Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: Project Azorian: The CIA's Super 70s Mission To Steal A Sunken Soviet Sub

Transcript

Selects: Project Azorian: The CIA's Super 70s Mission To Steal A Sunken Soviet Sub · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: AHOI everyone. For this week's select I've chosen our episode
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: on Project Azorean, one of the coolest, most bonkers cold
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: bar capers the CIA ever attempted. And I don't have
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: to tell you the CIA did some bonkers stuff during
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the Cold War. So sit back, pull up your favorite
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: volume on naval history, and use it to clench onto
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: while you're driven to thrills by this episode of Stuffy
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Should Know. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant. There's our ghosts podcaster producer.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Who's invisible Jerry's past? Yeah, actually the ghost of Jerry's present.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Jerry's not dead, everybody. No, that just sounded weird, it,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: did it. We're keeping Jerry around. Yes, she just out
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: this week. Yeah, there you go. So it's just us, Chuck,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: just a couple of boys batching it, just some good
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: old boys, never meaning no harm. No, something something been
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: in trouble with the loss. It's the day we were born.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I don't think there was something something before then? Is
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: there something something, something been in trouble? Yeah, right now,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll go we'll look it up. You know.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It's funny. There's a great and we might have talked
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: about this years ago, but there's a great website called
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Atlanta time Machine where you can go back and look
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: at old pictures of Atlanta and compare them to new
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: pictures and all that stuff. And they have some movie
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: specific pictures now. And they have the Dukes of Hazard
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Pilot shoot photos, which was they eventually moved it out
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: in the country, but like most of the Dukes of
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Hazard Pilot, all those car chases were in like midtown Atlanta.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Really isn't that crazy. But it was the original Bow
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and Luke. Wow, who was the Who's sang the theme song?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Was it? Walk Toosh wayal And Jennings? Wasn't he the narrator?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: It was whyal And Jennings? What was that first thing
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: he said? Walk toosh What does that mean? That's his nickname? Really,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: walk Toosh Wayalen Jennings. I never heard that? Wow, it
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: is I love Wayale Jennings. Yeah, he's great. Apparently he
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and Johnny Cash were roommates and highwaymen back well way
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: back in the day. Yeah, and both of them were
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: on drugs. But they didn't. Other people didn't know that.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So they both used to like be on drugs but
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: not tell each other about it. Really, And I guess
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: it came out later that they were like, you were
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: on drugs, said so was I wods like I used
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: to keep on drugs in the air conditioner and Johnny
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Cash is like, that's why the air condisher never worked
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and Whyalen and Jones was like, I used to keep
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: mining in the TV and Johnny Cash is or whoever was, Yeah,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: their TV never worked, in their AC never worked because
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that's where they stashed their drugs without the other one
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: knowing it. Why what are the drugs due to the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: TV and the air conditioner? I got them pretty wasted?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: What a weird start. Yeah, it is a little weird start,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: especially because while we're talking about has nothing to do
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: with drugs, Johnny Cash or Waylon Jennings or air conditioners,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: no TV really, No, it has to do with the
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: CIA yep, submarines yep, the USSR YEA cold war yep,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and Howard Hughes, Yeah, among other things been hidden with Kissinger.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Are you kissing him to his interesting? He's still alive too.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe you'll hear this. I've never seen you hiss before.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I know. It's kind of threatening, is it, Yeah, because
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I do have like a really sharp canine thing. Yeah,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: you should. You should totally hiss more often. I should,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: and I should shark in these things. I should file
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: them down. Oh people do that, I know, but surely
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: that has to hurt, right to file them down? Yeah? No,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: how does it? Don't you have nerved No, they don't
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: hit the nerves, They just Oh, I guess you're right. Yeah, yeah,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I might do that. In the meantime, let's talk about something. Well,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: let's let's go back to the beginning. Okay, okay, it's
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. I'm not exactly sure when, because look
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the first part of my page ripped. Does it say
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: win in nineteen sixty eight? It does? You want to guess?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm holding the keys. May of nineteen
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: sixty eight, close March. It was pre summer of barely
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, everybody's just getting started. It was the summer
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: of four play. Yeah, everyone's getting looped up, right, So
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it is gross. So March of nineteen sixty eight in
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: the northwestern Pacific, as far as the United States is concerned,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: which should be between say Hawaii and some far out
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: islands in Alaska and whatever else is out there. There's
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: not a lot out there. Yeah, apparently Hawaii is the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: most remote island chain in the war world. Did you
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: know that. No, there's no island chain that's further away
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: from other land than Hawaii, even like when you look
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: at the globe those teeny tiny islands, uh huh from
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: what I understand. All right, so say Hawaiians at least. Yeah. Anyway,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: basically out in the middle of nowhere in the northwest Pacific,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: there was a Soviet sub It was a Golf two.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Golf two Soviet submarine. Yeah, they called it the cabri
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Lay for a little while, but but that's Those were
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the subs with the rag top. Yeah, those didn't work out.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: The this Golf two sub was called the K one
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: twenty nine. Surely it had an actual name, right, No,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: I think they called him the K whatever. All right, Well,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the K one twenty nine was on a routine patrol mission.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: These are the Soviets they were glib about. You know,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: let's call this one the Hannah Montana. Yeah, exactly right.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: So it was just the K one twenty nine all business,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: which actually is kind of reassuring because it was a
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: nuclear submarine. Sure, it had not only a nuclear missile,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: like a nuclear missile you could come up to the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: surface and shoot on to say, the United States. It
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: also had nuclear torpedoes, which I had no idea where
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: a thing, oh, really a nuclear torpedo. It's kind of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: overkilled them to think. No, not if you're underwater and
