Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 45 - The USS Pueblo Incident

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

Joe is joined by Justin Rose to talk about the USS Pueblo Incident. An American spy ship is Captured by North Korea and we do our best not to make any really easy Navy jokes. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy some merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow the show @lions_by sources: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/23/580076540/looking-at-the-saga-of-the-uss-pueblo-50-years-later https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/23/beaten-every-day-north-korea-tortured-uss-pueblo-crew-members-gathering-damaging-intel/ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-uss-pueblo-pyongyang-north-korea

The Pentagon says that today's call-up is a precautionary measure to strengthen our forces. The 14,000-odd reservists is only a drop in the bucket compared to the pool of reservists that could be activated. But with the military beef-up, the agonizing search for a diplomatic solution to the crisis continues, as Frank Reynolds has noted. But if that diplomacy fails, what would our options be? What military action is being considered? ABC's Bill Downs reports. If it's left up to the military to force release of the USS Pueblo and her crew, the options are few and highly dangerous. The Pueblo probably is in this dock area of Wonsan,

a port said to be defended with 16-inch guns. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the lions led by donkeys podcasts i am joe and with me today is justin rose from the everything is awful podcast and we don't talk about that anymore and uh various uh you do a hockey blog now don't you yeah i uh am the editor-in-chief of Beer League Talk, which is a podcast and a website with writing geared towards your typical beer league hockey player. I'm a beer league all-star on the show today. And sitting across from me, I have a cardboard stand-in of Superman, which I found in my garage. So that's nice.

I'm not alone in the office anymore. which I found in my garage. So that's nice. I'm not alone in the office anymore. Also, you were in the Marines back in the day. And that was, so that makes you the closest thing this show has to a naval expert, which is why you're on the show today. I feel suddenly very attacked.

If you couldn't tell from the title of this episode, we were talking about the uss pueblo incident um and so that for people who are not aware the uss pueblo is the only american ship still currently on the commission roster as an active ship and is currently held by an enemy nation the nation is north korea uh and how it got there is and the story of its crew is just fucking wild um now while you're a marine were you ever like on a ship i know it's not something that everybody has to suffer through but uh no because i was the worst of the worst marines i was actually a marine reservist uh so

i've never been afloat it sounds like you did the right thing oh yeah no i think if i was an active duty marine i'd either be dead or a meth addict by now so yeah uh good things all around it's smoking fat bowls of crayons um you know how familiar i mean i think some people are kind of familiar with the pueblo but were you at all familiar with the story before i sold it into your dms uh actually no i had not heard about it at all um and when you originally sent it to me i'm like i don't give a shit about mexican history uh but apparently uh it's an american ship which donald trump would hate um but no so yeah i had no actual insight into this story it's actually kind of

interesting that we don't hear more about like getting the pueblo back with all these talks that we're having because like it's come up before in the past like uh they would give the pueblo back with all these talks that we're having because like it's come up before in the past like uh that they would give the pueblo back and i don't even know if it even could still sail anywhere but it's interesting and nobody ever talks about it anymore but and the north koreans like to bring it up but um yeah fuck this yeah north korea not the best korea it turns out um so to get to get the point, we kind of have to explain what the Pueblo is, and it was not a warship. Or at least not as much as a warship as is possible while still being a ship in the U.S. Navy. It was known as a Banner-class environmental research ship, which were little more than retrofitted cargo ships. These things weren't exactly going to go out and fight wars.

Now, as a few listeners probably already know, these ships or the entire Banner class actually was a lie. They were actually spy ships created by the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency or the NSA. They were named environmental Research Ships on paper because, you know, you just don't put fucking spy ship really big on paperwork.

Defeats the purpose. Yeah. But the thing is, like, the Soviets, who these ships were normally the target of, totally knew what they were, which is kind of apparently the thing of Cold War spying. Like, everybody knew what everybody was doing most of the time, but they just let it slide um but because this is the cold war um like i said it's kind of an open secret everybody knew what these environmental research ships were um so eventually

the pueblo was strapped on this as much spy equipment uh as that could hold and station in japan and this is uh and obviously a high target for spying and intelligence gathering. The Soviet Union maintained a fleet nearby. And North Korea was so close, they were literally kidnapping Japanese people from beaches from time to time. Have you ever heard of that before? I think I have. But I also think a lot of things that I think I know that I didn't actually know. So, yes. think i have but i also think a lot of things that i think i know that i didn't actually know so uh

yes so it is kind of wild like back in the day uh normally like the 60s 70s um north korean like commandos would just come up come up like a float on japanese beaches and just snatch random people and bring them back to north korea and like their whole plan was to use these poor kidnapped terrified japanese civilians to like teach their spies how to be like totally for real Japanese. So they could like insert spies in Japan. Um, but I think the rant,

like your everyday North Korean didn't know because they've never fucking seen anybody other than North Koreans or the occasional Russian that wondered by. But, uh, I, and I think it was like 20 years ago or something it was when uh kim jong-il was still i don't know sorry he's um god the middle the middle kim i forget his

fucking name right now um but uh he uh promised the prime minister of japan that he would totally bring all these japanese people uh like back and like prove to them that they weren't evil anymore but with like a a sworn promise they'd get to go to japan like visit their family and then they'd come back and like of course they didn't fucking come back yeah by the way i looked it up uh the middle kim was actually kim licensed to ill which was obviously the demo Kim. Yeah. I prefer his new stuff.

