Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129

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Naval Institute Press, 2010 - 238 pages
Despite incredible political, military, and intelligence risks, and after six years of secret preparations, the CIA attempted to salvage the sunken Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 from the depths of the North Pacific Ocean in early August 1974. This audacious effort was carried out under the cover of an undersea mining operation sponsored by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. "Azorian"---incorrectly identified as Project Jennifer by the press---was the most ambitious ocean engineering endeavor ever attempted and can be compared to the 1969 moon landing for its level of technological achievement.

Following the sinking of a Soviet missile submarine in March 1968, U.S. intelligence agencies were able to determine the precise location and to develop a means of raising the submarine from a depth of more than 16,000 feet. Previously, the deepest salvage attempt of a submarine had been accomplished at 245 feet. The remarkable effort to reach the K-129, which contained nuclear-armed torpedoes and missiles as well as cryptographic equipment, was conducted with Soviet naval ships a few hundred yards from the lift ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer.

While other books have been published about this secret project, non has provided an accurate and detailed account of this remarkable undertaking. To fully document the story, the authors conducted extensive interviews with men who were on board the Glomar Explorer and the USS Halibut, the submarine that found the wreckage, as well as with U.S. naval intelligence officers and with Soviet naval officers and scientists.

The authors had access to the Glomar Explorer's logs and to other documents from U.S. and Soviet sources. The book is based, in part, on the research for Michael White's ground-breaking documentary film---"Azorian: The Raising of the K-129"---released in late 2009. As a result of the research for the book and the documentary film, the CIA reluctantly issued a report on Project Azorian in early 2010, even though they tried to withhold details that were in that brief document from the public record by censoring one-third of it. In this book, the real story of the CIA's Project Azorian is finally revealed after decades of secrecy.

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About the author (2010)

Norman Polmar is an internationally known analyst, consultant, and award-winning author specializing in naval, aviation, and intelligence issues. He has worked extensively in the submarine area for the U.S. Department of Defense and Navy, and consulted on this subject to U.S. and foreign commercial firms and government agencies, and to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. He spent four years with the Navy's Deep Submergence Systems Project (DSSP) while an employee of Northrop Corp. He has served for almost eleven years on the Secretary of the Navy's Research Advisory Committee (NRAC). He has written fifty books, including eight editions of Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet. He is currently a columnist for Proceedings and Naval History magazines. He is a resident of Alexandria, Va.
Michael White has worked in film and television for more than thirty-five years. His career in special and visual effects began in 1976 at Pinewood Stuios in England, and 1990 he moved to Vienna, which he has used as a base to work around Europe as a director of more than fifty commercials and some twenty corporate films. In 2002, he turned to making full-length documentary,---"On a Wind and a Prayer." This award-winning film covered the remarkable story of the Japanese balloon bomb offensive against the North American continent during World War II.

Michael White's latest documentary---"Azorian: The Raising of the K-129"---provides the most accurate film account yet produced of the incredible covert operation and partial recovery of the Soviet submarine K-129 by the CIA.

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