REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana - The Hunt for K-129

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

In 1968, the Soviet submarine K-129 sank in the Pacific, carrying nuclear weapons and Cold War secrets. After its location was pinpointed three miles beneath the ocean surface, the CIA tasked a trailblazing engineer named Curtis Crooke with designing the technology to bring it back up. Backed by billionaire Howard Hughes, they launched a covert $800 million operation that pushed the limits of engineering and espionage—but the final outcome remained shrouded in secrecy.Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterFollow Redacted: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting https://wondery.com/links/redacted/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to redacted, declassified mysteries early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. It was late afternoon in the winter of 1968, and a Soviet captain was trying to contain his anger. His second-in-command had just caught two sailors asleep at their stations. On a submarine carrying three nuclear missiles that could kill millions of people, sleeping on the job could be deadly. The captain reamed out the two men and put them on kitchen duty. Then he headed down a narrow hallway filled with overworked sailors. The 98 men aboard submarine K-129 had been at sea for almost two weeks when they should have been on shore leave. But a couple other subs had mechanical

problems, so the K-129 had been ordered to cover the gap in the Soviet Union's Pacific defenses. But everyone was growing weary, including the 38-year-old captain himself. When the captain reached his living quarters, he sat down and unbuttoned his shirt. Then he glanced in the mirror at his tired face. The weight of commanding a nuclear sub was evident in his bloodshot eyes alone. He lay on his bunk and put his head on his pillow. Over the years, he trained himself to take deep naps at a moment's notice. The captain closed his eyes and started to fall asleep.

And then, he heard an impossibly loud bang. But before he could figure out what had made it, he heard the screams of his men and he ran into the hallway. Alarms blared and red lights flashed. Men were panicking, running in all directions. The captain felt the submarine start to tip on its side and he grabbed a railing to keep his balance. Then he felt growing pressure in his ears and he knew that could only mean one thing. K129 was sinking.

That's when he saw water, a wall of it, heading right toward him, engulfing everything in its path. He looked up at the ladder leading to the bridge where he could take command of this crisis. But there was no escape. From Ballin Studios in Wondery, I'm Luke LaManna, and this is Redacted Declassified Mysteries, where each week we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide.

This week's episode is called The Hunt for K-129. In March of 1968, the Soviet nuclear submarine called K-129 sank 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii, deep in the Pacific Ocean. This was the middle of the Cold War, and tensions between the United States and the Soviets were running high. A downed nuclear sub in the middle of the ocean meant weapons of mass destruction were unprotected, and sensitive state secrets could be taken by anyone with the resources to claim the prize. In the race to reach the dead sub, the Americans were able to pinpoint the location first and launched one of the biggest and most expensive covert missions in history.

The goal? To raise a 2,700-ton submarine from three miles below the surface without attracting any attention. To succeed, the mission would bring together a truly unusual cast of characters, including America's greatest spies and nautical minds, along with an eccentric Hollywood titan. After spending $800 million and hiring the top American minds of the time, would the U.S. government be able to pull off the impossible and raise the K-129 submarine? pull off the impossible and raise the K-129 submarine? If so, what Cold War secrets would they find, and would they share them with the American public, or keep them a secret? John Craven tapped a pen against the side of his head at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. in late May 1968. He was deep in thought with his eyes shut when suddenly they opened wide. It's in one piece, he shouted to nobody at all. Craven was the head of the Navy's Deep Submergence Systems Project, created to help

salvage materials on the seafloor. Though he was only 40, Craven may have had more expertise on undersea missions than any person in the U.S. Navy. So, when he learned a few weeks earlier that the Soviets had sent a fleet of submarines, ships, and fishing boats out into the Pacific Ocean, Craven became really interested. They were looking for something, and Craven was pretty sure he knew what it was, a Soviet submarine called K-129 that had sunk in the North Pacific Ocean. Craven realized the Soviets didn't know exactly where the sub had sunk, and in recent days, it looked like they were giving up on their search. But he and other Americans knew something that the Soviets did not. American sonar had found the exact location of K-129 beneath 17,000 feet of ocean.