His son killing his uncle with an anti-aircraft gun. But anyway, so the first, the crew's first real mission would be led by a captain Lloyd Boucher who spent his entire career in submarines. The Pueblo is decidedly not a submarine and butcher was not happy to be there in the 1960s the u.s navy was switching all their submarines from conventional power to nukes and uh apparently to be and i'm sure somebody's not telling him completely wrong about this but uh to to be in command of nuclear submarine you had to go through

like new extensive training and they weren't giving that to everybody who was on the old subs um butcher happened to be one of the people who did not fit the new training mold um so when he he finally uh ranked up to get his first command they stuck him on a retrofitted cargo ship which i think is like the biggest naval fuck you i've seen for a promotion and you know and like honestly i'm i think is like the biggest naval fuck you i've seen for a promotion and you know and like honestly i'm i'm shocked that the navy was so like progressive on that because like if this is a big change in the army as i'm sure you know they would have just given butcher the command of something he had no idea how to use i mean like back in the day they made honest to god the horse cavalry officers into tank commanders overnight.

Oh, yeah. And I mean, in the modern army, you have lieutenants coming fresh out of college getting put in charge of infantry platoons, which is definitely a good idea. I once had a tank commander who was made a lieutenant with a music degree. I wasn't even aware they gave degrees in music. I mean, at least music requires some ability to uh process information very quickly and like do something physical as a result i was a legal studies major i basically am really good at arguing esoteric facts um which i guess also makes me a great soldier so never mind carry on i have a degree in history so tell me which one those three we just named is the is the most useless and i'll probably agree um yeah

so uh while bush while booster had no idea what he was doing he was at least running by 83 seamen who were supposed to know what they were doing like operate a ship right wrong totally wrong it turns out that less than half of the pueblo's crew had actually been on any real missions before this one or had done anything other than basic training uh it was the for many of them it was their first time even out at sea um like when they went from san diego to japan that was like their first time on a boat and they're in the navy uh so there there was like nobody on the ship and knew what the fuck they were doing so with that a wonderful way to start the the mission they set off on the 5th of january

1968 uh and they went to waters right off the coast of the Korean demilitarized zone or DMZ. They were completely alone. Now, as you can imagine, there's supposed to be a spy ship. So having like a whole bunch of destroyers and planes circling above them would kind of be a dead giveaway that it's not a cargo ship. Yeah, that might give supposed to sail up and down the North Korean coast, taking careful precautions not to actually get within 13 miles of the coast, which is what the international law says is your country's waters. But just something I actually didn't know until I was researching this episode. So you don't watch The Simpsons? So the episode where Homer became a fucking submariner? That was awesome.

Yeah, that's where they had the monkey knife fights on the boat. Yeah. I assume that that is actually standard operating procedure for all naval ships. Somewhere, some ensign has to sign for the knife-fighting monkeys. They're serialized items.

They're actually something that you have to sign a hand receipt for. It's really unfortunate because Marines enlist and end up becoming the knife fighting monkeys and you know it's not something that they're ever prepared for um no no you can't prepare for something like that at all so um one of the things that they do is like at night they had to stay further away just in case uh all this is made really really difficult by the inexperienced crew only two sailors on the entire ship to include the captain had any kind of navigational experience and knew what the fuck they were doing so the guy you kind of want well rested and like have his head about him is up all the time because

he's the only one knows how to read a fucking compass um which is ironic because like as an enlisted guy we always joke the officers have no fucking idea like how to navigate and apparently the navy it's the complete opposite yeah uh no so yeah and the navy from what i understand uh nobody knows what they're fucking doing uh including the enlisted which is always a nice break from uh the army which only the enlisted do know what they're doing and that's relative i mean i was enlisted i was fucking terrible at my job i i only survived through sheer dumb luck uh and uh you know so did my soldiers. So thanks, guys, for making me look good. So despite the rough going for this mission to start, the mission seemed like it was kind of a success. At least for weeks, the Pueblo sat undisturbed, monitoring and gathering tons of information and communications being passed by the North Korean military.

That was until the 21st of january when a north korean jet buzzed right over the top of the ship um that is what is known i believe in the business as a fucking clue like you should leave yes yes that uh you're an author so in the literary world that is foreshadowing yes that is very good that is foreshadowing. Yes, that is very good. That is foreshadowing. Um, instead of doing what anyone else doing, gotten the fuck off out of there as soon as they could, the Pueblo just kept on sitting there.

Uh, probably not a good command decision. Now I, I have, I didn't, uh, Bush wrote a book about this. I did not read it.

Uh, I'm willing to bet that he was told probably not to leave, but I mean, even then, you should probably leave. If that wasn't enough, a group of fishing trawlers sailed right at them before like turning off last second, like they fucking played ship chicken. Do you do you know what the name of those rice trawlers were? Did you come across this in your studies? I did not. trawlers were did you come across this in your studies i did not the two north korean trawlers were called the rice patty one and the rice patty two which is really uh god damn it how would you

say not not at all an unobvious name if you were trying to like trick people like oh uh what are we gonna call our ship i don't know let's just call it the rice paddy one and two brilliant yeah the north koreans are not known for their their good names for things like all of them are either named after a kim or like the communist party or also apparently rice at this point you have to kind of start believing that they're fucking on to you uh every at this point everybody in fucking north korea knows who you are and what you're doing there now if you're thinking that butcher took the clue and left you're new to the show uh they did nothing they didn't change course or abandon their mission at all they just kept putting up and down the fucking coast like nothing happened um maybe he

still thought he was in a submarine or something like no no, they can't see me. Uh, I, I, I, it blows my mind that he just kept going through the mission. Um, in defense of him though. Uh, and I don't know if you were going to bring this up, but,

uh, unbeknownst to captain butcher at that time, uh, the North Koreans tried to assassinate, uh, South Korean president park Chung. He, they sure did.

