Focus 580; Blind Mans Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

Well in this part of focus 580 will be talking about a part of the military that that's one of the most secret and secretive and that is the U.S. Navy's submarine service. And we'll be talking with the co-author of a book that came out a couple of years ago just fairly recently been republished in paperback. The title of the book is Blind Man's Bluff The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage and our guest is Sherry Sontag. She's an award winning investigative reporter who has written both for the National Law Journal and also the New York Times her co-author by the way in this book is Christopher Drew who also works at the New York Times. And what the book does is it looks at a little bit of the history of Submarine Espionage picking up right after World War Two and continuing add to the recent past. I think that perhaps if people sort of thought about what sub Mariners were doing during the Cold War they perhaps thought well what they were doing was they were cruising around and and were on standby in case there was nuclear war but what the authors reveal is that in fact they were also

engaged in a lot of intelligence gathering and much of this is material that simply hasn't been reported before or talked about before. So as we talk you're certainly welcome to call if you have questions comments. The number here in Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line. That's good. Any place that you can hear us that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 1:58 WLM. Well Ms Sontag thanks to you. Talking with us today. Well thanks for having me on. We appreciate it. This is something that I know you and Christopher Drew actually worked on for some time. But it also was one of those subject areas I think wit that must have been difficult to report because a lot of this material was classified and traditionally the people who were in the submarine service are very closed mouth bunch of people. They simply don't they didn't talk about what it is that they

did they they couldn't even tell their families what it is that they did to other wives your kids or best friends their parents. Imagine doing something in journalism where you uncover the most important story in the world and something comes up to you and says well we can't publish this and you can't tell anyone that you accomplish this and then the next day walking across the street and coming back close to being hit by a car and having the police officer come and can go on god I'm really sorry this happened that you know I would. I need you not to tell anybody. And then you hold on to that and you hold on to that all day for weeks and for years. And that's what they have these guys but I mean that because. For six months at a time and come home and you know how it works fine no matter what happened. They can even say that the shipyard workers even could even come home if one of the guys working died that day and say what happened because then it begs the question what you were you working on. So they would just keep it all and so how is it then you managed to find a

number of people who were willing to talk to you and tell you the stories of what had happened to him them the stories that that before or outside of the service they hadn't been able to tell anybody or they could even tell their friends in the service I mean you could you could tell anybody he was on your boat what your particular boat it was a professional a lot of books you read there were like three four you know main sources and then a lot of filler though and not filler to fill in people in our in our case. Nobody opened up a vein and said OK here's a story and said Chris and I ran around for six years and we just kept asking questions and after a while it's like an archaeological dig you could piece things together. I mean. I'll give you an example. We had heard that a submarine when the cable taps submarines had gotten it somehow it attacked in the Sea of a caught and that divers had died and that it was because the Soviets had found the cable tap but the person who told us that had not been on the boat. So right away you know. OK. That did not happen but something might have.

So we start calling up people the USAC world trying to figure out what did happen. We know about 1980 1981. The phones kept getting slammed down. Finally one fellow was like oh I'm not going to talk to you and I'm getting off the phone now I have to just target practice and I was a little desperate. So I asked him if he was going to give up his chance to teach a five foot tall New York City woman journalist how to shoot a gun. He couldn't resist so he invited me over and we shot a 9 millimeter Beretta and a Colt 45 in the 357 magnum and by the way when you see people going boom boom boom like shot after shot on television their line one pulled the trigger and you got to rest your finger won't work again for a few minutes. And it was over the rifle that the fellow looks at me and says they weren't attacked. Nobody died. We got stuck. That's all he'd say. And to me stuck med oh God there's like a Soviet shippable above and not letting you

go anywhere like you know keeping track of you know any surface because there had been a story we had already found like that. What we later found out after another dozen or so interviews by you know using the word stuck. You know I guess people thought we knew a little bit more than we did. I was at the sea wolf had literally gotten head fixative ski like legs so it could sit on the bottom while divers got walked out walked out and services cable taps that were really crucial because they were military telephone cable clips of it had no way of knowing we could actually access it was clearly near right inside the Soviet mind. That their history had kicked up in the ski like legs had buried in the sand. The boat was literally stuck. You could do a full emergency blow because you pop to the surface you get caught. And these guys already knew they had self-destruct charges onboard. So if they got caught they were dead anyway and they came there and then Sam started coming in the water intake valve submarines recycle water through from the sea to various systems but now because the boat had guns so dug and

