SFChronicle ( APR 19Th Soviet Sub's S crets

By Nicholas C Chriss yond the drawing boards, sub from a Pacific cean that much of its reputed suc- and Jerry Cohen shipyard bustle and super- d epth of three miles. cess results from another Los Angeles Times secret negotiation and plan- find — a two-inch thick jour- ning. Intelligence sources insist nal kept by a young Soviet Los Angeles2 analysis of the rec vend naval officer being groomed Now, six years of intrigue About a year ago, a great wreckage supplied evi ence as an expert on the nuclear misshapen mass of steelier- which would lead to the 're- confirming that the oviet capabilities of the vessel rived on the Redwood City0 covery of 'part of a sunken Union was arming ven- which plunged to the ocean watefornt where, amid Russian h a d tonal undersea craft with bottom in 1968. tight security, it items jock- reached a turning point. Polaris-type nuclear i s- siles and also with nu lear- eyed into a large but ordi- Crewmen of the Hughes nary appearing metal shed. tipped torpedoes. The crew Glomar Explorer, already also recovered the young of- Its arrival was the signal intensively screened for the No w, the Los aeles ficer's body, • curled as if that the Central Intelligence undertaking, would begin to Times has been told y an asleep in . his bunk and so Agency Project Marian, leash at a secret school in lode, pendent source pos- well preserved that which had begun as Project Redwoal City techniques by sessing an intimate Jennifer, had advanced be3 which they were to raise the ledge of. Project Az rian Back Page Col. 5

From Page 1 gence agents were able to establish his identity. Ap.R. 7 1075 His jeuenal, the source Papers Show Hughes Sources have supplied not said, details the suspected - only precise 'details about but never before decument- the school and its classes ed — nuclear.potential of thd Owns Salvage Ship but al° with new informa- submaririe. tion about the total recovery Washington enterprise. • The misshapen steel mass owned as stated in the docu- transported into one of the Despite claims of govern- ment . . ." Some of the information is big buildings at Loackheed's ment ownership, sworn pa- Built at the CIA's behest at odds with that previously Redwood City• Space and pers state that billionaire and reportedly financed by divulged by the CIA, which Missile Facility on the shore ' Sum ma the government after the — using billionaire recluse of San Francisco Bay re- Corp. is the sole owner of Howard Hughes as a front— • sunken sub's position bad was in tharge of the'project. sembled. said a Times the Glomar Explorer, re- been charted. the Glomar source. "an old diving bell portedly financed by the Explorer was publicly pro- For instance: that had collapsed." Central Intelligence Agency. claimed as a deep-sea diving • The huge grappling The contorted object — ship. hook planted aboard the Glo- The tax • assessor of Los mar Explorer from beneath about five feet high, about Angeles county said he The Los Angeles county eight feet thick and about 20 tax assessor, Philip E. Wat- by a barge off Catalina Is- agreed to forget about a po- land initially clutched the feet long — was to have a tential $9 million tax bill for son, said his office has been major role in one of the keeping notes on the Glomar entire submarine, according the vessel when CIA repre- to one Times source. most remarkable intelli- sentatives seeretly assured Explorer since November gence feats in American his- him it was government 1973 and has been pressing The sub, intact. but badly tory. property. Summa officials about it for damaged, was raised about more than a year. 5000 feet. said th seource, Its role was to imitate the B u t the ship's license, Finally, on January 31, before two-thirds of it broke sub, a 320-foot-long filed under oath with the away. class vessel built in 1958, 1975, Watson said, an FBI U.S. Coast Guard, says it be- agent escorted four men to which sank 750 miles north longs to the Hughes empire. • Two nuclear-tipped tor- of Hawaii. his office and told him they pedoes- were brought up with T h e conflicting reports were "from the CIA." The the 38-foot forward section It becarne the centerpiece could pose a dilemma for assessor said the CIA dele- that was salVaged, aceord- for an' intensive two-week the Hughes organization. If gation wanted to keep the ing th the : source, lie also cram course for selected the Summa Corp. owns the vessel's real mission secret said A missile, believed nu- Glomar Explorer crewmen ship, it may have to pay and asked that he keep it clear tipe: d and relatively who attended a unique substantial federal, state off the tax rolls, on -grounds underhaged, slipped back to "school" in the. Lockheed fa- and local taxes. that the government really the ,'ocean floor when one cility's two metal builcings. owned it. sectioe,broke away. In the placid bay waters If the government owns He says he asked for a let- • The great height of the alongside t h e structures the vessel, its license to ply ter, which he promised to towering, eye-catching der- floated t he HMB-1, the the waters when i t re- keep secret, attesting to U.S. rick on the Explorer serves monster barge which Was an covered part of a sunken So- ownership, but the CIA rep- no useful purpose, according integral past of the salvage- viet submarine last summer resentatives refused to give to a