Editors Allege Pueblo Deceit

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31658, 19 April 1968, Page 13

Editors Allege Pueblo Deceit

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter— Copyright) WASHINGTON, April 18. American newspaper editors have charged the Johnson Administration with “official deceit” in information releases, and with carrying out a “cover-up job” over the captured spyship, Pueblo.

The accusations come after Tuesday’s telecast of what was purported to be a copied page from the ship’s log, which put the vessel’s position at the time of her capture as well within North Korean territorial waters. The National Broadcasting Corporation said it had got the document from North Korean sources. The Pentagon has so far made no comment on the document. The report by the editors, drawn up by their society’s freedom of information committee, said that the United States Ambassador to the United Nations (Mr Arthur Goldberg) and Administration sources at the White House had always maintained that the Pueblo was in international waters when captured and never violated North Korean territorial waters. “The fact was that for 10 days preceding the capture the Pentagon simply did not know exactly where the ship was,” the editors commented. “The credibility gap yawns wider in the Johnson Administration than it did in preceding regimes because this Administration follows a , policy of obscurantism for its ■ own sake.” The committee’s report says -Ithere was confused and con- > tradictory evidence over the . 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident - which led to the United States i bombing of North Vietnam. . i It adds that the reporter’s task in Washington is made

more difficulty “because, under L.8.J., official deceit is practised when there is a reason for it and when there is not.”