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

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