INVESTIGATIONS: CATCH-68

THROUGH the long, tense hours of the naval investigation into the capture of U.S.S. Pueblo, one conclusion has become dismally clear: the Navy was totally unprepared to protect Pueblo on a mission the hazards of which had been shrugged off at every level of command.

The key witness before the court of inquiry last week was Rear Admiral Frank L. Johnson, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Japan, who had operational responsibility for Pueblo's mission. Most of Johnson's testimony was classified and presented behind closed doors. Later, however, he delivered a "sanitized" version in open court.

A bland, beefy hero of World War II who is now waiting out retirement, Johnson testified that while he had responsibility for Pueblo, he had no ships or planes under his command to send to her rescue. Contingency plans were developed calling for the Seventh Fleet and Fifth Air Force to provide help should it be needed.

The plans had an almost surrealistic quality, as if Pueblo were on a paper mission while the military played an elaborate game. Air Force jets were kept "on call" on Okinawa, 900 air miles from Wonsan, North Korea. However, it would have taken 21 hours to scramble the fighters and fly them to Pueblo's aid. Four fighter-bombers were supposed to be ready in South Korea, but they were armed with nuclear warheads and useless for such a mission. Air Force jets stationed in Japan were unavailable because a status-of-forces agreement prevented their use in any combat mission without the Japanese government's consent. The only U.S. Navy ship in the area was the nuclear aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise, which was cruising 600 miles from Pueblo. But, said Johnson, since Enterprise was based in Japan, her jets were similarly locked to the flight deck by the status-of-forces agreement.

This Catch-68 scenario might have been hilarious as fiction, but it did not amuse the court's presiding admirals. As Rear Admiral Marshall White told Johnson: "You had a contingency plan to use forces that did not exist." His face flushing, Johnson admitted that this was so. He noted, however, that even if he had had the ships and planes at his disposal, he could not have dispatched them until a request had filtered up through the Air Force and Navy chains of command to the Pentagon and, presumably, the White House.

Howard Hughes Bet. Why had an experienced naval officer allowed this condition to exist? Johnson had been lulled into complacency by many factors. His principal argument was wholly unrelated to strategy or circumstance. No U.S. Navy ship, declared Johnson, had been captured in peacetime in 150 years. Thus, in his view, Pueblo's seizure was "highly improbable"--regardless of the belligerent mood of North Korea. "I would suggest," said Johnson, "that a bookmaker would give you such fantastic odds [against the possibility of capture] that someone as rich as Howard Hughes could not pay it off." Admitting that the spy ships were impotent against attack, the admiral maintained that they were "dependent to a large degree on the safety provided by the time-honored freedom of the seas."

Johnson testified that two previous spy-ship missions off North Korea had been almost without incident. His implication was that the entire Navy, from the Pentagon through his own command down to Commander Pete Bucher's, had pondered and dismissed the eventuality of any attack on Pueblo. What he failed to mention was that on two earlier missions another spy ship had made fleeting passes at the North Korean shore, one lasting eleven hours and the other 36 hours. These missions had drawn angry threats of retaliation from North Korea. Broadcast warnings that "more determined countermeasures would be taken against U.S. imperialist aggressors" spying off North Korean shores were monitored by the Navy in Japan--and ignored.

Bizarre Encounters. Lieut. Commander Charles R. Clark, skipper of U.S.S. Banner, sister spook ship to Pueblo, testified that his 16 missions off the coasts of China, Russia and North Korea had been marked by severe, often bizarre harassment. Banner had been threatened with attack and ramming on several occasions by Soviet and Chinese vessels, said Clark, though the encounters ended harmlessly. Some of the harassment seemed more humorous than hostile. Once, a Soviet destroyer made a feint at ramming Banner, passed 20 yards away and inadvertently rammed another Russian destroyer trailing behind. On another occasion, a Soviet vessel charged within 40 yards of Banner, halted, stood by and then showed a movie that Banner's crew watched for 40 minutes. "Generally," testified Clark, "there was a feeling that the risk was not very high." This view was passed on to Bucher when the two conferred in Japan before Pueblo sailed last year.

Improvements Ordered. Another curious aspect of Pueblo's operation was the relationship between Bucher and Lieut. Stephen R. Harris, the officer in charge of Pueblo's highly classified research space. Harris worked in complete independence of Bucher. His closed-session testimony before the court of inquiry last week left unanswered the question of why reams of secret material in the research compartment were not destroyed. Stuffed in two mattress covers, these documents were discovered by the North Korean boarders.

While the inquiry may drag on for several more weeks, precautions are being taken to correct the inadequacies that made Pueblo so vulnerable. Acting on a study that was started shortly after the ship's seizure, the Navy last week ordered installation of automatic devices for destroying classified documents and materials on all of the fleet's 15 spy shins, known as ELINTS, or electronic intelligence-gathering vessels. The ships will also be equipped with improved scuttling mechanisms and 20-mm. cannon to help ward off hostile boarders. These were the very changes that Bucher had requested and been denied.

In the future, the Navy's spy ships will be assured of either air cover or naval support. The Pentagon has ordered that specific plans be created to dispatch planes or ships to surveillance vessels in peril. And ELINTS operating off North Korea have been directed to cruise 70 miles offshore, lessening the chance of piracy but also reducing the vessels' ability to monitor shore-based radar and command radio net transmissions.

Whatever the outcome of the Pueblo investigation, it will be only a prelude to an even more intensive inquiry. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird has ordered a top-level Pentagon study "to see that incidents of this kind do not happen again." However, the overriding significance of the Pueblo inquiry so far is not that the seizure occurred, but that a mentality existed in the U.S. Defense Department that allowed it to occur. That may take more than a Pentagon study to correct.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.