From: Jed Rothwell [snip] A famous example of a dark project that was a waste of time & money was when the CIA raised a sunken Russian submarine K129, with help from Howard Hughes. I read that by the time they recovered it, the technology was long obsolete and they learned nothing of importance. That was in the book "Blind Man's Bluff" as I recall.
Well, there is a more interesting book and another possibility - good entertainment if nothing else… maybe a more accurate version of the Hunt for Red October. In fact, Clancy’s inspiration. Red Star Rogue by Kenneth Sewell makes the claim that we recovered virtually all of K-129 while irradiating the Glomar crew - and an elaborate cover-up was put in place to hide that fact. The underlying premise of Red Star Rogue is almost certainly exaggerated by the China connection which is tenuous - but many of the details have turned out to be accurate. There is no doubt that massive contamination due to plutonium was found (independently and in an area which was suspiciously near Hawaii). As for the tech -it was an antiquated diesel sub and we already had the code books so the getting the tech was always a fake motivation. We wanted to know who set off the nuke. https://www.amazon.com/Red-Star-Rogue-Submarines-Nuclear/dp/0743261127/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519777302&sr=8 It is likely that the nuclear detonator of a missile was triggered, not by accident and thankfully not the payload but that this may have been a fail-safe mechanism which was actually directed by a Soviet Admiral who figured out what was going on by the rogues. This is different from Clancy’s premise. A fail-safe device was known to be designed to be activated in the event of an unauthorized “fire” command and that is where the “rogue” part comes in. But who knows what strange machinations were going on when you put China into the equation. Sewell claims the soured relations between China and Russia was the outcome of the deep plan of Nixon and Kissinger, and this is involved as the motive for the K-129 incident. The sub or one like it may have been promised or to be sold to China. The real goal of Glomar was not the nuclear weapons or the code systems but finding the orders (or lack thereof) and crew identity to determine of what K-129 was doing at 40N/180W "where she did not belong" and not where we said she was found, and who was actually onboard. A Chinese presence was located in the area and kept silent. That much is probably true. This information was supposedly used by Kissinger in dealings with Brezhnev and started the string of events leading to the collapse of the USSR. In the end, this book may be part of an attempt to rehabilitate Nixon by Sewell and maybe Dick deserves the credit… but the episode and double-cross was probably Henry’s idea … and it may have been brilliant. Henry was so Dr. Strangelove… … no fighting in the War Room !!!