Times source. . operation In Which was con- would seem to have been in- him one. He said they sim- structed -a giant "claw" de- valid. Under U.S. shipping He said a much smaller ply reassured him verbally derrick could handle the signed to snatch the sunken law, "no, marine document that Hughes "had no invest- sub from the ocean floor. shall be considered to be in 60-foot lengths o f thick- ment in •either the boat or walled pipe which operated Classes included, a course force longer than the vessel the barge." to which it is granted is the claw with pressure from which hammered the diffi- Washington Post water or hydraulic fluid, cult Russian alphabet into the "students" — many of The derrick was built =the them former oil field rough- necks. back of the headgear w'ch way it was, he added, to jibe For that reason, he added, Section after 60-foot sec- with the cover story sup- it s tentacles have been also contained a microphone tion of exquisitely and earphones that designed plied by Hughes' Summa shortened ad a single long pipe was fed down through Corp. personnel that the Ex- scoop which will go under ted communication with two the "moon pool," driving the plorer was constructe tdo sunken wessel has been Russian-speaking C I A the agents, called by the crew- claw deeper into the ocean. mine the ocean for valuable added. mineral nodules. men "the two linguists."' "Sometimes," the source But a little more than a "They're the ones who remembers, "the four Rus- The Glomar Explorer was year aog.no such return to sian . trawlers came so built in a Pennsylvania ship- taught crew members the the site of the sinking was Russian alphabet. D u r f close some of our guys yard. The giant 'barge was anti cipafed. In g would give them the finger training, the crew people constructed in San Diego At that time. the educa- — and the Russians would and towed to Redwood City would work on the ship ( tional process which, preced- mockup) wearing those spa- give the finger right back." where the claw was assem- ed the first salvage opera- bled imside it. cesuits," the source said.1 By the time the claw tion was the matfer of great reached the ocean floor, the A Times source said the moment — or at least one of "When they saw some pipe had spiralled down 3 CIArecruitee specialists in the primary concerns. Russian wordsthat had b n miles. put on the sub, they wowilld a variety of highly technical Classes at the Redwood spell them out and the lin u- The claw reached for the areas. They were the true City "school" were to serve ists would tell them wreckage. "the contract men." three basic functions: af they meant. We knew th re "It lifted the sub slowly Provide crew meers One, the source said, was were some places that and cautiously for about a a charismatic former Navy with detailed information be damn dangerous and e mile," the source said. officer known to crew mem- about , especial- wanted to be prepared." ly the one on the Pacific Then the aft two-thirds of bers by' his code name: Four or five the sub snapped at leaSt two Blackjack. ocean floor. two-week classes were held at the of the claw's tentacles and Teach them theRussian school, the source said, with plunged back into a three- Blackjack. the source add- alphabet so they could re- ed, was — and still is — the eight to ten men in each mile deep ocean trough. cognize letters o n items class. on-the-scenes boss of the re- aboard the sub and then re- The intake into the "moon covery. operation. lay them to Russian lan Last year, the Explorer pool" resumed. Blackjaek, t h e source guage specialists would trailing its monster clay; What radiation experts said, visited fhe Lockheed would translate them into from t h e moon po I, had feared, was found. War- facility in Redwood City last words during the process of chugged into a pre-select heads which had been week to inspect a new claw picking the vessel apart, spot in the Pacific — a d aboard the Sub had contami- being completed i n the once it was recovered. stopped. nated it, either when it sank or during the years it HMB-1 for this sammer's Instruct them in ways Four Russian trawlers cir- had projected second mission! of handling possibly contam- cled it. lay rusting in the ocean wa- The original claw was se- inated components of the ter. verely damaged last July submarine w h e n they Trawlers had been moni- A s crew, members as- when the major portion of worked'on it after recovery toring the area since the stab signed to the duty worked on the sub broke away and and advise them of the nu- went down, said a source. the vessel, they wore the clear dangers. . . hauled its, tentacles. The Explorer crew t same heavy "spacesuits" in The redesigned new claw, Crewmen spent much Of about "mining" the oce n which they had trained in said the source, will have their classroom time in pro- depths fork. n Redwood City. the task of lifting the sub tective garb resembling spa- dales. That was the plan a d Despite the precautions, thout penetrating o r cesuits. The garments were that is how it must have a the source discovered that breaking the conning, tower designed to protect them peared to the Russian traN he had sustained radiation area where the missiles are against contamination. lers. burns and that an expensive housed. Oxygen flowed through the pair of his boots had been ?;tit something else really ruined, via' occurring aboard the Explorer.