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The evidence did not satisfy everyone. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright said that he wanted more information on just what had happened, and added: "I'll find out eventually—in two or three or four years. We're just now finding out what took place in the Gulf of Tonkin." Fulbright's rueful reference was to the exhaustive study his committee is making into the 1964 attacks on
U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese PT boats and the Senate's subsequent resolution granting President Johnson broad authority to counter aggression in Southeast Asia. The committee was to have decided last week whether to pursue the investigation farther, but in the light of the Pueblo incident, it prudently deferred a vote.
Hardening Line. In the Pueblo affair, despite a general willingness to give diplomacy a chance to work, pressure mounted swiftly for a retaliatory strike. The Navy, some said, wanted to bomb the Wonsan MIG base. South Korean Premier Chung II Kwon urged a massive response, warning that "a lukewarm U.S. response would encourage the Communists to engage in another Korean War." But President Johnson was cautious, in part because his critics have accused him so often of overreacting during crises, notably—if unfairly —in the case of the Dominican Republic. His carefully measured response was also determined by the war in Viet Nam. What may become the biggest engagement of that conflict to date is shaping up in the hill country of the DMZ around Khe Sanh, and Johnson is reluctant to take any new military initiative that might divert men and materiel from that looming battle.
One of the President's first moves was to ask Moscow to put pressure on Pyongyang for the release of both the ship and her 83-man crew. Shrewdly, he did not use "the hot line" that proved so useful during the Israeli-Arab war last June. The Russians, who have only recently weaned North Korea from Peking's camp and at least part way into their own, are reluctant to do anything that might disturb that delicate relationship. Moreover, Moscow has endured severe criticism from Asia's Communist parties for its lack of militancy in combatting the U.S. presence there, and seems to be hardening its line in the entire area.
Steamy Valve. As a result, when U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Llewellyn Thompson called on Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov to request Moscow's intervention, he was almost rudely brushed off. A second visit, this time with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, yielded an equally frosty response. Elsewhere in Communist Europe, U.S. Ambassador John Gronouski reported from Warsaw that he was discussing the matter with the Polish government.
White House aides frankly admitted that outside efforts to work with the North Koreans did "not have satisfactory results," and Johnson began exploring other channels with his crisis-oriented "Planning Committee." One course led swiftly to the perennial "pressure valve" of the United Nations, but few officials expected it to produce much more than steamy, timesaving debate.