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: you want to shoot a nuclear bombit somebody, Well, okay,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: then that really fits the bill. Well, it turns out
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that some of these nuclear tip torpedoes detonated, and there
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't a full nuclear detonation obviously, but it's obvious, but
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: it was enough to blow a hole in the submarine,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and I think kickoffs some other detonations in some of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the other nuclear torpedoes. And the upshot all this was
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: that the entire ninety eight person crew and the Soviet
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: submarine in the middle of the Cold War in nineteen
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: sixty eight, sunk about sixteen hundred miles or fifteen hundred
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: miles north west of and hit the bottom at sixteen
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: thousand feet more than three miles down. Yes, and so
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: kicks off the story of Project as Orean and the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Glomar Explorer. Yeah, so what happens, of course, is the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Soviets go looking for this thing. They spend a couple
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: of months, pretty massive search, couldn't find it. The US
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: is kind of laughing and saying, they haven't found their
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: own sub yet. Maybe we should go out there and
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: take a look, because we could probably get some intel,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: maybe salvage a nuclear warhead for ourselves, spray paint a
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: smiley face that says something like right back at you,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: it's a good one, and then throw it their way.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty eight, August of nineteen sixty eight,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: just you know, quite a few months later, they actually
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: found it. The United States of America located this thing. Yeah,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: so they they this is the official story. Here's the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: thing that I figured up from researching this story. You
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: can also go ahead and assume that all of this
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: is fabricated and that there's actually other stuff that was
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: actually going on. Yeah, this is the story that's been
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: handed like this. Actually maybe the story that covers up
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: an assassination in Brazil or something like that. That could
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: be the whole reason this story exists. Because we're talking
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: about a covert operation in the sixties and seventies by
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the CIA. Okay, so just take everything with the grain
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of salt. But the story as it was reported and
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: as far as the CIA has ever admitted, was that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the Air Force and the Navy both had listening devices
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: throughout the Pacific, and somebody at some point said, well,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, why don't we get these two together
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: and see if there's any data, any sounds that were
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: picked up from the sub exploding, and see if we
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: can pinpoint it basically triangulate with only two data points,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: which is I guess straight line gulate, right, Yeah, yeah,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that is what it would be called. But suppose they
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: did it and they found where the sub was, and
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: like you said, the US was laughing because they were
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: watching the Soviets look in all the wrong places. We're
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: near it. And then after a couple of months, the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Soviets called off the search. And it was quite obvious
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: to the Americans that the Soviets had no idea where
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the sub was, which made us think, maybe we should
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: check this thing out. Maybe we can go get it.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah they so we have two choices. We can call
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: them and let them know where it is, or we
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: can go get it ourselves, and this is the height
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: of the Cold War. Yeah, So they weren't about to
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: go with choice one. No, so option two came upon
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the table and we got our own sub called the Halibits.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: We had fun names. The Halibit dropped a camera down
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: there on a sled and took a bunch of pictures
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: of this thing. Verified it's down there, it's intact. We
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: don't know for sure if we can go get it,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: but we should try because if we can get this thing,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: not only do we have potentially information on how these
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: warheads are being built by them, but we might also
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: be able to bust their codes with this cryptographic equipment
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: they have down there. And so let's launch a project.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: And we love naming things, so let's name it Project Azorian. Yeah.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: I guess that's the name of a person from the Azores.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe maybe no idea where they'd come up with these names,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: God love them, who knows, But Project as Orion was
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the name of this this idea to go see if
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: we can get this sub right, yeah, which means, of
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: course we're not going to go out there next week
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: and start looking like there's a long process that has
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: to be undertaken before we can even figure out if
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: we can do this right. So they actually did get
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: together like a working group, a top secret working group
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: of engineers and nautical engineers and any kind of engineer
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: you can think of, and said, how would you do this?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: It was a submarine, a twenty five hundred ton submarine
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: three hundred feet long. That's a thing in and of itself.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: It's a big sub like that'd be hard to pick
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: up off land, sure, but it's not on land. It's underwater.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: It's sixteen thousand, five hundred feet under the surface of
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean in the middle of nowhere about is
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere as you can get. And
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: how could we do this? How could we possibly pick
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: this up? And wait, wait, wait before you answer, you engineers,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the Soviets can have no idea what we're doing, because
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: they will probably think any ship that they thought was
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: going after this, I love this stuff more than most
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: stuff in the world. Yeah. Like, when there's this incredibly challenging,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: almost insurmountical, insurmountable task and people get a lot of
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: smart people together and say, let's start brainstorming on how
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: if this is even possible? Right, I just think it's
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: really cool that and I bet these people, the engineers
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: are like, oh my god, this is a dream to
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: come up and try and solve this problem. Plus the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: CIA said that they are holding my family hostage, so
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I better get to work. So they decided, here's what
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: the only way we can try this is by doing this.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: It's gonna involve three large vessels. One is a recovery
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: ship that basically has a chamber with the bottom that
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: could open and close like that ship in the Abyss. Yeah,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: a moon pool. In fact that James Cameron totally glow
