Breaking News: US Government WMD Scandal!

By Piper Bayard & Jay Holmes

Sadly, as the world focused on WMD threats from North Korea, Bayard & Holmes uncovered information about a shocking WMD program right here in the US. On April 1, 2013, unnamed sources tipped us off to a brewing scandal in Washington D.C. that will make Watergate seem like a playground squabble. With hints at the program airing in the media, we feel it is now ethically acceptable to share the story with you.

image public domain

In 2009, when North Korea successfully detonated a nuclear weapon in violation of aid agreements with the US and the international community, US President Barack Obama summoned the DOE, DOD, and CIA to the White House for a secret meeting to discuss strategies to remove North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il from power. Within weeks, those agencies agreed to a new WMD program to be funded and developed under DOE management and deployed against North Korea.

You may have noticed a seemingly unrelated, but surprisingly critical, news story developing in New Jersey this past week. Yes, New Jersey. That state so famous for organized crime and illegal toxic waste activities. As the Rutgers University basketball coach disgrace unfolds, the general public is expressing the opinion that something smells rotten in Newark. For those of you who have not followed the story, Rutgers University fired Basketball Coach Mike Rice last week after video footage of him repeatedly abusing Rutgers student athletes went viral.

Some of the drama at Rutgers can’t be explained by the information that has thus far come out of university administrators. For one thing, Rice was hired in . . . you guessed it . . . 2010, just as the DOE and DOD were ramping up development of the newly authorized WMD system.

On the surface, we could dismiss this as meaningless coincidence. But the biggest problem with university administrators’ statements is the fact that we now have confirmation that they knew about Rice’s anger issues for two years. No renowned institution of learning could possibly accept and cover up a continuing series of felonies committed against their students for two years, right? If only the tragedy were that limited in scope.

Unfortunately, a deeper, more terrifying explanation is surfacing. In 2009, President Obama requested from the CIA a detailed personality analysis of then North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il. Within an hour, that agency delivered a report explaining that Kim Jong Il had too few functioning brain cells to warrant a personality profile.

That bit of information struck a chord with President Obama. When he thought back to his carefree high school days in Hawaii, he remembered his basketball games. He recalled how his athletically challenged pal, Wally Waltzenzanger, seemed to lose more and more brain cells each time he suffered another “basketball to the head” injury on the court. By the end of the summer, in spite of Wally’s passion for basketball, Obama and his friends refused to allow Wally in any more of their games for fear that he would lose his life with one more blow to the head. As conciliation, they insisted that Wally play the role of “journalist” and write up the games for the high school newspaper. Wally’s pieces lacked any realism or accuracy, so they never made it to the high school press. Eventually, Wally pursued a brilliant career with the Washington Post, but that’s a catastrophic story for another day.

Thanks to the president’s creative thinking, Wally’s pain and humiliation were not wasted. Obama reasoned that, given Kim Jong Il’s scarcity of functioning brain cells and his obvious state of delusion, one good, old-fashioned American “basketball to the head” attack might finish him off, opening the way to a younger, less delusional North Korean leader. Given the president’s reasonable intentions, we can understand why he authorized the development of the Weapon of Mass Delusion program.

When the DOE brought its $13 million cost estimate to the president it seemed like a dream come true. Obama did the mental math and calculated that even with the routine 300% cost over-runs, the DOE could deliver a highly lethal Weapon of Mass Delusion for the staggeringly low cost of $39 million dollars. What other WMD could the US produce in two years at that price?

When Kim Jong Il died in December of 2011, everyone involved in the new WMD project agreed that it should go forward. By then, a promising agent was training to deliver expert, close range head shots with a basketball. And here is where the story gets dirtier still. To ensure a high enough level of rage and recklessness, project directors increased the dosages in the cocaine and meth injections they were secretly administering a particular agent-in-training.

When former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman popped up in North Korea, sage intelligence analysts and journalists wondered what could possibly be afoot. How could anyone reasonably explain such strange birds flocking together in the middle of a brewing international nuclear crisis?

Dennis Rodman, WMD Project
image by Tuomas Venhola, wikimedia commons

Random lunacy? No, indeed. Our sources tell us Dennis was on a scouting mission, laying the ground work for the CIA to get a certain volatile college basketball coach close enough to Kim Jong Un for one last good shot to Un’s massive, low-functioning head.

So far, the White House, the CIA, the DOD and the DEA have all refused to respond to our questions about this developing scandal. The DHS, with its typical over-reaching style, even claimed that we are the mad ones, and that we should seek psychiatric help. In our experience, we can safely interpret such outright denials from multiple government agencies as confirmation that the rumors in question are true. Remember the old Soviet “mental hospital” trick for silencing voices of dissent? Be aware, America!

Now that the project is coming to light, it is doubtful that any branch of the US military will obtain funding from Congress for this horrific weapon. Some on Capitol Hill are rightfully worried that the DHS will hoard large numbers of this WMD if development continues. As to that, DHS Director Janet Napolitano thus far has not commented. Will Congress muster the sense and courage to call her in to committee to testify? We hope so. We can’t imagine any other way to force her to show a modicum of respect for our democratic process.

The dreadful moral and ethical implications of such a lethal WMD program are obvious. We will do our best to remain at large and keep you informed about this crisis.

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To receive our infrequent newsletters and notices of our book releases, click here on Bayard & Holmes Newsletter. We will not, under any circumstances, share your email with any foreign operatives, phone solicitors, or grasping DHS agents.

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Piper Bayard is a belly dancer from way back and a recovering attorney with a university degree or two. She currently pens post-apocalyptic sci-fi and spy novels with Holmes when she isn’t shooting, SCUBA diving, or chauffeuring her children. Her debut dystopian thriller, FIRELANDS, will be available June 14, 2013, from Stonehouse Ink.

 ‘Jay Holmes’, is an intelligence veteran of the Cold War and remains an anonymous member of the intelligence community. Piper is the public face of their partnership.

Bayard & Holmes blog at Bayard & Holmes. You may contact them in blog comments, on Twitter at @piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or by email at bayardandholmes@bayardandholmes.com.

©2013 Piper Bayard. All content on this page is protected by copyright. If you would like to use any part of this, please contact us at the above links to request permission.

The North Korean Sky is Falling

By Intelligence Operative Jay Holmes

On April 15, North Korea will celebrate its 68^th anniversary of independence. While the Western world will barely notice the celebration, it will undoubtedly be a big occasion in North Korea. Unlike the 4^th of July in the US, there will be no hot dogs or hamburgers on the grill. Maybe there will be one half of a hot dog per person at maximum, and no ketchup. Generally, celebrations in North Korea take the form of televised military and party cadre parades with a strong dose of religious worship for whichever unimaginative Kim happens to be in charge at the moment. Other than that, it will be just another miserable day in North Korea.

USGS info poster showing intensity of Feb. 12, 2013 North Korean nuclear test.

On February 12, 2013, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test, detonating a weapon with a seven kiloton yield. Fortunately, yields from nuclear detonations are easily measured by other nations, and we know that the explosion was one-third the size of the yield of the atomic bomb that the US dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

It was hardly the massive Armageddon weapon that North Korean dictator Kim Un’s propaganda machinery described. However, it represents a technical leap forward from previous North Korean nuclear detonations, and it is sufficient yield to cause thousands of deaths in any South Korean city or US base.

