Agreed.
This is long, but it details explicitly what happened to the crew after Time Magazine spilled the beans. Do you endorse stooping to Time's level?
There were reasons why Time spilled those beans, reasons why they were given those beans, so to speak, to spill in public in the first place. You'd do well to learn a good deal more about the subject matter besides a quick scan of that Time article.
Read the results here. It is horrifying.
Just so, and that is not the worst of it, though the CTs aboard were supposedly intelligence community professionals who knew and understood the risks of their business. Equally horrifying is the reason those men were placed in their position in the first place, and the decision to keep them in the dark as to the reason they were allowed to suffer that fate for a year, then to receive no recognition for their best attempts to bear such allegience to their oaths of loyalty as they could for all the years since. But there was indeed a reason, which I hope was a good enough one for the consciences of those who chose to sacrifice them in that manner.
And if civilian journalist Pearl is maintaining that same allegience to this country as the Pueblo sailors did, he deserves far better treatment than they received, and should his death result, it should be categorized as the same sort of sacrifice as that of Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers aboard Flight 93 after his reported last words of *let's Roll and the crash of that aircraft in a location other than where the terrorist hijackers aboard had intended. But let us hope that it doesn't come to that.
Everything following is from the link you kindly provided. I would suggest you read the story.
I am very familiar with the story, as I am with Captain Bucher's account of the event in his semi-autobiographical Bucher:My Story , the AGER-2 website, the book Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy by Chuck Downs, The Last Voyage of Uss Pueblo,. by Ed Brandt and several other related unclassified references, and also to after-action reports that I do not believe will ever see the light of day. Though the events on board the Pueblo are horrifying enough, a glance at a calender should help you further understand just what forces were at play.
But if you care to get a better understanding of what is going on for WSJ reporter Pearl, those are your starting places as well, acrobatic and specious though they may be.
*Hey, look at the little red stars on their sailor caps....*