I was just about to get to that. Yeah. And like, like unbeknownst to captain butcher all that's happening um so his his higher element kind of failed him in that regard yeah if you have an active spy mission since you just covered that uh i won't i won't cover it again but like if you have a fucking spy mission going on off the coast of north korea and someone sent in a team of fucking commandos to murder the president of South Korea. You want to like drop him a line because it's either he's really bad at his job. Maybe he thought the North Koreans are like the T-Rexes from Jurassic Park and only had motion based eyesight.

But there's a good idea that like the north koreans are definitely preparing for war nobody decided to fucking tell them absolutely nobody so if people are not aware of like the assassination attempt um the north koreans actually tunneled underneath the dmz and let out like teams of commandos to storm the blue house which is uh like the their version of the white house um to try to kill the south korean president uh so yeah attention with the koreans and the great naming of things yeah yeah uh so your tensions were pretty fucking high uh but nobody decided to tell the crew of the pueblo that they were about to be caught possibly in the middle of what could

turn into world war three uh that kind of warning may have given the crew time to i don't know man their battle stations which they absolutely had not have done but still their best option was to get the fuck out of north korean waters as fast as they could um but uh real quick before we go on i have to kind of talk about these battle stations because remember this is supposed to look like a research vessel it doesn't have turrets anywhere has a couple 50 caliber machine guns that's about it um but uh those 50 cals were stored away like uh and at the lowest decks of the ship and like wrapped in tarps and shit to protect them from cold water or cold weather um and their ammunition was stored below them as well so uh even so here's

a problem even if they were given time like hey uh they just tried to mark the south korean president you might want to get ready to have to fight uh nobody knew how to use the fucking guns except one guy one fucking guy on the ship had ever used these guns before and that's only because he had just left the u.s army yeah. I want to raise my hand here, though. To be fair to the Navy, I was an infantry officer, and I don't even think I knew how to use the.50 cal. That is a needlessly complicated weapons system. Yes, they are.

But they've actually changed. You don't have to do headspace and timing anymore, which is mind-blowing to me. Wait, is that true? Yes, it's totally true. Oh, so I haven't been in an infantry unit unit since 2011 so i was not aware of that yeah it's it happened after i got out the only reason i know that's because uh nick told me and he he's like yeah you just put the barrel in and it's good to go i'm like god damn it i know we i think that's the only reason i never actually

went for my eibs because i was terrified of trying to have to assemble, reassemble, and do a functions check on the.50 cal. Because you get that little gauge thing, and you're supposed to stick it in and then twist and then stick it in again. And, dude, I can barely fuck. Never mind fix a.50 cal, though. The sticking in with the thing, and it just wasn't going to work. It's definitely a product of its time, which is like World War one ish like it's it's a fucking oldest shit gun it's i believe it's from the 1930s so it's after world war one but it's still old as dog shit um but yeah they didn't even train on the damn thing before they set out um and so this obviously wasn't a ship that was

ready to defend itself which was unfortunately exactly what they were about to have to do on the 23rd three north korean torpedo boats approached them and demanded know who the fuck the pueblo was when challenge the pueblo ran up an american flag uh the captain was hoping that this would be enough to scare them off like hey don't fuck with us we're american the north koreans like they did that as much as they do today have no fucks to give about that um and the north korean military especially during like the height of the cold war and like americans being on the dmz they were notoriously confrontational like there was an incident one time they literally beat an american soldier to death with sticks and branches and shit. Cause they cut down a tree,

neither DMZ. Like they did not give a fuck about any of this. Um, I think it was called operation. Yeah. Yeah. They're notoriously a bit cunty. Uh,

someone say, um, so the, the flag did not scare them off. The North Korean Navy was already in 1968, years behind the time. They did not have a blue water navy. They had a coastal navy at best. The torpedo boats converted cargo ships and shit like that.

But they knew they were also dealing with a ship all by itself, so they were willing to throw down. they were also dealing with the ship all by itself. So they were willing to throw down. And not to mention that attack on South Korea the day before, there's a really good chance the North Korean sailors thought they're about to be at war. I mean, if you thought the U.S. was dumb for not telling the Pueblo that the attack just happened, there's very little chance that the North Korean sailors knew about it. So with that, they ordered the American ship to stand down and surrender. Of course, Captain Butcher wasn't about to do that

and ordered his ship to run for it. One problem, though. Remember how I said it was a converted cargo ship? The Pueblo was slow as fuck. Cargo ships aren't exactly known for their speed. Soon, the North Korean boats are sailing circles around them and shooting at it um as for things uh like if things couldn't get any worse four jets soon began chasing them and shooting at them um they're like running away at the speed of smell like they're just

getting shot to shit um as you can imagine while running uh for their lives with a bunch of pissed off north koreans shooting at them the first thing captain butcher's radio for help um and he had been for quite a while actually um they had been talking with the naval security group located back in japan and the seventh u.s fleet was tracking the entire situation captain butcher was promised air cover so the crew knew they had just to hold off a little bit longer like zig and zag and shit soon the cavalry will show up everything will be okay but this story being what is this where i could tell you but wait it gets worse um you know the air support never showed up otherwise this wouldn't have happened um there this is for a lot of reasons all of them bad so even though command knew the pueblo was going into what is kind of enemy waters the u.s fifth air force had zero jets ready to fly if they

needed them and the naval security group it had an aircraft carrier 500 miles away that's 500 miles i mean that's far away but a jet can cover that pretty goddamn fast right wrong as shit well uh so the uss enterprises jets uh that that were on board were not equipped to attack ground targets they're only attack uh equipped to attack air targets not entirely sure why but um the report said they would have to take an entire hour and a half to switch out the weapon system so they can attack ground targets. I think this is what you call goat rodeo. It gets worse.