This missile test was yet another predictable violation of the latest nuclear weapons agreement between North Korea and the rest of the world. Why anyone in the US government would ever believe that North Korea would hold to an agreement remains one of the more curious mysteries of US foreign policy. My suspicion is that diplomats are instructed to pretend to believe that they have some quiet agreement in place with the Kim dynasty for political value at home in the US.

Even Madeleine Albright had to know she was talking nonsense when she pretended to be giddy with the “successes” of her miserable diplomatic efforts with Kim Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, during the Clinton era. The upshot of Madeleine’s diplomatic “victory” was to exchange US aid for the assurance that North Korea would not pursue nuclear weapons. Only the staunchest of Clinton administration supporters were able to convince themselves that Madeleine’s diplomatic performance was anything more than self-delusion. Madeleine’s “work” with North Korea did, however, fulfill one critical purpose. It allowed President Clinton to pass the buck to the next administration.

No US president since Eisenhower has wanted to deal with North Korea. Bill Clinton was no exception. Every US president arrives to his first day of work with his heart and mind filled with optimistic projections of how he will build his particular version of the “great society.” These optimistic visions generally start with something like a beautiful No Child Left Behind butterfly. Those visions then end up devolving into some ugly No Corporate Donor Left Behind parasite, but that’s a topic for yet another day.

And therein lies the second motive for the North Korean Kim Machine. If the first urgent goal of the North Korean government is to convince North Koreans to remain obedient, then the second goal is to be noticed by the US White House.

North Korea desperately needs the West for two important reasons. It needs us and the rest of the world to feed them. Like any undeveloped infant, North Korea is not grown up enough to feed itself. It’s too busy playing with military toys to learn that basic survival technique. Also, the Kim Dynasty’s entire 68-year-old Kim Marketing Plan relies on the perceived great and urgent threat to North Korea from the outside world.

Any time the North Koreans can broadcast a genuine video clip of a US president uttering the words “North Korea” without having to rely on their unskilled photo-shoppers, it’s a propaganda victory. In North Korea, a day without “international tension” is like, . . . well, we can only imagine what that would be like. Who knows? It hasn’t happened yet.

North Korea has also been developing a missile that has the ability to reach Alaska. Kim claims that missile can hit Los Angeles and Austin. It can’t. In fact, it is highly unlikely that North Korean missiles could reach the US mainland as of yet. It’s also unlikely that North Korea could equip a long range missile with a light enough nuclear weapon in a reentry device that would enable delivery to US soil and detonation.

In spite of the lack of a real threat, the US Defense Department has reinforced missile defense systems on the US West Coast. That reinforcement was intended for psychological rather than tactical benefit. Precisely what, if anything, occurred as a result of the announced reinforcement is a matter that I will leave to the Defense Department to (not) talk about. That “(not) talk” session would likely consist of a terse statement that the precise details of military deployments are classified.

For folks living in South Korea and Japan, including the 63,000 US forces stationed in those two countries, the view is less comical. For one thing, North Korea has about sixty-five percent of its military at or near the border with South Korea. Thousands of artillery pieces with hundreds of thousands of shells are within range of the South Korean capital of Seoul. While some media pundits like to point out that the US and South Korea could easily wipe out that North Korean artillery, they are assuming a massive first strike by US and South Korean forces before North Korea could launch a barrage of missiles and artillery shells against Seoul and other targets. And a preemptive strike by South Korea and the US is highly unlikely.

To people living in South Korea and Japan, the clownish threats by Kim are not just rhetoric. North Korea does represent a real threat to its neighbors, and it has a long history of attacking South Korea. Remember that in March 2010, a North Korean submarine sank a South Korean Navy Corvette in South Korean waters, killing 46 South Korean sailors. The following November, North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing three South Koreans. The South Korean island garrison responded with their artillery and killed about ten North Korean soldiers.

On March 26, 2013, after listening to a month long series of nuclear threats by North Korea, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye stated that North Korea’s only path to survival was through abandonment of its nuclear weapons program. North Korea responded by cutting its “hot-line” communications system with South Korea. Given that nobody in South Korea was ever going to believe anything that was spoken by a North Korean on that hot-line system, it hardly matters.

On March 29, Pyongyang announced, “The time has come to settle accounts with the US imperialists.” It then ordered North Korean missile teams to be prepared to fire on US bases in the South Pacific. We in the US could afford to laugh, but there was less laughter in South Korea and Japan.

On March 30, North Korea stopped pretending to be on the verge of all-out war with South Korea and the US and, instead, announced that it is in an actual state of war. Fortunately, Kim has remembered that he is only pretending to be at war, and no unusual troop movements or communications have been detected in North Korea. The US responded by moving high tech F-22 Raptor fighters from Japan to South Korea. Any changes in deployment of US ballistic missile submarines in the waters of East Asia would be classified, but we may reasonably assume that, in the event of a nuclear attack by North Korea, the US would respond with strikes by US submarine launched missiles.

This morning, North Korea did something interesting. It announced the appointment of Pak Pong-Ju as the new premier. The premier would not be in the top five of the power structure in North Korea, but he would formulate and present economic policies to Kim Un. Pak was fired from his post as prime minister in 2007 after proposing some very minor U.S.-style economic policies.

This appointment is seen by Western leaders as a rare, positive bit of news from North Korea. The appointment of a North Korean who has dared to utter a few non-hateful words about the US is interpreted by some as a signal from Kim Un that he would like us to remember that he knows that he cannot hope to survive any war with South Korea and the US. It is also good news because North Korea’s most serious threat to South Korea and to its ally China is the threat of the complete economic collapse of North Korea.

While an economic collapse in North Korea might seem like a welcome possibility to distant observers, it is far less appealing to South Korea, to China, and to half of the 25,000,000 North Korean people who suffer from chronic malnourishment. China and South Korea quietly agree about two things concerning North Korea. One is that Kim Jong Un is an annoying twerp. The other is that if North Korea collapses, both South Korea and China will be flooded with millions of hungry North Koreans. Neither country wants to deal with such a large humanitarian crisis or the chaos that it would introduce inside their borders.

So what does this mean to those of us fortunate enough to not live in North Korea? It means that the US and South Korea have no choice but to remain prepared for war with North Korea. To the White House, that means annoying distractions from urgent domestic economic issues. Even the most loyal Obama lovers do not believe the White House’s recent optimistic self-assessments concerning the US economy. While Los Angeles will not be destroyed by a nuclear device from North Korea any time soon, it and the rest of the nation remain under attack by a home grown economic weapon of mass destruction. With so many foreign policy challenges to deal with in the Middle East, and so many millions of Americans slipping into poverty, Obama and the rest of the nation would prefer to not have to spend time and money dealing with North Korea.

However, Iran would love a war between the US and North Korea or between the US and any nation not named “Iran.”  To the north, Russia seems confused about what it wants in Korea. It can’t tell if a war in Korea would represent a net gain or loss to the Russian economy or to Russian foreign policy goals. The rest of the world is either unaware of the situation in Korea or simply hopes that war does not erupt there.

