USS Pueblo Incident

January 5, 1968. USS Pueblo leaves the US Navy base in Yokosuka, Japan. Its destiny is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly known as North Korea. USS Pueblo, designated AGER-2 (Auxiliary General Environmental Research), is a so-called technical research ship for oceanographic survey.

USS Pueblo AGER-2 in 1967 (source: US Navy)

In reality, the vessel is stuffed with SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) and ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) equipment. Its real mission is a joint Navy/NSA spy program to eavesdrop on North Korean and Soviet communications.

The Secret Mission Detected

January 20. USS Pueblo is observed a first time by a North Korean submarine chaser at 16 miles from the North Korean coast. Two days later, two fishing trawlers pass by at very close distance of USS Pueblo. The visitor is sighted and events start to enroll. The next day, January 23, USS Pueblo is approached by a DPRK sub chaser and, according to the US Navy, is challenged to show her nationality. After raising the U.S. flag, USS Pueblo is ordered to stand down or be fired upon.

According to the North Koreans, USS Pueblo is well inside their territorial waters. The U.S. version of the incident locates the spy ship far outside North Korean territory, but the North Koreans claim 50 nautical miles territorial waters, where international standards are 12 nautical miles. Whatever its position, USS Pueblo is in serious trouble. She desperately attempts to maneuver away from the much faster DPRK sub chaser, which is joined shortly after by four torpedo boats and another sub chaser. Two MIG-21 fighter jets fly over.

Damage Contol and Capture

For more than two hours, the DPRK vessels attempt to board USS Pueblo and repeatedly order the vessel to halt or be fired upon. The spy ship constantly manoeuvres to avoid the boarding but the cat and mouse game ends when one sub chaser opens fire with its 57 mm cannon on Pueblo's deck, wounding several crew members. USS Pueblo also receives machine gun fire from other DPRK vessels. Not equipped to respond to a serious threat (only .50 caliber machine guns are aboard, but covered to avoid suspicion and thus unmanned) USS Pueblo has no other option than to comply.

During the incident, USS Pueblo has continuous radio contact with the U.S. Naval Security Group in Japan, but air support is not be available on time. Meanwhile, below deck, intelligence personnel start destroying all sensitive documents and equipment. Normally, such spy ship, operating alone and close to enemy waters without protection, should carry only the absolute minimum of sensitive material. USS Pueblo, however, is loaded with documents and equipment. After an hour of emergency destruction, only a small percentage of the classified material aboard the ship is destroyed. An intelligence disaster is inevitable.

USS Pueblo is forced to follow the DPRK vessels but is fired upon again when she stops just outside North Korean territorial waters, killing one crew member and wounding several others. North Korean personnel now boards the vessel and takes over control. USS Pueblo is taken to Wonsan Naval Base, in southeastern North Korea. The Pueblo crew is moved to prisoner of war camps where, according to the crew, they are starved and regularly tortured while in North Korean custody.

SIGINT Fallout and Release of Crew

The capture of USS Pueblo was an intelligence nightmare. North Korea and its ally, the Soviets, seized large volumes of sensitive documents and cryptographic equipment, causing shock waves throughout the naval security and intelligence community.

Eleven months later, and only after a written apology and admission by the U.S. that USS Pueblo had been spying, its crew was released. On December 23, 1968, the 82 crew members crossed the DMZ border with South Korea (after the release, the U.S. immediately verbally retracted the ransom admission). The story however did not end with the release of the prisoners.

The captured USS Pueblo today in Pyongyang on the Botong river (source: laika ac)

Since then, USS Pueblo remained in the custody of North Korea. In 1999, the vessel moved from Wonsan to the North Korean capital Pyongyang, where it is now a primary tourist attraction on the Botong river, alongside the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum. USS Pueblo AGER-2 is the only American naval vessel held in captivity in the world.

More information on USS Pueblo and its history is found on the beautiful USS Pueblo website (archived) and on the Naval History and Heritage Command. Many pictures from a visit to Pyongyang are available on Brian McMorrow's USS Pueblo photo gallery. The Wilson Center published A Reckless Act: The 1968 Pueblo Crisis and North Korea’s Relations with the Third World.