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: marred this totally for his own needs. It would have
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a docking leg system that basically turned it into an
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: underwater on the ocean floor platform that I did not get.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I think just basically it goes down there instead of
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: like hovering in place, turns into a building. But I
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: don't understand. I didn't understand how. But yes, that is
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the understanding. Well, I had four legs, but that's crazy.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: That means they had four three mile long legs. Yeah,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: that doesn't make which since that does? You know what
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I mean? I need to see a picture. I've seen
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: pictures of it. I still don't know what it really
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: meant with the legs. Yeah, well I don't know then. So,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: but that's that's one. That's the ship that they sail
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: out there to undertake the whole mission, right, Yeah, there's
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: two others that they have to come up with. Two.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: That's right, capture vehicle. So that had a grabber right
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, like one of those banana clips that
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: girls used to wear in the nineties. Yeah, but for
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: a twenty five hundred ton submarine. Yes, and it wasn't
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: just like, hey, use a little grabber like that banana
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: clip it had. It was specifically designed to attach to
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the submarine, right. It was the one glove, the one
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: thing it was designed to do. That's correct. So that's
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: that's step two. If you have one of these things
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: and you're loading it onto a massive ship. I think
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: a seven hundred foot ship is what they came up with.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Six hundred and eighteen foot long ship, many many meters long,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: so many meters. Somebody's gonna say, what is that, Well,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the Soviets would yes, because they're flying over the US
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: with their spy cydlites ever since Sputnik got up there,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: so they're gonna want to know what that is. The
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Soviet analysts are going to point this out. So if
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: you have this big long ship that sticks out like
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a sore thumb, because what are you doing with that thing?
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: What are you also doing with this big grabber? How
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: do you get around the grabber part at least chuck
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: oh the grabber? Yeah, well you must be talking about
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: the barge. I am, so this is pretty amazing. This
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: thing had a retractable sunroof basically, and it was the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: whole reason this thing was here was to hide everything
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: right right, So it was they built the grabber vehicle,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the vehicle number two, inside the bargees. But like you said,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the barge had a sunroof. The thing about the barge
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: was it was also designed to be submersible. So what
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: they did was they built a barge that they built
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the grabber inside of, floated the barge out to this
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: huge six and eighteen foot ship, Ship number one, submerged
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: it underneath the ship, opened up the sunroof on the barge,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: opened up the moon pool on the big ship, and
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: raised the grabber vehicle into the six hundred and eighteen
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: foot ship, so that the Soviets never even knew the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: grabber vehicle existed. They never saw it. It just didn't exist.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And they had to build all this stuff from scratch, right.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just like they had a grabber laying around
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: that vit a Soviet sub precisely, or this barge that
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: could become invisible file accounts and they so this was
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: basically this is what this this working group came up with, like,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: these are the things you need to do this? Yes,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And the CIA said, who can we possibly get? Who
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: in the world, Well, Howard Hughes, Yes, mister Howard Hughes,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: specifically the Suma or Summa Corporation and that was a
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: part of the Hughes Tool Company. And they said, go
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: build this thing at thirty six thousand tons six and
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: eighteen feet like you said. And they called it the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Hughes Glomar Explorer because Global Marine was the company that
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: operated it. And that's just an abbreviation of Global Marine.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I did not know until a couple of days ago. Yeah,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: it's sort of a disappointing end to what Glomar meant. Yeah,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: because it sounds kind of like space ag It definitely does, like, wow,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: look at the healthy glow from radiation exposure. On that thing, Glomar,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Glomar has got a great glow. And here's the other
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: cool thing. Because this would I mean, there would still
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: be a big beheamoth ship out there in the ocean
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: in the Pacific, and the Russians would wonder what was
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: going on. So they said, here's the deal. There are
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: actually it happened to sink in an area of the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Pacific where there are a lot of may Nganese, really
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: valuable manganese nodules underwater. So we'll just concoct this story
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that said, Howard Hughes built the thing. You know how
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: crazy he is right to go out there and try
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and mind the ocean's depths to get even richer. And
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: people actually bought that right. The press even bought it.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: They went to the trouble of saying, this is actually
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: a really good cover story because there was manganese deposits
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: in the area. It checked out. There was the idea
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of deep sea mining was very new, so there wasn't
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: There was the idea that this would be a good idea,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: but no one had tried to undertake it yet, so
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the Soviets couldn't have been like, that's not a deep
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: sea mining ship. No one knew it a deep sea
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: mining ship looked like yet. Yeah, Plus it was very
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Huesy in thing to do exactly right. He was extremely wealthy,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: so he had the kind of money to just undertake
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: deep sea mining and be the first one. But he
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: also operated in strict secrecy, and the press used to
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: watch his operation and projects from the outside and just
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: make guesses about it and create rumors. But it didn't
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: matter because it was all just conjecture and rumors, right, yeah,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: so it was a perfect cover story. And then add
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: on to the top that Hughes was already in bed
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: with the US government in a number of ways, but
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: including making spy satellites in highly classified, top secret projects.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: It was they couldn't have come up with a better
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: person to helm the actual carrying out of this of
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the project. Should we take a break? Yeah? All right?