The greatest danger in North Korea is the possibility that, based on North Korea’s complete lack of understanding of the world outside of its borders, Kim Jong Un and his hard line pals in the North Korean military might miscalculate and trigger an all-out war. This morning’s announcement of their selection of a new “pro-Western” premier may indicate that, in lieu of a reasonable diet, Kim urgently needs to keep feeding his own subjects a heavy diet of war propaganda, but that he hopes that the US continues to not take him too seriously.

Yet in his confusion about the world outside of North Korea, Kim apparently feels that the only way to be taken seriously is to remain a military threat. He wants to be taken seriously enough to rate bribes from the rest of the world in the form of desperately needed food and oil shipments. My estimate is that North Korea wishes to remain one inch from that threatened war, but wants the US and South Korea to remain able to accurately measure that ever important last inch. In an ironic twist of any intelligence service’s basic goal, North Korea desperately wants everyone outside of North Korea to know more about their intentions than their own people know at home.

So far, North Korea’s war rhetoric has not been matched by military moves. Let’s hope it remains that way.

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To receive our infrequent newsletters and notices of our book releases, click here on Bayard & Holmes Newsletter. We will not, under any circumstances, share your email with any foreign operatives, phone solicitors, or grasping DHS agents.

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“Jay Holmes” is a man with experience in intelligence and covert operations who spent decades intimately involved in fighting the Soviets, the East Germans, and the various terrorist organizations they sponsored. Now, he is a Senior Mouseketeer in the intelligence community, and he writes spy thrillers with author Piper Bayard. Piper is the public face of their partnership. Their first spy thriller, APEX PREDATOR: THE LEOPARD OF CAIRO, is due out this fall through Stonehouse Ink Publishing.

For more about Jay Holmes, see No Room for Fragile Egos–A Spook’s World.

Snowquester – Magic Bullet for World Peace

By Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes

Last week, Washington, D.C. shut down due to a threat. No, not a terrorist threat. The threat of snow.

Frosty disappointed
image by Square87, wikimedia commons

A snow storm predicted to drop 5” – 10” of Frosty’s essence was moving into the area. In the end, Frosty was disappointed with an inconvenient slush. However, Bayard & Holmes, ever on the alert for original ways to make our world a better place, noticed that for a day, things were looking up for our country. For a whole day, the same government that brings us fat-cat banker relief acts, TSA gropes, warrantless searches of American citizens on our highways, and increasingly more hostile political, racial, and religious division actually did no harm to the nation.

In light of that remarkable event, Bayard & Holmes has founded the First Do No Harm Foundation for World Peace. We are currently accepting donations for the purpose of purchasing snow making machines and stationing them at strategic locations around Washington, D.C. Every time the children aren’t playing well together, we will turn on the snow makers to shut them down and give them a cooling off period. Sort of a Congressional Time Out.

But why stop there? We have already contacted the Defense Department about re-fitting retired B-52 and B-1 bombers with snow making equipment that would allow them to carry this peaceful mission to other parts of the world.

What’s that, Kim Jong Un? You say you’re going to send nukes south of the border? One Snowmageddon coming right up. Old Kimy Boy will be enjoying a week of relaxation while he roasts marshmallows in one of his deep underground bunkers. From what we see of Kim ther’s no shortage of snack food in North Korean bunkers.

What’s that, Iran? You want to become the sole Islamic Caliphate and bury the West? Looks like you’re the one buried now. Just to help the Iranian regime enjoy the snow from heaven we’ll sell them some curly toed snow-shoes. And Hugo Chavez? No worries about him. He’s finding out Hell didn’t really freeze over when he was elected president of Venezuela.  Should his replacement thug become too annoying and start financing Colombian terrorists again Caracas residents would be treated to their first snow storm since the last ice age.

This is win/win all the way around. Aging snow bunny pacifists will have delightful new adventure tourism destinations for winter fun all year round, and the military can give the tantruming toddlers of the world the discipline they need. And the best part? Americans will have a training tool to use on our nation’s leaders. Who knows? Maybe we’ll luck out, and Congress will throw a Donner Party. There’s more than one way to trim the fat in DC.

New Interpretations of the 1968 USS Pueblo Incident

By Intelligence Operative Jay Holmes*

Most traditional beliefs about North Korea’s motives for hijacking the USS Pueblo and attacking South Korea’s Blue House in 1968 were formed without the benefit of the vast quantities of East Bloc diplomatic correspondence that are now available for review. These recently available documents support new interpretations and challenge well-accepted views about the reasons behind the incident.

After the North Korean navy pirated the USS Pueblo from international waters, the crew were taken prisoner and kept in North Korea until December 23, 1968. During captivity, they suffered brutal torture in the hands of the North Koreans. (See Spy Ships – The Surprise Attack on the USS Pueblo)

Repatriation of the USS Pueblo Crew, image from US Navy

When considering the US response, it’s important to remember that in 1968, in addition to the US forces stationed in and near Korea, the US military maintained a costly, well-equipped military force with over 300,000 soldiers in Europe. It was also engaged in the very expensive Vietnam “non-war” with the ground fighting at its most intense, including the ferocious battle of Khe San and the Tet Offensive.

The US Navy Seventh Fleet’s first reaction to the attack on the USS Pueblo was to move warships closer to North Korea. Simultaneously, the Seventh Fleet staff planned for various responses ranging from a helicopter assault accompanied by carrier-based air support and fire support from destroyers and a cruiser, to plans for interdicting and capturing a North Korean freighter in retaliation for the illegal seizure of the Pueblo. Also during the first few weeks, more Pacific Fleet ships reinforced the Seventh Fleet, and the US Air Force moved more combat aircraft to South Korea and northern Japan.

The US Navy Pacific Command, the Pentagon, and the White House all agreed that any rescue attempt would likely result in the immediate murder of the USS Pueblo crew so no rescue was attempted. After the CIA and Naval Intelligence informed the Pentagon that the North Korean merchant fleet consisted of seven small, low value freighters, the idea of a retaliatory seizure lost its appeal.

The White House formed a committee that included such lofty personages as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Wheeler, CIA Director Richard Helms, and Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara to manage the crisis and formulate an effective response. The majority of the American public was furious, but the Committee had to take into account that neither President Johnson nor the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted a major escalation of the long-smoldering conflict in Korea. The committee reviewed a wide range of military responses from air strikes against North Korean Air Force bases to mining of North Korean harbors.

The Committee naturally gravitated toward plans that sought to damage North Korea’s already feeble economy with scenarios that did not involve major military strikes. However, after looking at the basic facts about the North Korean economy, the general consensus was that mining North Korean harbors would have little effect because the majority of North Korean trade was entering overland from the USSR and China. In general, economic targets in North Korea seemed less than spectacular because the economy there was in such a shambles. In 1968, doing economic damage to North Korea would have been a bit like rushing to punch someone before they could complete their own suicide. There just wasn’t going to be much satisfaction involved in it, and it wasn’t likely to impact the thinking, or chronic lack of thinking, by the North Korean government.

Some members of the US Congress felt that a strong response was needed and that the North Koreans should be threatened with a nuclear strike if they did not promptly return the USS Pueblo and her crew. Fortunately, President Johnson and the leaders in both Houses quickly got everyone in Congress to focus on their shared priority, the safe return of the remainder of the USS Pueblo crew.

The US attempted diplomatic contact via the Soviet Union, but at first the Soviets responded coldly. They were busy extracting everything they could from the intelligence windfall that the Pueblo’s secret coding equipment had provided them. The North Koreans themselves lacked the expertise to extract much value from what they had captured and they happily turned it over to the USSR.

