Tycoon Hughes behind secret Cold War ocean salvage
long haul. But suddenly the ship relaxed. Closed circuit cameras broadcast Clementine’s failure to the Mission Control station up top. At 9,000 feet from the ocean floor, the claw used to grab the submarine had failed. The larger part of the craft was now back on the ocean floor.
At Langley, John Parangosky, the mastermind of the Azorian Project, broke the news to his boss Carl Druckett.
Druckett stunned Mission Control with a cable ordering a return to the bottom to recover the “target.” He then demanded an open, unsecured radio channel to the Explorer to personally deliver the command.
Parangosky had to convince him it couldn’t be done. For one thing, the remainder of the submarine had likely fractured into pieces on impact. It was time to alert Washington the mission had ended in partial failure.
As the days at sea wore on, the Soviet vessel continued to menace the Explorer. The stolen section of sub was nearing the surface when the tug charged close enough for the Explorer’s captain to issue another warning.
This time there was a response. The entire Russian crew gathered on deck, dropping their pants to moon the Explorer. After that parting shot, the tug finally sailed away.
The Explorer was soon thick with the stench of rotting flesh. The corpses of six sailors were found inside the sub but not much else. Only one missile had been retrieved.
Plans were already underway at Langley to launch a return mission. But early the next year, the Los Angeles Times broke a story revealing the U.S. had raised a piece of a Soviet submarine from the deep.
The two L.A. cops who headed the robbery case had leaked word that they were warned by the CIA that confidential files were possibly stolen. The paper started investigating.
The CIA managed to convince other major papers too much was at stake to risk alerting the Soviets of the ongoing covert operation. The story was contained.
Shortly afterward, an ambitious Los Angeles County tax assessor slapped Hughes’ Summa Corp. with an astronomical tax bill based on the value of the Explorer.
Several high-powered attempts to make the tax man back down failed.
The Securities and Exchange Commission then launched an investigation into perceived financial irregularities at Global Marine, the firm hired to design the ship. A secret meeting with the CIA nipped that threat.
All the efforts were for nothing. In March, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Jack Anderson broke his story about the massive CIA $350 million “boondoggle.”
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised President Gerald Ford to admit nothing. The second retrieval mission was quietly laid to rest. In the end, there was no pushback from the Soviets.
What happened in the ocean depths stayed there. The K-129 was left to rest in pieces.