CIA Opens Files On Project to Raise Soviet Sub

The CIA for the first time has revealed details about an ultra-secret Cold War-era project to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in 1974.

The high-risk salvage operation, code-named "Project Azorian," had been shrouded in secrecy for decades but the spy agency broke its silence in newly declassified documents published Friday by an independent watchdog, the National Security Archive.

The documents, drawn from a 50-page article written for an in-house CIA journal, recount the daring bid approved by then-President Richard Nixon to raise the submarine using a specially designed ship, the Glomar Explorer.

Newspaper articles in 1975 first uncovered the operation but the Central Intelligence Agency initially refused to confirm its existence and had declined requests for information even after the Cold War ended.

"They've been holding on to it for years," John Prados, an author and analyst at the National Security Archive, told AFP.

"The release of this article greatly advances our knowledge of Project Azorian."

The episode began after a Soviet Golf-II submarine, the K-129, sank in 1968 in an accident 1,560 miles northwest of Hawaii, the cause of which remains unclear.

The Soviet sub, which was carrying three ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, offered a potential boon to U.S. intelligence agencies if it could be lifted out off the ocean floor and examined.

[ Editor's note-- In 2005, the investigative book "Red Star Rogue—The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S." claimed that K-129's captain ventured much further south than its scheduled patrol route, to an area some 300 nautical miles (560 km) north west of Oahu on 7 March 1968, positioning to launch one of her three ballistic missiles in a rogue attack on Pearl Harbor. The manner of the launch was purportedly designed to mimic an attack by a Chinese submarine, with the intention of igniting a war between the U.S. and China.

Red Star Rogue posits that the sinking of K-129 was caused by the explosion of one of the ballistic missiles while it was being readied for launch. It goes on to discuss the insertion of a small secret fail safe circuit that would destroy the warhead in the event of an unauthorized launch by a rogue crew member. John Craven's The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea (p. 218) supports a similar conclusion. ]

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