So Japan... Oh, wait, hold on. Can I use my one Navy joke since I said goat? Go ahead. Okay, so why does the Navy bring goats on ships? Oh, I knew we weren't going to get through this without a navy joke why uh because oh wait i fucked the joke up god damn it so the joke is why does the navy bring marines on ships and the punch line is because goats would be too obvious, but I completely fuck that up.

So in hindsight, I really marined that joke, which is probably the most on brand sentence of the episode so far. Yes. So if you were to like want a like an air wing nearby, like Japan is not too far away from from North Korean waters. These jets should be able to cover them pretty fast like you would assume that like an air force unit on japan or in japan could get jets up and ready right pretty fast you would hope problem this is 1960s what was the u.s air force mostly doing in the 1960s flying around in circles with nukes right so i thought you were gonna say smoking weed also yes uh the very true um so the entire air wing that was on japan were only armed

with nuclear bombs uh because like their mission was to be on standby in case any kind of soviet nuclear strike happened um so they could immediately respond so like they couldn't these jets were completely useless to the situation um in the meantime the north korean navy decided to end this bullshit and then attempted to board the pueblo captain butcher wasn't having any of that shit and decided to run ram his shitty cargo ship into the torpedo boat when they got close another boat got close and he swerved with that one too. Finally, the North Koreans backed off and just assuming maybe the captain was drunk or

crazy or whatever, because this seemingly unarmed cargo ship would not surrender despite being shot at. They backed off for a reason though. No, so they could use a fucking cannon. They fired a 57 millimeter shell that slammed into the Pueblo and set on fire. The second shot exploded near the rear of the ship and killed the fireman, Dwayne Hodges.

So according to an NPR article titled Remembering North Korea's Audacious Capt capture of the USS Pueblo, the same 57 millimeter cannon that killed Hodges hit Marine Staff Sergeant Bob Chica squarely in the dick and blew his dick and balls off. You're not making that up. No, I am not making that up. Bob Chica, at the time of writing the article, was still alive and told the fucking story. He got hit square in the dick with a cannon shell and he did not fucking die. Now, imagine you get hit in the dick with a cannon shell. And like, he continued like manning the ship and everything with his dick and balls completely shorn off so i that is the most marine thing

i've ever heard in my life i'm i'm absolutely uh despondent that that wasn't part of like marine corps history going through paris island because that that wasn't part of like Marine Corps history going through Paris Island because that, that, I mean, that's more motivating than, I don't know, some fucking, the,

the first Sergeant major of the Marine Corps. Like that's fucking awesome. I'm pretty pissed off. That's like, you guys don't learn about ton tavern. Then immediately Bob Sheikah's dick and balls, like just like enshrine, like the captain of the French foreign legions hand and a fucking memorial

somewhere. Um, so she could, who had actually been man, the captain of the French Foreign Legion's hand in a fucking memorial somewhere. So, Sheikah, who had actually been manning the radios this whole time, even after he got hit, still thought everybody, like, he still thought the whole Navy was coming to help them. And apparently he sent everybody else on the ship. Like, don't worry, guys. Everything will be all right. Dwayne might be dead and Bob might be missing his dick. But the cavalry's coming no help would ever be sent uh finally boucher admitted that they were completely fucked and uh

he ordered the crew to start destroying everything in sight remember he's a captain of a spy ship surrounded by huge amounts of deeply confidential equipment that under no circumstances was he allowed to fall into enemy hands. There's only one problem. Del Pueblo had so much top secret info, there's no way they could possibly destroy all of it, unless they blew up the entire fucking ship, which obviously they weren't going to do. To make matters worse, for some reason, Lieutenant Steve Harris, who was the lieutenant in charge of all of this information on the ship, had a really bad habit of keeping a ton of shit nearby that he didn't need.

Most of it was old classified information that was out of date, but he kept it all on the ship. report afterwards harris swears that he was just trying to uh get his office organized but instead he ended up with quote an excessive amount of highly classified copies on board um so he he was quite possibly the worst opsec officer in naval history um because of this and because of the fact that they are actively attempting to fight a fire on the ship, they had now engulfed about half of it, and they were trying their hardest to not get shot. Very little sensitive information was actually destroyed. I think the NSA said that the North Koreans would end up capturing 80% of everything on board intact. So not such a good job there cleaning up the uh

the top secret info that's what you get for leaving a lieutenant in charge of it yeah i mean like what's coming fuck fuck steve he's that guy that so have you ever had like a roommate that you were like really good friends with? No. Or like a friend and they have a roommate and their apartment's always a fucking mess and they just blame it on the roommate. Like, no, the roommate's the dirty one. I'm really, I'm fine. But then you quickly realize like when they hang out at your place, like, oh, no, my friend's the dirty asshole. That's Steve.

Like he was just blaming all this mess on the last guy that was there. He said, I'm totally going to get it all organized. Everything's going to be fine. And Steve was the fucking problem. Steve is always the fucking problem. Yeah. I had a roommate. I lived in an apartment.

My first apartment I ever lived in by myself was with this 40-year-old stoner woman. And this really nice gay kid. And the gay kid was like very, very clean and meticulous. And the 40 year old stoner was the exact opposite. And I was at this time, like this, just like alcoholic straight edge. They're not like an alcoholic hardcore kid.

