The clandestine CIA operation was perhaps most notable because the agency’s public response introduced the phrase “neither confirm nor deny” into the vernacular.

In March 1968, a Soviet Golf II-class submarine, K-129, disappeared in the North Pacific along with its entire crew. Soviet efforts to recover the vessel yielded nothing. But the United States, with the benefit of an underwater acoustic surveillance network, detected the event. US intelligence soon located the wreck, roughly 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii.

The discovery had the potential to be an intelligence bonanza for the United States. Though the submarine was clearly damaged from the sinking, it could be examined for information about the Soviet submarine program, and various items aboard it—Soviet ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, cryptographic materials and codebooks, comms equipment, and potentially torpedoes and other weapons tech—could be retrieved for further study. There was only one problem: K-129 was sitting beneath 16,000 feet of ocean, far deeper than any diver or submarine had gone until that date. How could the US military reach the submarine?

The CIA went all-out in preparations to locate and raise the wreck. Its response—codenamed “Project Azorian”—was notable, even against the heightened standards of the Cold War. A ship was built, capable of secretly lifting a 2,000-ton submarine from beneath 3 miles of ocean, without Moscow ever realizing what was happening.

How the CIA Planned to Retrieve K-129

K-129 was a conventionally powered Project 629A/Golf II ballistic-missile submarine armed with R-21/SS-N-5 “Sark” submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). And unlike modern submarines, the Golf-class boats were diesel-electric, not nuclear-powered; recovering one offered the US an unrivaled look into Soviet technology. Potentially even more valuable would be the cryptographic equipment, which could have revealed how the Soviet Navy communicated with its submarines. The US military viewed the K-129 as a rare opportunity to get inside one leg of the Soviet nuclear deterrent.

The engineering wouldn’t be easy, however. Salvaging a wreck at 16,000 feet—roughly three miles underwater—meant dealing with pressures in the 7,000 psi range. Nothing remotely similar had ever been attempted before. Conventional cranes and cables weren’t equipped for such a job, so the CIA contracted with Global Marine Development, a seafloor mining company. It even roped reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes into the cover story. As the public explanation went, Hughes was developing revolutionary technology to mine manganese nodules from the deep seabed—helping to explain why a gigantic specialized ship and unusual heavy-lifting machinery was suddenly conducting mysterious deep sea operations in the middle of the Pacific.

The project took several years and hundreds of millions of dollars (some say as much as the moon landing), and the end result was the purpose-built Glomar Explorer. The central feature was a huge internal “moon pool,” an opening through the ship where recovery equipment could be lowered miles below. Engineers developed a giant mechanical capture vehicle for the lost Soviet submarine. Miles of steel pipe were assembled section by section to lower the capture mechanism to the seabed. The claw would descend around K-129, grasp the submarine, lift it from the bottom, and pull it upward into the Glomar Explorer’s concealed interior. It was a remarkable machine.

Did the Submarine Recovery Attempt Fail? It’s Still Not Clear (to the Public)

The Glomar Explorer officially launched from the Sun Company Shipbuilding and Drydock Company yard in Chester, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 1972. Its special operations began in June 1974—six years after K-129 sank.

Despite all the planning and expense, the recovery of K-129 didn’t go as planned. Remarkably, the Glomar Explorer’s capture mechanism successfully secured K-129 miles beneath the surface and began slowly lifting it up towards the recovery ship. During the long ascent, however, part of the submarine broke off and plunged back to the seabed. So the CIA recovered only a portion of the submarine it was searching for.

How big a portion, one might ask? It’s classified. So is the intelligence yielded from the operation, even six decades later, though contemporary media reports cited officials who suggested it was minimal and the project had been a waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. After the story leaked in 1975, the CIA refused to either confirm or deny the program’s existence. This was one of the first times that the agency would “neither confirm nor deny” a story, and thereafter that phrase became known in journalistic circles as the “Glomar response.”

The CIA has since acknowledged that the program existed, even as it has remained tight-lipped about what exactly it recovered. However, it is known that the mission recovered the remains of six Soviet sailors, who were then buried at sea with military honors—hinting that the operation might have recovered something else, too.

As for the ship itself, it remained intact after the operation. The US Navy leased it to a succession of undersea mining and drilling companies, ultimately selling it to offshore driller Transocean for $15 million in 2010. The ship operated under the name GSF Explorer for the next five years, before it was broken up for scrap in China in 2015.

About the Author: Harrison Kass

Harrison Kass is a writer and attorney focused on national security, technology, and political culture. His work has appeared in Tablet, City Journal, The Hill, The Spectator, and The Cipher Brief. He holds a JD from the University of Oregon and a master’s in Global & Joint Program Studies from NYU. More at harrisonkass.com.

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