Azorian project

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Location of the wreck

In the Azorian Project (also known as part of the Jennifer Project ), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ) tried, under strict secrecy, to rescue the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the seabed . Shortly after the sinking in 1968, the CIA began with initial planning, the rescue attempt took place in 1974.

The K-129 sank in the North Pacific in March 1968 for unknown reasons. The Soviet Navy began an intensive search after the submarine's routine radio reports to the headquarters of the Soviet Pacific Fleet failed to find the boat. The United States, on the other hand, was able to locate the scene of the accident using the SOSUS underwater eavesdropping system . The CIA then began planning how the wreck would be lifted in order to obtain more detailed information about the Soviet nuclear capacities. Billionaire Howard Hughes stepped in as cover , and had a ship built, the Hughes Glomar Explorer , ostensibly to mine ore underwater . In fact, the US government financed the ship, which was supposed to enclose the wreck at a depth of 5000 meters with a grab arm and bring it to the surface of the water. In 1974, the Glomar Explorer set course for the site of the accident and managed to grab the wreck as planned. However, this broke during lifting, so that only part of the bow could be recovered.

Until then, the entire operation remained hidden from the public, and it was not until 1975 that the first newspaper and television reports appeared. In March 1975, the New York Times finally uncovered large parts of the Azorian project in a report by Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh . The CIA itself first released extensive documentation about the operation in 2010.

The last trip of the K-129

A sister ship of the K-129, Golf II class

The K-129 was a diesel-electric powered submarine with ballistic missiles of Project 629 , the length was around 100 meters, and the crew consisted of around 80 men. The main armament consisted of three ballistic missiles of the type SS-N-5 Serb , each with a nuclear warhead with an explosive power of around one megaton TNT equivalent and a range of up to 1500 kilometers. To charge the batteries that powered the electric motor , the submarine had to run a diesel generator at regular intervals . It had to rise just below the surface of the water in order to suck in fresh air for the combustion engine via a snorkel and to be able to release the exhaust gases.

The task of the K-129 and its sister ships was to patrol the Pacific Ocean with their missiles as part of nuclear deterrence, while keeping the missiles within range of the American west coast.

K-129 entered service around 1960, her third and final patrol trip began around February 24, 1968 from her home port in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky . The goal was a sea region northeast of Hawaii . There were 86 men on board. During the dive towards the patrol area, the K-129 routinely reported to its headquarters on Kamchatka several times while snorkeling . From March 1968, however, there were no reports. In the weeks that followed, the Soviet Navy conducted a large-scale search along the intended course of the K-129, but was unable to locate the boat. The United States Navy, however, had partially penetrated the oceans with fixed eavesdropping stations, these formed the so-called Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Several stations had recorded an underwater explosion on March 8 that at a point about 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii in the area around 40 ° N, 180 ° E determined was. The sea floor is around 5000 meters below the surface of the water. Combined with knowledge of the Soviet fleet search, the US Navy concluded that the Soviet Union must have lost a submarine. The reason for the accident is still unknown today.

Course of the Azorian Project

Preparations

Planning

The United States now had the advantage: they knew the place where the wreck of the Soviet submarine lay, while the Soviet Union had ended their search unsuccessfully. The Ministry of Defense and the CIA then began to consider whether it would be possible to lift parts of the wreck in order to gain an insight into the state of Soviet naval and weapons technology. The USS Halibut (SSGN-587) , which had only recently been converted into an espionage submarine and equipped with cameras and underwater lights that could be lowered down by cables, was sent to the site of the accident. In fact, the Halibut was able to locate the wreck and is said to have taken up to 22,000 photos that have not yet been published.

Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard then contacted the Director of Central Intelligence , Richard Helms , and instructed the CIA to set up a task force to develop a plan to recover the wreck. The CIA appointed John Foster, Director of Defense Research and Engineering, and Carl Duckett, Deputy Director for Science and Technology, as coordinators. The operational management of the operation was with John Parangosky.

