The CIA's Top Secret Mission To Steal A Russian Nuclear Sub

One of the great things about history is that it's filled with stories that are way more unbelievable and way more audacious than any bit of fiction ever written. One of those stories is the 1960s and 70s-era plot to recover a Soviet sub from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and just that summary alone is enough to give some hints at what a wild plan it was (joining the ranks of others that definitely happened, such as the plan to use psychics to spy on the Soviets.) Things kicked off with the disappearance of a Soviet nuclear sub, of the same type as pictured above, in 1968, and the U.S.'s realization that if they could find it, they might find themselves with some invaluable information in hand that included tech that could be reverse-engineered, code books, and other valuable documents. 

The hilarious thing is that the powers-that-be — which included the CIA and the Pentagon — knew exactly how risky, how unlikely, and how audacious the plan was. At the same time, it was kind of the perfect storm that came together to make it just too tempting of an opportunity to pass up.

The result was Project Azorian, a bizarre saga that cost somewhere around $800 million. (Adjusted for inflation, that's a little over $7 billion in 2023.) It ended up being one of the largest covert operations ever undertaken, required some feats of engineering that literally needed to be discovered and then developed, and when it was put in motion, there was one chance to get it right. Did they, and what went into it?

By the end of 1968, the U.S. government was sitting down to talk about how they could realistically launch a massive operation to recover a submarine three miles beneath the surface. Declassified CIA documents have revealed three main schools of thought as to the best way to recover the sub, the location of which had been verified during a recon mission carried out by the U.S. nuclear sub Halibut. 

Government contractors pitched one plan to essentially develop a system in which a "buoyant material" would be forcibly sunk down to the level of the sub with the use of a ballast, which would then be dropped and — in theory — the sub would rise. Another plan also relied on buoyancy, but in that case, they proposed creating a system that would generate buoyant gases at the sea floor.

Neither of those things sounded easy, and neither does the third plan: Dubbed the "Total 'Brute Force' (Direct) Lift," the plan was to create a series of pipes, ropes, and winches that would be lowered to the sea floor — and again, that's a whopping three miles — to grab and lift the 2,000-ton (ish) submarine to the surface. And yes, that's absolutely what they went with. On September 11, 1970, the system got the official stamp of approval, and at the time, project heads estimated they had somewhere around a 10% chance of success.

[Featured image by Victorddt via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 3.0]

Avoiding questions by using the phrase, "We can neither confirm nor deny," has been around for a long time, and even slipped into popular lexicon. When the CIA officially joined Twitter in 2014, their first tweet was surprisingly tongue-in-cheek, as they posted, "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet." (Perhaps ... but we're all still wondering what the CIA has to say about aliens)

The phrase was first used in connection with Project Azorian, and it was actually: "We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed." It was developed as a way of answering Freedom of Information Act requests that would protect the classified information in question, which, initially at least, was the existence of the massive not-only-a-mining-ship Hughes Glomar Explorer. When the media started sniffing around the project, they realized they couldn't confirm the existence of the vessel, and couldn't deny it, either — hence, the phrase.

Josh Dean, author of "The Taking of K-129," told NPR that the CIA was also challenged in court by somewhat of an unlikely candidate: Rolling Stone. They issued the carefully crafted response, "And now we all deal with that phrase on a daily basis."

Because the ship was too big to get through the Panama Canal, they were going to have to take the long way around the tip of South America, stopping to change crews along the way. Techs and engineers made use of the time to finish kitting out the equipment, but declassified CIA documents have confirmed that most of the people who served in the crew had no idea what the ship's purpose truly was.

The ship passed through the Strait of Magellan on September 6, 1973, and in a bizarre twist, things very nearly went completely sideways. On September 7, representatives from the company that had overseen the building of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, Global Marine, arrived in Santiago with supplies, and were scheduled to meet up with the ship on the 12th. Then, on September 11 — and this is the sort of thing that absolutely cannot be made up — a major revolution kicked off in Chile.

The city of Santiago was shut down, and declassified CIA documents are sadly lacking details. What little they do describe is a series of events "which reads like a Hollywood script ... [and involved] much intrigue and suspense" in getting the necessary equipment on board the ship during the first days of what would be an incredibly violent coup, which would overthrow the socialist government in favor of a dictatorship. Hilariously, the entire plan to oust Chilean president Salvador Allende was also sponsored by the CIA, which is perhaps a perfect example of the importance of communication.

Here's where things get a little ... less clear. Historian Norman Polmar did a deep dive into declassified CIA documents for his book, "Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129," but the key word there is "declassified." Not all the files have been released, and there are still many that have been redacted, so Polmar stresses (via the Smithsonian) that, "the conventional wisdom has become that this was a failed mission. [The CIA has] allowed that belief to be what everyone understands, but why would they not? I always say, 'We have no idea what they got.'"

The official story told by the CIA is that in the process of lifting the sub, it broke in half. Most of the 300-foot-long sub ended up sinking again, and another section was successfully recovered by the Hughes Glomar Explorer. When an approximately 40-foot section was hauled to the surface, it contained the remains of six Soviets — who were buried at sea with full military honors. It also was said to have contained a few manuals, and two nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

Officially ... nothing super cool. Polmar, at least, suggests that there might still be more to the story, but whether or not it ever gets released is another matter entirely. There is one footnote to that, though, and that's the fact that the CIA considers the mission a success with respect to the cover mission: deep-ocean mining. The HGE actually did, in fact, recover manganese samples from the ocean floor.

After investing all that time, energy, and money into the Hughes Glomar Explorer, it didn't just sit around ... did it? It actually did — for almost 20 years, before a Texas-based company called Electronic Power was hired to overhaul the electrics. When they headed to California to see what they had to work with, they were shocked to find that it was pretty much a pristine time capsule. CEO John Janik has said (via the American Oil & Gas Historical Society), "Everything was just as the CIA had left it, down to the bowls on the counter and the knives hanging in the kitchen. Even though all the systems were intact, this was by no means an ordinary ship."

The HGE was outfitted into what it was supposed to be in the first place: a drilling ship. After 17 years of service to Global Marine Drilling — during which it was recognized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as a technological wonder — it ended up being passed into Swiss hands, renamed, and anyone who thinks this is going to have a happy ending for the ship would be sorely mistaken.

By 2015, the HGE — now called the GSF Explorer — was one of around 40 ships in the drilling fleet. Then, it became one of many casualties amid falling oil prices: It was sold for scrap in a deal with an unnamed buyer, which put a rather ignominious end to what was one of the U.S. government's many strange stories.