And it always made for the most interesting parties. Whenever any of us would have like an individual party with like our friends and then they'd have to intermingle so like i'd have all my stupid hardcore friends over and there'd be like the 40 year old stoner woman trying to hang out or like there'd be like euro dance parties when the gay roommate would have his friends over and the stoner woman would just be like you guys want my drugs and um i don't know where i'm going with the story but uh roommates suck i'm glad what you're saying is you kind of accidentally live with a drug dealer once yes and we've all been there sometimes he's just dead that's all right

um so like most people in this situation um bushers saw absolutely no way he's going to get out of this without getting more crude killed uh he already had one dead um so he surrendered koreans board the ship tied them up and soon they started sailing towards north korea so here's the rub of the whole thing that continues to this day was the pueblo in north korean waters the koreans insist it was obviously we insist it was not um this this is why is why the Koreans attacked it in the first place. While the U.S. swears up and down, the closest a Pueblo was allowed to get was within one nautical mile of North Korean waters. Combined that with the fact that the crew is pretty damn bad at navigating, that kind of throws everything up in the air. They could have just been lost.

up in the air. They could have just been lost. So, since North Korea has a tendency to be very North Korean about international norms, so, like we talked about earlier, the standard for international water demarcation boundaries is about 12 miles

off the coast. This means that the Pueblo would be in the clear. And this is the same standard tactic that the Pueblo would be in the clear. And this is the same standard tactic that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. have been using to spy on each other for years. North Korea, however, because they're the special children of the world, insists that their boundary actually goes up 50 miles. Because when you are ruled by a dictator who said he was born on a mountaintop under double rainbows, invented hamburgers, facts really don't matter all that much. Also, I think they said he doesn't poop, which is weird. No, no, no.

You are just quoting the movie The Interview starring Seth Rogen, which is where that came from. I don't know what's real and what's not anymore when it comes to Kim Jong-un. I insist that he doesn't poop. If you can't tell from his sleek athletic frame, his internal organs work so efficiently that he just doesn't need to. Instead of a butthole, it's just smooth skin.

Can we talk about though, even though it's slightly problematic, the interview is actually a really good movie i actually really did enjoy it but i had i kind of have a notoriously bad taste in movies so like i thought it was fucking hilarious sure i mean maybe the the lead up to it with the hacking and uh you know north korea literally threatening war over a fucking seth rogan movie made me enjoy it a little bit more. But I still thought it was fucking funny.

Yeah. And I definitely have a big old man crush on James Franco. And I think he absolutely murdered in that film. So I was a huge fan. I have a love hate relationship with James Franco because every time I see a movie like The Dictator with him and I'm like this movie's this this is why or like pineapple express or i don't like uh what was the one where they all played exaggerated versions of themselves and then the devil came up through la uh this is the end yeah i like all those movies and then he does that weird spring breaker movie where he plays fucking post malone cancun no not post malone he plays no riffraff it's

riffraff riffraff whatever they're both shitty white soundcloud rappers they're all the same they look like the tricks rabbit got fucking fucked by a radioactive reactor or something i don't know but it looks stupid but like he makes all these good movies and he does that like why and i actually sat through that entire fucking movie and i paid for it and i hated myself for it yeah um no and the interview also has lizzie caplin who is my my probably biggest celebrity crush so that that movie is uh nine out of ten stars for me oh yeah she's great and everything. But before we talk about more awful Hollywood movies that we like,

fuck, Masters of Sex. That's what Lizzie Kaplan's really good in. I think it's on Showtime or HBO. It's really good. So, anyway, back on topic. Bad at segues there. North Korea has their own idea of where their boundary meets so to this day both sides disagree on if the pobo is breaking the law or not well they were still spy shit but hey whatever um so uh officials back in japan had to be wondering what the fuck was going on it would

take a full five days and a high uh so like back in the day you know the like the sr71 blackbird uh flights and uh like high altitude reconnaissance flights those are mostly operated by the cia it would require a high altitude cia recon flight for the first uh official confirmation the ship had actually been captured five days later um once the shock passed the response response in Washington, D.C. was as insane and unhinged as you can possibly imagine. Um, there's a congressman named Mendel Rivers of California said that we should offer an ultimatum to North Korea to either return its ship and crew unharmed, which obviously at this point that was already impossible, or get fucking nuked. That's a reasonable escalation of force. Yeah. And I mean, it's kind of on brand for Rivers. He's certifiably nuts. He was a segregationist

who voted on every civil rights bill he ever saw, and he was one of the people responsible for the escalation of the Vietnam War when the My Lai massacre happened. He refused to accept U.S. soldiers would do such a thing and was actually a central figure in the cover-up. He was

one of the people who called the warrant officer who flew the Huey helicopter to separate US soldiers from V-18 civilians and stop the massacre. He called him a liar and a war criminal. The guy who stopped it. So Mendel Rivers,

kind of a fucking asshole. Yeah, he was also good friends with george wallace so you know i'll tell you everything you need to know about him yeah uh other people wanted to straight up invade north korea to free the crew surprisingly enough the south korean government also fell into this camp though i mean the the pueblo was really just the icing on the cake because remember they almost just had their head of state get murked. So they were still a little upset, a little tiffed at North Korea. Another plan was the blockade of the Wonsan port where the ship was being held, but they decided that would invite direct conflict.

Someone suggested they just seize North Korean ships in the high seas. It's funny, for all the reasons that could have been problematic like you know it's an act of war of whatever but it was actually shot down because they thought north korea cared so little for their people they wouldn't actually give a shit which actually is probably a fair point to be honest it really is because like yeah they like rent out uh their civilians to russia for like timber slave mills and shit it's wild but yeah i i think i'm kind of a war hammer nerd but i truly believe that north korea is the closest thing to the warhammer universe that we have where like human blood might actually power some of their machinery um that's yeah it's i i just wrote a sci-fi book about i one-world central government, and I honestly think I still made them more progressive than North Korea on accident.