This working group worked out three ways of how to lift the wreck. It was considered to use heavy winches that can lift the wreck directly. In a second scenario, buoyant materials with ballast were to be brought to the sea floor and attached to the wreck. After the ballast was released, the wreck would be much easier to lift. Thirdly, the intelligence agents considered using electrolysis to generate light gases in the wreck and thus increase buoyancy. In 1970, the CIA opted for the direct approach, in which the wreck should be lifted from the surface of the water by a ship without additional buoyancy. As a camouflage it should be spread that the ship was looking for manganese ores and wanted to mine them from the seabed. An Executive Committee (ExCom) made up of high-ranking members from government, the military and the secret services approved in late 1970 to begin implementing this option. Members estimated the operation's chance of success at 90%.

Political discussion

In 1971 the Azorian project was on the verge of being abandoned when the planned costs continued to skyrocket and there was increasing uncertainty as to whether the concept could work. Between the original proposal in 1970 and August 1971, the cost had increased by 50%; how much money was estimated is not known. According to media reports, the total cost in 1974 should have been around 500 to 550 million US dollars. According to other sources, the estimated cost was $ 300 million, but most recently hit a budget of $ 800 million upon completion. Ultimately, however, the construction of the ship was still approved in 1971, as the potential gain in information outweighed the cost risk.

1971 Packard left, a driving force of the operation, the Ministry of Defense, the ExCom, he was of the nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, and from 1972 as deputy foreign minister incumbent Kenneth Rush replaced. He was far more critical of the operation than his predecessor. This assessment was fueled by statements from the Chief of Naval Operations , Elmo R. Zumwalt , Dr. Hall from the Department of Defense and the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency , Vice Admiral Vincent P. de Poix . They assessed the secret service value of the wreck to be far lower than previously explained to ExCom. Admiral Thomas H. Moorer , Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , followed suit.

Rush then set up a committee that was supposed to give a neutral assessment of the value and fiscal and operational risks of the operation. After a generally positive assessment, President Richard Nixon decided to continue the Azorian project.

Hughes Glomar Explorer

Hughes Glomar Explorer

In order to keep the Azorian project secret, the CIA approached Howard Hughes , whose company Global Marine was already operating ships for the extraction of subsea resources. The CIA asked Hughes to own the proposed platform for the recovery of K-129. Hughes agreed.

In April 1971, Global Marine announced plans to build a work ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer to collect manganese nodules from the ocean floor. Was Boatyard Sun Shipbuilding in Chester , Pennsylvania . The main feature was a loading bay in the bottom of the ship, from which a 50 meter long gripper arm could be lowered to the seabed. It was held in position by rods that had to be threaded through an 80 meter high winding tower. On board there were 600 parts of the boom around nine meters long. The two lattice towers standing next to the winding tower held the gripper arm under the ship. The winches were designed to lift the approximately 7,000 tons of weight of the K-129, the linkage and the gripper arm. Using five thrusters , a computer was able to hold the entire ship precisely above sonar transponders placed on the seabed. The Glomar Explorer alone is estimated to have cost 350 million dollars. The crew consisted of around 170 men.

The ship was launched on November 9, 1972, after test drives the Glomar Explorer left the shipyard in April 1973. In the civil shipyard, the claw for submarine rescue had not yet been scaffolded. The gripper arm in its size could not possibly have been used for the recovery of manganese nodules and thus would have endangered the camouflage. After further tests off Bermuda , the journey to the Pacific began in August. There were 96 men on board, 47 of them belonged to the regular crew, which was also intended for the later operation. The remaining 49 were employees of Global Marine and were only on board for the transfer. The Glomar Explorer crossed the Strait of Magellan and reached the Pacific, where she had to ride waves of up to eight meters in a 60-knot storm. The Glomar Explorer anchored on September 12th in Valparaíso , Chile . The ship was in port during the coup in Chile , but was able to cast off again on September 13th. It reached Long Beach , California on September 30th .

