Main interviews: Seymour M. Hersh; William E. Colby; Otis Pike; Aaron Donner, Edward Roeder III, and other former staff members of the Pike Committee; John P. Craven; former crew members of the Glomar- Explorer; and former top Navy, CIA, and Naval Intelligence officials.
Government documents, articles, books, and other sources: Some of the difficulties that Hersh faced in researching the Glomar story are described in Harrison E. Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor: The New York Times and Its Times (New York: Times Books, 1980). William Colby's memoir, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), also provided excellent background, particularly on his fencing with Hersh over Hersh's article on the CIA's domestic spying.
We interviewed Hersh several times, and interviewed Colby once before he died in 1996. Colby said that when he heard that Hersh had gotten a tip about the Glomar operation, "it scared the living daylights out of me. I didn't ask any more. I knew we had a problem." Asked whether he was worried that the Glomar operation could have threatened detente, Colby said: "We always knew we had a hot potato on our hands." Still, he said, Kissinger was always "fully supportive. Kissinger's idea was that it was my business… it was my problem, it was my money." And Colby remained adamant that the gamble to recover the Golf was worth taking: "The answer I give to that is: What would the Russians have given to have a full American submarine in their hands? The nuclear weapons. The command and control system. The communications system. The war planning. All of it." He also dismissed Craven and Bradley's idea of making a more limited recovery attempt with a deep-diving mini-sub by saying: "On any engineering job, you have different ways of proceeding."
We drew our description of the location of the patrol areas of the Soviet Yankees and the continued expansion of SOSUS from R. E Cross Associates, Ltd., Sea-Based Airborne Antisubmarine Warfare 1940–1977, volume 2. Several submarine force officials described in interviews how they kept track of Soviet submarines during the Yom Kippur War.
In the interview with us, Colby said he thought the "real genius" in the planning of the Glomar operation was in the choice to use the secretive Howard Hughes and the manganese cover story. Colby also was blunt in saying that no matter what legal justifications the CIA lawyers might have drafted, "obviously we were secretly trying to steal this submarine. If they had known we were after that, it would have been legitimate for them to be able to try to stop us." Colby also said it was obvious that the CIA was sending Glomar into a potential Pueblo-like situation. Asked what Glomar's crew would have done if the Soviets had tried to board her, he said: "Probably dodge and weave." He added: "We had some protection…. We had a deal with the Navy. They were just down at Pearl Harbor," where Naval Intelligence was assiduously monitoring every Soviet communications frequency possible while the Glomar was at sea.
We drew most of our technical description of the Glomar and how it used Clementine, its steel arm and claw, in trying to lift up the Golf from Roy Varner and Wayne Collier, A Matter of Risk: The Incredible Inside Story of the CIA's Hughes Glomar Explorer Mission to Raise a Russian Submarine (New York: Random House, 1978). Collier helped recruit many of the oil-field roughnecks who operated the Glomar's huge machinery, and he and Varner later interviewed them and some government officials to piece together a detailed account of what happened on the ship. Another book, Clyde Burleson's The Jennifer Project (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977), also provided helpful background information, particularly about the Glomar's design and technical capabilities. Because almost everything written about the heavily shrouded Glomar operation contains some mistakes, we went through both of these books carefully with our intelligence sources to avoid picking up any errors.
Hersh's story on the CIA's domestic spying led the New York Times on December 22, 1974, with a headline spread over three columns at the top of page 1: "Huge CIA Operation Reported in U.S. Against Anti-War Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years." Charging the CIA with "directly violating its charter," Hersh wrote that the agency had "conducted a massive illegal domestic intelligence operation" and compiled dossiers on ten thousand or more American citizens. CIA operatives, the story said, had been shadowing war protesters and infiltrating antiwar organizations. Colby always insisted-and repeated again in our interview-that Hersh "blew it all out of proportion" by using the word massive. Colby added in the interview: "We were engaged in a few things we shouldn't have done." But, he said, "if he had left the word massive out, it would have been very hard to contest." Colby also said he attacked the Hersh story publicly at that time because "there was a good chance the agency was going to he destroyed. I was fighting for its survival."
Colby's campaign to try to keep news organizations from breaking the Glomar story was described in Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor, and in two news articles that drew on declassified CIA documents: George Lardner Jr. and William Claiborne, "CIA's Glomar `Game Plan,"' Washington Post, October 23, 1977; and William Claiborne and George Lardner Jr., "Colby Called Glomar Case `Weirdest Conspiracy,"' Washington Post, November 5, 1977. The quote from Jack Anderson about why he went ahead and broke the Glomar story on his radio show comes from Martin Arnold, "CIA Tried to Get Press to Hold up Salvage Story," the New York Times, March 20, 1975.
The hest analysis of the lack of success of the Glomar operation remains the first detailed one-Hersh's first article, "CIA Salvage Ship Brought up Part of Soviet Sub Lost in 1968, Failed to Raise Atom Missiles," on the front page of the New York Times, March 19, 1975. Hersh also interviewed Wayne Collier extensively for a follow-up article: "Human Error Is Cited in '74 Glomar Failure," the New York Times, December 9, 1976. Hersh made some errors, such as initially overstating the number of bodies recovered with part of the Golf. But in describing how little of value was gained through the Glomar operation, he was right on the mark, while the Washington Post consistently wrote that the operation was relatively successful, and Time magazine published an article stating that it was a total success and the entire Golf submarine had been recovered. In our interview, Colby, who had previously declined to say much about the Glomar operation, finally confirmed that only part of the Golf was recovered. And while he said that some of the information gleaned from it was "useful," the sub "was not raised."
Hersh's story on the Holystone operations-"Submarines of U.S. Stage Spy Missions Inside Soviet Waters"-appeared on the front page of the New York Times, May 25, 1975. His follow-up on the Gato collision appeared in the Times on July 6, 1975.
Our description of the Pike Committee's conclusions comes from its final report, as reprinted in the Village Voice on February 16, 1976. After the full House voted not to release the report, it was leaked to the Voice by the veteran CBS newsman Daniel Schorr, who describes what happened in his book Clearing the Air (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, '1977).
Main interviews: Former top Navy, intelligence, and White House officials and crew members of the USS Seawol f and USS Parche.
Government documents, articles, books, and other sources: For President Jimmy Carter's background as a submarine officer and his general defense policies as president, we reviewed two of his hooks, Why Not the Best? (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1975); and Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1982). Our description of the briefing for him on the activities of the special projects subs is based on interviews with former high-level officials who were familiar with it. Because of the sensitivity of the decision to tap Soviet cables in a second location, we should note that Richard Haver did not discuss the Barents taps with us in any fashion. In fact, we deliberately avoided describing as characters in this chapter or the next anyone who did talk to us about the operation.