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\"In 1968, a small, dilapidated American spy ship set out on a dangerous mission: to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, the USS Pueblo was poorly armed and lacked backup by air or sea. Its crew, led by a charismatic, hard-drinking ex-submarine officer named Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested sailors in their teens and twenties. On a frigid January morning while eavesdropping near the port of Wonsan, the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded by more patrol boats, shelled and machine-gunned, and forced to surrender. One American was killed and ten wounded, and Bucher and his young crew were taken prisoner by one of the world's most aggressive and erratic totalitarian regimes.

Fifty years ago, North Korea captured the Navy vessel Pueblo and its crew, leading to calls for military action. But diplomacy ultimately won the day.

Fifty years ago, North Korea captured the Navy vessel Pueblo and its crew, leading to calls for military action. But diplomacy ultimately won the day.

  Labor unions, the Chamber of Commerce and local governments are united in efforts to create jobs.

One American sailor was killed and 10 others wounded in a rain of cannon shells and machine gun bullets before [Bucher] finally stopped his ship. The North Koreans seized the Pueblo, packed with code machines and other top-secret material, and threw Bucher and his 81 surviving crewmen into prison, where they were tortured and otherwise brutalized for nearly a year. A tough, charismatic officer, Bucher thus became the first U.S. naval commander to give up without firing a shot since 1807 - a status that instantly reduced him to an object of scorn in the Navy's upper echelons. A panel of admirals convened to investigate the Pueblo debacle concluded that he could have resisted the North Korean gunboats more but \"just didn't try.\" Before he was made captain of the Pueblo in 1966, Bucher served aboard submarines that eavesdropped on Soviet warships and naval bases in the Far East - certainly not a task for the chicken-hearted. Since Navy officials believed that communist vessels wouldn't dare attack the Pueblo in international waters, it was armed only with two machine guns and a handful of small arms. Though jammed with code machines, advanced electronic surveillance gear, and intelligence reports, the spy ship had no means of quickly getting rid of its classified materials in an emergency.

Whether it's an ex-president blocking release of incriminating White House tapes, the Russian government closing a KGB archive to foreign researchers or Japanese officials forcing a school textbook author to excise references to World War II-era atrocities, the public's ability to learn the truth about historic events is hobbled.

A bond issue that big, however, would trigger serious questions among voters, notes Ann Marie Harmony, CEO of Practical Ocean Energy Management Systems Inc., a San Diego­based nonprofit that promotes tidal power. \"Voters are going to go, 'What's the precedent?'\" she says. The short answer: There isn't one. Most tidal generators involve damming a river or bay or placing turbines, levers, or other moving devices in a waterway. The world's oldest and largest tidal plant -- a 240-megawatt station in northern France -- draws power from water passing through a barrier at the mouth of the La Rance River. Submerged turbines are in use in New York's East River and off the coast of Norway. But there's nothing like what HydroVenturi wants to build, with turbines on land. \"HydroVenturi so far is a unique design,\" says Harmony. \"Being a pioneer, you get arrows in the back, not the front. When you call for a bond issue of $1 billion, that's pretty pioneering.\" [Joseph Neil] says studies of the bay's water volume and speed indicate it contains an enormous amount of kinetic energy -- enough to convert into as many as 30 gigawatts a day. (The entire nine-county Bay Area consumes about two gigawatts daily.) Given technical limitations and environmental concerns, he contends, HydroVenturi could produce one gigawatt, if enough boxes and turbines were clustered together. Theoretically, that power could be shared among Bay Area cities, but Neil says he's committed to supplying San Francisco first. But can San Francisco unilaterally exploit the waters of the bay? Could it be required to share its electricity harvest with other Bay Area cities? What happens to the whole lovely scheme if [Matt Gonzalez] is defeated in the mayor's race? He's closely identified with the notion of tidal power, and he's consistently ranked only fourth in recent polls. Would his political ideas -- including tidal energy -- be discredited in the eyes of voters if he loses? Would a tidal bond issue be doomed as a result? Neil doesn't think so. While he appreciates Gonzalez's leadership, he believes that tidal power's future doesn't hinge on the career fortunes of any particular politician. It is simply an idea whose time has come. \"I don't think it matters who's in power,\" he says. \"They're going to have to come to terms with the fact that we need alternative sources of energy. \"I think you'll find that any serious candidate will look at what we're doing and think he should be there as well.\"

Johnson instructed Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to conduct an in-depth background investigation of the captain.6 Agents of the Naval Investigative Service soon fanned out in the United States and Japan, where Bucher had been stationed during his submarine days in the early 1960s.\\n A politically savvy former Rhode Island governor, he realized that public and media sympathy precluded a court-martial of Bucher. Chafee candidly admitted that mistakes and miscalculations by the Navy had led to what he called the Pueblo's \"lonely confrontation by unanticipatedly bold and hostile forces.\" [...]the consequences of the ship's seizure \"must in fairness be borne by all, rather than by one or two individuals whom circumstances had placed closer to the crucial event.\" According to long-secret National Security Agency damage assessments obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the capture of the ship and her eavesdropping gear was one of the worst intelligence debacles in U.S. history.15 Of the 539 classified documents and pieces of equipment onboard the ship, up to 80 percent had been compromised, the NSA reported.