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: So this this took a while. It was like years
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: had passed between the sub sinking and then actually saying
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: all right, I think we have a plan to do
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: this and we can get this done. And by the
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: time that came around, they said, wait a minute, like
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: should we even should we go take another look at
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: this thing? Is still intact. Should we bother? Is this
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: still relevant? Is it an asset or is it just
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: some rusty old, you know, hunk a metal at the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Is it basically like a
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: museum thing now? Yeah, So they said, and we're not
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: into Russian museums. No, let's be honest. So they did
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: form another committee. We're great at that, and they did
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: take another look, and they said, you know what, let's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: go down there, guys, because even though these missiles, the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: ss N five missiles are no longer like their big threat,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: they do have the ss N eight. Maybe we could
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: glean some technology and how these things operate, and there's
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: still that cryptographic equipment down there, which would be a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: good asset for our intelligence. Right, So they said, okay,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: let's do it. Come on, guys, let's do it. There
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: was another thing too, there's this great IO nine article
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: on this very project, and the author found some publication
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: of memos about project as orient Yeah, and one of
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: the things was that they were saying, like, yes, it's
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: still worth it intelligence wise and everything, but more to
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the point, we're locked in the punch here, like the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: US can't afford to seem wishy Washy to its contractors.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: That's crazy, So we need to do this regardless. Yeah,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: that's kind of nutty when you think about it. That
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the the risk of pissing off Howard Hughes. Huh. I
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: guess was too great, right, And I mean it sort
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of makes sense in a way because if he was
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: a big time contractor for them. Yeah, I feel like
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: that relationship going. But yeah, there's not that many top
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: secret factors that you know you need trust and yeah,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: you don't want to take them off, right. Very interesting though,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: are we saying pissed off? Now? Sure? Is that a thing?
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I guess it made an appearance in the last episode two?
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Did I say that just now? No? No, the the listener,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: male guy Peter Oh about vaping. Yeahbody said, I'm pissed off.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: If you can't if you can't tell, well, I'm not sure,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: but I appreciate you drawing attention to it. Well. I
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: guess we'll find out if Jerry bleeps all this out
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: or if we get booted out of the sixth grade
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: classes around the world. Yeah, kids, what you should say
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: is off, ticked off, and you really shouldn't say that.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: You should say that I'm going to use my words
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and let you know that what you just said bothered me.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Oh is that what you're supposed to say? Yeah? Okay,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: speak like an adult. So how adults speak? I say,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: pissed off. Here's the other side note, and this will
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: come into play later, is that there was another memo
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: that said, you know what, there are bodies down there,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and according to the Geneva Convention nineteen forty nine, there's
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a proper way that you handle even and quote unquote
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: enemies remains, and we're gonna abide by that, and we're
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: gonna take all the stuff we need to make sure
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: that we can do that in a respectful way, because
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: this will eventually probably come out and at least maybe
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: that'll be a slight goodwill gesture to the Russians that say, hey,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: we were very respectful of your dead seamen. Right. So
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: they outfitted the Huge Glomar Explorer Bloor Explorer, the hGe
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: with I think a capacity to handle one hundred bodies. Yeah,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: which is kind of funny. If you were a sailor
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: engineer on the Huge Glomar Explorer might have made you
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: a little nervous, considering there were ninety eight sailors on
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: the sub that you were going to get. So they
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: made room for two more two more dead guys. Don't
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: think that was by accident either. Yeah, they didn't just
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: round up to a nice even hundred cadaver coolers. They
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they're like, yeah, two people will probably die
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: on the mission, that's right. So there's there's another memo
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: from I think the nineteen seventy four June third, and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: it basically said, hey, all this stuff's ready. The ship's ready,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the grabb Her class vehicle's ready, the barge is even ready.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Everything's ready. Let's do this. Are we going to do
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: it or not? They estimated a forty percent chance of success,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: which they were like threw the moon over the moon about. Yeah,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: they were over the moon pool about this, which is interesting.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: But I guess when it's something something that tough to
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: accomplish and that innovative and and bleeding edge nice, the
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: apparently forty percent wasn't too bad, No, not at all.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: So and that was like of one hundred percent success,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: A forty percent chance of one hundred percent success, yeah, okay,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: so well oh yeah, sure, so they the project has
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: approved June fifth, nineteen seventy four, and just a few
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: days later, on June fifteenth, the ship departed. The Hughes
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Glomar explored departed I believe the port of Los Angeles. Yeah.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And another wrinkle that will come up a little bit
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: later is because this was so covert, they couldn't surround
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: it by battleships or have F sixteen's. Well they probably
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: didn't have. I don't know when the F sixteen came about.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I think maybe like the sixties or something. I'm sorry
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: to all the aviators, I'm sure we're way off, but
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: whatever fighter jets they had at the time, they couldn't
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: draw attention to themselves by being protected like that. It
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: would be really weird if there was a naval or
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: air force escort for a manganese ship. Right. Yeah, this
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: is a pretty I want to read this. So this
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: is pretty great. This quote from the CIA to kind
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: of just drive it home of what a task was
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: before them. Some in the CIA said this, Imagine standing
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: atop the Empire State Building with an eight foot wide
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: grappling hook on a one inch diameter steel rope. Your
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: task is to lower the hook to the street below,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: snag a compact car full of gold, and lift the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: car back to the top of the building. And on
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: top of that, the job has to be done without
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: anyone noticing. And that essentially describes what happened there, right,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: That's what they were doing when they when they shipped out.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: That was the task ahead of them, right, yes, and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: add to this that it keeps getting worked well. Yeah,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: but the Soviets were still surveiling everything. Right, So remember
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: like they couldn't have a US Navy escort of a
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: deep sea mining ship. That just looked really weird. But
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that's not to say the Soviets didn't send their navy
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: out to see what was up. So for the first
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: two weeks after the Hughes Glomar Explorer made made it
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: to its destination and started working, there were Soviet ships
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: surveilling them basically twenty four hours a day for the
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: first fourteen days. Yeah, so these guys are actually undertaking
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: raising a Soviet sub within sight of Soviet naval ships
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: watching them, and the Soviet they were really nervous at
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: this point. They didn't know if the Soviet navy was
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: going to try to board the Glomar Explorer just to