the water intakes Chipman of each foot three feet above the sea bed were now flat against it and they were pulling in sand rocks and secret. So that was being too gullible of machinery and they really almost didn't get out. Now the fact that the Soviets found the tab is true but the interesting thing is they were on their way to find the tap pretty much wasse Wolf was there but not because of sea world but because Ronald Pelton the spy had told them it was there. But the kill and indeed shortly after she wolf escaped the survey ship shows up and reaches down picks up this cable tapped two ton tap program like a BCR because it's meant to sit at the bottom of Siva costs for a year. So you want the best lines of the best times to conserve tape and opened it up and in case it had any doubt as to who put it there found a small part of bliss with the words proper to the United States and work to the tapping was so crucial to us that we kept going only now not massive a cause which is relatively desolate

but the baronetcy people listening may remember the Barents because they saw the water lapping endlessly as as as it was an attempt made to save them of course. Well that same sea surrounded by naval bases and it also had an even more crucial cable and we have the USS perch eight servicing that cable that even though it was remarkably dangerous and just in the end of the Cold War in case anybody. I want to underline this because it's one of the amazing stories of the telling case anybody is not quite sure what it is we're talking about here. We're talking about the fact that that the United States literally. We're talking about undersea communications cables that are used to carry Trant military transmissions Soviet military answer inspirations and what it is that the United States did was it mounted these missions we were using submarines to go down to the bottom where these cables were and literally tapped them put a device on there that would allow us to listen in to all of the Soviet military communications and that we we managed to pull this off and it was

there in place for some period of time until as you say someone someone told the Soviets that was there if that hadn't happened they may. Well and they never found the one of the pants. I'll give you an example of how important the Barents is. It's now years after you know several years after Pelton has compromised to save the cost which is on the Pacific side between the campdrafting Peninsula. Now we've got the one of the barren skyline and in fact there's there's some indication we actually went back to a cost later and put another one down just in a different spot. And I want to tell you the story of one of the things that we got off the top that I want to tell you the story of how we figure I have do this in the first place. But one of the one of the things that happened while our tap was running was that we mounted a naval exercise a very large exercise called Able Archer and that it was just a military exercise from the Soviet point of view however of it they saw all of this

of this hardware map massing and it was it at the time of the Reagan administration early Reagan administration where he had been still using the phrase evil empire. And the Soviets were terrified by the best phrase because they believed that whenever you're about to start a war the way you make it palatable to your people is you make the other side not human. So the evil empire to them sounded like a prelude to war. It was a way to deal with them. So if we weren't preparing for a first strike we can get away with it. They were so when they saw this massive exercise taking place there were a number of people within the Soviet Union that believed that we were preparing for a first strike. Now it's interesting we didn't know they were taking it this way and we were probably a kind of lucky that they didn't decide to do a preemptive strike under the circumstances. One of them because at the time we believed that they were ready to do a first strike at

any minute they believed that we were and what we found out from the tap was that their response was entirely defensive. That. As a people they were no more willing to do to start a nuclear war than we were that we actually had more in common than we thought. And indeed if you noticed Reagan's rhetoric changes very quickly. Now one reason is there's a young officer or not so young officer in the middle of the Able Archer attack from the Soviet side watching all this and getting very worried that somebody was going to push a button by accident you know to me panicking and start something and that was Mikael Gorbachev on our side. Months later get this. This these tapes and we hear what their response was to it to our exercise we realized that we could have panicked them into launching and suddenly Reagan comes out with his hand open and said is grab a child Mr. Chicken hands and being real good friends. It's like two kids who like you know realize that they all know they all have they almost got into a lot of trouble by going after each other and go OK OK we're going to stop this right now.

But it was one of the reasons that both sides were so open to the concept of like last us and perestroika it was it had a lot to do with the fact that they realize they came very very close. Out of sheer misunderstanding that that's probably from what we. That's probably the most dramatic thing that those taps provided does it provided just an ear inside the other side's mind. You know in a very close society you don't really know what's going on the Soviets were able to do a lot of spying by turning people they got Janet Walker they got robbed tell them we did it with technology and what was probably not understood at the time but looking back one of the most stabilizing influences of the Cold War was how much each side was able to learn about each other. Do you want to hear how we actually figured out how to do this. Sure. Well I'll tell you what maybe what I should do just for the benefit of anybody who might have tuned in here is reintroduce you. So folks will know who it is that they're listening to we're talking this morning. And that's part of focus 580 which Sherry Sontag. She's an investigative reporter. She has

