The Taking of K-129
Page 44
So while it’s true that the CIA lost two-thirds of the K-129, including the ballistic missiles and code books, it also fooled an entire nation of spies who were staring straight at them. And it did recover a nuclear-tipped torpedo, a number of logbooks and documents, and pieces of the submarine’s hull and controls. And that’s just what we know. The CIA has never released a detailed accounting of items recovered and probably never will. Every year, the number of people who know what was boxed up and carted away from Pier E gets smaller. But several Agency officers coyly told me that the mission was more successful than any of us know.
One of them said that even the loss of the missiles wasn’t as crushing as it seems. The warheads and their packaging had been in the water for six years, degrading, and probably had suffered damage in the original accident that caused the wreck. Radioactive isotopes from the weapons were found in the recovered portion of the wreck, and the types of isotopes and their relative distribution, he said, told Livermore’s scientists—who themselves designed nuclear packages for missiles launched out of US submarines—“a lot” about Soviet warheads. With that information alone, they’d get a pretty good idea of how the explosive package was designed.
In the early 1990s, New York Times science writer William J. Broad went to see former defense secretary David Packard at his Bay Area estate while reporting for his book The Universe Below. There’s a chapter in there about Azorian, and Broad asked Packard about the operation. Packard confirmed reports that a majority of the wreck did in fact drop back into the deep as the ship’s claw broke. But he added that it was still a worthwhile venture, implying that much of the value was retrieved. “The Cold War probably would have turned out as it did without that endeavor,” Packard told Broad. “But you never know.”
Inside the current CIA, the memory is increasingly positive. After burying the story for decades, the Agency today seems very proud of what it pulled off with Azorian. Artifacts of Azorian are now prominently displayed in the CIA’s private museum, which sums up the operation, and its engineering, in no subtle terms. “Imagine standing atop the Empire State Building with an 8-foot-wide grappling hook on a 1-inch-diameter steel rope. Your task is to lower the hook to the street below, snag a compact car full of gold, and lift the car back to the top of the building. On top of that, the job has to be done without anyone noticing. That, essentially, describes what the CIA did in Project AZORIAN, a highly secret six-year effort to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine from the Pacific Ocean floor during the Cold War.”
Feelings are mixed among surviving participants of the mission. Jim McNary, John Graham’s head mechanical engineer, told me that “being able to see my projects being built, installed, and operating was a very fulfilling experience,” but that he can’t shake the feeling that, ultimately, the project failed. He was the only engineer in the moon pool when it was first pumped dry, so he was among the first people on the ship who could see what was left inside Clementine’s broken jaws. “All I saw was a large cylinder covered in mud. I was very disappointed.”
Ray Feldman, the Lockheed electrical engineer who designed the telemetry cables, has a rosier view. He thought the mission had about a fifty-fifty chance of recovering the sub when they went out. “The risks were tremendous that something would go wrong, and a lot of things did go wrong,” he said. But that doesn’t diminish what was done, for him. “The fact that we could go all the way down and all the way up with a piece was a significant achievement.”
Walt Lloyd feels that way, too. Especially when you consider the bigger picture, with the cover story—a story so believable that it actually kick-started an industry. In retrospect, he says, it’s even more impressive, because in 1985, the United States learned that a Navy communications specialist named John Anthony Walker had been selling US cryptocodes to the Soviets since 1968, the year K-129 sank. “Azorian was being run right at the time all that information was being revealed, right under the nose of the Soviets, and they didn’t know about it,” Lloyd said. Throughout the years that the program was going on, Walker and his coconspirators decoded more than 1 million secret Navy messages. “And they didn’t get the Glomar communications.”
Lloyd was given an Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work on Azorian. People often ask him why the United States never broadcasted exactly what was captured from the sub. “They say, ‘You didn’t get anything good! What a failure!’” He smirked. “The Soviets didn’t know what we got. That’s just as valuable.”