They're worse than dystopian. Did you just really blog your own book? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So President Johnson ordered a huge show of force. 25 warships and two more aircraft carriers joined the USS Enterprise and did nothing.

So according to Jack Chevers, who wrote the book Act of War, they, quote, basically steamed around in circles for several weeks and then went back to port because it got cold. Fair. That's good problem solving, right? let's just drive around circles for a bit i don't really understand what they're hoping i guess it's kind of like uh it wasn't that long

ago where uh north korea was you know just like back when trump said shit about fire and fury and all that they did like this huge elephant walk they call it on the airship where like every single fucking jet on hand just kind of drives around together like they didn't even fly they just drove around together as like a show of course like what were you hoping to achieve with this um finally the department of defense had an adult in the room and they admitted that the military rescue of the crew was pretty much out of the question. They would actually have to talk to them. That did not mean, however, that the now-captive crew of the Pueblo was going to have an easy time. Not only would their captivity be incredibly rough and violent, it would last a full 11 months.

The North Koreans had a victory so large on their hands, they weren't entirely sure what to do with it. large on their hands, they weren't entirely sure what to do with it. The Pueblo was the largest cache and cryptologic information to ever fall into enemy hands at this point. I'm not sure what would have actually beat them, maybe like Robert Hansen, the FBI spy being on the Soviet side. It was also so big that the North Koreans and the Soviet allies had all these shiny new examples of American intelligence technology that they never even heard of before. But there was one small problem. The North Koreans and the Soviets had no fucking idea how to use it, how to work it, how to get the information out of it.

That's when the interrogations would start. At first, they were tame and almost kind of nice crew members got their own rooms hot food and all the medical needs uh that they had from you know the shit being on fire breathing and smoke being sick whatever is all taken care of doctors and nurses were available 24 7 this included taking care of any wounds they received um as well as cold sore throat and and one ear infection. For some reason, that's noted in the notes. Do we know if they did anything about the Marine's dick?

Well, I think they at least stopped the bleeding because the guy's still alive. I don't think the required microsurgery was available. He didn't get the Bobbbit treatment of his dick getting stapled back on or whatever. The North Koreans, their first route was just trying to kill them with kindness, winning them over. That didn't work because

the sailors just thought they were being treated as they should. They weren't entirely wrong. I like the North Korean concept of killing them with kindness. It was like, we'll treat them as POWs are supposed to be treated. Yeah, yeah. We'll actually adhere to the Geneva Convention. And they were shocked it didn't work.

Because the sailors were being treated better than North Korean civilians. And I don't understand. How come they have not seen the power and beauty of Juche? That is when North Koreans decided to go full action movie villain on the crew. They were moved to a place that was dubbed the barn. It was a cold

shitty concrete building with like dank cells like dirt floor shit like that. Their diet changed as well. Gone was the actual edible food and instead they were given raw turnips and foul smelling fish that they called sewer trout yeah they thought they were actually logs of shit uh that's my nickname for my penis by the way oh god i feel like you should take a shower

another thing that was gone was normal medical care. One man ended up like his tonsils got infected and he had to have them removed. And the North Koreans were nice enough to provide him with that surgery. Missing one thing. Anesthetic. They just ripped his fucking tonsils out of his throat. Not only did like this weird horrible medical shit happen they were also beaten almost every day nearly interrupt uninterrupted for a year uh so uh the the survivors on the crew

obviously don't like to really talk about what happened but the msa helpfully has an entire dossie on the event and i got my hands on it so the techniques that the north cranes like to use according to report uh include making crew members walk around the floor on their knees and that was after the north cranes put dry rice on the floor so like in bed on their knees and like and shit like that and pebbles and rocks uh making crew members hold chairs over their heads for long periods of time forcing crew to sit in straight chairs at, at the position of attention for lengthy periods. And if they move,

they'd be beaten required crew members to get down on their knees, their back straight, lean backwards for hours with a two by four piece of wood placed between their thighs and calves, exploiting the element of fear by creating noises in the adjoining room. Which sounded as though their other crew members. Were being killed. Slapping and punching crewmen.

And butt stroking them with rifles. Holding guns to crewmen's head. And threatening to kill them. Telling crew members that they might as well confess. Because the North Koreans had captured everything anyway. The US government. Had tricked the crew. Into thinking that North Korea was evil.

Which North Korea had done a hell of a job proving the US government correct in that, by the way. They also told the crews they'd be shot if they did not confess. Can we just talk about how if if I don't know about you because you're you're pretty badass. But if I was ever a POW pow i would i would sing like a fucking canary they would be like hey listen why don't you come into this room for a second and i'd be like wait are you gonna torture me there right now and they're like no no just come here for a second i'll be like hey these guys know everything like that guy right there that's my best friend he knows where everything is i would i can't uh-uh no i would say i'm not i'm

not dealing with that just fucking i, I will become North Korean. I will live with you guys. Make me your King and I will give you everything you need to know. Yeah. I mean, everybody fucking talks, everybody. Uh, and that's the, that's the thing. Every single member of the, um, Pueblo confessed eventually. I mean, there's, and there's stories of, uh, like POWs from Vietnam saying the same thing.

Like they'd get brought to the Hanoi hotel or sorry, the Hanoi Hilton. And it was pretty much accepted that everybody was going to sign a bullshit confession, say whatever they wanted them to say. So the pain would stop. But like the, the rule of,

of like the POWs, like you kind of had to make them make them earn it. Like you had to get tortured and then you were allowed to sing. And everybody talks fucking sing. And it, everybody talks fucking everybody. I mean, these guys were getting their shit kicked out of them, getting their fingers broken,

uh, not allowed to sleep, being fed shit fish, uh, you know, getting their fingernails ripped out, all sorts of other awful shit. And I mean,

tons of mock executions too, which have to be just mind-alteringly terrifying. And, I mean, it's North Korea. You have to assume they're eventually just going to shoot you. But they went through dozens of them. And Captain Boucher did the same thing. Yeah, I think the hope is that they just kill you quickly. Yeah, I think that's what all of them were probably hoping in the end, but when they finally broke.