worked both for the National Law Journal and The New York Times. She's the co-author along with Christopher Drew. A book that looks at American Submarine Espionage during the Cold War the title of their book is blind man's bluff was a bestseller when it came out that was a couple years ago it's been recently republished by in paperback by perennial. So and has some pretty interesting stories in it so if you're if you're interested in military history or naval history or cold war history you might want to take a look at it it's out now. Well just a quick aside we were talking before on about how secretive this all is and how these guys can tell their wives or kids or parents or best friends what they were doing. The men have been coming out or signing and buying armloads of these of us so we could find them and say things like Scott can tell you where he's been or what he's done. Read this you understand 1000 parching Now we know party's not tapping cables off of the side of of Russia the way it did off the Soviet Union but it should still pack cables in their other targets out there. He asked he asked me

to write a letter to his 18 month old son explaining why dad hasn't been there for his kid's entire life on the assumption that when the kid was 18 years old that still won't be able to tell him. You know so one of the reasons had to list as quickly as it did was that the submariners came out in force and wanted to give one to everyone they knew so they could essentially keep their secrecy up but have the people in their lives sort of have a clue as to what it was all about. The you know one of the things that really comes through very clearly is just how you know certainly being in the middle. Fear is dangerous but this may be one of the most dangerous parts of the service to BNN just in passing you mention something and I just want to go back and underscore and just hope people will hear it and appreciate the fact that that these are the submarines we're talking about the ones that were engaged in espionage were equipped with self destruct charges so that these guys were supposed to it if they got caught they were supposed to blow themselves up.

Not all of them not all of them I mean the self-destructs were a very special case. I Government was no more interested in blowing up a boat of submariners than you know that Putin was insane the course could not get rescued. I mean albeit the fact that put next to very stupidly during an accident but so it was it was special cases like tapping these cables for the simple reason number one it could be construed as an act of war that we were. I mean these were seasoned it is neatly into the Soviet Union as a Chesapeake Bay. It's our eastern seaboard. You know or one of the Great Lakes fits in over where you guys are. So it wasn't every sub that went out and remember there are two kinds of subs when you introduced me saying we all thought that subs are waiting to help launch nuclear attacks were missile subs boats that were equipped and designed basically only to shoot nuclear missiles they were moving silos and their job was to hide with pride. He stayed out of everyone's way. You took no chances. You were there if you were called

on. But then there were the attacks ups and the attacks obscure in the cold war just about everybody who rode an attack submarine during the Cold War has had the dual role. A SPOT THAT'S what they did during World War Two submarines were basically a carrier carrier group you know escorts and they and they shot torpedoes and things. But during the Cold War submarines were largely spy boats. They were a premier espionage vehicle as a matter of fact because what that or what what what what could be more stealthy than something that's what's in the water and seems to be you know I want I want to tell you the story of how we came up with the idea of camel. Right. There was a film on it Captain James Bradley who took over the job as the country's top submariner meaning it was his job to devise the missions. And the minute he got the job one of the things he was told about remember told you these guys didn't even know what the guys in the other boats were doing was up about an old submarine of ours called the US as halibut had been refitted. So even though she looked like an old quacker she'd been

given things like cameras that could angle all the way down to the ocean bottom and those. I mean that sounds easy now you see on television these are a group for erotic things that go down but at the time everything had to be figured out at one point you know these fish they had Castro boats and cameras and sonar and video and still and everything else would fail because the wires on them were were breaking down because we didn't realize that those pressures the gold coating the wires would compress at a different rate than the wire itself. So everything had to be figured after a scratch. So we had devices things at great effort great cost and now we have this boat that could literally seek out things like lost Soviet Meigs or or missiles ballistic missiles sent up and test shots to try to get a look at their technology. I mean there was a treasure trove on the ocean bottoms at the same time nobody bothered to. Nobody bothered to guard it because it was it was considered legitimately inaccessible. So Bradley finds out that we have how that she's equipped with

these with these boats with these fish and. And he looks at a map and he says you know here at these military military bases on the contract the potential is separate from the Soviet mainland by the sea the cuts here all the bases surrounding the Barents Sea. How are these guys communicating with Moscow or even their home bases onshore. They could send everything through the air. But then I would have to be causing you know encrypted and now that we still might be able to figure out what it what it had in it. Well if they would want and demand a hard wired telephone system something that they had every reason to believe would be inaccessible because of say of a consulate you know three four hundred feet deep the Barents six to eight hundred feet. I mean who again we didn't have the assets nobody did to send divers down that deep or so they thought. We had been playing with something called Sealab So we actually did have an idea of how to do it. And Bradley and Bradley thought What an idea if we could somehow find and tap that cable. Here's the

problem. He doesn't really know the cable access. He's guessing. Simple it made sense. One should be there and he certainly doesn't know where it's been lay at any of the Save a constant 611 a thousand square miles and the telephone cable that he's a vision of he knows by virtue of how telephone cables are built to be more than about five inches wide. How do you find a strand five inches wide in the sea at six o'clock one thousand square miles had to get permission to even try. Going into a city that the Soviets had claimed as their own. During the height of the Cold War where you risk sparking the very worry you're trying to prevent had to get permission from the president to do that. Well when we first heard of the plan great we envisioned you know all sorts of men and uniforms and people trying to turn spies and God knows what we envisioned. We. That was Jim Bradley himself. Babbitt was alone the Pentagon was about 3:00 in the morning and he started to drift off you know that place between awake and sleep.