Quantifying success can be difficult with programs as complicated as Azorian or the U-2. The spy plane was lauded for its secrecy, but the Soviets knew it was flying. They almost shot one down the first month of operation and worked furiously to improve their antiaircraft defenses afterward, pouring vast sums into the effort. That had a real effect on the Soviet economy. “We ran their enterprise into the ground,” Lloyd says. “Defense operations caused by [the U-2] caused major economic impact on the Soviet Union. Secondary and tertiary consequences are an untold story.”
Melvin Laird, Nixon’s secretary of defense, told the journalist Christopher Drew that he didn’t back the Azorian plan because he necessarily thought the cost justified the potential value of the intelligence. “I felt that the technology was important because we might be able to use it with one of our submarines if we got in a problem,” he said. “I was always worried about crews getting trapped. . . . This idea that it was just done for that one submarine is a mistake.”
Toward the end of my reporting, I visited a retired CIA officer who worked under a covert identity on the project. Even forty years later, he was uncomfortable with my using his real name. But he was quite proud of what they’d done. “Look, those guys did an engineering job that is world-class and unbelievable,” he said. “I didn’t appreciate at the time how spectacular it was, and that the fact that it was executed under such secrecy is amazing. I don’t think you could do anything close to it today.” As for the success: “If nothing else, the whole thing was worth it—whatever it cost,” he said, “for the sheer fact of the embarrassment it caused the Soviet Union.”
Soviet submarine K-129, in an undated photograph.
COURTESY OF NIKOLAI CHERKASHIN
The crew of the K-129, in an undated photograph.
COURTESY OF NIKOLAI CHERKASHIN
The K-129’s Ukrainian captain, Vladimir Kobzar, on the bridge of the sub in port.
COURTESY OF NIKOLAI CHERKASHIN
Alexander Zhuravin, the K-129’s second-in-command.
COURTESY OF NIKOLAI CHERKASHIN
One of the few known photographs of John Parangosky, taken at a base in Iran during his time on the U-2 program.
COURTESY OF CHRIS POCOCK
The men who were running Global Marine at the time that Project Azorian was born, from a company marketing brochure.
AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
John Parangosky, in a photograph of unknown origin, supposedly taken the year the Azorian program began.
COURTESY OF CHRIS POCOCK
John Graham, the Glomar Explorer’s chief architect, meeting with his staff.
COURTESY OF JOHN AND JENNY PARSONS
Manfred Krutein, the program’s “mining engineer” and a key figure in the cover story, on deck of the Explorer, off Hawaii, 1974.
COURTESY OF WEHRNER KRUTEIN
Some of the Glomar Explorer crew on the deck. Top row, left to right: Jim McNary, Charlie Johnson, Sherm Wetmore, Don Borchardt, John Parsons. Kneeling, left to right: Randy Michaelsen, Bob Cooper, John Hicks, John Owen.
COURTESY OF JOHN AND JENNY PARSONS
The deep-ocean mining cover crew in a publicity photograph prior to the sailing of the Sea Scope. Clockwise from top left: Manfred Krutein, Paul Reeve, Lockheed’s Connie Welling, George Sherry, and Dave Pasho.
COURTESY OF DAVE PASHO
Mission geologist Dave Pasho hoses down manganese nodules recovered on the faux mining voyage
of the Sea Scope.
COURTESY OF DAVE PASHO
The Hughes Glomar Explorer hull is launched in November 1972.
COURTESY OF CHUCK CANNON
The patch affixed to the blue denim uniform worn by Glomar Explorer crewmen.
COURTESY OF DAVE PASHO
The Hughes Mining Barge, or HMB-1, anchored at Lockheed’s base in Redwood City, south of San Francisco International Airport.
COPYRIGHT NORTON PEARL PHOTOGRAPHY/SAN MATEO HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
An illustration and timeline of the pipe string, drawn by Sherman Wetmore while on station during the mission.
COURTESY OF JIM McNARY
Chuck Cannon on the HGE, just after leaving the Strait of Magellan, en route to Long Beach.