The submarine was just sitting there, waiting for the Navy to find it, take the weapons aboard, and steal whatever secrets lay within. When Craven first heard about the sunken submarine, he thought it was intriguing, but no more than that. If the sub had suffered an explosion severe enough to make it sink, chances were that anything useful on board was destroyed. Then the mounting water pressure as the sub sank would finish the job, crushing it like a tin can. Craven assumed any recovery mission probably wouldn't provide much value. But the sonic data he was looking at showed a different story. It looked like the sub had been on the surface when it exploded.

But after that initial explosion, there were no significant events picked up by the Navy's acoustic tracking systems. That meant the submarine probably did not implode from the pressure as it sank to the seafloor. Craven wrote two thrilling words in his notepad, K-129 intact. Then he put down his pen and picked up the phone. The four young engineers standing in Curtis Crook's office in downtown Los Angeles looked at him like he was speaking ancient Greek. He'd been explaining a nuanced concept related to offshore drilling, but they were clearly perplexed. He needed to dumb his language down, but before he could, the intercom buzzed. Crook put his finger up to say, one sec, and the engineers nodded in relief. Crook was 41 years old and the head of engineering for an ocean drilling company

called Global Marine. Under his watch, the company had designed and built some of the biggest drilling ships ever made. Crook was the kind of guy whose office door was never shut, and the kind of guy who got the job done. The intercom buzzed again, and his secretary said there was a man on the phone who was anxious to talk to him. He wouldn't say who he was, but he'd called three times in the past hour. Crook took off his wire-rimmed glasses. He told his secretary to set up a call for later in the afternoon. He put his glasses back on and tried to regain his train of thought with the young engineers when the intercom buzzed again.

As soon as his secretary spoke, Crook noticed a change in her voice. She was panicked, telling him that the mysterious guy who'd been calling was now in their office with two other men, and he still wouldn't tell her his name. Crook was about to tell his secretary to inform the man and his associates that they could wait, when those same men confidently entered his office. They were all wearing crisp business suits and were in no mood to wait. Crook quickly apologized to the engineers and sent them on their way. The three men sat down.

The one in charge was 40 with slick back hair. He stuck out his hand and said his name was John Parangoski and he worked for the CIA. Everyone called him JP. Crook asked for ID, but the man said they didn't carry those. Crook looked at Parangoski with a healthy suspicion and then decided the man was legitimate. He asked what he could do for the CIA. JP said that America needed Crook's expertise for a highly classified mission. Crook looked at JP and his two colleagues, realizing how important this mission must be to the trio if they just showed up at his office with no notice.

But JP didn't explain. Instead, he asked Crook if it was possible to lift an object weighing 2,000 tons from three miles down on the ocean floor. Crook replied with the only answer he could think of. He wasn't sure. JP shook his hand and told him to think about it. They'd be in touch soon.

Crook went home that night, puzzled but intrigued, and went straight to his bookshelf. His company, Global Marine, specialized in doing things in the deep that nobody had done before, or even thought to do before. Why couldn't they lift something that big and that far under the surface? And what sort of object were they talking about anyway? 2,000 tons, 4 million pounds.

He figured it had to be a submarine. A year earlier, the Navy had asked Global Marine for some ideas when an American sub had sunk, but the company's planning didn't get past the idea stage because the job went to another firm. Maybe this one was an American, Crook thought. He searched the shelf until he found a thin book with a blue cover. It was a reference book known as the Bible for all the world's navies. It included information and data on naval vessels of all kinds from around the planet. He turned the pages until he found a section on Soviet subs. The weight roughly matched. The next day, Crook was back in

the office, still thinking about lifting a sub from the bottom of the ocean. The intercom buzzed, and Crook knew who it was. Send him in. JP from the CIA came in with his two associates once again, this time looking a little more relaxed. Well, he asked. Crook looked at him with a smirk and said, I think it can be done. It was mid-November 1969, a week after Curtis Crook first met J.P. of the CIA, and Crook was sitting in a windowless room, staring wide-eyed at a green book.