When you're real tired went out and his mind goes back to when he was growing up in the German section of Missouri and his mom used to drag him Mississippi River boat ride every summer every week sometimes twice a week and at because for her it was a way to escape the summer heat. There was a big band onboard all of her friends were there and you could see how interesting the trip over and over and over again sounded to your average 9 or 10 year old boy. So Bradley would end up in the pilot house talking to the captains. And after a while they ran out of things to say to him. So he'd end up head on the rail watching the shore go by and you know a kid in the car on the highway will like read out the sign. There's no final exit there. Backing you now and with a kid in the car I like the while but I'm with you. OK well maybe you did that when you were a kid. Yeah maybe Anyway we did. Bradley would read the Sun from the beach and he would read the science at Mark's mileage and he would read the science of Mark location and he would read the science of that cable crossing do not anchor. Cable crossing do not anchor there were there to keep him in

the pleasure boat from snagging a phone a utility cable in the shallows and Bradley suddenly comes for wake in the Pentagon and realize that if we have these idiots some of the subjects I mean maybe they're not in pleasure boat. Maybe they're in fishing boats. Same deal if you've got cable. You gotta keep the posts away from him so he got permission first from Head them from Kissinger and then later from the XM to send our most secret spy submarine into the heart of the Clancy thought for Sun's long lonesome so that beach that read Hey folks here's our cable or some such in Russian. They found the fun from the beach where the cables were right where the signs were. That's how we found those underwater telephone cables. But exactly what you usually expect when you think of a military operation as it has a great story. Yeah but that's just how human these guys were and because they were making it up as they went along. It wasn't the most militarized regimented you know come second got a pole up my

butt guy that would would would would do the best work. It really was very very creative sometimes off the mark. Who would do wonderful things and often their military careers were utterly blown out of the water by what they were doing because they could tell that a lot of this appears and disappears with exact revenge. Bradley was told he would never make adamant because all Ruth his superiors knew when their programs were losing money to that. And he went tell them why and they were pissed. So basically here here he's accomplishing this great stuff but he can't tell anybody about it and he never did make admiral and fact he had no need to know so they never let him hear a word of what was on the tapes they just told him was good. There are all these stories of characters that just take on challengers or just decide you know they want to try to do something outrageous. Like for example I'm thinking of the guy who decided that he would follow a Soviet submarine through its entire crews and managed to do that

more than a month trailed the Soviets the Soviets never did. Never knew that he was there and learned a lot about their their procedures just by following this other boat around. What you're talking about of course Chester Whitey Mack he was 6 foot 5 an absolute maverick and we had what we had always tried to trail Soviet missiles up. Remember the missile subs with the hype with pride was to be pride it was to be a moveable silo so that so that there would be nuclear warheads out of reach. You know a first strike if we were going to attack with Soviet Union we would aim at their website for us to try to take them out. If we could also take out their their ad see silos they would never be able to launch a second strike if we keep ours hidden. We could so we wanted very much to be able to follow these missile subs around. But remember you're driving 200 tons 200000 tons or something of steel you are doing it without Windows these are

like the tourist submarines you are listening to sonar and guys if you if you've if you've seen the movie and the product over it it's great fun to see you know Jonesy on the headsets going oh yeah the scepter a mess at 50 yards or though the movie U-571 where somebody guesses they dropped a quarter a dime into nickels or something on the floor but it doesn't work that way. Was she here on your son our headset is static. And there's another sub nearby You may have as a screw through there. So it's static against that. It's like looking for a white male you know and against a white background in a snowstorm. It's enormously difficult and in these early days death with an almost impossible to gauge and the Soviet subs were getting quiet enough that. You know one way one way you know that I could tell the guy had turned like a wrecker and it was right or left is it went quiet the other side there was a slight tone almost like a you know blowing over a bottle