The equipment that was specifically needed for the submarine recovery was installed there, including systems for decontamination, processing and drying of paper such as manuals and code tables. The equipment of the Glomar Explorer was interrupted in late 1973 by a strike by the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association , which meant that test drives with the new devices had to be postponed to the end of January 1974. This jeopardized the entire schedule, as the Hughes Glomar Explorer had to sail by June to accommodate the calm weather window from July to September. In January, however, the test drives could be continued. In the following weeks, the Glomar Explorer then also picked up the gripper arm. A specially designed submersible barge , the Hughes Mining Barge, was used for this maneuver . This was submerged with the gripper arm on board, the Glomar Explorer maneuvered over it, lowered the two lattice masts and pulled the gripper arm through the open roof of the lighter into the loading hatch.

After the test drives were successful, Nixon approved the operation on June 7th, but the recovery of the submarine was only allowed to begin on July 3rd after its return from disarmament talks with the Soviet Union in Moscow. There were around 170 men on board who had been hired by the CIA. Around 40 of them had been recruited from oil rigs to operate the drill rods.

Performing the operation

On June 20, 1974, the Glomar Explorer ran out of Long Beach and reached the sinking site of the K-129 on July 4 after a journey of 5,570 km (3008 nautical miles). High waves caused by Typhoon Gilda delayed the rescue, and on July 13 and 14, the British merchant ship Bel Hudson was near the Glomar Explorer . A Bel Hudson seaman was diagnosed with a suspected heart attack; since the Glomar Explorer had an equipped military hospital, she took over and treated the seaman. While it was on board, all rescue activities had to be stopped. On July 15th, tropical storm Harriet brought worse weather again. From July 18, the recovery operation was observed by the Soviet Navy, first by the Chazhma , which was equipped to observe and evaluate missile tests. Since she was carrying a helicopter, the crew of the Glomar Explorer blocked all open spaces with boxes to prevent a landing. After the Chazhma had stayed at a distance of one to two miles for around ten hours, the on-board helicopter took off several overflights and photographed the Glomar Explorer . The Chazhma then radioed the Glomar Explorer's mission . In response, she was informed that these experiments were being carried out to mine ore from the seabed; the Soviet ship then left the area for Kamchatka .

On July 20, in calmer water and unobserved, the crew finally began to lower the gripper arm. Two days later, the Soviet deep-sea tug SB-10 took up position near the Glomar Explorer and continued up and down next to the Glomar Explorer at a distance of only a few hundred meters . On July 26, the gripper arm had sonar contact with the ocean floor for the first time. However, the lowering had to be interrupted again and again due to technical problems with the mechanism that lined up the rods in the derrick.

On August 1, the gripper arm was finally closed around the wreckage of K-129 and the lifting could begin. The Glomar Explorer then reported via unencrypted radio that the gripper arm used to recover the manganese nodules had been damaged and that the naval base on the Midway Islands was to be called to check . So the CIA wanted to explain why the civilian ship called at a naval base. However, there were problems with lifting the load, the hydraulic pumps sometimes failed. During the ascent, part of the gripper arm broke off, and with it much of the wreck slid back to the sea floor. What the Glomar Explorer has recovered has not yet been officially announced. According to media reports, the bow of the boat was recovered with two torpedoes with a nuclear warhead, but not the nuclear missiles. In addition, the bodies of six Soviet sailors were recovered. They were buried in a sea ​​burial in September 1974 .

Around August 9, the remainder of the wreck was brought to safety in the hull of the boat, shortly after the Soviet tug SB-10 , which had come within a few meters of the Glomar Explorer in the previous days , left the area. During an initial investigation, the crew of the Glomar Explorer found that the wreck was contaminated with plutonium hydroxide. This came from the detonation of one of the propellant charges from one or both of the nuclear torpedoes on board the K-129 , which damaged the warheads. The Glomar Explorer started the voyage to Midway as planned, but changed course on August 11th to Hawaii, where she arrived on August 16th. What happened to the salvaged wreckage of the K-129 is not yet publicly known. The plan was to hand them over to the Hughes Mining Barge .

Later that year, the USS Seawolf (SSN-575) took more photos of the disaster, showing that the wreck had broken apart and the debris was scattered over a large area. Another attempt at rescue with the gripper arm of the Glomar Explorer was therefore out of the question.