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: be like, what are you guys doing. You're making us
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: nervous and apparently the CIA. One of the CIA offers
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: on board was like, we need to stack some crates
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: on our helicopter landing pad to prevent them from landing.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: And there was I don't know exactly what alert status
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: it was on, but maybe high alert, which was there's
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: a chance of soviets are going to board, there's sensitive
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: materials on board. The team that's in charge of destroying
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: those sensitive materials. You guys are on alert the people charge,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: but defending the team, you guys are on alert, but
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: we're not going to give you guns yet because we
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: haven't reached that point. This is the tension. But what
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: were they supposed to do? Like karate chop? I think
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: karate chop? Wow. It was like you can karate them,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: but don't shoot them. They're probably going to shoot you, yeah,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: but just deflect the bullets with your karate chops. So
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: they're out on the ocean. It's very complicated mission, to
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: say the least. So you've got your ocean currents at work.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: You have to maintain your position through those. That's hard enough.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Then you had to lower this capture vehicle by doing this,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: adding sixty foot pieces of steel pipe one at a time,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: connecting to each other sixty feet at a time, three
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: miles down right to lower that recovery vehicle down to
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: the sub and then when it gets down there, it
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: has to be just in the right position to straddle
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: over that submarine and get that grabber out, attach it
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: to the hull, and then reverse that whole process by
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: now towing a freaking submarine yep, by taking one sixty
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: foot length pipe off at a time until you're raising
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the sub like that. You know what I need to
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: see to understand this fully is remember the beginning of
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Titanic when James Cameron did that terrible obvious recreation of
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: what happened to sink the Titanic. Was at the very
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: beginning when Bill Paxton was in modern Days and they're
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: out searching for the Jewel of the Sea, and he says, well,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: that guy with the beard, you know, the nerd, fat
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: bearded guy that's in every movie, to explain what's going on,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: And he said, here's how the Titanic sunk, And it
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: did the little recreation on the screen and showed exactly
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: how it happened, just so everyone would know. That's what
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I need to see. Yeah, oh of this, I need
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a chubby bearded guy to explain to me visually. That's
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: not me or Ellen Page. You want to be an
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: inception and you want to be inception. Yeah, no, I
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: know what you mean. The problem is is there are
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: so many holes in this story. I need a picture book.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: But everybody's everybody accepts that there's holes in the story
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: because it's a covert CIA operation. Yeah, that is just
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: we'll probably never fully be explained, although there have been
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: interviews with people who are on the ship. They could
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: probably tell you, we'll look them up after this. Yeah.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: And at the very end of that whole process of
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: bringing this thing up, then it's not like they get
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: it up kind of close enough to the ship and
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: they're like, all right, it's thirty feet below us, we'll
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: just glide in from here. Then they had to suck
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: it on board and stow it in the docking well
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: right successfully. Yes. I could you imagine getting it to
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: where it's right below them and then it breaks free.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I'd be so nervous. And that's kind of almost what happened.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: That's close to what happened. So remember the Soviet navy
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: is circling them, and they're lowering this claw down to
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the sub, but also like, we're not doing anything over here,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: just no guns, right, So they reach the sub and
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: start doing the submersible claw thing, and at that time
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Navy twots three times like peep peep, peep,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: see you later, and they laughed for good. And so
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the Glomar explorer starts raising the sub. They get it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I have no idea how they know they've gotten it,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: but they've got the sub. I don't know how they
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: directed this thing over the sub. I don't understand either.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I'm totally with you, But as far as the story's concerned,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the claw got the sub and they started raising it,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and they got it over the course of a few
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: days a mile up and then all of a sudden.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: That's an extremely incredible accomplishment. I know. Imagine trying to
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: sleep while this thing is like slowly being pulled. Yeah,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: you would not, you'd not be able to. But there
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: was an engineer who was on the ship who later
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: recounted in an interview that there was something that felt
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: like about a ten second long earthquake on the ship.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: And he said, you knew something bad had happened. Yeah,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: and this was right after he said it's going great, everybody.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: We can't lose now that first miles the trick. Yeah. So,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess was it an earthquake? No, it
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: was the sub breaking up in the submersible claw. Oh okay,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: I thought that caused it to break up. No, he
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: said it felt like an earthquake. That's how big of
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: a an energetic release it was. So the sub breaks apart.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: I guess it had been down there so long that it, uh,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: it just wasn't you know, it wasn't viable as a
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: single solid piece of metal anymore. Here's what I think
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: happened based on some other stuff, like later memos. They
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: said that they needed to redesign the claw so that
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: it wasn't as britty. Yeah, the banana clip, so that
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: it wasn't as brittle, and that it was well, so
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: it wasn't as brittle. I think the claw broke up
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: and some of the sub was able to fall out.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Some remained in it's held into the grabber, but most
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: of the sub, this is a three hundred foot sub,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: about two one hundred and sixty feet of it broke
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: off and fell back a mile down to the ocean floor.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So I thought you meant that the grabber should have
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: had like, did anybody think to put felt on this
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: grab of right or rubber tips on the end of
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the clause? No they didn't. Oh I know. So the
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the most of the sub, including all the stuff the
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: CIA was after all the good stuff, the the the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: code books, the con tower. They're like, we had the galley, right,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: they ate, well, like, I guess that's okay. I love borshed,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: so that it is a silver lining. Yeah, they only
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: got what ten percent of this thing, yeah, which which
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: was the four of the sub The four of the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: subs stayed in the grabber claw and they were able
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: to bring it the rest of the way up and
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: salvage it, which included the nuclear torpedoes. Unfortunately for the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: CIA and everybody aboard. The nuclear torpedoes were of course
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: something that had detonated, so they all suffered from some
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: plutonium exposure as well. Yeah, so it was it was
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: their exposure was consistent with the fact that there was
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: in fact nuclear materials. Right. Yeah, they had been exposed
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: to these nuclear torpedoes. Not they didn't get their hands
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: on the nuclear missile they were after, right, Basically none
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: of the prize that they were looking for they got
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: their hands on. But one thing they did find on
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: their hands all of a sudden were the bodies of
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: six Soviet submariners. Yeah, for submarriners. How do you say it?
