Mobley, Richard A. 1952-

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Mobley, Richard A. 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born October 12, 1952.

CAREER:

U.S. Navy Intelligence, commander (retired); worked as chief of indications and warning, U.S. Forces, Korea, and with Defense Intelligence Liaison Office, London, England.

WRITINGS:

Flash Point North Korea: The Pueblo and EC-121 Crises, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Retired Navy Commander Richard A. Mobley draws on his years of experience as an intelligence officer for Flash Point North Korea: The Pueblo and EC-121 Crises, an investigation into two international incidents that brought the United States and North Korea to the brink of war. "In January 1968," explained Joseph Romito, writing for Air Power History, "the Pueblo, a signals intelligence vessel, was seized in international waters by North Korea while on its initial collection mission. One sailor was killed during the attack, and the North held the eighty-two survivors for nearly a year, not releasing them until December." The following April, North Korean fighter aircraft shot down an unarmed American plane that was also on an intelligence-gathering mission. All of the thirty-one crew members on board were killed. "The North Koreans embarrassed two American presidents, their intelligence specialists, and their defense advisors twice within eighteen months," Regina T. Akers wrote in the International Journal of Naval History, "in part, because they underestimated the risk assessment of these missions; had difficulties gathering, interpreting, and sharing the available data; and underestimated the North Korean's capability and agenda."

Despite these incidents, the United States government made no response to the North Korean actions. In part, Mobley points out, this was due to the ongoing involvement in the Vietnam War—the Nixon government had no desire to reopen the Korean conflict—but it was also due, stated Douglass P. Bacon in the Military Review, to the fact that U.S. intelligence-gathering in North Korea was limited at best. The United States knew little about NK leadership other than that its actions were unpredictable," Bacon declared. "America's risk assessment was deficient, and its forces were not fully prepared to execute timely retaliatory operations." "Belatedly, changes in U.S. surveillance operations came in response to ‘a multilevel "lessons-learned" process [that] followed both incidents’ …, resulting in ‘the death of the surface-ship collection program’ … and ‘a sharp reduction in the number of PARPRO [Peacetime Aerial Reconnaissance Program] missions,’" wrote James I. Matray in Korean Studies. "A new Special Action Group centralized command, communications, and control in response to future crises. U.S. planners devised more efficient methods for fighters to support reconnaissance aircraft and formulated two-dozen contingency plans for reacting militarily to new DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] provocations." For readers interested in this little-studied aspect of Cold War history, Romito concluded, "this well-written, well-researched book is highly recommended."