posted on Oct, 19 2017 @ 04:30 PM
a reply to:
Zaphod58
In the late '70s I had read several published articles about the CIA's attempt to raise the Golf. I even attempted, through the FOIA, to pry whatever
I could from the Navy about the Glomar Explorer but, predictably, I hit a brick wall. I recently read "Blind Man's Bluff: the Untold Story of American
Submarine Espionage," by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, published in 1998. They spent a lot of ink at the back of the book listing many of their
sources by name and claiming nearly as many sources needed to remain anonymous. It was clear that those anonymous sources had access to sensitive
information.
In the book they say
Clementine (the claw) had raised the sub 5,000 feet off the ocean floor and two miles from the surface when (emphasis
mine) ".... three of the grasping claws cracked and fell away.... Now, there were only two claws and the net left holding the forward section of the
Golf. The rest of the submarine was dangling mid-ocean, and within moments proved itself ... fragile ... (as) predicted six years earlier. The steel
of the Golf began to tear at its seams, until the bulk of the sub ripped free from the small section still in
Clementine's grasp and fell back
into the depths.
Back to the ocean floor went the intact nuclear missile, the code books,, the decoding machines, the burst transmitters.
Everything the CIA most wanted to reclaim.
"There were no celebrations as Glomar headed home, no sense of victory that she carried back about 10 percent of a Soviet submarine.
Most of this
portion was nearly useless from an intelligence standpoint."
Talking about Seymour Hersh's article in the New York Times they said, "Hersh mistakenly wrote that as many as 70 bodies had been recovered in the
wreckage, when
only six had been recovered.... the CIA had held a burial service for the Soviet dead and videotaped it in case the Soviet Union
ever found out about the recovery attempt and demanded information.
"....Nearly every newspaper and magazine reported that the United States had recovered the forward third of the 300-foot long sub.
But former Navy
officials say that only a 38-foot piece was brought to the surface.
"... Ultimately it seems the agency (CIA) even convinced some reporters that Project Jennifer had been at least moderately successful ..."
The CIA had a vested interest in convincing Congress and the American people that Project Jennifer was more successful than it actually was, and was
worth the 200+million dollars it cost.