USS Pueblo: LBJ Considered Nuclear Weapons, Naval Blockade, Ground Attacks in Response to 1968 North Korean Seizure of Navy Vessel Documents Show
Forty-six years ago today - well before Edward Snowden was born - the National Security Agency suffered what may still rank as the most significant compromise ever of its code secrets when the American spy ship USS Pueblo was captured by communist forces off the coast of North Korea on January 23, 1968. The U.S. Navy signals intelligence ship was on a mission to intercept radio and electronic transmissions, and apparently sailing in international waters, when North Korean naval units opened fire, then boarded the vessel and took its crew hostage for almost a year, sparking a major international crisis.
Beyond the dramatic political ramifications of the seizure and hostage-taking for the Lyndon Johnson administration and U.S. world standing, the incident resulted in the capture of a dozen top secret encryption devices, maintenance manuals, and other code materials. Because it involved actual encryption equipment rather than just papers and briefing materials, the Pueblo affair may have produced a much greater loss than the recent disclosures of former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden.
Recently declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive describe tense U.S. internal reactions to the Pueblo seizure, and include previously withheld high-level political and military deliberations over how to respond to the episode in an atmosphere fraught with the dangers of a superpower conflict. Military contingency plans, which President Lyndon Johnson eventually rejected, included a naval blockade, major air strikes and even use of nuclear weapons against North Korea.
Among the main disclosures in these documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research, are the following....
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB453/
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I remember that from way back then!
Captured USS Pueblo crew members display their middle fingers in an official DPRK photo. The "Hawaiian Good Luck sign" became a routine gesture of defiance whenever they were photographed. (Photo courtesy USSPueblo.org)