Legal evaluation

The K-129 is seevölkerrechtlich seen on the high seas dropped; this area is not subject to any sovereignty. The two relevant points regarding the legitimacy of the Azorian project are therefore the special protection of warships from salvage by a foreign state and the concept of abandoning the wreck by the state under whose flag the wreck sailed.

Warships are perfectly legally on the high seas without exception from access by foreign states protected . However, it can also be formally argued that the K-129 is no longer a warship as a wreck and therefore does not enjoy any special protection. It is possible that it was still owned by the Soviet Union, so that the wreck was still under legal protection. The United States took this view with the USS Panay (PR-5) and a freighter that sank in Port of Spain . In the latter case, the US government took the view that the right to the cargo or hull of a ship that sank under the US flag rests with the United States until it has been transferred or abandoned. Accordingly, a ship owned by the public sector is subject to special protection, even without having to fall back on the status of a warship.

The question of whether the Soviet Union had permanently given up its right to the wreck is therefore important. At first glance, this may be true because the Soviet Union did not know the location of the wreck and had not looked for it for more than six years at the time of the salvage. In this case, ownership of the wreck would pass to the person who rescues the abandoned object. However, the general position of the US government as well as the Soviet Union is that ownership of a state property can only be given up explicitly, but not, as in this case, by neglecting to search for the wreck. This applies in any case, as long as it is clear that the wreck belonged to a foreign state.

So if the wreck could not be considered abandoned, then the recovery by the Glomar Explorer could not be lawful; the recovered wreck would not be owned by the United States. As a further indication of the illegitimacy of the operation, Alfred P. Rubin sees in the American Journal of International Law that the USA camouflaged its intention. Had they been of the opinion that the recovery was legally possible, the wreck would have become their property when the recovery began, so that camouflage - at least from a legal point of view - would have been unnecessary.

publication

Revealing the operation

The entire preparation of the Azorian project remained hidden from the public. Hughes announced the supposed purpose of the ship as it was being built, and in fact American newspapers have reported several times over the years about the ore mining ship Glomar Explorer . The Honolulu Advertiser ran a cover story on the ship and its submarine ore mining on August 16, 1974 when the wreck arrived off Hawaii . As early as the fall of 1973, however, Seymour Hersh had heard vaguely about the Azorian project from the New York Times . CIA Director William Egan Colby quickly asked the editors and Hersh himself to stop the research and possible publication for reasons of national security. After an editorial conference it was decided not to investigate any further. Instead, Hersh focused on the Watergate affair .

However, in June 1974, a Hughes warehouse in Los Angeles , California was broken into. Documents relating to the Azorian project were also stolen during this break-in. The Los Angeles Times became aware of the following investigations . On February 7, 1975, the newspaper published an article under the heading "US Reported after Russ Sub" which contained the first facts, but also some errors such as the relocation of the operation to the Atlantic. The CIA intervened here, too, and the editors assured that the story would be moved to page 18 in issues that had not yet been printed, but publication could no longer be prevented. Nevertheless, Colby managed to suppress further publications in the next few weeks. On March 18, Jack Anderson finally went national radio and television with the story of the Azorian Project, and a day later Hersh ran the New York Times headline “CIA Salvage Ship Brought Up Part of Soviet Sub Lost in 1968, Failed to Raise Atom Missiles ". In this article, the Times detailed the circumstances of their research and self-censorship in addition to the recovery.

There is no known reaction from the Soviet Union to the publications.

The following publications

In 1975, journalist Harriet Ann Phillippi applied for the CIA to hand over all files on attempts to withhold media reports. She based that request on the Freedom of Information Act . The CIA replied that the existence of such files could not be confirmed or denied and accordingly did not release anything. Phillippi sued against this, but lost in the first instance. Before the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, DC , she was able to get the hearing back to the District Court (Phillippi v. Central Intelligence Agency, 546 F.2d 1009, 1013 (DC Cir. 1976)); however, the court conceded to the CIA that it was legally possible to neither confirm nor deny the existence of information. This form of response to a FOIA request is therefore referred to in the United States as the Glomar response or Glomarization.

