LECTURE - Project Azorian

During the cold war, both the US and Soviets were creating nuclear weapons and this concern loomed over us. We learned a lot about one incredible story. In 1968 a Soviet submarine, K-129, slipped through detection when it left Siberia and was making its way to the Pacific to “patrol Hawaii” (of course, the US had similar operations). This story makes you wonder why they have not made it into a full-length feature film since it has so much intrigue between the US and Russia. On their 3-week trip they carried 2 nuclear torpedoes and 3 “new model” ballistic missiles with a 900 mile range (potentially threatening the US West Coast with the equivalent 200 times the strength of the atomic bombs that we used against Japan). Of course this sounds way to like Iranian threats today. The K-129 was gone a week and came up to check-in and then went down, never to be seen again. The Soviets went looking for them and that’s when their secret mission got out. They looked for 72 days but never found a trace of the sub before giving up.

A US Navy cable ship manned by civilians heard 2 explosions, 6 minutes apart, 3 miles under water (the Titanic has remained only 2 miles). The explosions that were probably 2 of the missiles igniting underwater. The US wanted the submarines design, the cryptographic info onboard and these 5 weapons. The CIA (with the support of Henry Kissinger and President Nixon decided to spend the equivalent of $4B in today’s dollars to recover the sunken Soviet submarine from the Pacific Ocean floor in a clandestine plan they gave 10% chance of success. It took 6 years and they built a specific vessel called the using the purposely built 618’ ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer (giving Howard Hughes credit for this operation…just a cover story). It employed a large mechanical claw, designed to be lowered to the ocean floor and “grab” the sub to bring it up (makes you think of a 007 movie). In 1974, the Explorer took 20,000 photos of the sub. The middle moon bay of the boat was not “mining vacuum”, which is what it was advertised as for mining but rather a grabber claw machine to attempt to pick up the sub.

It left Long Beach CA and a Soviet tracking ship followed them but they had a short window to complete their operation. Ironically, they answered a distress call (potential heart attack averted) from an English container ship and that made the Soviets backoff thinking that if it were a serious government operation they would not help another boat.

The Explorer and its claw attempted to lift the 131’ sub but 1/3 of the way up the sub breaks from its weight and lots of debris went everywhere. They brought up 6 bodies and “some Soviet info” but we do not know of what value there was, if any. The US has an “official ceremony” for the bodies and much later turns them over to Soviets when they finally in the 1990s admit what happened and that the sub “existed”. The K-129 bell was found and turned over to the Soviets, but its location is mysteriously unknown.

Once the information got out, many conspiracy theories came out as to the US crashing into the sub on purpose. Of course, this is not true but as to what was discovered from the sub and were those findings and that intelligence worth it. We may never know BUT what did come out from this incident was the expression now tenderly called “THE GLOMAR RESPONSE”, which is a "neither confirm nor deny" answer used by U.S. government agencies, utilized when acknowledging the existence of records would reveal classified information or cause "cognizable harm" to national security or privacy interests.Read more