The room was in a building near Los Angeles International Airport that had doors with coated locks. JP had brought Crook onto the K-129 project officially, but it was very hush-hush. To keep everything as quiet as possible, Crook brought on just two other engineers to start. Now, the three of them were together in this dull and practically airless CIA

provided room. Crook had guessed right. The CIA wanted to somehow lift a Soviet submarine off the ocean floor and needed Global Marine's help to do it. JP gave him a green book containing all the different ideas that CIA engineers had come up with for how to raise K-129. Crook looked through the ideas with his team and laughed. Some of them were so ridiculous they felt like a joke. One plan involved using rockets. Another used robots. They even suggested using flotation bags to lift K-129 to the surface.

One of Crook's engineers threw his hands up in mock desperation, as if to say, are they serious? Eventually, Crook and his engineers decided that none of the ideas in the Green Book would work. But over several days of thinking, they came up with a plan that would. They called it the deadlift method. It involved creating a string of pipe longer and heavier than any ever built. At the end of the pipe would be an enormous claw capable of picking up the submarine. When Crook said the idea out loud, it sounded just as absurd as the ones the CIA proposed. But there was one difference. He knew the claw would work.

Crook took a sip of coffee and looked at the hastily scribbled drawing of the claw that he'd made. It looked more like a kid's fantasy than an idea that would one day be built. And that wasn't the only extraordinary thing they would need to raise K-129. They also had to design and build a ship. And not just any ship. This would be closer to a man-made island than a boat. Crook stood up and told his colleagues there was yet another complication. It was paramount that Project Azorian, as the CIA was calling it,

stay a secret from the Soviets and hidden from regular American citizens. They needed a plausible cover story for the ship's existence. One of Crook's colleagues asked the obvious question, how do you hide a $350 million, 600-foot-long ship floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? The answer, Crook said, came down to two words. Deep sea mining. In 1969, the idea of mining the seafloor for crucial elements like copper and nickel was no longer science fiction, and companies were investing tens of millions of dollars to make it happen. It wouldn't be too far-fetched for the Americans to claim

they were investing in an incredibly expensive ship for deep-sea mining. Crook looked at his colleagues and let out a big sigh. The cover story was the easy part. Now, they had to build the damn thing. On a hot summer day in 1970, Curtis Crook was having coffee at a mom-and-pop restaurant down the street from the Global Marine office. The man sitting across from him was his friend and colleague, John Graham, the company's chief naval architect. The 55-year-old was an MIT grad and the smartest person in any room he entered. He was the brains behind the company's most innovative ship designs, including a 400-foot-long beast called the

Challenger that was capable of drilling in water 20,000 feet deep. So, when Graham spoke, his colleagues listened. But now, Graham, cigarette perched on his lips, was doing the listening. Crook told Graham that he wanted him to design a ship that was far bigger than the Challenger. How much bigger? Graham asked. Crook looked at his friend. He was about to tell Graham a staggering number, and he couldn't tell him the true reason they needed the ship. That's because Graham was a former alcoholic.

The CIA saw alcoholics as a security risk because they could more easily let classified information slip. And even though he hadn't touched a drink in years, Graham was the first to admit he was an addict. So he didn't have clearance to know about K-129 or the true mission. Crook told Graham he wanted a ship weighing 35,000 tons, three times the size of the Challenger. He also wanted it to have a huge 125-foot-long opening in the middle of the ship to lower equipment through, maybe bigger when all is said

and done. As he lit another cigarette, Graham said he thought this seemed like a giant boondoggle. How in the world would they make money on a ship this expensive to build? Crook told him he didn't need to worry about that. They already had investors, people very excited about undersea mining. Let him worry about the money part of things. Over the next few months, Graham went to work designing this giant ship.