On the surface it might appear that the Soviets were thrilled about North Korea’s hijacking of the USS Pueblo. In fact, they were not as happy as most Western observers assumed they were in 1968. The USSR, communist China, and the rest of the Communist Bloc did their best to maintain an appearance of solidarity to their own citizens and to the Western world, but divisions within the Bloc were far more severe than most Western analysts knew at the time.

Due to Kim Il Sung’s government’s inability to actually perform the usual basic functions of government, North Korea’s day-to-day survival depended on the charity of communist China and the USSR. Communist China was, itself, suffering from the bloody and economically disastrous consequences of Mao’s “cultural revolution,” but in 1967 it had managed to send $150,000,000 in military aid to North Korea in addition to food and other commodities.

The figure seemed small to Western observers, but expenses incurred in helping the North Vietnamese burdened China. Millions of people in China were facing starvation. From 1958 to 1961, approximately 28,000,000 people starved as a result of China’s misguided agricultural reforms. China’s agricultural output still had not substantially recovered from the severe self-inflicted damage so what might have seemed like modest aid to Western observers actually represented a significant sacrifice on the part of communist China.

The USSR delivered significantly more aid to North Korea via direct aid and one-sided trade agreements that benefited North Korea. On the surface, relations between North Korea and the USSR seemed warm in 1968, but below the surface, Moscow was growing tired of Kim. Many were regretting that the USSR had not select a better and more “manageable” leader for North Korea.

By the late 1950s, communist China was challenging the “Soviet” model for international communism and wanted to assume a leadership role over existing and potential communist states in Asia. As far as the USSR was concerned, the Chinese were only to be tolerated and flattered as fraternal brothers in communism for the sake of the greater communist good.

The Soviets believed they were the only ones qualified to manage “world communism,” and they expected other communist nations and communist movements to respect their position of supreme authority. When China made it clear that it was not only not under Soviet control but was, in fact, attempting to lead its own communist bloc, the rift between China and the USSR became a great chasm.

North Korean Dictator Kim Il Sung’s response to the Chinese/Soviet rift was to try to maximize aid from both communist China and the USSR by pretending to be squarely in both of their camps simultaneously. In retrospect, we now know that from the point of view of the USSR, Kim was seen as an aggravating and troublesome “friend” and a complete liability to the Soviet agenda. What Mao’s assessment of Kim was remains more difficult to determine, but it appears that communist China viewed him as a difficult puppet to manage.

Mural of Kim Il Sung, image by John Pavelka, wikimedia commons

Both the USSR and China wanted North Korea in their own camp, and both wanted Korea unified as a communist nation. But both the Soviets and the Chinese were beginning to wonder if the usual “fraternal” struggle in the Korean peninsula was worth the cost.

For Kim, the hijacking of the USS Pueblo likely had little to do with his view of the US or his relations with South Korea and the West. He likely had more interest in creating an illusion of legitimacy for himself as a great, or at least believable, communist leader and player in the world communist struggle. He had every reason to assume that either China or the USSR was running out of reasons to continue supporting North Korea. If North Korea did not seem to be in danger of attack from the West, then there was still less reason to continue to pump money into a hopelessly useless North Korean system.

In the great poker game of international communism, Kim only had one card to play, and that was the “I oppose the US and the West” card. Beyond that, he wasn’t in the game and could have easily been replaced at the table by a less ridiculous and less troublesome North Korean. While to outsiders the kidnap of the USS Pueblo appears to be lacking in rational motive and devoid of any positive potential results for North Korea, in existential terms, hijacking the Pueblo and holding her crew gave Kim Il Sung both a reason to be alive and a method by which to remain alive within the international communist community.

Kim never understood China’s ongoing economic crisis or the limits of Soviet military might. With the help of his trained parrots in generals’ uniforms, he convinced himself that if he could start another fight with South Korea and the US, China and the USSR would pour massive amounts of military and financial aid into North Korea. Kim likely started to believe some of his own propaganda along with that generated by the governments of other communist nations. He dreamed that the next Korean War would result in him ruling over a unified Korea, and he believed that his dream was reality.

While these twisted motives were difficult to see from outside of North Korea in 1968, the growing mountain of available declassified documents from the collapsed USSR and Eastern European Communist Bloc concerning both the Blue House attack and the Pueblo incident now indicate gross miscalculations on the part of Kim. They make it abundantly obvious that the USSR and East Bloc nations viewed North Korea’s hijacking of the USS Pueblo as inconvenient to their own foreign policy agendas.

When neither China nor the USSR increased military or financial aid to North Korea in response to Kim’s urgent “call to arms,” Kim at some point must have realized that he miscalculated. After months of increasingly blunt diplomatic pressure from his fraternal communist pals, he agreed to release the crew of the USS Pueblo in exchange for a statement from the US saying it was spying on North Korea promising to not spy on them any more.

The US was no longer greatly concerned with the ship itself beyond its propaganda value because the Soviets had long since extracted all of the information that they could from the equipment and documents. Once the crew returned on December 23, 1968, the US considered the crisis to be over. As soon as the crew was safely out of North Korea, the US repudiated the statement.

The US Navy quickly convened a board of inquiry into the USS Pueblo incident. Although Captain Bucher and his entire crew had obeyed all orders and done their best to follow all prescribed procedures, the Board strangely recommended that Captain Bucher and the Pueblo’s Security Operations Group Commander Lt. Steve Harris face Courts Marshall. Wisely, Navy Secretary John Chafee rejected the Board’s recommendation with the excuse that they had “already suffered enough.”

While that was certainly true, Chafee was perhaps more motivated by the fact that a Court Marshall would have exposed the poor planning by the Pentagon and the NSA, along with the unworkable, indefinite, and divided command structure to which the USS Pueblo and all NSA-controlled US Navy ships reported. The fact that the Pueblo was allowed to operate 13 miles from the coast of North Korea in 1968 without proper protection from possible North Korean attack indicates an unworkable chain of command. Ships under clear Seventh Fleet control would not have been forced into in a similar situation.

During preparation for her mission, the USS Pueblo reported to the US Navy, but it received mission directives from the NSA and the White House via the Join Chiefs of Staff as well as by other informal and undefined channels of command. Lots of folks with no naval training were apparently in charge of directing the Pueblo, but no one in those multiple command chains seemed to be responsible for her safety or well being. This was a formula for disaster.

The NSA documents concerning the USS Pueblo are informative and paint a picture of an inadequate understanding of naval operations on the part of the NSA, but they are redacted and only a small portion of the relevant records have thus far been released.

The issues of chain of command might have never been cleared up, but signals intelligence operations were evolving quickly and the need for surface ship missions close to the shores of hostile nations was rapidly declining. Newer technologies in satellites and spy planes, along with the increasing capabilities of nuclear submarines, were revolutionizing signals intelligence gathering operations. Interestingly, the Air Force would soon face similar issues of divided command concerning their ever-more-sophisticated reconnaissance and signals intelligence planes, but those are stories for another day.

USS Pueblo, image from US Navy

North Korea has never returned the USS Pueblo to the US so the vessel has never been decommissioned. It now serves as a tourist attraction in North Korea. It also remains one of many reasons why the US and the West have no trust or respect for the government of the North Korean Kim Dynasty.

