“We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness.”
Dean Koontz
During the Cold War, there were a great many very interesting stories which either never made the light of day, or were told with big pieces missing. In addition, some of these stories had nothing to do with the Soviet Union. These are just two of many of them.
Those that know me from my early Navy days, know I went in the Navy specifically to go to sea. In particular, I wanted to be on an aircraft carrier. However, my Navy path had other plans and I ended up with my entire career being in Cryptology. To be in Cryptology during the time I served in the Navy, there was very little chance of going to sea.
However, that was not the case prior to 1969. There was a class of ship known as the AGER - an ELINT (electonic intelligence) and SIGINT (signal intelligence) Banner Class environmental technical research ship. These ships kept a low profile - very low. Low until January 1968 when the USS Pueblo (AGER-2) was involved in an international incident with North Korea.
Actually, the Pueblo was not the first time that a technical research ship had come into harm's way. The first occurred off the coast of Israel in June 1967. This particular ship was the USS Liberty, an AGTR (Auxiliary Technical Research Ship), and what really happened to this ship is cloaked in mystery, even today.
The USS Liberty incident was an attack by the Israeli Air Force jet fighters and Navy torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and one civilian), wounded 170 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time of the attack the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula. Both Israel and the United States conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the identity of the USS Liberty. However others, including all of the ship's survivors that could be located four decades later, have rejected these conclusions and maintain that the attack was deliberate. Now, I never served with any of the cryptologists that were onboard the Liberty, but I did serve with someone who knew a survivor at his former duty station. According to this second hand testimony, the day was clear, the colors were flying and there was no way this US vessel could have been mistaken for anything but. Many killed and wounded that day were Navy cryptologists, just doing the job they were trained to do.
Because Israel was an friend, the press wrote this off as a "fog of war" mistake. However, this was not the case with the USS Pueblo. The incident occurred less than a week after President Johnson's State of the Union Address and only weeks before the Tet Offensive. It developed into a major incident in the Cold War.
North Korea stated the Pueblo strayed into their territorial waters, but the United States maintains that the vessel was in international waters at the time of the incident. The Pueblo was shadowed by North Korean torpedo boats, overflown by MIG aircraft and then fired upon twice. Two crewmen were killed instantly by the gunfire. The Pueblo was basically unarmed and surrendered to North Korean forces and was then boarded.
The Pueblo was taken into port at Wonsan and the crew was moved twice to POW camps. Some of the crew reported upon release that they were starved and regularly tortured while in North Korean custody. This treatment allegedly turned worse when the North Koreans realized that crewmen were secretly giving them "the finger" in staged propaganda photos.
Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, after being tortured and being told his crew would be executed, relented and agreed to confess. Following an apology, as well as a written admission by the United States that Pueblo had been spying, and an assurance that the U.S. would not spy in the future, the North Korean government decided to release the 82 remaining crew members. On 23 December 1968, the crew was taken by buses to the DMZ border with South Korea and ordered to walk south one by one.
The Pueblo is still held by North Korea today, and it officially remains a commissioned vessel of the Navy. It is the only ship of the U.S. Navy currently being held captive.
As a post script, I did serve with a Petty Officer who had been on the Pueblo. Questions were never asked and answers were never given. Everyone seemed to have the unspoken knowledge what these survivors went through should never be brought up to be relived.
I went though my four years active time and seventeen years active reserves without having the opportunity to grab a sea billet and do what I set out to do in 1969. Towards the end of my career some sea billets started to spring up on Destroyers, Cruisers and Carriers, but by that time my rank did not fit the requirements. Many times in my active days I took ribbing about never going to sea. What was not widely known was the cryptologists that went to sea in the mid 60's were as tough as nails. They stood in the gap.
I did not get go to sea because the Navy realized after 1968 the AGTR and AGER ships were the wrong solution. by 1969, all remaining ships in those classes were decommissioned. Today about one third of all crypto billets are sea billets, serving on ships protected by the AEGIS weapon system. The men that stood in harms way in the mid-sixties have been replaced by the men and women who stand in harm's way today. Smart and tough then, smart and tough today. Two stories, seldom told, of the bravery and valor of sailors during the Cold War.
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