Fall 1988, 54.
“Drop the atomic bomb”: LBJ, National Security-Defense, ND 19, CO 151/1-30-68, box 205.
“Coward”: LBJ, National Security-Defense, ND 191, 5-25-65, CO 151/1-28-68, box 205.
“792 pounds of cargo”: LBJ, Tom Johnson’s Notes of Meetings, Jan. 25, 1968, 1:26 p.m., Pueblo 5 luncheon meeting, container #2.
“The fullest justification”: LBJ, NSF, Files of Bromley K. Smith, Meeting of the Pueblo Group, 1/24/68, 10:30 a.m., box 1.
“An act of war”: “U.S. Pressing Ship’s Release,” Washington Post, Jan. 25, 1968.
“Putting prestige factors in the refrigerator”: LBJ, NSF, Files of Bromley K. Smith, op. cit.
CIA pilot Jack Weeks: A number of published accounts credit another CIA pilot, Frank Murray, with locating the Pueblo after its capture. But a declassified CIA history of the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft program, “Finding a Mission,” says it was Weeks who discovered the ship in a small bay north of Wonsan on January 26, 1968. About four months later Weeks disappeared while flying a Mach 3–plus A-12 over the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines. His body was never found. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/a-12/finding-a-mission.html
No concentrations of troops and tanks: LBJ, NSF, National Security Council Histories, “Pueblo Crisis 1968, Vol. 4, Day to Day Documents, Part 5,” box 28.
“Just crazy enough”: Author interview with John Denham.
KGB agent in India: LBJ, NSF, Country File, Korea, Pueblo Incident, Vol. I, Part B, box 257.
FBI men in Washington and New York: Information about the communist nations’ plans at the United Nations is taken from Lloyd Mark Bucher’s FBI file, File No. HQ 100-370055, Section 5, obtained by the author through the Freedom of Information Act.
“We going to have to do something”: LBJ, Recording of Telephone Conversation Between Lyndon B. Johnson and Arthur Goldberg, Jan. 28, 1968, 11:38 a.m., Citation #12613, track 3, Recordings and Transcripts of Conversations and Meetings, White House Series, WH6801.02.
“Is that clearly understood?”: LBJ, Tom Johnson’s Notes of Meetings, Jan. 26, 1968, 7:29 p.m., Pueblo Backgrounder with Hugh Sidey, container #2.