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*‘Jay Holmes’, is an intelligence veteran of the Cold War and remains an anonymous member of the intelligence community. His writing partner, Piper Bayard, is the public face of their partnership.

You may contact them in blog comments, on Twitter at@piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or by email at piperbayard@yahoo.com. 

© 2012 Jay Holmes. All content on this page is protected by copyright. If you would like to use any part of this, please contact us at the above links to request permission.

Spy Ships – Surprise Attack on the USS Pueblo

By Intelligence Operative Jay Holmes*

From the point of view of the US Navy, the two most notable Cold War Spy Ship incidents were the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 and the North Korean attack on the USS Pueblo in 1968. In previous articles, we dealt with the sad events of the USS Liberty. (See The USS Liberty Incident Part I and Part II). In this article we will consider the unprovoked attack on the USS Pueblo by North Korea.

USS Pueblo, image from US Navy

While the motives and actions of the USS Pueblo are easily understood, the motives and actions of the North Koreans are more difficult to understand and will require a glimpse at the North Korean situation in 1968.

The USS Pueblo AGER-2 is a Banner class technical research ship that was originally built as a US Army cargo ship in 1944 as part of the massive US ship building program in World War Two. After the war, the USS Pueblo operated under US Coast Guard command as a training vessel for US Army crews and was transferred the US Navy in 1966.

The Navy took the old cargo ship and performed a low budget conversion to Spy Ship configuration by adding receivers and code machines to a cramped “spook shack.” This type of low-cost conversion worked well on several ships of the same class and had provided the National Security Agency (“NSA”) and Naval Intelligence with an economical (by US government standards) platform for coastal electronics intelligence gathering.

After the unprovoked and still unexplained Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in international waters off of the coast of Egypt in 1967, we might imagine the rigorous evaluation and project-wide shake up that occurred in the NSA and the US Navy’s Spy Ship program. However, that earth shaking reorganization would take place only in our informed imaginations. Unfortunately for the crew of the USS Pueblo, intelligence operations continued to be conducted under NSA control without adequate coordination or support from Navy combat fleets and air bases. For the Pueblo crew, the consequences of that risky strategy were substantial.

Before departing from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state, the Pueblo’s captain, US Navy Commander Lloyd Bucher, and his intelligence specialists were concerned that the USS Pueblo had accumulated too many excess classified documents and manuals that were not required for their upcoming operations. The wise and diligent Commander Bucher informed his superior officer of these materials and requested to transfer them ashore. Unfortunately, no proper storage was available for them.

Captain Bucher also requested that destruction systems be installed on all classified equipment and document storage. Unfortunately, the NSA was thirsty for more intelligence from the US Seventh Fleet in the Far East, and the Navy, possibly under pressure from the White House, did not grant the delay needed for the installation of those simple systems.

To be fair, I should disclose that I don’t mind occasionally leveling a little criticism on the fantastically expensive NSA. I have never worked for them, and their highly paid bosses like to remain silent so they are an easy target for me. If they should take exception, they are welcome to make my computer blow up or come into my driveway for a friendly inter-agency conference. Since I don’t live in North Korea (and since they’re too busy counting all that cash) they won’t do either.

Tasked with intercepting radio and radar signals and observing Soviet naval activity, the USS Pueblo cast off from the Navy dock in Sasebo, Japan on January 11, 1968. She still had unwanted classified materials aboard and still lacked any destruction system for those materials or her code machines. An experienced, well-trained, diligent officer captained her, and he commanded a well-trained, highly skilled crew. None of them would see a friendly port again for nearly a year.

January 21, 1968

At 1730 hours local time, the USS Pueblo was 15.5 nautical miles from the coast of North Korea, near the North Korean naval base at Wonsan, when a North Korean sub chaser passed within 1600 yards of her. The sub chaser made no radio transmissions. Making an educated guess that Pueblo had not yet been identified, Captain Bucher decided to continue in radio silence to further delay identification. He knew that once his vessel was identified, the North Koreans would likely reduce radio traffic.

At 2000 hours, a battle erupted on land in South Korea when a 31-man North Korean infiltration team dressed as South Korean soldiers was detected and blocked at a checkpoint 100 meters from the South Korean president’s residence, the Blue House. The Navy considered the implications of the assassination attempt and decided to not recall the USS Pueblo.

January 22, 1968

North Korean radio traffic increased. At approximately 1400 hours, two North Korean trawlers approached to within 500 yards of the USS Pueblo and then left the area. Later they returned and approached within 25 yards of the ship.

At 2000 hours, Captain Bucher transmitted Situational Report 1 to the Navy Security Group Station in Kamiseya, Japan. Atmospheric conditions prevented that report and all other communications with Kamiseya from arriving until fourteen hours later.

During the night of January 22, the Pueblo moved out to a position 25 miles further offshore. In the morning, she returned to a position 25 miles off the coast of North Korea.

January 23, 1968

Captain Bucher was lunching in the wardroom when he received a message from the bridge that a North Korean sub chaser was approaching. A few minutes later, the bridge reported that the sub chaser was making 40 knots and was within five miles of the Pueblo.

Captain Bucher sent two civilian oceanographers to take ocean samples, and the Pueblo raised international signal flags indicating oceanographic operations. The North Korean sub chaser transmitted a voice message to Wonsan that it was approaching an unarmed US oceanographic vessel.

The sub chaser came within 500 yards of the USS Pueblo and demanded that she “heave to or be fired upon.” The US ship was already laying to at the time.

The Pueblo took a radar range on the North Korean Coast and verified that she was 15.8 miles from North Korea. She then signaled the North Koreans that she was in international waters. Three North Korean P4 torpedo boats approached the Pueblo at high speed.

The Pueblo got under way and headed further from the North Korean Coast. Two North Korean Mig 21s made a low pass over the vessel. A second North Korean sub chaser and another North Korean torpedo boat joined the scene.

At approximately 1330 hours, a North Korean torpedo boat attempted to come alongside and affect a boarding. The slow-moving USS Pueblo maneuvered to prevent that. The sub chaser opened fire with its 57mm cannon, and the torpedo boats fired their machine guns at the Pueblo.

Captain Bucher and another crew member on the flying bridge were wounded. The captain realized that this was not another typical harassment operation. He ordered modified general quarters (no personnel on outside deck areas). He also ordered all classified materials to be burned.

The USS Pueblo had two 50 caliber machine guns. However, the ammo was below decks and the guns were in unprotected mounts and unready to fire so attempting to man and prepare them would have been suicidal. The Pueblo managed to get a radio message to the Navy Security Group at Kamiseya, Japan, and they maintained radio contact until the North Koreans boarded.

The USS Pueblo communications techs used axes to smash equipment and began burning the classified documents and manuals. The North Koreans ceased firing and ordered the Pueblo to follow her into port. The USS Pueblo followed at one-third speed as the crew threw equipment overboard. The Pueblo stopped, and the North Koreans opened fire again, killing crew member Duane Hodges and injuring four other crewmen who were throwing materials overboard. The Pueblo resumed following at one-third speed.

The North Koreans ordered the Pueblo to stop, and then a boarding party boarded her and captured her crew. The North Koreans immediately started beating the crew members and blindfolded them. The invaders then navigated the Pueblo into Wonsan. The crew of the USS Pueblo began eleven months of brutal torture at the hands of the North Koreans.