The Damage Documented

The USS Pueblo incident was one of the most catastrophic events to have damaged the codebreaking efforts of the National Security Agency (NSA). They released several historical papers on USS Pueblo, including the Cryptographic Damage Assessment. Robert Newton's paper on USS Pueblo is also available on their website.

The National Security Archive's The Secret Sentry Declassified published two documents related to the incident: The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations (pdf-document 3) and some of the captured documents, from a North Korean expose on the ship’s mission (pdf-document 24).

 

KW-7 teletype encryption
(source: Jerry Proc)

The TSEC/KW-7 and the KL-47 (Navy version KL-7) were two of the crypto systems, compromised in the incident. Until today, the question remains whether the capture of USS Pueblo was a coincidence or that is was triggered by naval communications specialist John Walker and his spy ring. It is questionable whether the SIGINT and crypto equipment was indeed a planned target, since the North Koreans took that long before boarding the vessel, giving the crew the chance to destroy documents and equipment. More on the ship's electronics at Jerry Proc's USS Pueblo page.

USS Pueblo, John Walker and KGB (pdf) by Robert Derenčin is a detailed overview of Walker's spying and the damage he caused. See also the interview with KGB General Boris Solomatin.  

A Risky Job

 

Such SIGINT and ELINT missions have always been hazardous, even in peacetime. The Cold War was all but cold for the many intelligence technicians, sailors and pilots who lost their lives while collecting intelligence.

During an Israeli raid on USS Liberty AGTR-5, 34 crew were killed and and 173 wounded. Many SIGINT airplanes also got their share in the losses. The EC-121 #135749 (VQ-1) shootdown over the Sea of Japan in 1969 (all 31 killed) and the C-130A-II #60528 shootdown over Armenia in 1958 (all 17 killed) are only two of more than 40 reconnaissance aircraft that were shot down. NSA's National Vigilance Park has published a paper called A Dangerous Business: The U.S. Navy and National Reconnaissance During the Cold War.

Lambros Callimahos and the Dundee Jar

Lambros Callimahos

There's a curious story at NSA about a marmalade jar that became a symbol of cryptanalytic skills within the National Security Agency. It all began in the late 1950's, when Lambros Callimahos created the Intensive Study Program in General Cryptanalysis (ISPGC), also known as the CA-400 course.

It was the first extensive high-level course for experienced and senior cryptanalysts. Callimahos based his course on William Friedman's manual on Military Cryptanalysis. He revised and expanded Friedman's work into the new training manuals Military Cryptanalytics I and II and molded it into an extremely demanding course, unequaled in wide range of subjects and in dept.

The students rushed trough the Military Cryptanalytics manuals to continue with exercises in cryptanalysis of codes, ciphers, cipher machines and traffic analysis. While solving their crypto problems, they were assisted by aids who helped them to speed up their paper work. By doing so, Callimahos managed to reduce a most complex course from 12 to 4 month. Clearly not a course for wannabees that were still wet in the pants!

He composed many new examples and problems that the students had to solve. At the end of each course, the students had to solve the notorious Zendian Problem. The students received 375 encrypted military messages, intercepted from the fictional third world country Zendia. The messages were encrypted with various manual systems and cipher machines. Within two weeks, they had to break all exploitable message. It was the perfect opportunity to merge all their skills into one single fictional yet most difficult codebreaking operation. The exercise prepared them perfectly to tackle the real stuff.

NSA's famous Dundee jar

The course was also the start of a tradition of gatherings for the graduates at a local restaurant. While making the reservation for a diner, Callimahos faced the problem that he could not disclose the real - secret - purpose of the group.

He quickly devised the name Dundee Society by looking at a marmalade jar that served as a pencil holder at the CA-400 course. The Dundee Society was born! Since then, every graduate received a Dundee jar, which became a symbol of a truly extraordinary course for elite cryptanalysts. In 1977, Lambros Callimahos passed away much too soon, at the age of 66.