He was told to keep the project quiet, even in-house, but he was allowed to hire several engineers to help with the blueprints. He spent countless hours guiding his plastic slide ruler over the constantly evolving drawings of the ship. All the while, he listened to big bands play on the stereo he kept in his office. In October 1970, Graham's clearance finally came through, and Crook could reveal the reason they were designing such a massive ship. Now that the engineers knew the real purpose of their ship, they realized they needed something even larger. Over the next few months, the planned weight of the ship would increase from 33,000

to 50,000 tons. The opening in the middle of the ship, called a moon pool, went from 125 feet long to 199 feet. And then, of course, there was the claw that would eventually grab the K-129 and try to lift it back to the surface. It needed to have a set of fingers that made it resemble a toy claw, along with video cameras and sonar devices to help locate the exact position of the sub. cameras and sonar devices to help locate the exact position of the sub. The claw would also have legs that were sturdy enough to help lift the sub off the seafloor as the claw pulled. So, not exactly an arcade game. Now that everyone understood the assignment, pressure set in. There was no time to waste. Any idea that didn't work was a waste of time, and Crook couldn't afford that. Crook assigned a quiet and detail-oriented engineer to watch over Graham's shoulder,

making sure the technology to build the architect's vision existed or would exist soon, and to check his work. Crook was starting to see the design taking shape, and soon the ship would be built. Now, he just had to explain why this vessel, the size of an island, was in the Pacific Ocean. In early December 1970, Crook took an elevator up to the penthouse floor of a Los Angeles hotel. When he got to the door of the suite, two muscular security guards patted him down and then let him in. Waiting for Crook at a fancy glass table were other representatives of Crook's company, Global Marine,

as well as two men from the CIA and a lawyer from a company called Hughes Tool. The lawyer pointed Crook to an empty seat. Crook had butterflies in his stomach. He felt like this meeting was about to go terribly wrong, and if it did, he'd be blamed because it was his idea to involve one of the most unpredictable people on the planet, the owner of Hughes Tool, the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Adding Hughes into this difficult operation was high risk, high reward. On one level, the billionaire was the perfect person for Crook's cover story. Not only did Hughes have a long history in mining and drilling,

but Global Marine had already been buying drills from his company, Hughes Tool, for years, and the billionaire had a reputation for risky ventures. So it would be just like him to invest in high-risk deep-sea mining. The catch was that Hughes was a known eccentric who rarely showed his face. In private, his behavior was erratic. He once told his staff he was going to watch movies at a local screening room. Then, he didn't emerge from that room for four months. And when he did, he was wearing the same soiled clothes he was last seen in. At this meeting, Hugh's lawyer represented him,

but he kept getting mysterious phone calls. The lawyer would listen for a few seconds, hang up, and then ask a new question. Crook was certain that Hughes was in the building somewhere, listening to the whole conversation and phoning in instructions. But whatever Hughes heard, he must have liked it. By the end of the meeting, Hughes agreed to act as a go-between for the CIA and Global Marine, funneling the money to build the ship. The success of the project now depended on one of the world's strangest people. On December 8, 1970, a few days after Howard Hughes agreed to be a front for Project Azorian, Crook found himself in another penthouse, but this time in Hawaii. He was there for the public

unveiling of Global Marine's phony mining project. Crook stepped up to the podium that had been set up in the suite and tapped on the microphone as he looked out at the room full of reporters and people involved in the project. Most people in the audience were holding full glasses of champagne. Crook told them that the rumors were true. Global Marine had a big new project. It involved an unprecedented ship, new technology, and deep-sea mining on a scale never before seen, and it would all be paid for by Howard Hughes. The president of Hughes Tool then stepped to the mic and announced that Howard Hughes had been the mysterious sponsor behind this project all along.

Together with Global Marine, they planned to mine rare earth elements from the bottom of the ocean on a ship that would be called the Hughes-Glomar Explorer. Everybody cheered. On January 2nd, 1974, the now fully built Hughes-Glomar Explorer was out to sea off the coast of California. It had been almost six years since K-129 sank, and the CIA finally had an actual ship to retrieve it with. It was 619 feet long, with three metallic towers sticking out of the deck that made it look like a floating factory.