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I think sub mariner. Okay, but we'll get taken to
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: task and told the right way. Well, we said both,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: so you can't get it wrong when you say it
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: both ways. So, like we said, they could hold a
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: hundred bodies, so they could certainly hold six. And then
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I guess ninety four other guys on board worried I
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: would guess, so, and they did. They had copies of
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Soviet burial manuals American burial manuals. They had a ceremony.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Did you watch the video of this? I did, well,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: some of it they conduct They've filmed it in color,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and I love How is it you who wrote this part? Yeah?
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: I love how you put it. The bizarre an inexplicably
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: futuristic video. Yeah, it looks weird. It looks like it
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: does look like a George Orwellian like transmission from the future. Right,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: But if the future was in the nineteen eighties and
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: it was being written in the nineteen twenties, right, and
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the reason why I put my finger on it. Finally,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: it's men wearing matching coveralls in hard hats disposing of bodies,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and the video quality is just weird. It's just perfectly weird. Yeah,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: just go check it out. It's a I guess CIA
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: project is z Orian Burial at C. I think would
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: probably bring it up on YouTube. And eventually this film
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: was turned over to Boris yeltson Somebody Still Loves You
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Boris Yelton in nineteen ninety two by CI director Robert Gates.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: At that time, yeah, do we take another break? Yeah,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: I think we're going all right, go wow, all right,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: we're gonna wrap up this whole mess in just a minute.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: So they found it. Once they got part of it,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: should they go again? That was the big question, right,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: And there was a lot of discussion that the CIA,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: for its part, was like, I don't know if there's
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: anything left of that sub like it's the seventies now, right.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: We lucked out that it was intact to begin with.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: After a series of explosions, Yeah, we're pretty sure that
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the stuff that fell a mile back down to the
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: seafloor probably broke up. Yeah, I'm suspicious of that, but
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: that was the CIA's position. Regardless. Kiss and the rest
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: of the Nixon administration were like, how can we do
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: this again? The thing is, right around the same time
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Nixon resigned, and all of a sudden, everybody who'd been
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: high flying and freewheeling and overthrowing governments and all that
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: were suddenly like, nothing, we're not doing anything. There's no
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: operations going on whatsoever. So the idea of a second
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: project being undertaken was pretty doubtful for a number of reasons. Yeah.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And one of the other big reasons was that this
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: whole cryptographic equipment and the codes probably weren't even relevant
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: by that point. Yeah, And so they didn't think I mean,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: they're basically like, there's so little upside to this at
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: this point, they Kissinger. I think he even finally relented, right, Yeah,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I think so, it's not the worth it. What I
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: found was interesting was that a later interview by an
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: admiral said, even if you found the code books and
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you found the communications equipment and figured out the arrangement
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: of like the burst transmitters and circuits and all that stuff,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: all you'd be able to do is break the codes
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: for a twenty four hour period. Yeah, but that would
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: have been the case no matter if they've gotten the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: whole suburbine at any point, so that it was already
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: years later when they first went down, right, So I
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: guess they you probably would still be a pretty big
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: treasure trove intelligence wise, to just get a one day
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: snapshot of Soviet submarine operations, they'd probably be worth it.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: But maybe it was more about those warheads though. I
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: think that was definitely part of it too. But they
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: said there's probably not a good chance we're going to
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: do this. The other the other problem was this, by
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: this time, journalists named Seymour Hirsch, who's written some of
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the most some of the deepest exposees on the US
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: government ever written, wrote about the Mili massacres. He wrote,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: he didn't write, or he wrote a few stories on
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the Frank Olsen case that Wormwood was based on. Seymour
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Hurst was in that towards the end. Yeah, he's written
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff. He had this story down cold.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: He had everything for well over a year before it
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: finally broke and the CIA director went to Hurst and said,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: don't please, don't say anything about this. Please sit on
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the story. Please sit on the story, and behind Hirsh's
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: back or right from under him. The story ended up
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: breaking in the most bizarre, suspicious way it possibly could have. Yeah. Well,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: and even before that, a very famous term came about
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: because of this. There was a Rolling Stone writer named
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Harriet and Philippi, and she flat out asked the CIA
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: to reveal its existence. And that's where the phrase we
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: can neither confirm nor deny its existence came into play,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: which is now known as the Glomar response. Right, if
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: you've ever heard that, that's where it comes from. Yea,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: which is a great little cherry on top. I think
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: I think so too. Even though this isn't the end,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: No it's not. It gets even weirder to tell you
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the truth. Yeah. So, Harriet and Philippi was asking about
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Project as Orion because there is a cryptic, weird, little
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: short news blurb in the Los Angeles Times that was
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: basically about some gossip and rumor that was circulating at
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: the LAPD and among cops in LA There was a
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: rumor that the Hughes Corporation had cooperated and carried out
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: a project to retrieve a lost Soviet sub with the CIA.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Weren't any other details about that. They said it was
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: in the Atlantic Ocean. There were a lot of problems
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: with this story, but for the first time ever, it
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: started to see the light of day. And the whole
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: reason that that was in there, Chuck, was just the
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: weirdest things that I think, the weirdest part of this
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: story and the most suspicious. Yeah, the fact that all
