Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (45 page)

Following
the briefing, NSA officials began planning what to do next. Zaslow argued that
they should immediately bring the
Banner
up from Japan to take the
Pueblo's
place, only with a destroyer or two for protection. The operation could be
accomplished within fifty-seven hours, he said. Sigint flights would also be
increased south of the demilitarized zone and unmanned drones would be used
over North Korea. In addition, President Johnson personally approved the use of
the superfast, ultra-high-flying SR-71 reconnaissance plane to overfly North
Korea in an attempt to precisely locate the ship and its crew. Another top
priority was recovering any highly secret material jettisoned from the
Pueblo.

However,
Gene Sheck was totally opposed to now putting the
Banner
in harm's way
after what had happened to the
Pueblo.
"Our reaction was," he
said, "you ought to be careful, Mr. Zaslow, because you know, if they've
done that to the
Pueblo . . .
We would say, 'That's kind of a dumb thing
to do.' . . . and there was a lot of argument in the building whether that made
sense or not." Eventually it was decided to position the
Banner
within
the safety of a naval task force south of the 38th Parallel.

Twenty-five
miles south of NSA, at the White House, President Lyndon Johnson was secretly
planning for war. Within hours of the incident, Secretary of Defense Robert S.
McNamara and his generals were leaning over curled maps, revising America's war
plan for North Korea. At 10:00 A.M. on the day following the attack, McNamara
called a war council to discuss preparations for combat with North Korea. It
was to be an enormously secret deliberation. "No word of the discussion in
the meeting should go beyond this room," everyone was warned. "Our
primary objective is to get the men of the
Pueblo
back," said
McNamara. "Return of the ship is a secondary objective."

There
would be a limited call-up of the reserves. Upwards of 15,000 tons of bombs
were to be diverted to the area from the war in Vietnam. "There are about
4,100 tons of aircraft ordnance in Korea now," said General Earle G.
Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "with about 10,000
more on the way. We need Strike, Bullpup, Walleye, Falcon, Sparrow, and
Sidewinder missiles."

Admiral
Moorer said that he could maintain two aircraft carriers off Korea for about
six weeks without affecting the war in Vietnam. A plan to mine Wonsan harbor
would also be drawn up and nine surveillance/attack submarines would be sent
into the area. "This could be done completely covertly, and within a
week," said Moorer. More naval gunfire support—cruisers and
destroyers—could be brought in. A blockade of selected harbors was also a
possibility, as were "reprisal" actions against North Korean ships on
the high seas.

The Joint
Chiefs recommended moving fifteen B-52 bombers to Okinawa and eleven more to
Guam. "We had F-4s lined up wingtip to wingtip," said General Charles
Bonesteel, in charge of U.S. and UN forces in Korea, "and if the North
Koreans had wished to run the risks and indulge in a five-day war of their own,
they could have really provided Time-Life Incorporated with some ghastly
sights."

Known as
Operation Combat Fox, what followed became the largest strategic airlift in
U.S. Air Force history. More than 8,000 airmen, hundreds of combat-ready
aircraft, and millions of pounds of bombs, rockets, ammo, and supplies were
flown in. Among the options were selective air strikes against North Korea.
"Our first action, should we become involved," said the Air Force
Chief of Staff, "should be to take out the North Korean air
capability."

At the
same time, according to NSA documents obtained for
Body of Secrets,
the
Pentagon began planning still another trumped-up "pretext" war, this
time using the
Banner
to spark a full-scale conflict with Korea.
"They wanted to provoke the North Koreans into doing something so they
could get back at them," said NSA's Sheck. Manned by only a crew of two—a
captain and an engineman—the
Banner
would be sent to the same location
the
Pueblo
was at when it was fired on. Then it would just wait for the
torpedo boats to attack. "They were going to do that with carriers over
the horizon, out of radar range," said Sheck, "and having air cover .
. . out of range. And the minute the ship indicated the North Koreans were
coming after them, they would then [send an alert]. That was the signal to
launch all the fighters."