You can read the story of the Callimahos course (pdf) on the NSA website. More on the Cryptologic Almanac, as part 1 and part 2. In 2003, Callimahos was inducted in the NSA's Hall of Honor. William Friedman's Military Cryptanalysis is also available at the NSA website.

If the Zendian Problem is beyond your cryptanalytic skills, you can always participate in the challenges on our website. Those are quite accessible for those without codebreaking experience. More info in the blog post 20 Years Cryptologic Challenges.

KGB Operations in the U.S.

The Soviet Committee for State Security KGB (Комитет Государственной Безопасности) ran numerous intelligence operations in foreign countries during the 20th century. Its First Chief Directorate PGU (Первое Главное Управление), responsible for foreign intelligence and espionage, stationed many agents, often under diplomatic cover, in embassies and trade mission all over the world, and also used illegal agents under false identities. The PGU's main target was of course the United States.

In 1991, the KGB was dissolved and divided into several different organisations. The most important parts are now know as the Russian Federal Security Service FSB (Федеральная служба безопасности), the Foreign Intelligence Service SVR (Служба Внешней Разведки) and the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information FAPSI (Федеральное Агентство Правительственной Связи и Информации). Despite the reorganisation and new names, they still can't leave their old habits, as you can read in my post on the large SVR spy ring in the U.S.

There's an interesting old 130 minutes documentary about KGB operations in the United States in the 20th century on Youtube. You can view the complete 1981 documentary (in black & White) here, or watch five separate parts (in color) via the links below the video.

The KGB Connections (original film)

See KGB Connections Part 1 & 2 also in color.

1983 - The Brink Of Apocalypse

Soviet RSD-10 Pioneer (SS-20)
 with three 150 kt MIRV warheads

One of the most frightening episodes of the Cold War took place in November 1983. It was probably the closest we ever got to a full blown nuclear war between the Unites States and the Soviet Union, even closer than during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. And it all happened in total secrecy.

In 1983, tensions between Washington and Moscow rose to a dangerous level. The Soviet Union, who had always trailed the United States in the field of technology, finally closed the gap in military power by an immense increase of their nuclear arsenal to more than 11,000 warheads. Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, convinced that the U.S. would attack the USSR sooner or later, was determined to get a strategic advantage. He also initiated operation RYAN (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie or Nuclear Missile Attack), a worldwide hunt for information that would indicate an imminent first strike by the United States.

Tension Builds Up
 

U.S. President Ronald Reagan on the other hand wanted to regain superiority by taking a technological lead. The U.S. also tried to provoke enormous defense expenditures by the USSR to bring them on the verge of bankruptcy. In March 1983, Reagan presented his Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI, also referred to as the Star Wars program. Once developed and in place, SDI would neutralize any Soviet missile that was launched towards the United States. This would render the Soviet strategic arsenal ineffective.

Reagan also decided to deploy Pershing II nuclear missiles across Europe, at the doorstep of the USSR. It was a game of poker with high stakes and it caused a very rapid deterioration of relations between the two powers. In a provocative speech, Reagan called the USSR an Evil Empire.

Two events were the catalyst of a catastrophic chain of events. The first one occurred on September 1, when Korean Air Lines flight 007 deviated from its assigned route when its autopilot system operated in the wrong mode and KAL 007 accidentally strayed without permission into Soviet airspace.

Click to visit TIME 1983

Soviet Command, convinced that the Boeing 747 was a spy plane, sent four Sukoi and MiG interceptors. Indeed, USSR air space was frequently violated by USAF airplanes, gathering technical intelligence, and the airliner flew over Soviet military installations in the Kuril Islands. The SU-15's were ordered to shoot down the plane. All 269 civilian passengers and crew aboard were killed. The Western world was outraged and condemned the Soviets.

The second event occurred on the night of September 26. Inside a bunker of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces near Moscow, Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov resumed his night shift. His bunker was part of an early warning system with satellites, to detect incoming U.S. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Suddenly, their computers detected a missile launch and minutes later gave a missile attack alarm.