Why did North Korean Dictator Kim Il Sung order the capture of the USS Pueblo from international waters and hold the crew captive for nearly a year of brutal treatment?  What did he have to gain? What part did the USSR play in the incident?

The reaction in the White House was muted. The reaction by the majority of the US public and some of her allied citizens was one of shock and anger.

In the next segment, we will look at the US response to the attack on the USS Pueblo and examine the relationships between the communist allies of North Korea and the surprising ways in which they contributed to the events in question.

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*‘Jay Holmes’, is an intelligence veteran of the Cold War and remains an anonymous member of the intelligence community. His writing partner, Piper Bayard, is the public face of their partnership.

You may contact them in blog comments, on Twitter at@piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or by email at piperbayard@yahoo.com. 

© 2012 Jay Holmes. All content on this page is protected by copyright. If you would like to use any part of this, please contact us at the above links to request permission.

New Strategy for Domestic Bliss

Last year, an immigration officer in the UK found a cheap, creative way to get rid of his wife. He used his position to put her on a terrorist watch list while she was away on vacation in Pakistan. She was stuck there three years. Then, the immigration officer applied for a promotion, and, while vetting him for the new position, his superiors discovered what he had done.

While we find his behavior reprehensible, this does suggest a solution to the high crime rates in America while boosting the American economy. We call it our Club Penitentiary Program.

Recidivist criminals are a problem for all countries, and the US is no exception. You’ve heard of the “three strikes and you’re out” policy that some states have for their felons? We think the “out” part should be more literal. Let’s reward the tenacity of these outlaws by offering them all-expense-paid vacations to the Axis of Evil country of their choosing.

Our research indicates that, for the paltry sum of $1500/tourist, we can charter our own flight and transport these vacation-starved inmates in bulk. Here’s how it works.

As each of these fun-loving American tourists boards the bus at the penitentiary for the trip to the airport, his or her name will be added to the Dept. of Homeland Security terrorist database. This will prevent them from ever returning to the United States.

 

As they board the plane, our friendly Attica guards professional flight crews will dose them with strong sedatives. We know that sounds expensive, but no worries! We will recycle unused medications from nursing home patients who pass away leaving behind their unused pills.

We have not included a doctor or pharmacologist in the budget. However, we have hired a convicted crack dealer who was saved by religion just before his parole board meeting, and we believe he’ll get each traveler the right medication and dosage most of the time. In any event, we’ll make sure the passengers get what they need to be on their best behavior for the duration of the flight.

Here’s what a Club Pen jaunt to Korea would look like. Upon their arrival in Seoul, our South Korean allies will transfer the unconscious inmates excited tourists to North Korean bound buses. Each reveler will receive a hot, flat South Korean beer and the necessary South Korean documentation to become citizens of North Korea.

For enticement to accept the offer, we will give each traveler $500 cash to spend as he or she sees fit at his vacation destination. Also, in exchange for South Korea’s quiet assistance, we will reimburse that country $200/inmate.

If the South Koreans should refuse to cooperate, with one or two phone calls, we can get the Chinese to do it for half that.  Although, with the Chinese option, we can’t guarantee the safe arrival of the travelers in North Korea.

We know what you’re thinking. Every responsible American’s first question is, “Where do we get the money for this outstanding program?”

Consider that the average annual cost for incarcerating a violent offender in the US is about $27k per year. Spending two or three grand to say Adios! to these rather interesting and adventurous folks would generate a savings of $25k per inmate the first year, alone. And just think what the taxpayers will save over the course of a life sentence!

 

This is win/win for everyone. Psychopaths get what they want, which is out of prison. Communities win by not having these violent offenders in their neighborhoods. The taxpayers win by realizing tremendous savings. South Korea wins by picking up sorely needed cash and finally enjoying the opportunity to do something for us for a change after years of suffering the humiliation of existing only at the grace of the American defense budget. And even the North Koreans win. Compared to the oligarchy that controls North Korea now, these new visitors will bring an infusion of cash and ideas, and a higher level of morality than their current leadership has ever demonstrated.

What politicians or other dangerous criminals would you nominate for a Club Pen gift certificate?

All the best to all of you for a week of staying off the watch list.

Piper Bayard–The Pale Writer of the Apocalypse

Holmes–Student of Sex, C4, and Hollow Points

The End is Near (and we deserve it) . . . Kim Jong Il Proclaimed Eternal Leader

Apparently, some North Koreans have decided that a dead dictator is better than a living one so they left Kim Jong Il in charge in spite of his extreme infirmity. Considering the despotic hopefuls lined up before the body was cold, this was probably a wise decision.

Kim Jong Il to be enshrined as “eternal leader”

Kim Jong Il back from the taxidermist. He looks so natural.

Click here for full story.

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Fun post from Ellie Ann on Dime Novel Romance. What’s your recipe for a husband?

Love this funny, down home logic from Old Jules. Sweatsocks, Milo Maize, and Microwaves

New York Times Best Selling Author and Heckuva Nice Guy James Rollins now has a YouTube Channel! You can check it out here and subscribe. James Rollins Official YouTube Movie Site

Doublespeak by Nigel Blackwell. Why not just say the pilot #$@d up?

Don’t Eat the Butt – Lies that Can Poison Our Writing Career #1 by Kristen Lamb. When should you call yourself an author?

And here’s one for the football fans . . . Hitler Reacts to Tim Tebow Beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Playoffs in OT.

Are you a football fan? Who will you be rooting for?

All the best to all of you for making your Hail Mary Pass.

Piper Bayard–The Pale Writer of the Apocalypse

The Gangster and the Poet – Kim Jong Il and Vaclav Havel

By HOLMES

This week, we have been treated to odd bits of news from the North Korean state media machine. According them, Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack on Saturday, December 17, 2011. The “news” that has been broadcast from North Korea has been rather interesting.

image from theweek.co.uk

One of my young coworkers took the time to read and analyze some of the very odd claims that were made for North Korean consumption and for those imaginary North Korean admirers that the NK government likes to pretend exist in large numbers across the world. Here are a few of the recent outlandish claims from a nation that is so crippled it can produce little more than outlandish claims.

Kim Jong Il lived for five thousand years. Kim Jong Il did not urinate or defecate because he was a higher being that didn’t need to do those lowly human functions. It’s not often that Westerners or anyone living outside of North Korea agrees with the NK media, but based on that particular claim, Westerners were apparently being fair and accurate when saying that Kim was “full of shit.”

We are now being told that a mountain peak in North Korea that was named after Kim Jong Il glowed for an hour after he died. As absurd as it seems, that claim might be accurate. It could be that the insects hiding beneath the frozen surface were so overjoyed at the death of the despised dictator that they glowed like glow worms and fire flies in celebration of his departure from their ecosystem.

The nonsensical and amateurish propaganda that flows from North Korea would all be nothing more than cheap comedy if not for the fact that it tells us something about the current state of their tortured society. Even in authoritarian police states like China, Cuba, Syria, and Iran, there are limits to how outlandish the propaganda can be. Neither North Koreans nor Cubans would believe that their respective crime syndicate leaders were five thousand years old, but the difference is that the Cubans would loudly refuse such asinine statements. It’s a sad comment about the lives of the victims of the North Korean crime state that they feel compelled to pretend to believe such absurdity.

