On Friday The New York Times revealed what may go down in history as the single most ignominious fiasco of US special operations in years, or possibly even decades – a positively wild story which is going to cast a further spotlight on Trump and current and former intelligence officials and elite military commanders.
In early 2019 at a moment President Trump during his first term publicly engaged in high-profile diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, which included chummy summits at the DMZ border and the exchange of letters, a highly secretive operation by the US Navy’s SEAL Team 6 ended with a group of North Korean civilian fishermen massacred under mysterious circumstances.
Trump as Commander-in-Chief had ordered a high-risk mission, utilizing low-tech methods to avoid detection, to insert the Seal team on the North Korean coast where they would install a surveillance device capable of intercepting Kim Jong Un’s most sensitive communications. It would be hidden from Congress and the public, and even government officials based on need-to-know access. It’s one of those past covert ops which was never intended to see the light of public knowledge.
The Times report describes the mission’s purpose as likely to give the White House a huge leg up as Trump tried to engage Kim on the nuclear front, to achieve hoped-for historic denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. “The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump,” it says. But the report notes that the hidden surveillance objective may have had a broader purpose.
“The mission had the potential to provide the United States with a stream of valuable intelligence,” NY Times continues. “But it meant putting American commandos on North Korean soil — a move that, if detected, not only could sink negotiations but also could lead to a hostage crisis or an escalating conflict with a nuclear-armed foe.”
Essentially this would be a small-scale invasion and breach of one of the most militarized and paranoid countries in the region and on earth. It should be noted that it is covert operations like these which give autocrats like Kim Jong Un (or previously: Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, as well as the Iranians) valid reasons to be paranoid concerning Western spies and elite operatives.
The report details that under the cover of night, the Seal team landed on a North Korean shoreline after they swam through freezing waters with untraceable equipment, operating completely blind and with no typical drone, spy plane or overhead surveillance or real-time mapping. Even their weapons and bullets were selected so as to be ‘untraceable’.
Apparently there was precedent for this, something also long kept secret: “In 2005, SEALs used a mini-sub to go ashore in North Korea and leave unnoticed, according to people familiar with the mission,” NY Times discloses. “The 2005 operation, carried out during the presidency of George W. Bush, has never before been reported publicly.”
Every aspect to the 2019 infiltration was ultra high-risk, NYT continues:
The plan called for the Navy to sneak a nuclear-powered submarine, nearly two football fields long, into the waters off North Korea and then deploy a small team of SEALs in two mini-subs, each about the size of a killer whale, that would motor silently to the shore.
The mini-subs were wet subs, which meant the SEALs would ride immersed in 40-degree ocean water for about two hours to reach the shore, using scuba gear and heated suits to survive.
Eight Seals would swim to the target and plant the device, but the mission began to dramatically unravel from nearly the moment they surfaced in the dark of night.
Given the lack of real-time intelligence and communications black-out, intelligence analysts had studied and monitored the intended landing spot for months prior via satellite, to ensure no North Korean soldiers or bystanders could detect the operation. But it turns out there was a fishing boat very near the target zone:
Every few yards, the SEALs peeked above the black water to scan their surroundings. Everything seemed clear.
That might have been a second mistake. Bobbing in the darkness was a small boat. On board was a crew of North Koreans who were easy to miss because the sensors in the SEALs’ night-vision goggles were designed in part to detect heat, and the wet suits the Koreans wore were chilled by the cold seawater.
The SEALs reached shore thinking they were alone, and started to remove their diving gear. The target was only a few hundred yards away.
By that moment, one group of Seals had made it to the shore, while another had stayed with the underwater small subs. Thinking that the fishing boat had likely detected the subs, which may have been exposed due to wake-movement or bubbles at the surface, and possibly underwater lights – a Seal commander at the shore opened fire on the boat.
“As the shore team watched the North Korean in the water, the senior enlisted SEAL at the shore chose a course of action,” NY Times details. “He wordlessly centered his rifle and fired. The other SEALs instinctively did the same.”
Upon inspection of the shot-up boat, all the crew were dead. They had just been unarmed civilians diving for shellfish. But to conceal their presence, the Seals punctured the lungs of the corpses so the bodies would sink to the bottom of the ocean floor.
From that point, “The SEALs swam back to the mini-subs and sent a distress signal.” The report adds: “Believing the SEALs were in imminent danger of capture, the big nuclear submarine maneuvered into shallow water close to the shore, taking a significant risk to pick them up. It then sped toward the open ocean.”
The fact that this highly classified incident is being leaked to the press now is significant in its own right…
This is insane. Trump secretly deployed SEAL Team 6 into North Korea to plant a listening device but the mission collapsed when a fishing boat approached. SEAL Team 6 killed every civilian, sank the bodies by piercing their lungs, and escaped. Congress wasn’t told about it. pic.twitter.com/JnnZuSqibt
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) September 5, 2025
The Seal team made it back unharmed, and US officials told the NY Times that a flurry of intense North Korean military activity was later observed by satellites at that same shoreline. Pyongyang never made accusations or statements publicly acknowledging there was a deadly incident, and the US gained no intelligence from it – as the listening device was never planted – and there was apparently never accountability.
The whole episode suggests there may be many more such ‘secret failures’ involving special forces in recent history. Special operations tend to only be made public, and celebrated, when they are a success; however, such missions which end in futility and innocent civilians dying get covered up, often with mission overseers getting promoted. Pyongyang is certainly paying close attention to the Friday Times report.
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