To Lloyd Bucher [Letter 552]

Lloyd Bucher (1927–2004) was commander of the USS Pueblo, the US warship captured by North Korea in 1968.

March 7, 1969

Commander Lloyd Bucher
c/o Pueblo Command Information Bureau
Building 303
Naval Amphibious Base
Coronado, California  92118

Dear Commander Bucher:

I am enclosing a copy of my magazine, The Objectivist, which contains (page 1) my statement in regard to the Pueblo case [“Brief Comments,” February 1969].

Please accept it as a small token of my profound admiration for your great moral courage and for the rightness of your stand.

If it should become necessary to defend you against injustice, I would be honored and proud to be your Emile Zola.[*] But I believe that this country is still healthy enough not to let it become necessary.

I have read in the newspapers that I am one of your favorite authors. If this is true, I would like very much to meet you some day, when and if possible, at your convenience.

Sincerely,

Ayn Rand

AR/bw
Encl.

*Although AR had a low appraisal of the naturalism written by French author Emile Zola (remarking in “Art as Sense of Life” that he presents “sewers” as normal), she is referring here to Zola’s heroism in exhaustively pursuing justice for wrongly-convicted French artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus.

The Ayn Rand Archives contains no record of a response from Bucher.