But, said
Sheck, the logistics and the risk to the American prisoners made the idea
unfeasible. "It took some time to get the carriers over there," he
said. "It took time to get the
Banner
ready for sea, and by then,
the reaction of the United States was, Let's cool it, because we don't want to
lose the eighty guys and all that sort of thing. So they didn't do that."

Another
proposal, said Sheck, came from the four-star admiral in charge of U.S. forces
in the Pacific. "CINCPAC [Commander-in-Chief, Pacific] wanted to go in and
tie a lasso on it and pull it out of Wonsan harbor. Literally! He said he'd
propose a message that said, 'I will send a fleet of destroyers in with
appropriate air cover. I will tie a rope on the goddamn tub and I'll pull it
back out.' But some cooler heads at the Pentagon said, 'No, forget that.'
"

On January
26, three days after the
Pueblo's
capture, an aircraft as black as a
moonless night slowly emerged from its steel hangar at Kadena Air Base on
Okinawa. With stiletto-sharp edges, windscreens like menacing eyes, a skin of
rare titanium, and engines pointed like shotgun barrels, the CIA's secret A-12
was at once threatening and otherworldly. Beneath the cockpit canopy, dressed
in moon boots and space helmet, Frank Murray pushed forward the throttles to
the mid-afterburner position. Fuel shot into the engines at the rate of 80,000
pounds per hour and fireballs exploded from the rear of the shotgun barrels. In
the distance, a flock of birds flapped for safety. Looking at his control
panel, Murray saw that he had reached decision speed and all was go. Ten
seconds later he pulled gently back on the stick and the A-12's long nose rose
ten degrees above the horizon. Murray was on his way to find the
Pueblo.

By January
1968, CIA pilot Frank Murray was a veteran of numerous overflights of North
Vietnam. But following the capture of the
Pueblo,
he was ordered to make
the first A-12 overflight of North Korea. An attempt had been made the day
before but a malfunction on the aircraft had forced him to abort shortly after
takeoff. Following takeoff on January 25, Murray air-refueled over the Sea of
Japan and then pointed the plane's sharp titanium nose at the North Korean
coast.

"My
first pass started off near Vladivostok," he recalled. "Then with the
camera on I flew down the east coast of North Korea where we thought the boat
was. As I approached Wonsan I could see the
Pueblo
through my view
sight. The harbor was all iced up except at the very entrance and there she
was, sitting off to the right of the main entrance. I continued to the border
with South Korea, completed a 180-degree turn, and flew back over North Korea.
I made four passes, photographing the whole of North Korea from the DMZ to the
Yalu border. As far as I knew, I was undetected throughout the flight."
(Actually, NSA Sigint reports indicated that Chinese radar did detect the A-12
and passed the intelligence to North Korea. No action was taken, no doubt
because of the plane's speed, over Mach 3, and its altitude, 80,000 feet.)
[2]

Murray's
film was quickly flown to Yokota Air Base in Japan, where analysts determined
that North Korea was not building up its forces for any further attacks.

Shortly
after the January 26 A-12 mission, another set of spies made preparations for
the waters off North Korea. They would travel via the opposite route: under the
sea. Navy Chief Warrant Officer Harry O. Rakfeldt, a career cryptologic
officer, and three other Sigint technicians based at Kamiseya were ordered to
report to the USS
Volador,
a diesel-powered attack submarine then docked
at Yokosuka. "Our mission was to support the captain with special
intelligence received from Kamiseya," said Rakfeldt, "and
intelligence we might obtain on our own." The sub was part of the Navy's
buildup in the days following the attack, to put subs in place to locate Soviet
submarines should war begin with North Korea.

On January
31, the
Volador’s
loud Klaxon sounded twice, the hatch was slammed shut,
and the sub slipped beneath the waves to periscope depth. Sailing north, the
Volador
quietly crept into the crowded Tsugaru Strait separating the main island of
Honshu from the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, and entered the Sea of
Japan during daylight. "We entered the Sea of Japan covertly," said
Rakfeldt, "the first challenge. A current runs from the Sea of Japan to
the Pacific Ocean and there is a lot of surface traffic in the strait."

