Peacekeeper - Flickr - The Central Intelligence Agency

By Dru Blair
2010
Mixed Media on Illustration Board
Donated Courtesy of Richard J. Guggenhime and Donald Elster
On 23 January 1968, North Korea seized the US Navy Ship Pueblo while it was on a signals intelligence collection mission in international waters off the coast of North Korea. Pyongyang claimed it had caught the US spying inside its territorial waters. Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, aware of the A-12 OXCART’s quick-reaction, overhead-photographic capabilities, urged its use to find the missing ship. Helms assured President Lyndon B. Johnson, reluctant at first, that the A-12 supersonic aircraft “could photograph the whole of North Korea, from the DMZ to the Yalu River, in less than 10 minutes and probably do so unobserved by air-defense radar.” With the President’s approval, on 26 January 1968 CIA pilot Jack Weeks flew a three-pass mission over the southern part of North Korea and the Demilitarized Zone to locate the Pueblo and to determine whether Pyongyang was mobilizing for possible hostilities with the US in reaction to the seizure.

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