of the men under him. He never realized his dream of commanding his own sub, though, ranking 20th on a list of candidates for 17 available boats. In 1966 the Navy “surfaced” him, putting him in charge of the Pueblo , a balky, World War II–era tub that had been dusted off from the Navy’s mothball fleet and refitted as a spy platform.

The Naval Investigative Service eventually reported that while Bucher had had a few sexual dalliances with Japanese bar girls, there was no evidence he was a traitor. 7 As part of the background probe, the Central Intelligence Agency worked up a psychological profile of Bucher. The CIA shrinks, too, concluded that he was a loyal American. However, they couldn’t resist pointing out what they evidently regardedas a significant character flaw: the captain’s “strong inclination to become too involved with his men.” 8

Hellish Imprisonment

After mooring the pirated spy ship in Wonsan, the North Koreans paraded Bucher and his men past a screaming, spitting mob of civilians at the dock and threw them into a prison under nightmarish conditions. For the next 11 months the sailors were routinely tortured, beaten, and starved. 9 The communists applied horrendous pressure on Bucher in his first hours of captivity, trying to force him to sign a phony confession that he had intruded into their territorial waters for the purpose of espionage. He was beaten, threatened with a firing squad, subjected to a mock execution, and taken to a bleak basement to view an Asian man who had been