The
Volador’s
operational area consisted of a 10,800-square-mile stretch of water in the
middle of the Sea of Japan; for a while, it seemed the mission would be fairly
routine. Its first priority was to locate the Russian subs before being
discovered itself. Every night the
Volador
had to come up to periscope
depth and raise its hydraulic breathing tubes, like chimney tops, above the
surface of the sea. That evening, the sub discovered company nearby.

Sitting in
front of a round green screen, the sonarman watched the deep sea as a plane's
navigator scanned the sky. Gradually he began noticing a pinging in his
earphones, coming from the
Volador's
passive sonar. It was a Soviet sub
that had surfaced. Despite the darkness, the
Volador's
captain decided
to maneuver close enough to be able to read the hull number and identify the
sub. Closer and closer he edged the
Volador,
quietly heading directly
toward the Russian boat, broadside. "Damn it, it's turning on us,"
the captain shouted as the Soviets suddenly embarked on a collision course.
"Dive!" The hatch to the conn was quickly closed, sealing Rakfeldt
and other officers off from the rest of the boat. They avoided a crash by
diving under the Russian sub. "It was a close one," said Rakfeldt.
"We did it without being detected."

Later, as
the
Volador
was snorkeling, the tables were turned. "We were found
by a Soviet sub," said Rakfeldt. Once again the sonarman heard the
distinctive metallic pinging of a Russian boat. The captain began maneuvers to
determine if the
Volador 
had
been detected. "It was
confirmed that the sub was tracking us," said Rakfeldt. "What evolved
was a hide-and-seek operation." To keep as quiet and invisible as
possible, all operations were kept to a minimum and the snorkel was retracted.
"It took many hours but it worked, as the Soviet sub was finally detected
snorkeling," Rakfeldt recalled. "We then became the hunter and
maintained covert contact on the sub for a period before it moved out of our
area of operations."

But now
another problem developed. After the long period of deliberate inactivity, one
of the diesel engines refused to start because the oil had become too cold.
Finally, after hours of work, the chief in the engine room jury-rigged a
temporary pipe system connecting the oil supplies for the two engines. "It
wasn't pretty," said Rakfeldt. "The temporary piping was suspended
overhead." By circulating the cold oil from the dead engine into the
working engine, the chief was able to warm it up enough to restart the dead
engine, and the crew sailed back to Yokohama without further incident.

Following
a bus and train ride to Pyongyang, Bucher and his crew were locked in a worn
brick building known as the "barn." Dark and foreboding, it had
hundred-foot-long corridors; bare bulbs hung from the ceilings. From the moment
they arrived, they were regularly beaten, tortured, and threatened with death
if they did not confess their espionage.

To Pyongyang we were taken,

All comforts forsaken,

When into the "barn " we
were led.

All set for the winter,

Cords of bread you could splinter,

A rat ate my turnips, now he's
dead.

. . . .

"What's your status?! Your
function?!

Could it be in conjunction

With spying on our sovereign
territory?!"

Said the captain, "Goddamn!
I'm a peace-loving

man, Same as you and your crummy
authorities!"

In the
meantime, the KPA removed the papers and equipment from the
Pueblo,
and
the highly secret information was shared with the Russians. Major General Oleg
Kalugin was deputy chief of the KGB station at the Soviet embassy in
Washington. "The KGB did not plan to capture the
Pueblo,"
he
said. "The KGB was not aware of the
Pueblo's
capture until the
Koreans informed the Soviets. So the Soviets were taken unaware. But they were
very interested because they knew that it was a spy ship. And in fact, the
Koreans managed to capture a lot of classified material aboard the ship. They
also picked up the code machines. They picked up the keylists. . . . And this,
of course, for the Soviets, had very great operational importance."