December 31, 2008 2:36 PM

Barnes & Thornburg Helps Tortured Sailors of USS Pueblo 40 Years Later

Posted by Zach Lowe

It probably says something about the difficulty of reliving the torture they endured over 11 months in North Korean custody that only three of the USS Pueblo's surviving crew members chose to participate in a lawsuit against the North Korean government.

But on Tuesday a federal judge awarded the trio and the widow of their commanding officer a combined $65 million after the government of North Korea refused to offer any defense against the suit.

"It was an amazing, emotional roller coaster," says Richard Streeter, the Barnes & Thornburg partner who, along with partners James Sweeney and Karen McGee, represented the plaintiffs. 

Though more than a dozen books have been written about it, the Pueblo incident has been overshadowed by the other traumatic events of 1968--in particular, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.--as the years have passed.

In January of that year, the ship, carrying sophisticated surveillance equipment and only two machine guns, was sailing unprotected off the coast of North Korea. Its mission: pick up radio chatter emanating from the Soviet Union's Asian ally.

A well-armed North Korean ship, claiming that the Pueblo had encroached on North Korean waters, chased down the U.S. vessel, fired on it, and eventually boarded the ship and forced Pueblo commander Lloyd Bucher to surrender. (U.S. officials have always maintained that the Pueblo, which North Korea kept and displays today, never departed international waters). 

One sailor was killed by artillery fire. The North Koreans held the other 82 for 11 months, beating them with broomsticks, belt buckles, and boards until they signed letters confessing they were spies. (One interesting note: the sailors took jabs at their Korean captors, who spoke limited in English, in some of the confessions, and subtly extended their middle fingers in some propaganda photos, according to accounts linked below). The U.S. government negotiated the sailors' release in December 1968 by issuing an apology--one that was immediately revoked once the sailors were safe, according to news accounts and a Web site organized by Pueblo sailors. 

The U.S. Navy actually moved to court marshal Bucher for his decision to surrender instead of fighting back, but elected not to after hearing testimony from him and others, according to Streeter and various news accounts.

"They were basically defenseless," Streeter says. "Any soldier who manned those (two) machine guns would have been killed instantly." 

The plaintiffs decided to file suit against North Korea in 2006, claiming the 11 months of torture caused lasting physical and psychological injuries. They turned at first to Daniel Gilbert of the Rockford, Ill., boutique Barrett & Gilbert.

The choice made sense, since the firm had represented several U.S. Navy divers who were on board TWA Flight 847 when Islamic terrorists, allegedly backed by Iran, hijacked the plane, diverted it to Beirut, and killed one diver before releasing the other hostages. The divers sued various entities, including Iran, and ended up recovering more than $300 million in damages--an amount similar to what the Barnes & Thornburg team requested in the Pueblo case.

Having gotten help from Barnes & Thornburg in the TWA case, Gilbert reached out to the firm again for the Pueblo suit. 

Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. decided on the $65 million award Tuesday after hearing testimony from Bucher's widow, Rose, and the three Pueblo survivors, Streeter says. 

The testimony was difficult to listen to, Streeter says. All three survivors continue to suffer post-traumatic stress, and one, Dunnie Tuck, can barely lift anything because Korean soldiers struck his back so often, Streeter says. The bathroom the hostages were forced to use was four floors below their cells, and a different soldier-escort would beat them on each floor as they led the hostages on trips to and from the bathroom--eight beatings per man per trip, Streeter says. 

The firm has handled the case pro bono "so far," Streeter says, but that may change as they pursue the next step: actually getting their hands on the $65 million. That will entail dealing with the Treasury Department over various frozen assets with links to the North Korean government, Streeter says.

"That's going to be the hardest part," he says.

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