Publications by the US authorities

In 2003, the CIA released a 14-minute video on a request under the Freedom of Information Act showing the burial at sea of ​​the six bodies found in the wreck on September 4, 1974. Three seafarers could be identified by name, three others were buried anonymously. After a service held in English and Russian under the US national and Soviet naval flags, the bodies were thrown overboard the Glomar Explorer and buried in the Pacific. The video was given to the Russian government in 1992.

In February 2010, detailed documents were also made public for the first time via the FOIA. At the request of the National Security Archive, the CIA released a 1985 50-page article from its internal magazine Studies in Intelligence . However, this is still heavily censored, around a third of the content has been blacked out; the author's name also remained a secret. Among the unapproved content are all mentions of the cost of the project as well as anything related to the upscale parts of the K-129. Instead, the official name of the operation was given as "Azorian Project". Previous publications were based on the name "Jennifer Project". Jennifer, however, was just the name of an internal security system put in place for the operation.

Criticism of reluctance by the press

The revelations in 1975 were viewed critically from the media perspective. While CIA director William Colby regarded the secrecy of the press as a "great tribute to [American] journalism ", it was at the same time for others a mockery of the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution . In 1977 columnist Anthony Lewis took a look at the self-censorship in The Times and said to journalism: "After these papers it becomes more difficult for journalists to believe in their self-image, as a tough skeptical number, immune to ingratiation to the government." Rolling Stone magazine sued the CIA for the release of transcripts of conversations between Colby and publishers.

literature

  • Anon .: Project Azorian: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer. In: Studies in Intelligence , Langley, VA, Fall 1985
  • Olaf Kanter: Project Jennifer. In: mare . Issue 36 (2003), pp. 62-67
  • Jost Herbig: In the labyrinth of the secret services. The case of Jennifer Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 1985, ISBN 978-3-596-24226-9 .

Web links

Commons : Azorian Project  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Azorian Project - Recovery of Submarine K129 . Multi-part documentation from 2014, zdf_info broadcast from January 4, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Anon: Project Azorian: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer (PDF file; 3.04 MB). In Studies in Intelligence , 1985
  3. ↑ a b c The New York Times: Navy Has Long Had Secret Subs For Deep-Sea Spying, Experts Say February 7, 1995 (Eng.)
  4. ^ A b Norman Polmar: Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the US Fleet. US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2005, ISBN 978-1-59114-685-8 . P. 251
  5. ↑ Robert Miraldi: Seymour Hersh . Scoop Artist. First edition. Potomac Books, University of Nebraska, Nebraska 2013, ISBN 978-1-61234-475-1 , pp. 202 .
  6. ↑ Diagram of the Glomar Explorer on white.at ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ A b Time Magazine: The Great Submarine Snatch . March 31, 1975. (Eng.)
  8. ↑ Copy Closing session of 16th plenum of the US-Russia joint commission on prisoners of war / missing in action ( Memento of February 18, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), November 1999 (engl.)
  9. ^ A b Frederic A. Eustis: The Glomar Explorer Incident: Implications for the Law of Salvage . In: Virginia Journal of International Law 16 (Fall 1975)
  10. ↑ Eustis 1975, p. 5
  11. ^ Alfred P. Rubin: Sunken Soviet Submarines and Central Intelligence; Laws of Property and the Agency . In: The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 69, No. 4th October 1975
  12. ↑ Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1973: Hughes' Secret Deep-Sea Ship Sets Sail for Atlantic Trials
  13. ^ Kathryn S. Olmsted: Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI . University of North Carolina Press, Wilmington, NC 1996. ISBN 0807845620 , pp. 67-79
  14. ↑ verdict on justia.com (Engl.)
  15. ↑ FOIA Counselor: Questions & Answers (Engl.)
  16. ↑ Robert Miraldi: Seymour Hersh . Scoop Artist. First edition. Potomac Books, University of Nebraska, Nebraska 2013, ISBN 978-1-61234-475-1 , pp. 211 (eng., Quote: "After these papers, it will be harder for journalists to believe in their self-image as a tough, skeptical lot, immune to government cajolery," he said.).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 17, 2010 .