High Seas The Mysterious Stealth Ship

By Barbara Rudolph

It seemed a straightforward assignment for the high-tech wizards in naval intelligence. They were alerted that the North Korean freighter Dae Hung Ho had sailed with a reputed cargo of Scud-C ballistic missiles bound ultimately for Syria, and they were told to track it. Last week an eager faction in the National Security Council and the State Department leaked word that the U.S. was determined to intercept the freighter and search its hold as it made its way from the Indian Ocean toward the Persian Gulf, where U.S. naval vessels were patrolling to enforce the U.N. embargo against Iraq. But after 10 days of less than crackerjack surveillance, the Dae Hung Ho eluded U.S. warships and docked peacefully in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The Pentagon suddenly had a lot to explain.

Central Command Marine General Joseph Hoar confessed to a congressional committee that the failure was a basic one. "We were unable to locate the ship, clear and simple," he said. "We made every effort, and we were unable to do it." But the real problem, Navy insiders grumbled, was bad judgment at the top. Said an officer: "Initially there was no high priority for this assignment. We were told to look for the ship, no more." Meanwhile the vessels and aircraft best equipped for spotting the freighter in the 800,000- sq.-mi. area, the aircraft carrier America battle group, were carrying out exercises hundreds of miles away.

The Navy was apparently caught in the cross fire between officials back in Washington who wanted to "board now" to determine if there were any Scuds and those who argued that such a bold move would doom negotiations under way to bring about full international monitoring of North Korea's nuclear facilities. "On any scale, the Korean nukes are far more important than a few Scuds," said an Administration insider. Only in the final day or so before the Ho arrived in Iran did word reach the Navy that intercepting the freighter was a high priority.

By then it was too late. Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams made an effort to minimize the embarrassment -- to little avail. "There are a lot of arms sales going on in the world that we don't like," he told reporters, "but that doesn't mean we have the legal authority to stop them." Nonetheless, Williams said, the Navy made every effort to track the Dae Hung Ho. "It would have been nice to have found it," he added.

Washington's embarrassment served as an excuse for Syrian President Hafez Assad to lash out at U.S. Middle East policies. Damascus already has Scud missiles capable of striking Israel. The Scud-Cs believed to be part of the Ho's cargo have a greater range, at more than 300 miles, than the Scud-Bs already in Syria's arsenal, but they would not significantly alter the balance of power in the Middle East. While denying that the Ho was delivering new missiles -- a denial echoed by North Korea -- Assad attacked Washington's efforts to "strip the Arabs of their weapons" while "allowing Israel to manufacture arms."

Israel voiced no public reaction. Privately, however, officials are furious at American inability or unwillingness to thwart what they are firmly convinced was a deliberate mission to deliver the missiles to their archenemy. "What kind of garbage is this?" asked an Israeli government official. "The U.S. doesn't have the ability to stop a North Korean ship? Either it wants to or it doesn't."

The Administration would like to avoid answering that question. Already reporters were asking what the U.S. intended to do about the Iran Salaam, an Iranian freighter suspected of transporting arms. Said spokesman Williams: "I don't think we plan to do anything further." That strategy, at least, is easy to execute.

With reporting by Robert Slater/Jerusalem and Bruce van Voorst/Washington