Prudently, the Soviets withdrew their own surveillance ships from American coasts.
By openly beseeching them, however, Washington had committed a tactical blunder. The Russians had much to lose by helping Johnson, at least overtly. Kim Il Sung was likely to resent any such intercession, and his pique could drive a new wedge between his country and the USSR, allies whose relationship often waxed and waned. China, Moscow’s longtime rival in courting Pyongyang, undoubtedly would try to widen the rift by loudly denouncing the Soviets for giving aid and comfort to the imperialists.
But even as they publicly rebuffed Johnson, the Russians quietly tried to signal that they’d had nothing to do with the capture, declaring their innocence to Westerners at diplomatic receptions and in other settings.
Some lower-echelon U.S. intelligence officials, despite their superiors’ suspicions, tended to believe the Soviets. Moscow, these analysts noted, had no interest in being drawn into a potentially explosive conflict with the United States over something as insignificant as a spy ship. “The USSR appears to have been caught unawares by the Pueblo incident,” reported the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, adding that there was “no indication that Moscow instigated” the seizure or even knew about it beforehand.
When Kosygin made a state visit to India, the Soviets saw another opportunity to get across their message. Boris Batrayev, a KGB officer attached to the Russian embassy in New Delhi, approached some American journalists covering Kosygin’s tour. Batrayev told the newsmen that contrary to its rejection of LBJ’s requests for help, Moscow privately was trying to end the Pueblo impasse. The Soviet Union’s public brush-off of the White House, he said, was a piece of political theater necessary to preserve its influence with Pyongyang.
One of the reporters the KGB man spoke to was Adam Clymer, the Baltimore Sun’s correspondent in New Delhi, who cabled a story home. The Sun’s Washington bureau chief passed a prepublication copy of the article to Walt Rostow, who related its hopeful contents to Johnson.
The president, meanwhile, decided it was time to speak directly to the American people about the crisis.
Just before four p.m. on January 26, the three television networks cut to Johnson as he stood at a White House podium and called the Pueblo capture a “wanton and aggressive act” that “cannot be accepted.” He said he was doing everything possible to resolve the situation peacefully, but that “certain precautionary measures” were being taken to strengthen South Korea’s defenses. LBJ also announced he was taking the matter before the U.N. Security Council.
That same afternoon, in New York City, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, presented the case against North Korea in an emergency session of the Security Council that was reminiscent of the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A bit of international intrigue preceded Goldberg’s speech. American officials suspected that communist U.N. members were plotting to stymie him, and FBI men in Washington and New York hurriedly contacted sources in embassies and diplomatic missions of nations on friendly terms with North Korea. The agents discovered that the communist bloc was indeed planning to draw attention away from Goldberg’s address by challenging Taiwan’s right to a U.N. seat.
But that skirmish never materialized, and the white-haired Goldberg rose to declare that North Korea had created a “grave threat to peace.” The United States, he said pointedly, “is exercising great restraint in this matter.” Using a large map to show the Pueblo’s movements, Goldberg vividly recounted the assault on the ship. Intercepted position reports from sub chaser No. 35 proved that the spy boat hadn’t violated North Korean waters on the day of its capture, he asserted. In fact, only minutes after the American vessel was boarded, communist seamen radioed their location as more than 21 miles from shore.
The ambassador also decried North Korea’s “systematic campaign of infiltration, sabotage, and terrorism” against South Korea. Northern commandos had expanded their attacks far beyond the demilitarized zone, striking throughout South Korea and killing 153 soldiers and civilians in 1967—a more than fivefold increase over the previous year. The communist campaign had reached “a new level of outrage,” Goldberg said, with the attempt to assassinate President Park. When the Soviet representative retorted that Bucher’s recent admission demonstrated that the Pueblo had entered North Korean waters, Goldberg, a tough-minded former labor lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court justice, shot back that he was well acquainted with “the Soviet experience in coerced and fabricated confessions.”
Goldberg finished by warning the Security Council that to ignore the Pueblo incident and communist depredations in South Korea was to invite catastrophe. But he was careful not to demand any specific action, such as a resolution demanding that North Korea return the ship and its men. The Soviets could veto that, abruptly cutting off debate in the U.N. and intensifying domestic political pressure on Johnson to mount a military attack. With no motion from Goldberg, the Security Council’s members scheduled more talks over the weekend.
“What are they gonna do?” the president asked Goldberg in a phone call following the envoy’s speech.
“Not a damn thing, just between us,” Goldberg replied. “They’ll fiddle around.”
LBJ knew he’d bought himself some time, but not much.
When the United Nations eventually did conclude its deliberations, he told Goldberg, “We going to have to do something.”
At 7:29 p.m. that evening, Johnson greeted two journalists in the Oval Office for an off-the-record “backgrounder” on the Pueblo.
Hugh Sidey was a prominent columnist for Time magazine. Garnett “Jack” Horner was the White House correspondent for the Washington Star, a scrappy afternoon newspaper read by many on Capitol Hill. The president laid down strict ground rules for the interview.
“There should be no attribution to anybody on this,” he said. “I do not want any stories attributed to the president or to the White House. Is that clearly understood?”
“Yes, sir,” both newsmen answered.
The background session gave LBJ the opportunity, with minimal political exposure, to address uncomfortable questions being raised in Congress, such as why the spy ship lacked protection during its mission. He told Sidey and Horner that neither the United States nor the Russians provided armed cover for surveillance ships, since doing so would require “navies and air forces enormously greater than their present forces.”
Bucher probably waited before calling for help, said the president, because the harassment at first seemed routine. When he finally did request a rescue, it was too late. “Darkness was close at hand,” said Johnson, explaining why General McKee grounded his F-105s at Osan. “The [seizure] operation was evidently preplanned, with MiGs on station which might have endangered the aircraft we might have sent in.” The president said he could “find no fault” with field commanders who decided against engaging the hornet’s nest of enemy jets in the Wonsan area.
Although McNamara had told him there was no proof that the Pueblo hadn’t strayed into North Korean waters while observing radio silence, Johnson asserted to the journalists that the ship had been in international waters “at all times.”