The weather was choppy, winds were strong, and the boat was rocking. If they weren't pushed by a compressed timeline to have the mission completed by that summer, they might have postponed this trip, but they needed to test the ship's equipment as soon as possible. Crook stood at the railing above the giant opening in the ship called a moon pool. Looking down, he could see the enormous gates at the bottom that kept ocean water from getting in until they were ready. Then, someone in the control room flipped the switches to open the gates, and water began getting in until they were ready. Then, someone in the control room flipped the switches to open the gates, and water began rushing in. But the ship bucked hard in the rough water, and the water filling the pool washed up onto the deck, soaking the people who were watching. Underneath the ship, the open gates slammed against the hull, making one deafening

boom after another. As he watched the technicians in the control room struggle to close the sea gates, Crook wondered if all this work he'd put in was going to be for nothing. Was this plan just as laughable as those ideas in the CIA's Green Book? Crook watched as two divers swam down into the pool to manually close the gate that refused to shut. It suddenly struck Crook that people were risking their lives for this crazy idea that he had had in that windowless office. And what made him feel even worse was yet another problem. One of the most resourceful investigative journalists in the country was asking questions about Project Azorian.

CIA Director William Colby was escorted up to the Washington, D.C. Bureau office of the New York Times, where famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh was waiting. Hersh offered a seat and a coffee to Colby in his thick Chicago accent. Colby had only been CIA director for five months. He didn't want Hersh to spoil the agency's biggest mission, not on his watch anyway. Colby told Hersh he was going to be frank with him, franker than he'd like because he knew the journalist's work. Hersh interrupted. He said that he knew that if the director of the CIA had come to him for an interview, it meant that his

source was correct. The CIA was trying to recover a sunken Soviet submarine. Hirsch smiled and sat back. Four years earlier, he'd won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the My Lai Massacre, where American soldiers slaughtered hundreds of civilians in a village in Vietnam. Once he found a trail, he didn't stop following it. Colby shrugged and admitted that Hirsch was right. There was a sunken Soviet sub, and if Hirsch published his story, it would ruin a mission six years in the making and waste hundreds of millions of dollars already spent. Hirsch looked back at Kolbe with a combination of satisfaction and surprise. Kolbe explained that if the Soviets found out, it would raise Cold War tensions even further, a major escalation that

would require the government scrap the operation, wasting years of work and hundreds of millions in American taxpayer dollars. But legally, Colby knew he couldn't stop Hirsch from reporting on this. Hirsch knew it too, but he waited to hear more. Colby offered him a better story, a complete briefing on this secret operation, as soon as it was completed. Colby sat in suspense as Hirsch closed his eyes to consider the offer. He seemed to enjoy making Colby sweat. Everything came down to this one reporter's decision.

Colby did everything he could to avoid looking nervous. Finally, Hirsch stuck out his hand and said, you've got a deal. Colby shook the reporter's hand and tried to hold in his sigh of relief. Crisis averted. Project Azorian could proceed. proceed. On the morning of August 4th, 1974, global marine engineer John Parsons was sleeping for the first time in more than 24 hours when a young crewman stormed into his room, waking him up. when a young crewman stormed into his room, waking him up. He looked like he'd just lost his mother, as he said, John, something's wrong. We've lost a lot of weight. Parsons, a former Marine who'd fought in Vietnam,

was used to things going wrong on difficult missions. He got up and felt the ship beneath his feet shaking. At first, he thought it was an earthquake, but then Parsons had an even worse thought. What if they'd lost the submarine? The Hughes Global Explorer had been at the recovery site of K-129 for a month. Over the previous months, they had strung together 17,000 feet of steel pipe all the way down to K-129, complete with a giant claw at the end. all the way down to K-129, complete with a giant claw at the end. Unbelievably, the claw had taken hold of K-129,

and the submarine was slowly on its way up to the Explorer. The ship, designed by John Graham years earlier, seemed to be working exactly as he designed it. But now, all of a sudden, something was seriously wrong. Parsons sprang from his bunk and ran to the control room. When he got there, the room was already full of CIA agents and engineers, all staring at the same closed-circuit camera images of the Claw. At first, Parsons didn't see anything worrisome in the black and white images. All he saw was the claw holding K-129 and slowly rising towards the ship they were standing on.

But everyone, except the sleeping Parsons, had felt the ship shudder just a few minutes earlier. Unless something had rammed into Explorer, it had to do with the submarine. Parsons was as perplexed as everyone else in the control room. But then, one of the engineers suddenly screamed a four-letter word, and everybody looked at him. It's not live, he said, referring to the closed-circuit images. The image only updates when a camera detects a change. There must be a glitch.

