The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations

The story of the Pueblo incident of 1968 is inherently a distasteful one forintelligence professionals, but the factors which make it unpleasant at thesame time make it imperative reading. The lessons to be leamed from failedoperations in general and this incident in particular are many and should bewidely studied throughout the intelligence community so that we may preventsimilar disasters from occurring in the future.Indeed, as the present monograph makes clear, the components of theintelligence community conducted reviews, postmortems, and "lessons leamed"exercises of many types in the aftermath of the Pueblo incident and madenumerous beneficial changes in the policy and procedure as a result.What we must recognize, however, is that the lessons to be leamed gobeyond the mechanical, i.e., that intelligence officers must remain flexible intheir thinking and skeptical in their approach to any problem. It is arguablethat some of the fundamental problems in the case of the Pueblo were thegreat haste to get the operation under way and an unwillingness to challengepreconceived assumptions about the way operations should be conducted. Thiswas compounded by a failure to communicate fully to all who needed to knowabout the operation - and by a failure to communicate candidly when problemsor doubts appeared.Mr. Robert Newton's monograph, The Capture of the USS Pueblo and ItsEffect on BIGINT Operations, presents a thorough discussion of the incident, including the details of the ship's commissioning, its mission, the capture ofship and crew in waters adjacent to North Korea, official reactions inWashington and overseas, and the release of the crew. Mr. Newton alsodiscusses the reaction of the cryptologic community and assesses carefully theserious damage done to the U.S. SIGINT effort by the North Korean capture ofequipment, publications, and personnel