COURTESY OF CHUCK CANNON
The capture vehicle, inside the HMB-1, in 1975, after repairs and improvements in preparation for Project Matador.
COPYRIGHT REGINALD McGOVERN/SAN MATEO COUNTY HISTORY MUSEUM
Program dignitaries at the HGE’s launch, in Chester, Pennsylvania. Standing, left to right: Chuck Goedecke (Lockheed), Chester Davis (Summa), Jim LeSage (Summa), Nadine Henley (Summa), Bill Gay (Summa), Paul Reeve (Summa), Clinton Morse (Summa), and Curtis Crooke (Global Marine). Kneeling, left to right: Pat O’Connell (Honeywell) and Dick Abbey (Honeywell).
COURTESY OF CURTIS CROOKE
The Hughes Glomar Explorer, off the coast of California.
COURTESY OF JOHN AND JENNY PARSONS
Curtis Crooke (bottom left) and executives from Honeywell, Lockheed, and Summa Corporation sign the transfer of ownership papers on the Explorer, off the coast of Catalina Island, June 1974.
COURTESY OF CURTIS CROOKE
The cover story was so well planned that it even had a cake to celebrate the “transfer of ownership” from Summa to Global Marine, off the coast of Catalina.
COURTESY OF CURTIS CROOKE
An actual manganese nodule recovered with the K-129, photographed at the home of an Azorian veteran.
AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
A newspaper cartoon, drawn by Bill Garner, that appeared in The Washington Star-News on March 18, 1975, shortly after Jack Anderson blew the program’s cover.
COURTESY OF ZEKE ZELLMER
John Wayne visited the Explorer in 1976 when the US government was trying to market it to new, potential customers. Bob Bauer, Global Marine president, is at center; Don White, CIA contractor turned Global Marine employee, is at far right.
COURTESY OF CURTIS CROOKE
Acknowledgments
Really, this book exists because of David Grann. Back in early 2014, I had a proposal and was all fired up to write about an incredible story of murder and conspiracy in the American West that had somehow never received the book treatment it deserved. The day after we sent the proposal out, my agent, Daniel Greenberg, called me with gut-wrenching news: David Grann was writing this same book—and he’d been working on it, quietly, for two years. Obviously, we scrapped the proposal. Not only is a two-year head start by another journalist impossible to overcome, but in this case that journalist happens to be one of the most talented narrative nonfiction writers on earth (who, in the end, wrote an incredible book on that story, Killers of the Flower Moon). So after allowing me a few days to wallow in self-pity, Daniel asked me what else I had.
You’re looking at it.
Needless to say, this book would not have been possible without the help of many people. Dave Sharp, Norman Polmar, and Michael White all contributed greatly to the recent Azorian literature and legacy, and their works helped get me started while filling in some critical blanks. Gene Poteat, a DDS&T ELINT superstar, welcomed me into his Alexandria home and later convinced Walt Lloyd and Zeke Zellmer that I could be trusted. Andrew Dunn, my brother’s best friend and a guy so close to our family that my nephews call him uncle, encouraged me to pursue this idea and then opened the door to the crew at the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs. I made three trips to see them in a windowless conference room at Langley and was always treated well. Ryan Trapani became my most frequent point of contact, and while he was often too busy dealing with the indefatiguable Jason Leopold to reply to my e-mails very promptly, he did let me use his employee discount at the gift shop and an Agency-approved recording device for an interview I did there. (Visitors must leave all electronics outside the Langley gate. The only things you can bring in are a notebook and a pen.) Trapani and his colleagues were also supportive of the project from the outset and helped where they could, which included assuring a few retired officers that I was trustworthy. David Robarge, the agency’s lead historian, also did what he could.
