Donald Trump greenlit a daring mission to send Navy SEALs into North Korea to bug Kim Jong Un before the operation unraveled after the soldiers killed several fishermen and fled, a bombshell new report reveals.
The audacious plot unfolded in early 2019 as Trump was locked in high-stakes nuclear talks with Kim to limit the hostile nation’s nuclear program.
With negotiations moving forward, Trump was set for the first of two face-to-face meetings with Kim in Vietnam, and military officials presented a plan to have a SEAL team covertly move in.
The mission was given to SEAL Team 6, the same unit that took out Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011.
But despite months of rehearsals to sneak to the North Korean coast in submarines and plant the device before leaving undetected the operation quickly went sideways, a new report from The New York Times claims.
According to military officials who spoke with the outlet, the SEALs only got onto the beach for a short time before they were spotted by a sailing vessel.
Fearing that the vessel was North Korean military, the SEALs opened fire and killed around three people on board before puncturing their lungs to ensure their bodies would sink to the ocean floor.
They soon realized that the men were merely shellfish divers and quickly fled as military officials raced to cover up the fiasco which has never been reported on before.
Donald Trump greenlit a daring mission to send Navy SEALs into North Korea on submarines (seen here during a separate training mission) to bug Jim Jong Un before the operation unraveled when the soldiers killed several fishermen and fled, a bombshell new report reveals
The audacious plot unfolded in early 2019 as Trump was locked in high-stakes nuclear talks with Kim Jong Un, shortly before the first of two face-to-face meetings with Kim in Vietnam (pictured)
The bold plan on the North Korean coastline has remained classified for six years since it fell apart in spectacular fashion.
The White House declined to comment to the Times, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report when contacted by the Daily Mail.
The Trump administration also reportedly failed to inform Congress and Congressional intelligence oversight committees of the operation or its failure, which experts said may have violated federal law.
Despite the severe risks of sending the SEAL team into North Korea, it was deemed necessary to gain a strategic advantage in negotiations at a time when Kim Jong Un was developing a fleet of nuclear weapons that had the capacity to reach the United States.
Officials said that understanding Kim’s mindset and objectives was a key priority after Trump entered the White House for the first time, and the plan to plant the listening device was put forward to the president as a solution.
But the plan had a major catch – the device had to be physically snuck in and embedded in the dictator’s residence.
The bold plan was for a small team of SEALs to sneak onto the North Korean coastline (pictured) and plant a bug on Kim Jong Un’s residence before sneaking away undetected
The SEAL Team 6 – the same unit that killed Osama Bin Laden – was deployed from a US Ohio-class nuclear submarine (pictured) before sneaking into the coastline in mini-subs
The proposal was to send a small team of SEALs on a nuclear-powered submarine into the waters off North Korea, then deploy them on two mini-subs to bring them silently to the shore.
The mini-subs were wet subs, meaning the SEALs would travel to the coastline fully submerged in 40-degree ocean water for around two hours while using scuba gear and heated wet suits.
Although the plan was elaborate and deemed very hard to pull off, the SEALs told military leadership that they believed it was achievable because they had managed a similar feat before during the presidency of George W. Bush.
During the 2005 mission, which also not been reported upon until now, SEALs were able to use a mini-sub to sneak onto North Korean shores and leave unnoticed.
The plan that Trump approved called for a very similar operation as the SEALs would deploy from the mini-subs, install the device and slip back into the sea without being detected.
The Times reports that the mission immediately faced issues that other SEAL operations would not usually encounter, as the US military was unable to establish many of the communications protocols that they would normally use.
This included not having any overhead drones to relay a visual of the target, and an inability for the SEALs on the coastline to communicate with the mini-subs to avoid the messages being intercepted.
In a communications blackout, the mission went ahead in the dead of night, and initially it appeared to be going according to plan.
The audacious plan came months before Trump made his historic visit to North Korea in June 2019, where he became the first US president to cross the demilitarized zone
But within sight of the coastline, one of the mini-subs overshot its mark and was forced to perform a U-turn on the ocean floor, meaning the teams would not be facing the same way as they were deployed.
Commanders decided the mistake could be remedied after the SEALs were in place, and the teams continued their ascent onto the shoreline.
Using untraceable weapons and ammunition, the SEALs got to within a few hundred yards of their target when the North Korean boat came within view.
It was reportedly speculated later that the mini-sub U-turning under the water may have attracted the vessel.
The North Koreans on board began shining flashlights in the water and were overheard talking by the SEALs, who said it appeared they were discussing something they had spotted.
Without being able to communicate with the mini-sub pilots, it was up to the soldiers on the beach to make a decision – and the senior SEAL decided it was time to open fire.
The other SEALs instinctively followed and gunned down the North Koreans on the boat.
The decision to shoot the men meant that the mission was immediately aborted and there was no time to plant the listening device. The SEALs quickly discovered that the North Koreans they had just killed were civilian fishermen.
The mini-subs used in the daring plan were wet subs, meaning the SEALs would travel to the coastline fully submerged in 40-degree ocean water for around two hours while using scuba gear and heated wet suits
The main submarine then took a significant risk by wading into shallow waters to pick up the SEALs from the fiasco, and raced into open water as they hoped they had covered their tracks.
In the time immediately after, officials told the Times that the area saw a surge in North Korean military activity, but it remains unknown if Kim’s intelligence ever pieced together what happened.
Soon after in February 2019, Trump held a summit opposite Kim in Vietnam, and that June he then made his historic visit to North Korea and became the first US president to step beyond the demilitarized zone.
Neither summit yielded any deals, and North Korea went on to ramp up its nuclear weapons programs.
The disastrous SEAL mission spurred military reviews that remain classified, although insiders told the Times that officials decided the killings of the North Korean civilians was justified under rules of engagement.
