Judge awards $65M to men taken from USS Pueblo

Judge awards $65M to men taken from USS Pueblo

By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Tuesday awarded more than $65 million to several men who were captured and tortured by North Korea after the communist country seized the U.S. spy ship USS Pueblo during the Cold War. North Korea never responded to the lawsuit filed by William Thomas Massie, Donald Raymond McClarren, Dunnie Richard Tuck and the estate of Lloyd Bucher. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. entered the judgment against the country.

The USS Pueblo was seized off North Korea while it was on an intelligence-gathering mission on Jan. 23, 1968. The North claimed the ship was inside its coastal zone while the U.S. Navy contended it was in international waters.

One of the U.S. ship's 83 crew members was killed and 10 others were wounded. The crew members, led by Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher, were released after 11 months of captivity and sometimes torture.

The ship is still in North Korean hands, the only active-duty U.S. warship in the hands of a foreign power.

The crew kept the military chain of command alive and resisted their captors. They planted defiant codes into forced letters of confession and extended their middle fingers when North Koreans photographed them and sent the images around the world.

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I got to meet all three of the men -- only one of them would ever talk about what they experienced while captured.

Am I correct that this money is supposed to be coming from North Korea? How will they collect that?

so probably well-versed in spookism, but not in surface warfare strategies and evasion.

The US govt. failed these guys. Pay up!

China and South Korea are the biggest trade partners of North Korea. I don't see either of these countries handing over any money for a lawsuit!

If nothing else it's a great symbolic victory.

This $65 million is essentially a lien on an future deals between American and N. Korea.

Just as a lendor files a lein on your house, hoping to get paid many years in the future when you sell it, this is the same thing.

Someday, when North Korea and American become friendly and decide to trade arms, food, technology or who knows what, that $65 million will be a footnote as part of the terms.