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The Shadow Dossier — The Submarine That Never Officially Sank · The Shadow Dossier

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  The Shadow Dossier. Act I. Lost in the Pacific.
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  In March 1968, a Soviet Gulf -class ballistic
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  missile submarine, designated K -129, sank in
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  the North Pacific under circumstances the Soviet
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  Navy never fully explained, killing its entire
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  crew. The Soviets searched for it and failed
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  to locate it. American intelligence, however,
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  using undersea listening arrays that had picked
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  up an anomalous acoustic event, succeeded where
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  the Soviets had not, pinpointing the wreck roughly
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  three miles down, far beyond the reach of any
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  recovery technology that existed at the time.
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  To the CIA, a sunken Soviet ballistic missile
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  submarine sitting on the ocean floor. represented
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  an almost unimaginable intelligence prize nuclear
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  warheads cryptographic equipment and code books
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  all intact and waiting if anyone could figure
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  out how to lift it act 2 a cover story worthy
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  of hollywood the cia's answer was project azorian
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  a purpose -built recovery ship called the hughes
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  glomar explorer Publicly presented as a commercial
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  venture by the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes
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  to pioneer deep -sea mining of manganese nodules
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  from the ocean floor. Hughes' genuine reputation
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  for unusual, secret adventures made the cover
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  story plausible to the public and, crucially,
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  to Soviet intelligence watching from a distance.
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  Built in the early 1970s at enormous cost. The
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  ship was engineered around a giant mechanical
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  claw designed to descend on a pipe string, grip
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  the submarine's hull, and lift it, section by
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  section, up through the ship's specially built
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  moon pool into its hull, all while appearing
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  from the outside to be doing nothing more unusual
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  than deep -sea industrial work. In the summer
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  of 1974, the Glomar Explorer positioned itself
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  over the wreck and began the recovery. Partway
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  through the lift, a significant portion of the
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  submarine's hull broke apart and fell back to
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  the ocean floor. What the CIA actually recovered
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  has never been fully declassified, though it's
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  understood to have included at least some of
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  the submarine's forward section, along with the
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  remains of several Soviet crew members. who were
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  later given a formal burial at sea with military
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  honors, filmed by the CIA out of what officials
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  later described as genuine respect for their
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  adversaries dead. Act IV, the phrase the operation
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  left behind. The operation's secrecy nearly held.
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  It became public in 1975 after a burglary at
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  Howard Hughes' own company exposed documents
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  referencing the project, and journalists began
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  connecting the pieces. When reporters and, later,
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  a Freedom of Information Act requester pressed
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  the CIA for details, the agency crafted a now
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  -famous non -answer. It could neither confirm
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  nor deny that the material requested existed.
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  That phrase became so associated with this case
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  that it's still known in American law and journalism
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  today as a Glomar response. A small linguistic
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  fossil left behind by an operation to raise a
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  sunken submarine from three miles down, disguised
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  as a hunt for lumps of metal on the ocean floor.
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  This concludes declassified file number 072 of
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  the Shadow Dossier. The submarine that never
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  officially sank. What dangerous secrets await
• 4:27
  in our next file? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts,
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  Spotify, RSS .com, and YouTube so you never miss
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  an official declassification. This is the Shadow
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  Dossier. Thank you for listening.