The CIA’s Biggest Heist

“We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of those materials.” This well-known denial associated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was first popularized during a remarkable Cold War event. 

In a recent AARP Virginia Tuesday Explorers program, historian Jim Lewis recounted the incredible story involving a Soviet submarine, a seemingly impossible recovery operation, and a famous eccentric millionaire.  

The year was 1968, a time of worldwide unrest, with the conflict in Vietnam and political assassinations and race riots across the United States. It was the height of the Cold War, with the U.S. and the Soviet Union in a tight arms race and intelligence war. 

Soviet submarines armed with ballistic missiles caused fear in the U.S., particularly along the West Coast, prompting many families to construct bomb shelters. 

One such sub was K-129, armed with 21 ballistic missiles, each of which carried a punch 65 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki during World War II. In addition, it carried two nuclear tip torpedoes. Equipped with the latest Soviet technology, the sub posed a further threat because it could launch its weapons in deep water. 

In mid-March, while heading from the Petropavlovsk Soviet base in the north Pacific towards Hawaii, the sub went missing. The Soviets had never lost a sub with nuclear weapons on board, so this became “the Soviets’ worst nightmare,” said Lewis. 

U.S. intelligence vessels picked up details of a massive Soviet recovery operation, involving 40 vessels and 53 aircraft, about 1,200 miles northwest of Hawaii. The Soviets unsuccessfully searched an 854,000-mile radius for about two months. 

The United States of course, was very interested in finding and recovering the sub, along with its arsenal, code books, and instructions. President Lyndon Johnson, in his last year of office, authorized the search. 

Unbeknownst to the Soviets, the U.S. had developed sophisticated underwater listening technology designed to detect nuclear activity or submarines. Using this technology, it identified a recovery site about 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii.  

The sub was located at 16,800 feet deep. To put this depth in perspective, said Lewis, the Titanic was about two miles under water, and Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was more than three miles down. This sub was even deeper.  

In July 1968, the U.S. Navy launched a full-scale search, called Operation Sand Dollar, using a special submarine called Halibut equipped with intelligence technology. It was a dangerous mission, as the Soviets were still using ships with sonar to try to locate K-129. Halibut was able to avoid detection by positioning itself under layers of cold water, reflecting the sonar signals back to the surface. 

In August 1968, Halibut located K-129 in three pieces on the ocean floor. The largest piece was called the Ford section because it included Ford missile tubes. This was clearly desirable for recovery, not only for the nuclear weapons but also for code books and operating manuals the U.S. hoped to obtain.  

In January 1969, Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the new U.S. president, and he very much wanted to recover the Soviet sub. The U.S. Navy, however, said it had no workable plan for recovery. The salvage operation was then offered to the CIA, which jumped at the opportunity.  

The problem, of course, was the extreme depth. The deepest successful ocean recovery to date was 245 feet in 1939. K-129 was nearly 17,000 feet deep. 

The CIA approached a private company, Global Marine in Los Angeles, to consider the possibility of such a deep salvage. After more than a year of examining options, it was decided the best approach would be a “grunt lift,” or use of a pipe with a claw to grab and lift the target section for recovery. The probability of success, said Lewis, was estimated at 10 percent. 

Called Project Azorian, the plan was to construct three components: a heavy-duty ship, a capture vehicle with a claw, and a large submersible barge to bring the recovery target up into the bottom of the ship through an opening called a moon pool. 

The size of the ship would have to be massive to accommodate the weight of pipe sections weighing 8 million pounds and the claw and barge each weighing 4 million pounds, for a total weight of 16 million pounds, or “the equivalent of 450 empty Greyhound buses,” said Lewis.  

But how would they explain a ship of this size being constructed, let alone hovering in the Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of a sunken Soviet submarine? Here’s where the eccentric millionaire comes in. 

Oceanographers had long known that the floor of the Pacific was covered with manganese nodules, so the story devised was that the vessel would be an experimental way of mining valuable minerals for profit. The CIA, of course, couldn’t take ownership of the operation, so it turned to the man who was, according to Lewis, “the Elon Musk of his day,” Howard Hughes. 

With Hughes on board, the venture was seen as a privately owned corporation. Much like Musk today, when Hughes initiated a new idea or venture, people just shrugged and accepted him as he was. 

The media bought the story, and the Hughes Glomar (for Global Marine) Explorer was christened in 1972. The barge was sold as support for the mining project, while the recovery vehicle was constructed secretly and never seen. 

The Explorer was built in Philadelphia, and because of its size, it was unable to travel to Long Beach, Calif., via the Panama Canal, instead travelling around the cape of South America. It arrived in Long Beach in early 1974 to much media attention. 

In June 1974, just before Project Azorian launched, Hughes’ Burbank office was burglarized. This becomes important later in the story. 

Six years after K-129 sank, the Explorer arrived at the recovery site, after battling typhoons, tropical storms, and continuous Soviet surveillance. The crew started lowering the pipe and the capture vehicle, called Clementine, down to the target. 

On Aug. 1, 1974, Clementine freed the target and began the slow ascent to the ship. The 16 million pounds of the ship strained the hydraulics, causing the ship to creak and groan.  

On Aug. 4, with the target only 9,000 feet from the surface, there was a shudder and then calm. CIA employee Dave Sharp, who later wrote a book on the project, went to the control room, where staff were watching the ascent on closed circuit cameras.  

“Do you have all the targets?” asked Sharp. 

They refreshed the cameras – and saw disaster. Clementine’s claw had failed, with two of its huge fingers broken. Only a small portion of the sub was recovered, with the rest sinking back to the ocean floor. 

The CIA was furious, but wanted to make another attempt. Global Marine was willing to make repairs and try again. Planning began on the second attempt, dubbed Operation Matador. 

Investigation of the recovered portion of the sub uncovered the remains of six Soviet sailors, well preserved in the deep pressure and cold air of the ocean floor. They were respectfully buried at sea.  

Interestingly, the sub section also contained manganese nodules, which helped support the mining cover story. 

Remember the break in at Hughes’ office? Before Operation Matador could get underway, stolen documents exposed the story and blew the CIA’s cover. When the story hit the media, the CIA issued the now famous “we can neither confirm nor deny” response, which became known as the Glomar response, after the Hughes Glomar Explorer. 

After investigation by the predecessor of today’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the CIA would never again have day-to-day control over a spy operation, although intelligence from the project contributed to future deep-water black operations missions. 

Project Azorian was considered a failure, and it is unknown what intelligence the CIA gained from the mission, although it did achieve at least one objective. The loss of the sub and its recovery attempt forced the Soviet Union to make major changes to its submarine operations, causing tremendous financial burden when the country could least afford it.  

Project Azorian, said Lewis, “remains one of the greatest feats in naval engineering history.” The mission cost $800 million, or about $4 billion in today’s dollars, and sent a powerful message to any potential adversaries that the United States was the only country that had the wherewithal to attempt anything of this magnitude. 

Today, only the barge portion still exists, used as a floating dry dock. The Explorer was used for deep sea drilling, then scrapped. And Clementine, the covert recovery claw, was immediately disassembled following the mission. 

This presentation is available on AARP Virginia’s YouTube channel. 

For information about upcoming Tuesday Explorers programs, visit AARP.org/TuesdayExplorers.