CIA scheme to claw & capture Soviet sub

the key players met at a hotel in Los Angeles to work out the “black contract,” Hughes’ lawyer was repeatedly summoned from the room at critical junctures.

It struck at least one of the government representatives that Hughes was nearby, getting briefed by unseen means on the negotiations.

The agreed-upon cover story: Hughes’ company was funding a first of its kind exploration into deep-ocean mining. The next step: foisting the hoax on an unsuspecting media.

While it could be easily be sold as yet another of Hughes’ crazy ventures, the operation required sufficient plausibility to keep the Soviets from getting suspicious.

Manfred Krutein, an expert in ocean mining, was hired to manufacture a string of convincing rationales for the monstrous ship’s construction.

The specs for the Hughes Glomar Explorer needed a lot of explaining. The ship had to be massive enough to pick up 3.92 million pounds, lift it more than 3 miles, then carry it home undetected.

Months later, Krutein watched a Hughes spokesman announce the birth of an “entirely new industry” of deep-ocean mining at a lavish press conference in Hawaii.

None of the details raised any questions. His work was done.

While the ship could be built in public, the capture vehicle — to be hidden in the world’s largest submersible barge — had to be constructed under deep cover.

Secrecy was maintained almost until launch.

A break-in at a Hughes’ storage facility mid-1974 should have sounded more alarms than it did. But when the thieves turned out to be small-time crooks, the CIA let the matter slide.

On July 4, the Explorer reached the target site, 40 degrees latitude and 180 degrees longitude. Due to technical problems, weeks passed before the hull opened to release the giant claw dubbed Clementine.

Clementine had only just descended deep enough to be hidden from view when a small salvage tug, the kind the Soviets routinely used for undercover intelligence, started dogging the Explorer.

The boat would come close, retreat and then return, tightly circling the ship at the critical moment Clementine grasped its prey.

On Aug. 4, the slow process of raising the wrecked submarine began. Everyone on board could feel the ship straining as they settled in for what was going to be a

Howard Hughes (r.) pretended to be mining ocean as cover for 1974 CIA operation to retrieve a sunken, nuclear-armed Soviet submarine, as told in new book by Josh Dean (far left inset). The “mining” crew (top left) was part of a media hoax. Middle,...