Howard Hughes, the CIA, and the Untold Story Behind Their Hunt for a Sunken Soviet Submarine
FAIN: FZ-256628-17
Michael Todd Bennett
East Carolina University (Greenville, NC 27858-5235)
A book
exploring intelligence oversight and accountability though a narrative account
of the covert 1974 CIA operation to use Howard Hughes's ship
Glomar Explorer to raise a sunken Soviet submarine.
What led the Central Intelligence Agency to think that it could ally with one of the world’s most newsworthy figures to secretly operate a giant ship capable of doing the impossible, all without getting caught? Based on interviews as well as newly declassified files, my book, Imagination Unlimited, studies one of the biggest covert operations in CIA history—the 1974 voyage of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a spyship ostensibly owned by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, to raise a sunken Soviet submarine—to address a small group of questions that remain almost as unresolved today as they were forty-plus years ago. What is the value of intelligence oversight? Does greater accountability harm the nation by discouraging the sort of blue-sky thinking that keeps the U.S. intelligence community one step ahead of the competition? Or, does it help by placing needed limits on that community’s overactive imagination?
Associated Products
"Imagination Unlimted: How the CIA Raised a Sunken Soviet Submarine in the 1970s and Why it Matters Today" (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: "Imagination Unlimted: How the CIA Raised a Sunken Soviet Submarine in the 1970s and Why it Matters Today"
Abstract: A ship ostensibly owned by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, the Hughes Glomar Explorer was actually the centerpiece of a 1970s-era CIA effort to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The program, among the most ambitious in CIA history, originated in near-complete secrecy in 1968, the tail end of an era of intelligence permissiveness in which Congress exercised oversight so minimal as to constitute "undersight," one historian has remarked.
Over the operation's seven-year lifespan, however, U.S. government efforts to shield certain facts from the public in the name of national security received closer scrutiny, leading, some say, to the dawn of the "sunshine era." Indeed, Glomar's unauthorized disclosure by journalists helped usher in the "Year of Intelligence," as the New York Times dubbed 1975, prompting members of Congress to call for a probe of the mission's high cost and even higher risk.
Yet the outing of the ongoing intelligence activity also provoked a backlash among defense hawks, who vilified the media for damaging U.S. security and warned that congressional regulation would only cripple the CIA's ability to perform cutting-edge initiatives such as the "Great Submarine Snatch" in the future.
That backlash restrained the press as well as Congress in their attempts to investigate U.S. intelligence activities, and it is among the reasons why Glomar played an underappreciated but pivotal role in saving the CIA from the clutches of transparency. In short, Glomar changed the conversation, working to establish new limits on the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate culture of disclosure. And this presentation tells the program's history both to provide an alternative perspective on the 1970s, a decade known for expansive openness, and to weigh in on America's perennial struggle to balance the demands of democracy with the need for secrecy in national security and foreign policy.
Author: M. Todd Bennett
Date: 03/27/18
Location: Phi Kapp Phi honor society, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina
"The Glomar Explorer: How an Operation to Salvage a Soviet Submarine Saved the CIA from Transparency" (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: "The Glomar Explorer: How an Operation to Salvage a Soviet Submarine Saved the CIA from Transparency"
Abstract: A ship ostensibly owned by reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, the Hughes Glomar Explorer was actually the centerpiece of a 1970s-era CIA effort to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The program, among the most ambitious in CIA history, originated in near-complete secrecy in 1968, the tail end of an era of intelligence permissiveness in which Congress exercised oversight so minimal as to constitute "undersight," one historian has remarked.
Over the operation's seven-year lifespan, however, U.S. government efforts to shield certain facts from the public in the name of national security received closer scrutiny, leading, some say, to the dawn of the "sunshine era." Indeed, Glomar's unauthorized disclosure by journalists helped usher in the "Year of Intelligence," as the New York Times dubbed 1975, prompting members of Congress to call for a probe of the mission's high cost and even higher risk.
Yet the outing of the ongoing intelligence activity also provoked a backlash among defense hawks, who vilified the media for damaging U.S. security and warned that congressional regulation would only cripple the CIA's ability to perform cutting-edge initiatives such as the "Great Submarine Snatch" in the future.
That backlash restrained the press as well as Congress in their attempts to investigate U.S. intelligence activities, and it is among the reasons why Glomar played an underappreciated but pivotal role in saving the CIA from the clutches of transparency. In short, Glomar changed the conversation, working to establish new limits on the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate culture of disclosure. And this presentation tells the program's history both to provide an alternative perspective on the 1970s, a decade known for expansive openness, and to weigh in on America's perennial struggle to balance the demands of democracy with the need for secrecy in national security and foreign policy.
Author: M. Todd Bennett
Date: 12/12/18
Location: North American Society for Intelligence History Brown Bag, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
"How the U.S. and Iran Can Avoid War: Plausible Deniability Can Give Both Countries Room to Maneuver" (Article)Title: "How the U.S. and Iran Can Avoid War: Plausible Deniability Can Give Both Countries Room to Maneuver"
Author: M. Todd Bennett
Abstract: The diplomatic history of the U-2 incident suggests that plausible deniability offers an imperfect but effective way out of international standoffs — if countries choose to follow it.
Year: 2019
Primary URL:
http://https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/25/how-us-iran-can-avoid-war/?utm_term=.404f19544a75Access Model: Open access up to a point; subscription only thereafter.
Format: Newspaper
Periodical Title: Washington Post
Publisher: Washington Post
Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency (Book)Title: Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency
Author: M. Todd Bennett
Abstract: Set in the early 1970s, the book plumbs the depths of government secrecy—its rise, fall and rise again—via an historical account of an improbable CIA mission to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/neither-confirm-nor-deny/9780231193474Publisher: Columbia University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780231193474
“Détente in Deep Water: The CIA Mission to Salvage a Sunken Soviet Submarine and US-USSR Relations, 1968–1975” (Article)Title: “Détente in Deep Water: The CIA Mission to Salvage a Sunken Soviet Submarine and US-USSR Relations, 1968–1975”
Author: M. Todd Bennett
Abstract: Despite détente, the superpowers continued their Cold War practice of spying on one another throughout the 1970s. Yet intelligence is largely ‘missing’ from the historiography of détente. Why? Based on newly declassified data, ‘Détente in Deep Water’ reveals the geopolitical calculations behind the ‘Glomar response’ and how that legalese operated to limit disclosure of intelligence operations starting with AZORIAN/MATADOR, the CIA-led project to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine using the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a ship ostensibly owned (under a cover story) by industrialist Howard Hughes. Glomar’s diplomatic backstory sheds new light on the historical relationship between intelligence collection and foreign policy.
Year: 2018
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2017.1342344Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Intelligence and National Security