| On
January 23, 1968, North Korean
gunboats surrounded the USS Pueblo in the Sea of Japan, setting off an
international incident that threatened to destabilize the entire
region.
The slow, lightly armed spy ship came under a withering cannon barrage
that killed one and wounded ten, including the captain. At the end of
the
day, the Pueblo surrendered all her sensitive spying instruments and
classified
documents without firing a shot, in what may have been one of the
greatest
intelligence disasters of the last half of the twentieth
century.
In
A
Matter of Accountability,
author Trevor Armbrister has re-created the amazing events that
culminated
in the first surrender of a U.S. Navy ship since the War of 1812, from
the ship itself -- a nearly-defenseless former coastal freighter that
frequently
had to be hand-steered -- to the unheeded warnings from North Korea
about
U.S. spy ships, to the lack of air support when the ship came under
fire.
Eleven months later, the North Koreans released the tortured crew after
they had signed confessions. Some were nearly blind from starvation.
The
United States immediately revoked a grudging apology, and started an
investigation
into what had happened.
An
initial court of inquiry recommended
that the captain be tried in a court martial, but the Secretary of the
Navy declined, perhaps fearing what author Trevor Armbrister details in
A Matter of Accountability. With over
three
hundred interviews,
starting with the skipper, Commander Lloyd M. (Pete) Bucher, to
then-Secretary
of Defense Clark Clifford, Armbrister painstakingly reveals every
aspect
of the appalling behind-the-scenes blunders that made the Pueblo a
doomed
ship from the very beginning. A Matter of Accountability
is a must-read
for anyone who has enjoyed Tom Clancy's high-stakes naval thrillers.
|
A Matter of Accountability
The
True Story of
the Pueblo Affair
by
Trevor Armbrister
The
Lyons Press, 2004.
Order
a copy.
|