Parsons held his breath as the tech team reset the feed. When the screen finally lit up with an updated shot from the claw, Parsons saw what he feared most. The image showed that a few of the claw's fingers had snapped and the claw had dropped at least half the submarine. A large chunk of K-129 was probably already back on the seafloor. Unreachable. Unretrievable. This was a major failure. All Parsons could do was shake his head. Back in Los Angeles, Curtis Crook arrived at the Project Azorian program office in one of Howard Hughes' buildings, ready to celebrate. He knew that while he was sleeping, the remains of K-129 would be getting close to the surface.

Six years of endless, stress-filled days had all led to this. There were boxes of champagne waiting for him and all the other staff to pop them open. But when he walked into the office, he instantly knew something was wrong. There was no laughter, no sign of celebration. The champagne bottles were exactly where they were when he left the day before. Crook put his briefcase down and sat at his desk as a member of his staff entered the office. He spread his hands out to silently ask, what's going on? She shook her head and told him about last night. Everyone had stayed late in anticipation of word that the K-129 had reached the surface, the staff member said.

The first telex message came in at 11 p.m. It read, congratulations, break out the champagne. The staff cheered and hugged. But then another message came in soon after. It said, disregard the previous communication. The claw, it turned out, had broken and dropped a big chunk of the submarine. Six years of hard work and $800 million of American taxpayer money had all led to this heartbreaking moment. Though Crook was disappointed, there was still a glimmer of hope that Project Azorian wasn't a complete failure. A decent portion of K-129 was in the explorer's claw, still on its way up to the ship. That part of the sub might contain valuable Soviet secrets, even if it was unlikely to contain the codes and missiles they considered primary targets. They'd just have to wait and see.

They'd just have to wait and see. Days later, Crook was in the office when the recovery ended. The Claw finally came through the open sea gates and entered the Explorer's moon pool. The gates were closed, the submarine lowered, and the pool emptied. Everyone on board finally got their first clear look at what had been recovered. It was a bitterly disappointing sight. Only one-third of the submarine lay in the empty pool. Everything from the submarine tower on back was gone, including the missile tubes and the code room, as best they could tell. All the primary targets had sunk back to the bottom of the Pacific. Crook took a bottle of champagne and put it on his desk.

They'd accomplished a lot after all. Built a brand new ship, lifted part of a nuclear sub, kept it all hidden from the Soviets and the American public. But they only got a third of a submarine. So Crook's champagne remained unopened. A few men volunteered to look through the recovered third of K-129. There was a risk of exposure to nuclear radiation, but a lot of people were anxious to see inside the sub.

A young CIA engineer with a cowlick was among them. He suited up in the way they were all trained. Surgical gloves, rubber galoshes, then a full-body long john, before putting on a Tyvek suit. Then another layer of gloves, which were taped at the wrist. Ankles were also taped to prevent leakage. A hard hat and an oxygen mask in a tank finished the outfit. The job was to enter the recovered subsection and collect as much as possible.

Even seemingly benign items could reveal something about where the submarine was built or who designed it. If an item looked interesting, you handed it over to an expert for analysis, maybe a Russian linguist or a nuclear physicist. All the volunteers were given lessons on Soviet warning labels in advance to avoid injuries or worse. The collection was a race against time. As he entered the hull of the submarine, the young CIA engineer noticed the smell of rust. Items that had been underwater for six years were starting to decay rapidly now that they were re-exposed to air. He was surprised at the amount of space there was to move in the battered K-129. In some places,

the structure looked horribly deformed, like a giant had stepped on it. In others, it looked like nothing was amiss, like it was still a functioning vessel. He entered what appeared to be an officer's sleeping quarters. He got down on his knees and reached under a bunk, feeling for anything that might have been stored underneath. Something was stuck to the bottom of the bunk, and he tugged on it. It came loose, and the engineer jumped back. It was a human head, nearly whole. The eyes and ears had been eaten away by crabs, but the skin and hair and nose were still hanging on after six years underwater.