Eventually, the system reported five missiles. Indoctrinated that any U.S. nuclear strike would be massive, Petrov distrusted the computer reports and ignored the alarm. He could not believe that they would only launch five missiles. He was right and it proved to be a life saving decision. The event was kept secret but the flawed early warning system showed the vulnerability of the Soviets and made them even more nervous.

Tickling the Soviet Nerves

The seeds for a dangerous chain of events were sown. Then, on November 2, NATO started a large command post exercise, codenamed Able Archer. The exercise was a simulation of a conflict that culminated in a nuclear war.

There were no real troop movements involved. It was a communications only exercise with signals troops across Western Europe, sending coded messages, and lead from a NATO nuclear bunker in Belgium. The scenario included a gradually escalating situation, with communications between heads of states, periods of total radio silence and eventually a DEFCON 1 alert, indicating an imminent nuclear attack.

Russian forces intercepted the communications and were puzzled. Their traffic analysis told them there was a huge event going on. NATO used the words Exercise Exercise Exercise on each of their messages. However, after the events one month earlier, the Soviets were convinced that any attack by NATO would start under disguise of an exercise.

The encrypted communications and unexplained radio blackouts (simply pauses in the war game) added to the paranoia of the Russians. Moreover, Soviet intelligence officers abroad were expected to report signs of an imminent attack. Reports that stated otherwise were unacceptable for the KGB leaders and the Kremlin. Therefore, the agents, in good KGB bureaucratic tradition, reported non-existing signs.

By November 7, according to the exercise scenario, NATO forces failed to counter a chemical attack and preparations were made to initiate a large nuclear strike. Alarmed by the increased coded communications between NATO countries, the U.K. and the United States, the Soviet Army and Air force initiated a massive war-time deployment of troops in Eastern Europe and their nuclear arsenal was prepared for launch, thumbs ready on the buttons! Their Northern Fleet steamed to the Baltic and nuclear missile submarines disappeared under the sea surface.

Radio Silence, Red Flags and Common Sense

On the eve of November 8, NATO command decided to start the nuclear attack. They pushed the big red button, exercise Able Archer was finished and everyone went home. Total silence in the aether. Little were they aware that Soviet command expected the attack to come on a holiday, when the Russians were off-guard, and November 7 was Revolution Day in Russia. When Able Archer ended, all went deadly quiet and the Soviets were ready to counter the attack or initiate a pre-emptive attack. Fortunately, they kept their nerves together, waited and... nothing happened.

When President Reagan was informed by intelligence and spies about how scared the Soviets really were, and how U.S. intelligence failed to notice how close they were to a nuclear war, he was shocked and decided to drastically change the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Reagan soon started talks with the new Soviet leader, Michail Gorbatsjov. It was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Being stationed in West Germany, from early 1983 on for many years, I'm glad that lessons were learned from that frightening event. It could have been my and everyone else's last year.

Reykjavík Summit with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
The talks were the run-up to the INF and START treaties.

Learning from the Past

There is an excellent paper by Nathan Bennett Jones about Operation RYAN and Able Archer (pdf) and the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence published a piece on the 1983 Soviet War Scare. Paul Dibb from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote a special report on the 1983 nuclear war scare. The National Archive's Able Archer Sourcebook provides many declassified documents. If you're into reading, I can recommend General John Hackett's 1979 book The Third World War, August 1985 (see Amazon) about how a war in Europe would look like if they bring tactical nukes on the war theatre. It's a fictionalized but very accurate scenario.

A Cold Cold Year

1983 was a pretty eventful year, with Secretary Yuri Andropov inviting Samantha Reed Smith to visit the USSR in July, after she wrote him a letter. In August, NSA evacuated eleven tons of equipment in total secrecy from the U.S embassy in Moscow. The operation called the GUNMAN Project came after receiving intel about sophisticate bugs in embassy equipment. In September the mistakenly shootdown of KAL 007 and the Soviet early warning system for missiles going haywire, almost causing an all-out nuclear war. To top the year off, ABC aired in November the movie The Day After that gave an idea of how a nuclear war would look like, the movie that scared Ronald Reagan like hell.

