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The taking of K-129, how the CIA used Howard Hughes to steal a Russian sub in the most daring covert operation in history, Josh Dean - hardcover

The resource The taking of K-129, how the CIA used Howard Hughes to steal a Russian sub in the most daring covert operation in history, Josh Dean - hardcover represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in DC Public Library System.

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Dean, Josh

Author

Dean, Josh

Summary

A true story of Cold War espionage and engineering reveals how the CIA and the U.S. Navy, using the involvement of Howard Hughes as a cover story, spent six years and nearly a billion dollars to steal a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine after it sank in the Pacific Ocean
"In the early hours of February 25, 1968, Russian nuclear-armed submarine K-129 left Siberia on a routine combat patrol to Hawaii. Then it vanished. As the Soviet Navy searched in vain for the lost vessel, a small, highly classified American operation found it--wrecked at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The sub lay three miles down, but the potential intelligence assets on board--the nuclear warheads, battle orders, and cryptological machines--presented an extraordinary opportunity. So began Project Azorian, a top secret mission that took six years, cost an estimated $800 million, and would become the largest and most daring covert operation in history. After the US Navy declared retrieving the sub "impossible, " the mission fell to the CIA's burgeoning Directorate of Science and Technology, which commissioned the most expensive ship ever built [the Hughes Glomar Explorer] and told the world that it belonged to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who would use the mammoth vessel to mine rare minerals from the ocean floor. In reality, a vast network of spies, scientists, and engineers attempted a project even crazier than Hughes's reputation: raising the sub directly under the watchful eyes of the Russians, at a time when nuclear annihilation was a constant fear and the opportunity to gain even the slightest advantage over one's enemy was worth massive risk."--Jacket

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