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: this came together in this way is pretty remark So.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: The huge Summa corporation that we talked about, they were
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: broken into. Their HQ was broken into in Los Angeles.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: They got cash, they got boxes of documents, including a
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: memo describing this secret project to the CIA, and no
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: one knew for sure whether or not they had this
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: document or not, right the thieves yes, until a few
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: months later there was this I guess sort of deep
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: throat intermediary person that called up and said, hey, we
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: have possession of a lot of these stolen papers. They
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: didn't say we have the CIA document about Project Hazorian,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: but they say we've got boxes full of stuff, we
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: got binders full of women, right, and we'll take a
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: half a million bucks to return this to you, right.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: And so there's a couple of points that need to
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: be mentioned. This is the fourth or fifth breaking of
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: a huge office in like the last four or five months. Yeah,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and what they think They think the Vegas mob and
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the Saint Louis mob was involved, but they don't know
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: who they were working for. Were they working for the government,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: were they working for Howard Hughes. Who were they working for?
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: But they were very clearly after some specific papers. They
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: think what they were after was definitive evidence that Howard
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Hughes owned a number of high level politicians in the
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: United States and that they actually found it. There was
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: a Center report that was repressed at the last minute.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: So they do think that they found evidence of just high,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: high corruption, but that they didn't know that they had
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: this CIA document in their possession until the CIA accidentally
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: tipped them off. Yeah. So the CIA tells the FBI
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: about this police report that the the LA cops supposedly
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: have h and there's being offered up for sale and
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: for money and it might have this project is orient information.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: The FBI then tells the LA police about this because
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: they didn't know They didn't know about this. They just
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: knew that they had this box full. They were being
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: offered to exchange this box full of documents for a
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: lot of cash. They didn't know what was inside of it.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Apparently people I had it didn't know what was inside
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: of it. So the LA police told this dude who
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: tried to broker the deal and the CIA. That's how
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: the CIA found out about it, right this. I think
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the CIA was surveiling the LAPD, I probably as a
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: matter of course, and found out about the LAPD being contacted.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Right like you said, the CIA contacts the FBI. The
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: FBI contexts the LAPD, and the LAPD says to the intermediary, Hey,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: do you happen to have a document that shows the
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Hughes Corporation trying to receive retrieve a Soviet sub for
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: the CIA thumbed through the boxes and let me know
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: if you see the word Azorian And the intermediary says
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: b RB Yes, And the next thing you know, the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: La Times is starting to report on it. Yeah. February seventh,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. La Times article US reported to russ
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: sub short for Russian. Sure, I guess they just had
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: a They wanted that big font right, They couldn't get
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: it get Russian in there. So, according to reports circulating
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: among local law enforcement officers, Howard Hughes had contracted with
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: the CIA to raise a sunken Russian nuclear submarine from
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic Ocean. Not true. It was a Pacific right,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: and again just a lot of holes in this. However,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: it was now out there. So there's a dude named
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Jack Anderson, I believe, who had a nationally syndicated radio show,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: and he was the first to really mention this thing,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: and he said he was going to get to the
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: bottom of it and reveal some more stuff about it.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: And by this time, once he did that, all of
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: the reporters who were sitting on stories about it, all
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: bets were off, including Seymour Hirsh And so mysteriously, the
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: day after Jack Anderson mentions it, there's front page in
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: depth stories about Project as Orion, which they rectally called
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Project Jennifer on newspapers around the country. And the cat
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: was out of the bag. As they say, I'm Jack
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Anderson and that's the last word. It sounds like that's
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the kind of show he would add. Yeah, Yeah, he's
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: got his fedora with scoop like in in the bill. Yeah,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious about why project or why Jennifer
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: was the name of the compartment. So this I okay,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: so it comes like some sexist thing to me if
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you asked me, I think it was just maybe like
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: a hurricane, like they just that was up for usage.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: But the compartment, it's it's kind of like all communications,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: all memos, all everything that has to do with this
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: project goes into this compartment. And somebody thought the compartment
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: name Jennifer was the name of the project, so they
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: messed that up. Yeah, but they got just about everything
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: else right. And so by the time that this story
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: comes out, the US is like, well, it's the Soviets
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: are about to unleash hell on Earth diplomatically, maybe militarily.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: This is going to be really bad. And the US
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: braced itself for a response and out of Moscow crickets. Yeah,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and for very good reasons, all of which kind of
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: tie back to embarrassment. Three things. Mainly, they would have
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: to admit that they lost a sub which would be embarrassing.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: They would have to admit that they couldn't find it
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: and the US could find it super embarrassing, and then
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: they had to admit that we were following them out there.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: In the ocean and saw them doing something. But we
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: turned around and went home. We went beep beep, so
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: super triple embarrassment. So they said, nyet, we're not doing it.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting. I've seen a bunch of
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: stories lately about the Cold War where like where we
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: knew something that the Soviets knew, but no one could
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: admit it out loud. So there was a lot of
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: city back and like, all right, are they going to
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: say something? Uh? Huh are they going to say something?
