There's a piece of artwork on the walls of the CIA (available to see by those who have access, it's unclassified) that dramatically shows the recovery operation, including showing the one failed grabber that lost one piece of the sub (if that is to be believed): https://shipscribe.com/usnaux2/AG/glomarexp3b-h09.jpg
"This painting representing Project AZORIAN is displayed in one of CIA's corridors with other paintings of key events in the Agency's history which, while not open to the public, are shown to uncleared visitors as well as employees. It clearly shows the grabber on the capture vehicle that failed, dropping much of the submarine back to the ocean floor."
It's typically the opposite. The most successful operations from secret services are the ones you never suspected even happened, while the fuckups are the ones who make the news.
When one visits South Bend, I would guess there are zero posters commemorating when they were ranked #1 and lost the last game of the season to an unranked Boston College.
I came here to make the same comment. Not trying to be an ad for Amazon, but if you have Prime, it's currently available there. Well worth watching if you have any interest in this time period, submarines or Charlie Stross. ( The Charlie Stross reference comes from Project Azorian being the backdrop of his novel, The Jennifer Morgue https://search.worldcat.org/title/680284711 ).
Ever since Accelerando blew my young mind, I've been a huge Stross fan. But I put off reading Laundry Files books (Jennifer Morgue being the second) thinking they weren't in genre for me, wouldn't be my thing.
Wow was I wrong. The spy x demonologist x hacker combo just gives Stross more rope to play around with, and is full of fun eccentricities. A strong Anti-Memetics Division vibe. Would recommend.
First three or maybe four books are good, then characters start to outgrow the author, as it usually happens. It's good that at some point cstross rebooted the series with a new setting and the new heroes, bad that Bob et al didn't get a proper ending.
Charlie's commented about that before. Last I heard he's planning to come back around and give the Laundry series a proper ending once he's done with the New Management novels.
With the exception of the unicorn story which a lot of people found problematic for its treatment of children, I think the laundry files are pretty good
I'd also recommend the book The taking of k-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History by Josh Dean.
I would have appreciated if there were better captions on the photos rather than repeating “While the public believed the Hughes Glomar Explorer to be a vessel for deep sea mining, CIA was really using the ship to search for a sunken Soviet submarine.”
> Among the contents of the recovered section were the bodies of six Soviet submariners. They were given a formal military burial at sea. In a gesture of good will, Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates presented a film of the burial ceremony to Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1992.
As I understand it, Azorian was just a cover story for the exploration and exploitation of certain technology artifacts which were deemed non-human in nature [0]. The Soviets knew exactly where their sub was but the CIA didn’t, so when Hughes found the artifacts while doing actual subsea prospecting they made up the Soviet sub story to get funding and cover. That Harvard professor [1] is using parallel construction to allow the artifacts to be revealed eventually without tipping everyone off the US has had the material for 50 years.
In 1975, the CIA used Howard Hughes's Glomar Explorer in a bungled attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in order to access the "Gravedust" unit, an occult device that allows communication with the dead. Now a ruthless billionaire intends to try again, even if by doing so he awakens the Great Old Ones, who thwarted the earlier expedition. . . .
A mentor of mine was involved with the project. One way he knew who had been aboard or not was what he referred to as "mint jelly" — I think he meant Vick's Vapo-Rub or a similar OTC preparation.
You see, many of the Soviet sailors didn't die neatly, and while the Agency crew treated what Soviet remains they were able to gather up with as much respect as they could, various bits and pieces started to rot as sections of the sub were exposed to warm air. The corpse smell was masked by the judicious use of Vick's (or something similar) under one's nostrils.
Argo being another. However, if you're a clandestine agency trying to create believable cover stories, why not turn to those whose profession it is to create fantastical stories?
The way in which the entire industrial and military might of the country joined forces is hard to imagine today. I suppose the pandemic is a good example of this but nowhere near the breadth of WWs or the cold war.
"A Matter of risk" by Roy Varner and Wayne Coller is a book that covers the story with some interesting details about how this (incredible) operation was carried on.
To show how deep this conspiracy was planted I had science textbooks in the early 90s which had a small section on manganese modules and a photo of the Glomar Explorer, the ship that was designed to explore for them. I only found out in the late 2000s this was an intelligence ruse. This cover had been embedded for so long it managed to wind its way into public school textbooks.
Also in the 90s: The local oil refinery in Northern Europe had a large lobby display of manganese nodule collection as the future of mining for minerals. Next to it was a demonstration of solar panels for future energy needs.
The Glomar Explorer wasn't unique because of it's mobile derrick. There were any number of ships designed for that purpose. It was notable for its deep sea mining of exotic minerals, such as manganese. To date, there still isn't a ship capable of doing such a task and this particle ship was positioned in a public school textbook as having done so.
I remember from an old documentary that when the sub broke apart while it was being lifted, the operators were watching a live video feed of the sub, and on that feed they could see an ICBM escaping from its silo before plunging back toward the depths. While the ICMB was sinking, I suspect that if someone farted in the room, only the dog could hear it.
>"The ship would be called the Hughes Glomar Explorer, ostensibly a commercial deep-sea mining vessel ostensibly built and owned by billionaire Howard Hughes, who provided the plausible cover story that his ship was conducting marine research at extreme ocean depths and mining manganese nodules lying on the sea bottom."
"This painting representing Project AZORIAN is displayed in one of CIA's corridors with other paintings of key events in the Agency's history which, while not open to the public, are shown to uncleared visitors as well as employees. It clearly shows the grabber on the capture vehicle that failed, dropping much of the submarine back to the ocean floor."
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