A composite documentary by fifteen crew members of the USS Pueblo after eleven brutal months of imprisonment by the North Koreans.

For President Lyndon Johnson, 1968 was a year of calamity, including the hijacking of the USS Pueblo in international waters off North Korea. After a fierce attack by the North Korean Navy, the lightly armed spy ship was captured and its 83 crewmen taken hostage, imprisoned and tortured for nearly a year before being released. How and why did the Navy, the National Security Agency and the Johnson administration place the Pueblo in such an untenable situation? What drove Kim Il-sung, North Korea's autocrat, to gamble on hijacking a ship belonging to the world's most powerful nation? Drawing on extensive research, including summaries of White House meetings and conversations, the author answers these questions and reviews the events and flawed decisions that led to Pueblo's capture.

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON AWARD FOR NAVAL LITERATURE “I devoured Act of War the way I did Flyboys, Flags of Our Fathers and Lost in Shangri-la.”—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author In 1968, the small, dilapidated American spy ship USS Pueblo set out to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Though packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, its crew, led by ex–submarine officer Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested young sailors. On a frigid January morning, the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded by more boats, shelled and machine-gunned, forced to surrender, and taken prisoner. Less than forty-eight hours before the Pueblo’s capture, North Korean commandos had nearly succeeded in assassinating South Korea’s president. The two explosive incidents pushed Cold War tensions toward a flashpoint. Based on extensive interviews and numerous government documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, Act of War tells the riveting saga of Bucher and his men as they struggled to survive merciless torture and horrendous living conditions set against the backdrop of an international powder keg.

Mitchell Lerner now examines for the first time the details of this crisis and uses the incident as a window through which to better understand the limitations of American foreign policy during the Cold War." "Drawing on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents from President Lyndon Johnson's administration, along with dozens of interviews with those involved, Lerner provides the most complete and accurate account of the Pueblo incident to date."--BOOK JACKET.

How the NSA manipulated the U.S. Navy, Pentagon, White House, Congress, tricked the North Koreans, Russians and Chinese, almost caused a war, and concealed the truth for over 40 years. On January 23, 1968, the North Koreans seized the U.S.S. Pueblo. The incident sent shock waves around the world-almost started a war-and has been the focus of controversy and contradiction ever since. Investigative reporter Robert Liston uncovered startling information to support a remarkable conclusion: The Pueblo was purposely surrendered in a covert mission conceived and carried out by the National Security Agency, a super-secret branch of U.S. intelligence. Liston produces documented evidence to show that the Pueblo, controlled by NSA operatives, was used as bait to draw the Soviet Union and Red Chinese into an NSA trap-an operation that enabled the NSA to break the Soviet system of codes, put the KGB on the defensive for years, and stop a possible war between the Soviets and Chinese. For the first time, author Liston brings to light a true story of international intrigue hidden from the American public, from Congress, even from the White House. He goes inside the U.S. intelligence apparatus and reveals how the Pueblo incident may have shaped and controlled American foreign policy and superpower politics for more than twenty years.

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON AWARD FOR NAVAL LITERATURE “I devoured Act of War the way I did Flyboys, Flags of Our Fathers and Lost in Shangri-la.”—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author In 1968, the small, dilapidated American spy ship USS Pueblo set out to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Though packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, its crew, led by ex–submarine officer Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested young sailors. On a frigid January morning, the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded by more boats, shelled and machine-gunned, forced to surrender, and taken prisoner. Less than forty-eight hours before the Pueblo’s capture, North Korean commandos had nearly succeeded in assassinating South Korea’s president. The two explosive incidents pushed Cold War tensions toward a flashpoint. Based on extensive interviews and numerous government documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, Act of War tells the riveting saga of Bucher and his men as they struggled to survive merciless torture and horrendous living conditions set against the backdrop of an international powder keg.