Act of War by Jack Cheevers

Author:Jack Cheevers
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

AN UNAPOLOGETIC APOLOGY

With the U.S. presidential race picking up summertime momentum, the Pueblo standoff was becoming a distinct liability for the Johnson administration and its Democratic allies in Congress.

LBJ had declared he wouldn’t run for reelection, but both his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and a prominent Democratic senator, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, were eager to succeed him. (Another high-profile Democratic senator, Robert F. Kennedy of New York, was fatally shot while campaigning in Los Angeles on June 5.) Republicans, meanwhile, realized they could use the spy-ship incident as a political tire iron against Democratic candidates for the White House and Congress. In speeches from Capitol Hill to their hometowns, GOP politicians criticized the administration’s response to the seizure as yet another example of Democratic shilly-shallying in the face of communist aggression. “After a brief period of hand wringing,” sniped Republican Representative Bob Wilson of San Diego, “our State Department has settled down into a rut of defeatism, puny protest, and wishy-washy talk-a-thons with the North Koreans.”

Newspapers in the Republican-friendly Copley chain, including Wilson’s hometown San Diego Union, printed boxes on their front pages showing the number of days the sailors had been held hostage. Editorial cartoonists at the zealously Republican Chicago Tribune showed little mercy. One Tribune caricature depicted a frightened Democratic donkey trying to run away from a pursuing skunk labeled “Pueblo Disgrace.”

To Republicans as well as many conservative Democrats, the seemingly easy capture of the ship represented a devastating blow to American pride and prestige. “When the time comes that respect for America has sunk so low that a fourth-rate naval power can hijack an American military vessel from off the high seas, it’s time for new leadership,” declared Richard Nixon, soon to be the GOP’s presidential nominee. Two thousand Republicans at a fund-raising dinner jumped to their feet and applauded when California governor Ronald Reagan warned, “Stealing the Pueblo and kidnapping our young men is a humiliation we will not tolerate.” U.S. Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois contrasted President Johnson’s cautious reaction with the derring-do of Commodore Stephen Decatur, who used his naval squadron’s cannon to force the bey of Algiers to free American bluejackets captured during the Second Barbary War.

LBJ had no retort for his critics. The Panmunjom meetings had produced nothing but stalemate. The communists still were demanding an unconditional apology; the United States still refused to acquiesce. A rumor was circulating that Bucher had killed himself in prison, and no one in Washington knew whether it was true or not. Intelligence sources reported that North Korean divers had recovered material thrown from the boat, and captured eavesdropping equipment had been taken apart and analyzed with the aid of “foreign experts,” presumably the Soviets.

While rhetorical brickbats flew in the United States, tensions on the Korean peninsula kept rising. As President Park had predicted, warmer weather attracted more infiltrators from the north, and communist saboteurs were again active in Seoul. In less than four weeks in June and July, allied forces killed 26 commandos.

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