COLD WAR CONVERSATIONS - The shooting down of KAL007, the Able Archer exercise and the nuclear war scare of 1983 is a fascinating interview with Brian Morra who served as Chief of Intelligence Analysis for US Forces Japan at Yakota airbase when KAL007 was shot down. He describes incidents between Soviet and US military aircraft after the shootdown, which almost caused a direct conflict. He wrote the fictional book The Able Archers, partly based on his personal experience of the incident and its aftermath.

The Able Archer 1983 The Brink of Apocalypse documentary explains exercise Able Archer, the Soviet reaction to it and how close we were to nuclear war.

Able Archer 1983 The Brink of Apocalypse

 
Watch also Nate Jones' Able Archer 83: The Secret History for the U.S. National Archives.

 

Related Posts on This Blog

•  3 Seconds from World War 3 The story of a Soviet satellite that mistakenly triggered a missile warning.
• Russia’s Modern Early Warning Systems Old and new early waring satellites and radar.
  
• Mysterious Cold War Signals Detailed description of the Duga phased array over-the-horizon radar.
• Dead Hand Revealed How the Soviets could still execute a retaliatory nuclear strike, even if a U.S. strike was detected too late.
• US Strategic Intelligence on the USSR and miscalculation of Soviet aggressiveness during the Cold War.

U.S. Spy Ring betrayed by Defecting SVR Colonel

The sensational case of the ten illegal Russian agents (see previous blogs) gets yet another intriguing twist. Investigative journalists of the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported yesterday that SVR (Russian Foreign Intelligence) Colonel Aleksandr Vasilyevich Shcherbakov blew the cover of the spy ring, before defecting to the United States. It is questioned whether Shcherbakov actually betrayed the spy ring, and his name might possibly leaked on purpose by Russian Intelligence.

Meanwhile, Russia's Intelligence Services remain silent and the U.S. State Department has no comment. The Kommersant source said "We know who he is and how he did it. Money was his only incentive. Make no mistake, we already send a Mercader after him." (Ramon Mercader was the KGB assassin who killed Leon Trotski). According to a Kremlin source, his fate is unenviable and he will live in fear for the rest of his life. More about Shcherbakov on the Russian Коммерсантъ news paper (translation).

Update November 19, 2010: Russian intelligence sources told the Interfax newspaper that Colonel Alexander Poteyev was the double agent who betrayed the spy ring. Poteyev reportedly served in Department 4, running illegals in the United States for SVR Directorat S. He is a former KGB ‘Zenith’ Special Forces member who served in Afghanistan. In the 1990s, Poteyev was operating undercover in the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York, where he was recruited by the CIA in return for a financial settlement.

See the report in Интерфаксе (translation). A report on the secret trial that awaits traitor Poteyev is published on Sovinformburo (translation). Note: U.S. sources later said he was recruited by the FBI just before his return to Moscow.

Alexander Poteyev

Update 2016-2018: In 2016, Interfax announced the death of Alexander Poteyev, as reported in MKRU (translation) but they believe his death was staged to protect him. In 2018, BBC and Buzzfeed reported that Poteyev was alive. This was also published on Russian 5 TV (translation).

Officially, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies busted the spy ring after a many years investigation. As it turns out now, Colonel Poteyev, who worked at the Illegals department, betrayed SVR Mikhail Vasenkov (A.K.A. Juan Lazaro), one of the illegal agents in the U.S. spy ring. This started the avalanche of arrests, leading to the expulsion of the ten illegal agents, the biggest spy scandal since the end of the Cold War.

Mikhail Vasenkov
a.k.a. Juan Lazaro

Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov started his intelligence career in the 1960's when the KGB's First Chief Directorate PGU (Foreign Intelligence) sent him to Spain. In the 1970's, during a tour in South-America, he obtained Peruvian citizenship as Juan Lazaro, by using a Uruguayan birth certificate of a 1947 deceased boy.