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: All right, they're not saying anything. So despite that, despite this,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: this this uh assessment that the Soviets weren't going to
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: publicly acknowledge this, and the United States certainly didn't publicly
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: acknowledge it either. Despite that, it was clear that the
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Soviets also weren't going to be like, sure, go ahead,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: try to get the rest of the sub. They were
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: worried that if they did go back out, the Soviets
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: would maybe sink whatever ship tried to go out there. Yea,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: the Soviets had a military presence, a naval presence around
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the site the whole time from that moment on. Once
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: the story broke and they said that's it. It's it's done.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: So for all we know, they went back and managed
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: to sneak it out from under the Soviets. For all
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: we know, this never happened, and that all of this
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: is actually a cover story for that break in of
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the Hughes Corporation. That's what I think. Yeah, or for
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: all we know, this is all gospel truth. I mean,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: maybe it's sitting next to a spaceship in the area,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: if one right deep within the earth, and a bunker
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: very well could be Chuck, don't be so naive. In
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the end, and today's money, it cost about three billion bucks.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: And here's the kind of fun ending is that Glomar explorer.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Remember the barge. It was eventually retrofitted to be a
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: regular deep sea drilling barge. The whole the whole ship.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Oh I thought just the barge was. No, the whole
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: ship was. So it was finally sold only eight years
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: ago to a private company for fifteen million bucks. Yeah,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I think for scrap. Oh the secrets they're in, I know,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: can you believe it? But they actually finally did do
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: deep sea mining and then get this, Howard Hughes got
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: a free deep sea mining ship out of it because
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the government paid him to build it. That guy, that guy, Well,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Project the Zorian,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: you should probably go back in time and join the CIA.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Oh,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: and shout out to the great IO nine article that
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: time the CIA and Howard Hughes tried to steal a
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Soviet submarine by Mark Strauss. That was a great source.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: So two with Seymour Hurst's nineteen seventy five New York
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Times article on the whole thing where he mistakenly calls
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: it Project Jennifer Law. And there are a bunch of
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: other sources too. And we'll go ahead and shout out
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: pinto madness again. Why not? Because why not? All right,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: listener mail, Yeah, I'm gonna call this really great thing
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: that you should think about throwing a few bucks too. Hey, guys,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: want to preface this by saying I'm not looking for
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: a shout out. It's always a good way to get
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: a shout out. Yeah. I run a charity trivia night
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: every year in honor of my late wife that passed
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: away from brain cancer a few days after we got
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: married in the hospital. The events the event benefits Grace
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: giving a five h one C three we started for
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: brain cancer research donations, mainly for our trivia event. We
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: created the event three years ago and now in year three,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: we sold out our three hundred person event and roughly
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: three minutes. It's awesome with one hundred and seventy people
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: on the waitlist. So I just want to publicize this event.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: That's me talking Chuck. I should do it in voices. Yeah,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: that way people would know. Do this guy's voice like
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: really high pitched. No, I'm not going to do that
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: to Mike. Mike's a really good guy. We've been emailing
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: back and forth. So it is April fourteenth this year
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: in Chicago, and our tickets. Can you even get tickets
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: to this thing? Well? I think it's sold out, but yeah,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: I did say, can people at least donate because this
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: is such a great thing, and even if you've got
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: like five dollars, it's what this family's been through and
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: what they're doing now is pretty amazing. So I want
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: to say thanks for helping me out these last few years.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Love the podcast. Really enjoyed the PR Live show that
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: you put out. By the way, and by the way,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: my roommate roommate is Emmett Cleary, the football player who
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: wrote in about CTE. Oh wow, remember that man alive?
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: So wait, these two roommates have both made Stuff you
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Should Know. Listen to your mails. Yeah, that's really something.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: How about that's some sort of trifecta. So if you
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: have it in your heart to throw a few bucks
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: toward Grace Giving, we can encourage you to do so.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: You can go to Facebook dot com slash Grace Giving
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: twenty four great or just go you know, google that
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: stuff on the internet. And that is from Grace and Mike.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, guys. It's very it's I think where
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: you're doing a fantastic Yeah, keep it going there in Chicago. Yep.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: And if you want to let us know about something
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: great that we would want to publicize, you can get
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: in touch those via Twitter at sysk podcast you can
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: send us an email. This Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: com and has always joined us at our home on
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.