Pueblo Surrender

I was part of a TOP SECRET Intel team located in the Panama Canal Zone when we intercepted the unique SOS from the Pueblo. At first we thought it was a joke because the signal was coming in so clearly all the way from the coast of Korea(?!); but, once we DF'd this weird UI signal, the bells and whistles exploded in our Ops Center. NSA and NSC directed our station to pipe the SOS directly from our Ops to the War Room at the White House. For almost an hour we got a running account of events before one N. Korean set foot on Pueblo! We knew there were 2 (maybe 3) aircraft carriers within 15 to 30 minute flight times from the Pueblo's position; but, no fly bys, no show of force. One of our Eastern experts said that the reason no rescue attempt was attempted was because LBJ and NSA were making a gift to their Commie buddies as part of some mission we weren't aware of. We hooted at the suggestion; but, this same expert said that the attack against the USS Liberty a year earlier might have been 'practice' for abducting a US Intel ship and making it disappear, COMPLETELY---anyone of us could have been on the Pueblo and a Cold War pawn. (The crap that happened to our Intel pals on the Liberty and the subsequent Congressional cover-up still rankled us; because the Liberty's calls for help were heard by US Intel but no action was taken by LBJ and comrades. More importantly, because The Liberty's calls for help were coded, no news organizations knew anything was happening to the Liberty.) Still, all this kibitzing was going on before one N. Korean boarded the Pueblo! About ten years ago I talked with an Intel type who was in Washington, DC, during the Pueblo abduction and was told that due to the SOS of the Pueblo being in the clear and very slow, most news agencies like UPI, Reuters, AP, etc... were monitoring the Pueblo SOS and were calling the White House before one N. Korean foot hit the Pueblo deck and asking LBJ what the hell he was going to do to rescue the Pueblo! According to this same Intel source: Verification could be found in tapes that you can listen to available at the Johnson Presidential Library and on which you can hear LBJ complaining about the news agencies and their questions. Again, according to my Intel source, these Pueblo tapes can only be listened to at the LBJ Library itself. Looks like our paranoid Eastern Intel expert was correct. Our theory was that since the Pueblo SOS was broadcast to the whole world, the crew's lives were saved. If that Pueblo radio operator had followed normal USN regs, we might still not know what happened to the Pueblo and crew---they'd just be another ship and crew that disappeared into the maw of the ocean.. At least once or twice a year I meet someone from one from one of the aircraft carriers that had planes that could have been there in 10 to 30 minutes. None of them knew anything was going on. In 2001, I met Commander Bucher, shook his hand and gave him my handout regardi