 

In the 1980's, he married the Peruvian journalist Vicky Pealez (one of the also expelled spy ring members) and moved to the United States. This was the start of an impressive deep cover carrier.

Vasenkov assimilated perfectly. He earned a degree in political science and he cultivated highly placed friends among left wing Democrats. He apparently provided the Soviet Union with invaluable information. In 1990, Colonel Vasenkov received the Hero of the Soviet Union distinction, the highest possible Soviet award. Update 2022: Mikhail Vasenkov deceased on April 6, 2022.

Update 2020, in a rare move, the SVR published on January 27, 2020 the names of seven distinguish illegals, among them Mikhail Vasenkov, on Russia's news agency RIA Novosti (translation). In that announcement, the SVR also acknowledged that Vasenkov was betrayed by Poteyev.

After Poteyev's tip-off, Vasenkov was arrested but insisted during the interrogations that his arrest was a mistake. His cover was so perfect that U.S. intelligence had no evidence against this respected 65 year old family man. Many influential American friends and relatives, who had no idea of the truth, backed up his fake identity. He kept denying until Poteyev provided a folder with documents that identified Lazaro as SVR operative Mikhail Vasenkov. According to Gennady Gudkov, member of the Committee on National Security, "there is indirect evidence that Poteyev was recruited by the Americans several years ago and, thus, he was able to prepare his escape, taking files of our agents and even information he might have obtained from other departments".

It is now clear that both Russia and the United States downplayed the espionage case and resolved it with a swift spy exchange to preserve the reset in relations between the two countries. An unprecedented investigation is now initiated by Russia's law enforcement, including Russia's Federal Intelligence Agency FSB, to find out why Poteyev betrayed the 10 agents and how Russia's intelligence failed to notice the betrayal and could not prevent his defection. Especially the fact that he betrayed a highly respected deep cover agent fell very bad within the intelligence services.

The SVR had no idea and never suspected Colonel Poteyev, not even after he refused a promotion to an even more sensitive post, possibly to evade the required thorough background check a lie detector test. This occured one year before the fall of the spy ring. Poteyev's daughter already lived in the United States and his son, an officer in the federal drug enforcement service Gosnarkokontrol, left Russia for the United States shortly before the spy ring was uncovered. No one within the SVR questioned his behaviour. Poteyev fled to the United States only three days before President Medvedev's visit to the United States. The FBI arrested the illegals soon after Medvedev's return to Moscow.

This again puts the pressure on Mikhail Fradkov, head of the SVR. The embarrassing case fuels the criticism on the segregation of the SVR after the radical reform of the intelligence services in 1991, and supports the proponents of reorganising the SVR back under control of one large intelligence agency, just as the First Chief Directorate was a part of the KGB during the Soviet era.

Meanwhile, Russian President Medvedev said that there was nothing new to the case and that he knew the details about the betrayal from the very start. Indeed, last July, Prime Minister Putin stated during an interview that it was a sell-out and they knew the traitors by name. The ten spies had a tough job and their arrests were not caused by their own mistakes. According to Medvedev's press secretary, the SVR agents received state awards during a Kremlin ceremony last month. As I predicted in my July blog... again, case all but closed.

More details about the spy ring on my blogs Large SVR Spy Ring Arrested in the U.S. and U.S. - Russian Spy Exchange.

Update November 3, 2011: The FBI release a large number of documents, photos and videos from operation Ghost stories, the investigation and arrests of the ten illegal SVR agents. All information is released through the FBI records webpage The Vault.

More news from Moscow on this case below and at Russia Today. As an end note, a more than entertaining view on the 'Mercader' treatment by Bazzel Baz on MNSBC

Biggest Intelligence Fail Ever? Spy traitor 'Wanted'

 
 

The attempted assassination of a Russian spy defector 

 

Overview of this Spy Case

• Large SVR Spy Ring Arrested in the U.S. 
• U.S. Russian Spy Exchange
• Spy Ring Betrayed by SVR Colonel
• FBI releases 2010 SVR Spy Ring information