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

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(More customer reviews)"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of K-129" by naval historian Norman Polmar and documentary film producer Michael White provides the first unclassified, factual accounting of a unique event in world history - the loss of a nuclear-missile-equipped submarine in 1968, and its subsequent clandestine (partial) salvage by the CIA in 1974.
In the intervening 35-plus years, there have been many magazine and newspaper articles and several books addressing the K-129 and the CIA's recovery attempt -- incorrectly identifying the CIA effort as "Project Jennifer". Such reportings devolved over the years, as ignorance gradually was replaced by unsupported theories, wild speculation, and finally by absolute nonsense. These distortions and fantasies (represented as factual accountings) eventually motivated several men who participated in CIA's Project Azorian to step forward for in-depth interviews revealing the history of "Azorian" in intimate detail.
Added to the information obtained in these interviews of CIA & Naval officers, men onboard the Hughes Glomar Explorer, and ex-Soviet officials, Polmar & White have published actual photography of the K-129 wreck and, most astonishingly, have published the recorded sound trace of the catastrophe which sank that unfortunate ship. The acoustic recordings were captured by the U.S. Air Force hydrophone system operated by the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) - and Polmar & White reveal that the Navy's SOSUS system never detected the deployment or identified the acoustic events associated with the loss of the K-129.
To these unprecedented sources, add a lengthy interview with ex-Soviet Admiral Viktor Dygalo, who was the K-129's Division Commander in 1968, and add a document review of Russian-language sources concerning Soviet naval activity in the Pacific in 1968. Polmar & White also include declassified documents revealing U.S. Pacific fleet surveillance and operational activities in the northern Pacific from February through May 1968, KH-4B satellite photography of the Petropavlavsk submarine complex in September 1967, and interviews with U.S. naval personnel who participated in events that conspiracy theorists can only speculate about (specifically an interview with the Officer-of-the-Deck of USS Swordfish when she bent her periscope, and with individuals involved in the 1971/72 Trieste dives north of Kauai). Finally, the book integrates the information revealed in a heavily censored 50-page CIA history released in 2010 in reaction to Michael White's documentary film. From these threads, Polmar and White weave the most complete and detailed rendering of this event available outside of the U.S. intelligence community.
Determining the cause of the loss by accident of any vessel is made difficult or impossible if there are no survivors to question, and lacking a forensic reconstruction of recovered parts. Yet, with a very detailed analysis of the acoustic information, Polmar & White come close to an explanation of the catastrophe. When the acoustics are combined with an examination of the photography, and Russian reports of K-129 communications problems at-sea are integrated - certain events identify themselves.
Like many such catastrophes, "Project Azorian" reveals that two or more highly improbable failures occurred in succession, finding a pathway to disaster which designers never considered, and provided no safety cut-out to prevent. Further expertise (probably only available in Russia from ex-Soviet naval architects, equipment designers, naval officers, and training specialists) will be required to verify and explain all the new evidence and identify a definitive chain-of-events to failure as well as "first cause".
After an extensive and detailed narrative of the CIA's "Project Azorian" salvage attempt, and its planned successor "Project Matador", Polmar & White review what the CIA salvaged from the wreck, and whether or not the "take" was worth the cost. An exquisitely detailed blow-by-blow discussion of the Project's intelligence-and-political-review process is included, providing the reader with an understanding of how "black" ops are evaluated and approved within the Executive Branch of government.
The book ends with eight appendices containing information on the K-129, its crew, its missiles, the USS Halibut (SSN-587), the lift ship (Hughes Glomar Explorer), the capture vehicle (the claw), and the "Hughes Mining Barge" (the submersible dry dock for the capture vehicle), 14 pages of "Notes", a "Book List", and a complete index. The "Book List" is a bibliography of earlier books concerning "K-129" with an evaluation of the factual or speculative nature of their contribution to the public's knowledge of this unprecedented event.
If the above does not reveal my unbounded enthusiasm for this book, it is a failure as a review. Others have postured and pretended, promising a unique knowledge of the K-129 and the CIA's salvage effort -- but prior to this book delivered only speculation and distortions. Polmar & White, finally deliver the goods -- they deliver a book demonstrating comprehensive knowledge of this fascinating and heretofore highly-classified incident which occurred at the height of the Cold War.
The CIA Project "Azorian" cost American tax payers about $1.4 billion (2010 dollars), spent between 1968 - 1975. Now for the first time, we can see what our representatives in the "black" communities did with our money, and evaluate for ourselves whether they properly protected our interests during those years of confrontation and threat.
"Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of K-129" is the ONLY authoritative unclassified source of reliable information on this event, and should not be read as just another layer of the speculation which has been accumulating since 1975. Azorian (this book) is the bible for FACTUAL data leading to an understanding of these events, and for identifying and measuring the purposeful misdirection, fictions, errors, and speculation which have been published over the past 35 years.
Buy it; read it; and appreciate that finally facts have been separated from the fancy and disinformation which has surrounded the K-129 loss since 1968.
Polmar & White have produced a tour-de-force.
Also highly recommended is the complementary DVD film by Michael White Productions which, in two hours, covers the same story visually: Azorian: The Raising of the K-129


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