[HN Gopher] Project AZORIAN
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Project AZORIAN
Author : cebert
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-05-04 23:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cia.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cia.gov)
| thenobsta wrote:
| There's an incredible documentary on this. The scale of the
| engineering, the secrecy of the project, and the environmental
| challenges are wild.
|
| Azorian: The Raising of the K-129 --
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2042455/
| dingosity wrote:
| I came here to make the same comment. Not trying to be an ad
| for Amazon, but if you have Prime, it's currently available
| there. Well worth watching if you have any interest in this
| time period, submarines or Charlie Stross. ( The Charlie Stross
| reference comes from Project Azorian being the backdrop of his
| novel, The Jennifer Morgue
| https://search.worldcat.org/title/680284711 ).
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Ever since Accelerando blew my young mind, I've been a huge
| Stross fan. But I put off reading _Laundry Files_ books (
| _Jennifer Morgue_ being the second) thinking they weren 't in
| genre for me, wouldn't be my thing.
|
| Wow was I wrong. The spy x demonologist x hacker combo just
| gives Stross more rope to play around with, and is full of
| fun eccentricities. A strong Anti-Memetics Division vibe.
| Would recommend.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| With the exception of the unicorn story which a lot of
| people found problematic for its treatment of children, I
| think the laundry files are pretty good
| reisse wrote:
| First three or maybe four books are good, then characters
| start to outgrow the author, as it usually happens. It's
| good that at some point cstross rebooted the series with a
| new setting and the new heroes, bad that Bob et al didn't
| get a proper ending.
| sillywalk wrote:
| I'd also recommend the book _The taking of k-129: How the CIA
| Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring
| Covert Operation in History_ by Josh Dean.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Azorian: The Almost Raising of the K-129 would be more
| appropriate though
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Agreed!
|
| In terms of {interesting content}:{interesting title} ratio,
| it's near the top.
|
| Which is to say the title drastically underserves the
| fascinating content.
|
| It should be something more like "Azorian: How the CIA et al.
| secretly built a megaship to lift a Soviet sub from 4.9 km
| under the ocean"
| yardie wrote:
| To show how deep this conspiracy was planted I had science
| textbooks in the early 90s which had a small section on manganese
| modules and a photo of the Glomar Explorer, the ship that was
| designed to explore for them. I only found out in the late 2000s
| this was an intelligence ruse. This cover had been embedded for
| so long it managed to wind its way into public school textbooks.
| sufficer wrote:
| Did you read the article?
|
| The ship was used by mining companies after its sub recovery
| cover was blown.
|
| It's still being used now for oil drilling.
| pdoege wrote:
| No, it was scrapped in 2015 at a Chinese shipyard.
| yardie wrote:
| The Glomar Explorer wasn't unique because of it's mobile
| derrick. There were any number of ships designed for that
| purpose. It was notable for its deep sea mining of exotic
| minerals, such as manganese. To date, there still isn't a
| ship capable of doing such a task and this particle ship was
| positioned in a public school textbook as having done so.
| nilsherzig wrote:
| I really wouldn't take their word for it haha
| mohaba wrote:
| I would have appreciated if there were better captions on the
| photos rather than repeating "While the public believed the
| Hughes Glomar Explorer to be a vessel for deep sea mining, CIA
| was really using the ship to search for a sunken Soviet
| submarine."
| rexreed wrote:
| There's a piece of artwork on the walls of the CIA (available to
| see by those who have access, it's unclassified) that
| dramatically shows the recovery operation, including showing the
| one failed grabber that lost one piece of the sub (if that is to
| be believed):
| https://shipscribe.com/usnaux2/AG/glomarexp3b-h09.jpg
|
| "This painting representing Project AZORIAN is displayed in one
| of CIA's corridors with other paintings of key events in the
| Agency's history which, while not open to the public, are shown
| to uncleared visitors as well as employees. It clearly shows the
| grabber on the capture vehicle that failed, dropping much of the
| submarine back to the ocean floor."
|
| You can see more on the Shipscribe page here:
| https://shipscribe.com/usnaux2/AG/AG193-p.html
| akira2501 wrote:
| Crow about your wins.
|
| Classify your failures.
|
| The worst kind of propaganda.
| rexreed wrote:
| And recast your wins as failures (and failures as wins) when
| the need so arises
| jgalt212 wrote:
| That's a little flip.
|
| When one visits South Bend, I would guess there are zero
| posters commemorating when they were ranked #1 and lost the
| last game of the season to an unranked Boston College.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Oh.. is South Bend defending the United States from the
| enemy Boston College? Did they use our tax dollars to do
| it?
|
| Who's being flip?
| cm2187 wrote:
| It's typically the opposite. The most successful operations
| from secret services are the ones you never suspected even
| happened, while the fuckups are the ones who make the news.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| This is great evidence of how embedded the intelligence community
| is with Hollywood.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Argo being another. However, if you're a clandestine agency
| trying to create believable cover stories, why _not_ turn to
| those whose profession it is to create fantastical stories?
| liendolucas wrote:
| "A Matter of risk" by Roy Varner and Wayne Coller is a book that
| covers the story with some interesting details about how this
| (incredible) operation was carried on.
| 1f60c wrote:
| > Among the contents of the recovered section were the bodies of
| six Soviet submariners. They were given a formal military burial
| at sea. In a gesture of good will, Director of Central
| Intelligence Robert Gates presented a film of the burial ceremony
| to Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1992.
|
| Interestingly, footage of the ceremony and burial is available on
| YouTube: https://youtu.be/TOypyBdVZhU
| j-pb wrote:
| Alright boys we got 'em up, let's play a song, pray, and then
| throw 'em back in.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I remember from an old documentary that when the sub broke apart
| while it was being lifted, the operators were watching a live
| video feed of the sub, and on that feed they could see an ICBM
| escaping from its silo before plunging back toward the depths.
| While the ICMB was sinking, I suspect that if someone farted in
| the room, only the dog could hear it.
| adolph wrote:
| As I understand it, Azorian was just a cover story for the
| exploration and exploitation of certain technology artifacts
| which were deemed non-human in nature [0]. The Soviets knew
| exactly where their sub was but the CIA didn't, so when Hughes
| found the artifacts while doing actual subsea prospecting they
| made up the Soviet sub story to get funding and cover. That
| Harvard professor [1] is using parallel construction to allow the
| artifacts to be revealed eventually without tipping everyone off
| the US has had the material for 50 years.
|
| 1. https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/avi-loeb-harvard-
| profess...
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| But what if that's just a cover story and the conspiracy goes
| even deeper?
| brevitea wrote:
| nit: ostensibly x2 in the same sentence... ugh.
|
| >"The ship would be called the Hughes Glomar Explorer, ostensibly
| a commercial deep-sea mining vessel ostensibly built and owned by
| billionaire Howard Hughes, who provided the plausible cover story
| that his ship was conducting marine research at extreme ocean
| depths and mining manganese nodules lying on the sea bottom."
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(page generated 2024-05-06 23:01 UTC)