And Captain Boucher was one of the people that finally broke after mock executions um he he he he personally because they knew he was in charge went through uh at least two dozen of them and he was psychologically tortured to the point of like near incoherence like other crew members said like he would just wander around his cell and walk into walls and shit like he they literally broke him mentally um the one of the ship's officers lieutenant eddie murphy uh was beaten so badly his ear was torn off no not that eddie murphy but now now that i have that image in your mind imagine how much funnier this whole story would be if eddie murphy and like the full crump like clump fat suit was just

getting the shit beat out of them by north koreans uh so eventually all the sailors broke down because of course they did uh they told the north koreans everything they want to know they signed confessions they went on tape about it things like that um and they told the north koreans everything that they want to know about the equipment on the ship the nsa for obvious reasons did not go into detail on what exactly the north koreans figured out but they did say it was significant uh which i assume is like intelligent wonk ease for like everything they just know everything um another thing that the north koreans wanted was an admission that the crew had been north korean waters i mean obviously the north k North Koreans didn't want to look like the bad guys here, you know, torturing and murdering aside.

They wanted it to look like the Americans had fucked up, been in their water, and they were just defending themselves. So North Korean propaganda campaigns sprouted up around the sailors. And it's really fucking bizarre to watch some of these movies. They were made to recreate the capture of their own ship uh in another they were toured around north korea where they performed just like fucking random exercise routines for north korean citizens and children like they were brought to a school and just made to do pt in front of kids it was like please believe it or

not before please believe it or not was a thing. Yeah, they were literally a human zoo. Like, look, we captured these white folks that watch them do pushups. Imagine how fucking insane it must have been to go through this whirlwind thinking you're about to be executed, only to be brought out in front of some starving farmers and forced to do jazzercise or some shit instead. starving farmers and forced to do jazzercise or some shit instead i i really hope they actually were made to do jazzercise because that would make this very sad story actually kind of comedic but i'm guessing they didn't do anything nearly as sexual as uh you know vigorous hip thrusting vigorous hip thrust lots of lots of hip thrusts now i going to do squat thrusts around the oxen. Now watch. Imagine everybody wearing probably ranger panties, just doing the weirdest shit possible in the middle of some random field outside of Pyongyang.

They're also made to write letters home, sign false confessions, and most of the confessions are just how great North Korea was, which is weird. North Koreans also enjoyed filming the sailors watching propaganda films so they could try to frame it as like, look, they see the light. They're coming over to our side. Soon they'll worship the one true God, the Kim family. In one of these movies, one of the sailors gave the camera the middle finger.

They probably assumed they were going to get their asses kicked like so many times before, but they didn't. It quickly became clear that the middle finger did not translate across cultures and languages. The North Koreans had no idea what it was. So the middle finger kind of became the sailors' main propaganda tool against their own captors. One sailor said, quote, Anytime a camera appeared, so did the fingers. There's literally dozens of pictures of them doing this everywhere.

Yeah. So all good things must come to an end. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't go well. When asked what they were doing, because obviously the North Koreans like, oh, why are all these assholes putting up one finger? This obviously means something. They told their captors the finger was simply a hawaiian good luck sign and the north koreans bought it since the north koreans thought nothing of it

they published their propaganda so everybody in the u.s promptly laughed in their fucking faces unfortunately the propaganda was republished in time magazine who put a picture of the sailors on the cover flipping off their cappers and a full spread. And laying out in very obvious terms. What the middle finger actually meant. Because North Koreans have spies. Instead of the Soviets. And they're not stupid. They eventually got their hands on a copy of the magazine.

That narked them the fuck out. And the sailors got so viciously beat. That they nicknamed the extended torture. Hell Week. Thanks time. You fucking assholes. I mean. Imagine you've been so horribly tortured at this point that this week sticks out in your mind and almost a year of being

brutally tortured um yeah that's um bad it's not great it's not good um but the real award for telling the cappers to go fuck off definitely goes to Captain Boucher. Up until almost the very end, he had refused to admit any mistakes or say that his ship was in Korean waters. He finally caved when he was told that his sailors would be executed one at a time until he did so. And his confession is a thing of beauty. So it starts with, quote, a confession. OK, before I start the quote, it's going to sound ridiculous and it's not going to make sense i promise i'm saying it correctly um quote a final confession in intent in anticipation of leniency for my crew and myself for the heinous crimes

perpetrated by ourselves while conducting horrible outrages against the democratic people's republic of korea and the purpose of provocating and annoying those stalwarts of peace-loving humanity. The absolute truth of this bowel-wrenching confession is attested to by my fervent desire to peon the North Korean People's Army and Navy

and their government and to beseech the Korean people to forgive our dastardly deeds unmatched since Attila. Therefore, I swear upon the following account to be true on the sacred honor of the great speckled bird. As you can tell, he's just fucking rambling and it doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, and I love how he put pain and pronounced it as peon. Yes. Which was a nice little bit that the Koreans wouldn't understand because they would just read the word and not understand that he was pronouncing it as if he wanted to pee on them. Yeah, it's pretty obvious that the North Koreans probably had a few minders who spoke fluent-ish English, but their comprehension level was pretty low. So he could see where the fuck he wanted and he could get away with it.