By far the most important contributors to this book were the veterans of Project Azorian who are still around and willing to talk about it. Curtis Crooke and Walt Lloyd stand out, of course, both because they were part of the operation’s leadership and because they’re wonderful humans. I visited Curtis and his wife, Jean, at their house above Carmel three times and was always made to feel very welcome. Jean even cut the crusts off my sandwiches, and when I brought a nice bottle of wine as a gift she insisted that we drink it, right there. So we did. I only got to Arizona to see Walt and Monte Lloyd once, but I stayed three days, and Monte sent me off to the airport at the end with a packed lunch. In Jacksonville, Zeke Zellmer and his wife bought me lunch and then let me borrow piles of irreplaceable clippings to take to Staples for photocopies. Zeke also made me a color photocopy of a painting of the Glomar Explorer by his former wife that hangs over my desk. I’m looking at it right now.
I wish the budget had allowed me to fly around visiting all the men who devoted years of their lives to the K-129 recovery effort, but alas, it did not. Most of my conversations with Azorian veterans were on the phone and often stretched over many hours. Those who took my calls and answered my many questions, even the dumb ones, are, in no particular order: Sherm Wetmore, Jim McNary, Chuck Cannon, Charlie Canby, Steve Kemp, John Owen, John Parsons, Vance Bolding, Dave Pasho, Hank Van Calcar, Joe Houston, John Hollett, Fred Newton, Wayne Pendleton, Tom Bringloe, Larry Small, Bill Swahl, Bill Tancredi, Jon Matthews, and a few retired intelligence officers who still aren’t comfortable talking on the record even though these events took place forty-some years ago. (Old habits are hard to break.) I’m going to pull the project’s attorney Dave Toy out of this list for a special and sad reason: He passed away a few months after we spoke.
Occasionally, though, I was in the neighborhood and caught someone in person. Ray Feldman was the first to show me a manganese nodule, still in the little box that Walt Lloyd had made, during a visit to Palo Alto. Bob Frosch and I had sandwiches in the café at his retirement home in Amherst, Massachusetts. I had no idea the beautiful Webb Institute existed until I caught a train out to Long Island’s North Shore to spend the morning with Jacques Hadler, who is well into his nineties but still teaching future naval architects, and commuting back and forth from Long Island to the Washington, DC, suburbs on I-95 every week during the academic year. Jenny (Graham) Parsons was a joy, and eager to help me get to know her amazing father better. I never made it to Santa Barbara, but she and her husband, John, a Glomar veteran, happened to be in New York, so we had lunch—in New Jersey.
Vern Krutein, Manfred’s son, digitized a video of his father giving a talk and sent me some pictures, one of which appears in the book. TD Barnes, who runs Roadrunners Internationale, a group of Area 51 veterans, helped me fill in a little of Mr. P’s mysterious life and graciously invited me to join the club’s annual gathering, which I wish I’d been able to attend. John Lahm, a retired electrician, successfully lobbied his local politicians to get a plaque installed on the Philly waterfront remembering the Glomar Explorer, not far from where the ship was built, and helped connect me with some former Sun Ship workers.
Others who contributed expertise and wisdom include Admiral (Ret.) Bobby Ray Inman, Admiral (Ret.) Paul W. Dillingham, Jr., Admiral (Ret.) Mal Ma
ckinnon, John Halkyard, Charles Morgan, Miriam John, and Rich Wagner. Steve Bailey, a Lockheed engineer who worked on the Glomar Explorer during her stint as a real deep-ocean-mining ship, in the late 1970s, and later on the stealth vessel Sea Shadow, endured an interview and then, when I visited the Bay Area, took me to visit the HMB-1, now a floating dry dock at Bay Ship & Yacht, in Alameda, California.
Menschy writers include Chris Drew of The New York Times, naval historian W. Craig Reed, and Jim Steele, who gladly gave me access to the treasure trove of Howard Hughes material in the archive he and Don Bartlett donated to American University. Susan McElrath, who oversees that archive, helped show me around and had piles of copies of Hughes clips and memos made and mailed to me. Serge Levchin in New York and Dmitry Kvasnikov in Moscow helped find and translate Russian stories, books, and films. Dmitry also tracked down some photos, answered many annoying questions, and is just a generally kind and cheerful person whom I now consider a friend.