Strange bedfellows: Howard Hughes, a $2 billion ship and a lost Soviet submarine

It's 1968 and a Soviet sub carrying nuclear warheads has gone missing – lost, with all hands. The Soviets never found it – but the Americans did – in nearly 5000 meters of water.

What follows is the strange tale of Project Azorian, an ultra-secret mission by the US Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, that played on national fervor over deep sea mining to create an elaborate cover story to raise the sub. This strange tale involved Howard Hughes, a journey around the tip of South America, the 1973 Chilean coup and a 1974 burglary. This last resulted in an expose of what has been called one of the greatest covert operations in the CIA's history.

I stumbled onto this story in the course of reporting the episode on Norway's decision to open its seabed to exploration and mining, and couldn't resist making a little podcast extra about it since it's such a bizarre tale. Fortunately, my guest on today's show, Mats Ingulstad, a professor at NTNU's Department of Modern History and Society, was equally fascinated by this little sidebar to the history of deep sea mining, so here you have it.

Here are some links to relevant documents:

The declassified CIA document (heavily excised) about Project Azorian, with lots of amazing details

The US National Security Archive's webpage describing the declassification of the CIA's Project Azorian

The US Department of State, Office of the Historian's extremely detailed description of The Hughes Glomar Explorer’s Secret Mission to Recover a Sunken Soviet Submarine

For the definitive account of the whole affair, check out the book Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129.

A New York Times article about the 1974 burglary that first exposed Project Azorian: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/27/archives/an-easy-burglary-led-to-the-disclosure-of-hughescia-plan-to-salvage.html

The Wikipedia page on Project Azorian

The Kennedy speech came from a 28-minute film made on behalf of the US Air Force, called Oceanography: Science for Survival. It's available from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

I don't talk about it, but the part of the sub that was raised also contained the bodies of six submariners, who were subsequently given a proper burial at sea. There's a video of the ceremony here.

If you've read this far, I'd be interested in feedback on the sound design of this podcast. I had access to a different music library and decided to use a lot of music to see how it would sound. So let me know: was it too loud, too much, not enough? If you do send a note, make sure to tell me what kind of headphones you're using. Other comments? Questions? Fan mail? email me at nancy.bazilchuk@ntnu.no

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