Kim Jong Il had announced that his third son, Kim Jong Un, would inherit the family crime syndicate, but not all is going as planned. Today, North Korea announced that Kim Jong Un’s aunt and her husband would share power with him, and that the military would have more power than they did under Km Jong Il.

My impression is that the North Korean military hates Kim’s sister and her husband and will wrestle for control of the country. At least in the short term, it seems unlikely that the people of North Korea can expect much improvement in their lives. Chronic malnutrition and a complete lack of freedom will continue. Kim Jong Un has a long way to go to gain complete control of North Korea, but the undeserving victims of the ongoing Kim family crime spree have even further to go to reach freedom and human rights.

Kim Jong Un – To show their loyalty, all North Koreans are required to get bad haircuts before Friday. (That’s actually a joke. So far.)

While the news is filled with the farcical proceedings in North Korea, another important world leader left us on December 18, 2011. A brilliant poet who I admired.

On October 5, 1936, a boy, Vaclav Havel, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. That boy would one day prove instrumental in leading the nation of Czechoslovakia out of the dark ages of forty-nine years of brutal Nazi and Soviet occupation.

Vaclav Havel was the son of a theater owner father and a wealthy mother. During the Soviet occupation, he was not allowed to attend secondary education because of his “bourgeois” parents, and he was shunted to industrial training. He worked full time and attended night school. Then, he dropped out of economics school and found work as a laborer in theater productions. From that humble beginning, he went on to become one of Europe’s most respected writers, admired poets, and esteemed world leaders.

While living under constant police surveillance and suffering through multiple prison internments, including a five-year stint, Havel managed to write popular plays and was able to see them produced in spite of sabotage by the Czech secret police. What did he have to say after years of abuse? “Truth and love will prevail over lies and hate.”

In 1989, as the Soviet lead Warsaw Pact began to unravel, Havel became the de facto leader of the Velvet Revolution. The Czech secret police and the Soviet KGB had long seen Havel as a dissenter. It is my belief that the Czech police state and the Kremlin decided Havel was just a poet and playwright and would never be able to successfully lead a revolution. They denied permission to their field operatives to assassinate him. They likely feared that killing Havel would have left less known and less visible leaders in charge of the resistance.

Vaclav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989 and served in that office until July, 1992. He later served as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1993 until 2003.

The Soviets underestimated the poet and the people of Prague. Now, that poet is gone, but his memory and the freedom that he helped create lives on. The world was a better place with Vaclav Havel in it. It remains a better place for his having passed here.

image from Life Magazine, February 1, 1990

To his family and to the courageous people of the Czech Republic who defeated brutal tyranny with little more than reason and moral conviction, I offer my sincere condolences and my deep admiration. May reason and moral conviction reign forever in the Czech Republic. May truth and love always prevail over lies and hate.

Tonight, in North Korea, the notions of freedom and human rights appear to be beyond all hope. Only 25 years ago, we would have said the same about Czechoslovakia.

Bayard & Holmes Shuffle the Deck with Help from Brian Cashman

As many of you know, I am running for President of the United States. As promised, my writing partner, Holmes, will be your new Secretary of Defense. You may recall that, as part of our Bayard & Holmes Peace Initiatives, we were already working on engaging Brian Cashman, General Manager of the Yankees, to arrange a few international trades that we believe will be beneficial to America. To jog your memory, here is a reposting of that proposal.

Brian Cashman calling for trades

As part of our Bayard & Holmes Peace Initiative, we’re asking Brian Cashman, General Manager of the New York Yankees, to ignore the United Nations and all of the usual diplomatic conventions in order to get some desperately needed personnel changes done for several of the world’s governments. After all, if anybody can, Cashman can.

This is the current multi-team trade that we’re trying to work out at this very moment, and we’re quite sure that none of the parties involved in the trade will feel the slightest sense of loss. This is as win-win as it gets.

17-yr-old Karima Keyek and Berlusconi

Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, would be the new supreme religious leader of Iran. Those folks in charge of Tehran need to loosen up a bit on boy/girl issues, and who better than Silvio Berlusconi, the loosest of world leaders, to guide them toward political adolescence? Few in Italy even notice a change in government. They’ve gotten used to it, and they certainly won’t miss this guy.

Nicole Minetti

Since Berlusconi is an aficionado of belly dancers, he would certainly bring back belly dancers to Iran and introduce his wildly popular bunga bunga culture to the fun-starved Iranians. Tehran needs to learn to laugh and who’s more laughable than Berlusconi? The Italian taxpayers would be so thrilled to not be the ones paying for his parties any more, and with everyone indulging in the new bunga bunga culture in Tehran, who would have time for nuclear weapons development?

And for Italy? About now Italians would appreciate a leader that talks less and spends less. We would send them Queen Victoria. We know she’s dead, but dead people come with certain advantages. Their salary is cheap, and they aren’t given to corruption.

Alexandrina Victoria Hanover, aka Queen Victoria

At this point in Italy’s history, Queen Victoria might be the one person capable of avoiding scandal while serving an Italian government. Unlike Berlusconi, she is unsoiled by any prior associations with the Sicilian mafia. As a paragon of self-restraint with a reputation for efficiency and an image of sexlessness, Queen Victoria’s refinement could do a lot to clean up the government of Rome, as well as their back alleys.

Queen Victoria Wax Figure

We could borrow her wax figure from Madame Tussaud’s to speak at European Community meetings, and, with so many Oxford graduates unable to find suitable employment these days, we’ll have our pick of great voice-over candidates to transmit her messages to the decency-starved masses. We think we’ve finally found the secret of good government for Italy. They simply need a dead person to be in charge.

Mubarak recently joined the ranks of eligible free agent political players. We’re going to send him to the one country where he would be a significant upgrade. You guessed it. . . . North Korea. Since he’s not that much of a hedonist, he could start by setting the Joy Brigade free, allowing those young ladies to escape from their enslavement to the hairless frog that is Kim Jong Il.

Joy Brigade Recruits

Mubarak’s massive personal wealth should go a long way toward establishing a post-stone-age economy in North Korea. Also, North Korea is far enough from the Mideast and forgettable enough to the rest of the world for Mubarak and Egypt to each feel safe from each other. By North Korean standards, Mubarak’s methods of dictatorship will seem like a wild, liberal social revolution. Wow! Imagine being able to speak in public in North Korea. With Mubarak in charge in North Korea, Koreans might finally have the opportunity to reunite north and south, but in any event, nothing he could do, short of nuking his own country, could fail to be an improvement over Kim and his family. We can’t see either country turning down this trade.

Kim Jong Frog

Kim Jong Il will soon be arriving in San Francisco to star in a brand new dominatrix film series, The Princess and the Frog. We’ve contracted a Condoleezza Rice look-alike to play the dominatrix princess who whips that sorry frog into a state of submission until all he can say is, “Please, Your Highness, may I have another?” Finally, people will have a reason to laugh about something Kim Jong Il does.

Condoleezza Rice Lookalike Discussing Kim Jong Frog

What world leaders would you like to trade around? Where would you put them and why?

All the best to all of you for a week of good trades.