He sat down on the bunk and closed his eyes, waited until his heart rate returned to normal, forced himself to look away from the head. He moved on to a different room, which he thought might be the captain's quarters. It looked roomier and a tad fancier. On the sole bunk, the captain's body, or whoever it was, still lay prone. Squint, and you might not be able to tell that the man had died years ago. He opened a desk drawer and found a journal. The CIA's paper preservation crew would later discover that the journal contained important notes taken by the senior Soviet officer. The journal was flown straight to Washington to be studied further.

Maybe they'd get some decent intelligence yet. That same morning, as crew members on Explorer sifted through Soviet machinery from K-129, President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. For Crook, it felt like two eras were ending at once, the Nixon years and the Explorer saga. The Hughes-Glomar Explorer headed away from K-129 after a month at the recovery site, but the mission wasn't over. Sorting and analyzing all the items found aboard K-129 and the recovered section of K-129 itself would take a while. Only after that stage would the full success or failure of the mission be determined. But even with the monumental

amount of cash and deception that went into lifting K-129 to the surface, the public still doesn't know exactly what was gained or if the mission was worth the cost. We do know that the salvage operation recovered a total of six bodies, and many years later, the Americans gave Russian President Boris Yeltsin the Soviet naval flag that shrouded their bodies. We also know that the ballistic missiles and code books, the primary targets, were not brought up. And we know that at least 100 feet of the submarine is still at the bottom of the Pacific. Otherwise, the CIA still hasn't revealed a full list of what was recovered. Is that because they don't want to give proof that it was a crazy expensive mission? Or because they're hiding some of their success? Secrecy around the mission was

so obsessive that today, in government circles, a stubborn refusal to release even the most minor information is known as the Glomar Response. known as the Glomar Response. All told, Project Azorian cost about $800 million, the equivalent of almost $5 billion today. For that much money, you could house tens of thousands of people, build schools, hospitals, and roads. Instead, the American government spent it on one of the most expensive sleight of hands in the history of espionage.

In March 1975, when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh finally got to publish his report about Project Azorian in the New York Times, he wrote it was considered a failure in the opinion of senior U.S. Navy officials. Though the codebooks and nuclear missiles that the CIA wanted from the K-129 fell to the ocean floor, it could be argued that the Hughes-Glomar Explorer is a symbol of American ingenuity. When Curtis Crook had coffee with John Graham and told him how big they needed the Hughes Glomar Explorer to be, it seemed impossible to build that big of a ship. But Crook, Graham, and the other engineers figured out a way to get a 4 million pound submarine from three miles under the sea without their Cold War enemy knowing it was happening. John Graham, the recovered alcoholic turned naval engineer,

died just a few weeks before K-129 was pulled out of the water. He knew death was coming after a lung cancer diagnosis, and he asked that his ashes be scattered aboard the Explorer, in recognition of the capstone of his life's work. Curtis Crook took Graham's urn on the Explorer, in recognition of the capstone of his life's work. Curtis Crook took Graham's urn on the Explorer, gathered with a few other engineers, and spread his friend's ashes into the Pacific. A final tribute to a job well done. To be continued... and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. From Ballant Studios and Wondery, this is Redacted Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke LaManna. A quick note about our stories. We do a lot of research, but some details and scenes are dramatized. We used many different sources for our show, but we especially recommend Taking of K-129, the most daring covert operation in history by Josh Dean, and The CIA's Greatest Covert Operation, Inside the Daring Mission to Recover a Nuclear-Armed Soviet Sub by David H. Sharp. This episode was written by Sean Raviv. Sound design by Andre Pluse.

Our producer is Christopher B. Dunn. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak, Teja Palakanda, and Rafa Faria. Fact-checking by Sheila Patterson. For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt. Script editing by Scott Allen. Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins. Production support by Avery Siegel.

Produced by me, Luke LaManna. Executive producers are Mr. Ballin and Nick Witters. For Wondery, our head of Sound is Marcelino Villapando. Senior Producers are Loredana Palavoda, Dave Schilling, and Rachel Engelman. Senior Managing Producer is Nick Ryan. Our Managing Producer is Olivia Fonte. Our Executive Producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis. For Wondery.