Yeah. He also could combine the words together and they wouldn't notice. Right. I'm interested in knowing what he meant by the great speckled bird. away with it yeah he also could combine the words together and they wouldn't notice right i i'm interested in knowing what he meant by the great speckled bird i'm wondering like i don't i have no idea i think it's just supposed to be fucking ridiculous i mean i think and he has said as much that he purposely went out of his way to make his confession so outrageously ridiculous that everybody would know he was forced to write it or that not if that didn't work that um that that maybe the it was prepared by the north koreans because it made no sense

um right but there there he is on stage on camera saying he wants to piss on north korea and then it gets even better because he ends the ridiculous speech with so help me hannah which so help me what the fuck does that mean i i i don't know i don't think it meant anything i think that's what made it so funny is that he was he was quite literally saying fuck you to the north koreans without saying fuck you and they just kind of went along with it i mean imagine there's probably like multiple generals and propaganda officers in the room there's cameras pointing there's a microphone his face i'm gonna piss on all you motherfuckers so uh back with uh u.s and korean diplomats who are negotiating the recent the release of the crew things are not going all that well the koreans want the u.s to

sign a paper admitting everything they did was wrong and they would never do it again and they absolutely refuse to negotiate anything else it's like speaking to a child like you're trying to ask them like they're demanding pizza and you try to explain them why they can't get pizza and they're like no no you don't understand i want pizza and it just goes in circles for hours or in this case almost you don't have children so you don't know how fucking miserable that is so i don't even want to hear it out of you i'm just assuming i feel like it's a it's a it's a good comparison except you know now now imagine your kid is like going to shoot you if

you don't listen uh so finally the u.s just said fuck it it's only a piece of paper we'll fucking sign it so they signed it and immediately after they announced they only did to get the crew back in the u.s had done nothing wrong so you see the north koreans had actually forgot to put an integral no takesies backsies clause in the agreement like a bunch of fucking amateurs yep they forgot that fingers crossed meant that it never actually happened and they didn't put no crossies yeah fucking beginner mistake uh on the 23rd of december 1968 the crew along with the body of Fireman Hodges, was released across the Pommajoon Bridge, also known as the Bridge of No Return.

Do we know if the penis of the Marine crossed the bridge as well or was that not a company? It was buried with full honors. Was the flag at full staff or half staff? Well, unfortunately, all accounts say it's a pretty small staff.

Honestly, his dick must have been just a fucking the size of a human thigh for a cannon to hit it and not kill him. Like, if a cannon hits me in the dick, it's going to take off my lower body too, right? Like, but his nothing but dick. just clear yeah i know this is sick but i'm trying to imagine the visual of this guy just fucking swinging three sheets to the wind it only made things worse that Bob insisted working without pants on. Just bottomless all the time. Just socks and boots. Dick tucked into one boot.

So when they got back to the States, the military, being the wonderful arbiters of free thinking and understanding that they are, immediately attempted to court-martial fucking everybody. Uh, they were immediately marched out for a, what's known as a Navy court of inquiry, which I assume is like a grand jury. They were recommended for court-martial for failing to destroy all the sensitive information on board and for surrendering without a fight.

The only thing that saved their asses was secretary of the Navy, John Chaffee, who rejected the recommendation. And it's not because he didn't agree with it he actually completely agreed with the board of inquiry but he simply insisted they had suffered enough which i think is a fair assessment that they uh you know spent over a year in captivity getting their literal shit kicked out of them yeah i mean i guess if if nobody's not gonna stick up for me after all that i'll i'll take like pity if it means me not going to prison after just spending almost a year in north korean prison yeah yeah pity is pity is okay with me i'll

take pity i'll take pity sex i'll take uh pity kindness i mean pity pity works for me i'll take pity kindness. I mean, pity works for me. I'll take a pity snuggle at this point. So Butcher would actually continue without incident in the Navy until he retired. And he ended up writing a book about it because apparently he was also a Navy SEAL. Eww! Yeah, that was my one dig at SEALs. Speaking of retired, the Pueblo still isn't. It is still commissioned as a ship in the u.s navy being the only one captured since the war of 1812 it now sits moored as a tourist trap

on the botong river in pyongyang as part of the fatherland liberation war museum which they definitely you know i take back my digs on naming stuff. They definitely have much more flair to their naming of the museum. The only thing missing is like the fatherland diplomatic war of liberation peoples. I don't know. It's dad and we're fucking words in there. And finish off with in honor of our great leader, Kim Jong-il. That's right. And, you know, it's really sad that his dad, Lil' Kim, died.

But, you know, he didn't do such a great job in North Korea. But anyway, that is our fucking ridiculous episode. Since we've now turned the entire Kim family into what I'm assuming is some kind of rap dynasty. Yeah, I mean, I'm down for it yeah rap dynasty that's just holding a marine's dick hostage to this day and we'll get it back just like we'll get the boat anyway uh justin thank you for taking time out of your day to come on i know it's late over there and i know you're about to go to a hockey game but thank you for being my co-host today since mine is still trapped in california my pleasure as always joe thank you

do you have feel free to plug your pluggables if you have any um beerweektalk.com is the website for beer week talk um i am captain disney on twitter uh and you know actually fuck all that stuff if you need a disney vacation i do disney vacations on the side. Hit me up and I'll hook you up. That's what I want to plug because that actually makes me money. All right. There you go. All right. So for everybody else, thank you for coming by this week and we'll see you next week. Later. Hi, this is Nate Bethea and I'm the producer of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. This show is brought to you by A and as it just so happens audible is offering our listeners a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership just go to audibletrial.com

forward slash donkeys and browse the selection of audio programs download his title for free and start listening once again that's www.audibletrial.com forward slash donkeys to get started