Piper Bayard–The Pale Writer of the Apocalypse

Holmes–Student of Sex, C4, and Hollow Points

Donald Maclean – Most Adaptable of the Unholy Trinity

My spy novel writing partner, Holmes, is a man with experience in intelligence and covert operations. As such, he is a great student of history. In his series on the Unholy Trinity of the Cambridge Forty, Holmes began a post on Thursday about Donald Duart Maclean, the quietest man of the trio. Today, he tells us the rest of the story.

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Donald Maclean – Most Adaptable of the Unholy Trinity

By Holmes

In 1939, while Maclean was in Paris, a defected Soviet NKVD agent by the name of Walter Krivitsky traveled from the United States to London to be interviewed by MI-5. Krivitsky gave MI-5 descriptions of approximately 65 Soviet agents working in the British Foreign Office and British Intelligence services.  Maclean was vaguely implicated by the information.

The magnitude of the information was so large that MI-5 concluded Krivitsky must have been planted by the NKVD in an attempt to ignite a purge of British Intelligence Services. On the surface, this might seem sloppy work by MI-5, but MI-5 was relying on Krivitsky’s memory and little documentation.

Krivitsky had escaped to Paris on the lam from the NKVD in 1938, ahead of one of Stalin’s purges of Soviet Intelligence staffs in Europe. The Soviets anticipated that Krivitsky would certainly inform the UK government. They took great pains to plant decoy information, and they successfully made Krivitsky look like he was still working as their agent.

Walter Krivitsky

When judging MI-5′s response to Krivitsky in 1940, we must take into account that for the last 20 years, they had been constantly barraged by false information from Soviet “provocateurs” (fake defectors and doubles). Had MI-5 and Scotland Yard believed half of the sensational “revelations” they received, there might have been too few government employees left out of jail for the British Government to function.

While uncertainty plagued MI-5 and other Western counterintelligence operations, the Soviets suffered from similar doubts. One of the NKVD’s case handlers for Maclean was Elena Modrzhinskaya. For Elena, the windfall of intelligence from Maclean, Burgess, Philby, et al. was just too good to be true.

Living in Moscow Soviet police state without first hand experience in the UK, Elena was not capable of understanding how so much critical, secret information could so easily slip out of England. At times, this doubt caused the Soviets to lose some of the value of the information sent by the Cambridge Forty.

One of the more famous instances of the USSR ignoring valuable intelligence was when Great Britain warned the USSR of the impending German attack in June, 1941. Stalin insisted that the Soviets should not mobilize defenses against a German invasion. That failure to trust his information cost Russia millions of casualties and nearly allowed the Germans to defeat the Soviet Army en totem.

When the German Army was simultaneously knocking at the gates of Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, Stalin realized that his spies in England had been right. After that, he placed more credence on the intelligence received from the Cambridge Forty.

Another piece of valuable information that Maclean passed to Moscow during World War Two was a complete copy of the minutes of British Cabinet Committee meetings concerning the development of atomic weapons by the UK and the USA. Moscow had several other sources of technical intelligence on atomic weapons development, but Maclean’s information gave Stalin a precise reading on the long-term intentions of the United Kingdom and the USA.

By 1942, Maclean’s friends and associates noticed an increase in his drinking. Since his graduation from Cambridge, he had developed a reputation as a reliable and stable individual. Previously, his drinking and social conduct at parties was controlled, but at this time he became more boisterous and argumentative. While increased drinking and a personality change would often catch the attention of counterintelligence watchdogs, during World War Two heavy drinking and a lack of social restraint would not have been quite as noticeable.

In 1944, the Soviet Union hit the jackpot (again) when Maclean was assigned to the British Embassy in Washington D.C. During his time in D.C., Maclean did his most valuable work for the Soviets. He worked to be assigned to the British team in any US/British atomic policy meetings. As a result, Stalin remained very well-informed about US and British nuclear planning and policies.

Division of Berlin, image from spiritoffreedom.org

After World War Two, Germany was divided up into four temporary occupation zones controlled by France, the UK, the USA and the USSR. The German capital city of Berlin was within the Soviet sector, but it was subdivided between the four occupying nations.

The USSR had agreed that France, the UK, and the USA would have unhindered access to road, railroad, and air corridor routes to West Berlin. Thanks in large part to intelligence gathered by Donald Maclean, Stalin knew that the Western powers would not engage in a shooting war with the USSR to keep control of West Berlin.

On June 24, 1948, the Soviets broke their treaty with the allied nations by blockading the land routes to West Berlin, calculating that the Western powers would be forced to abandon West Berlin.  At the same time, the UK and the USA were able to safely predict that Stalin would not attempt to shoot down allied aircraft flying to Berlin. The UK and the USA combined efforts in a massive airlift to keep Berlin supplied. It was an expensive and risky undertaking.

Berlin Airlift, image from spiritoffreedom.org

The Soviets were certain that the West could not operate a big enough air operation to keep Berlin supplied. They did. Between June of 1948 and May of 1949, at the cost of 101 casualties, the Western powers flew an astounding 2.3 million tons of supplies to Berlin. The Soviets lifted the blockade on 12 May 1949. The long-term effect of the blockade was to draw the people of West Germany closer to the Western Allies and to foster overwhelming support in the West for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. NATO.

In 1948, Maclean was reassigned to Cairo. While in Cairo, his drinking increased and his social restraint decreased. His drunken orgies involved him in scandals, and the British Foreign Office recalled him to London. But rather than firing him, in 1950 he was assigned as head of the American department in the British Foreign Office.

In June of 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea without prior permission from their Soviet allies. At that point, Stalin had to decide whether to encourage North Korea to accept a peace agreement, or to support them in a war against the West. Some historians and analysts today believe that Stalin’s decision to back North Korea was based in large part on the intelligence provided by Donald Maclean.  Intelligence that the US and its allies did not intend to allow the Korean conflict to escalate to a nuclear war, and that they did not intend to directly attack China or the USSR.

By 1951, the evidence against Maclean had become undeniable. Newer leaders were rising in MI-6, MI-5, and the foreign Office. The Old Boy stranglehold on these institutions had been broken, in large part, by the hard-working, well-educated middle class professionals (of both sexes) who had joined the expanded operations during the crisis of World War Two. Their lack of pedigrees left them unimpressed with class distinctions and unafraid to challenge the old establishment. Maclean was done.

Ironically, the very sort of social revolution that Maclean had aspired to work for in the Soviet Union had occurred under his nose in British government. That institutional change in MI-5 left the best of both the experienced “old blood” and the enthusiastic “new blood” to forge a much more efficient and effective organization that made the activities of men like Maclean and Philby much more difficult to hide.

In 1951, at the behest of Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, Maclean escaped to the USSR with the help of Guy Burgess. Maclean adapted to his unguilded cage in Moscow, finally getting to live in the communist paradise that he had always wanted, just not a British one. He studied Russian and maintained a loyal party line.

Donald Maclean’s grave in England, image from newworker.org

To reward him for his good behavior, the KGB made Maclean a colonel, but only in nominal terms. He had no authority or responsibility in the KGB. Maclean died of a heart attack in 1983 in Moscow. His ashes were sent back to England to be buried with those of his parents at Trinity Church, Penn, Buckinghamshire.

Any comments or questions about Donald Maclean and the Unholy Trinity of Philby, Burgess and Maclean?