because it was a fight you know problem of the machinery. But you're trying to follow the guy and it's very easy to lose it. I mean he could be right above you and you may not know where he is. Mac nobody had managed to do this more for more than a day or a few hours. Mac managed to follow the gang through forty seven days and nights we call it a near biblical fate and in fact at a certain point you know the you know on shore they're getting like practically daily reports of progress because when magma there's got be other get the Yankee gun deep Yankee Severine we call that a Yankee because it very closely resembled our best submarines. Almost like a Mattel model Mac would quickly you know come to the surface and flash up a quick message and then go back down and continue. And the other side never knew they were being chased. Now what he did was he did this by falling a lot closer than anybody had ever dared and indeed Severine to try to do that after Mac not all of them but there were a couple of really severe collisions because you are falling blind it's in fact that it was

in something called the Battle The Ballad of Whitey Mac that we first heard the phrase blind man's bluff in this game of blind man's bluff because that's what these guys realized that they were doing it was like a game of blind man's bluff. Now as we got better at this because at the point where we could pretty well trail most of the missile subs that were out there. So if there had been a third world war then this. So took the mick was a maverick was willing to break all the rules to close the Atmel can stand up but at the same time they knew that he was the guy to do this mission. You know the same thing that made them really nervous. The fact that he was a little bit out of control also made him the only guy who might be able to pull this off. But he never made it he never made admiral but in part even though he won a presidential unit citation which is literally the highest award a submarine captain can win during peace time. The elites know I mean that the captain of the boat which won the other awards in fact when they wanted to give them the award in secret and without the family is there why they basically told him they could sort of shove their wars most of families were at the ceremony so they had a whole

ceremony where they would never once mention what they had actually done and what Whitey had actually done. But as we got better at this we were able to sort of follow the subs around and the danger and the damage that Johnny Walker did was very simple. He told the cell bit how many how often we were following them how easily we were following them and they did to the banks. Percy began to work on getting their subs more quiet. That's where the whole to Shivah scandal comes from later because it was just one way to make it even quieter. But also they pulled their subs out of the open oceans and back into the Barents and then on to the Arctic. And I'm not talking about the polar ice cap where the waters are pretty strong quiet underneath. Talking about all the seas around the polar ice where there are salt layers and cold layers that befuddle Sun are in the cries of BURNETT ringneck seals and ice crunching on ice. And it's like in most you follow God directly into that mess you know and they're never going to find them. And the closest place to the quote The easiest way to launch a missile the closest point between the U.S. and Soviet Union really is

over the polar icecap. So by doing that the Soviets essentially trumped us with said you're following us well you know. So there now we're going to put ourselves in a place where you can't fall. And in fact by the end of the Cold War those tactics and also their quieting techniques have gotten so good they have leveled the playing field. So Johnny Walker Red had there been a third world war in this period could have been responsible for a second nuclear strike being possible. As it turns out just at the time they totally leveled the playing field they also went bankrupt the Soviet debt which is the Bush really the saving grace. We're here coming to the point where we have maybe about 12 13 minutes left. Again our guest is investigative reporter Sherry Sontag She's co-author of the book Blind Man's Bluff which is all about American Submarine Espionage during the Cold War. It's available now in the paperback edition published by perennial Go on look at it we have some callers here. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 in Champaign-Urbana toll free 800 to 2

2 9 4 5 5. First up here's Belgium line number one. Hello. Yes I've been following your discussion here and you said initially that your open your your subject matter was very reticent in trying to tell you anything about your stories. Well through actually. Yes well I find that very interesting because I heard about your book oh about two years ago and read I've read some of it I can't read all that but it was given to me by a Sub-Mariner. Well submariners now that it's out I was very happy that it's out officially that I mean officially the service world neither confirm or deny and will not comment on the book. I'm officially we've won awards from the Navy from the baby Whatley and we've. And John Lehman former secretary called the book brilliant in The Wall Street Journal. So they're very pleased that it's out they don't want to be the one to each each individual will tell you he wouldn't want to be the one that told us anything. But now that it's out they get to show their families a little bit of what they're about. And they do give out them out by the armless. They

really do. Look at me this is not even give me credit. This is what I could tell you all the time because you're just holding it in it's a whole part of your existence maybe in some cases the best part of their existence. And it's just a relief to tell. Thank you. Then let's go to line two. When Robinson Oh yes David I don't trash me. Why you chose to name the book Blind Man's Bluff with an L and as opposed to Babbitt would wind up in the OED originally and he's right. The original the actual phrase is a blind man's buff but the popular phrase and the one the submariners use is bluff and we chose to go with what the guys were actually saying and we debated back and forth whether or not to put a note in the books or say hey we're not atheists we know what the OED says but we decided not to. But you're right. The original game that blindfold the game was blind man's buff. And even though it's a corruption of the proper name.

Yes because in it the people we were writing about used the corruption as as the phrase. OK when they never would have recognized it let's go to another call here Line 3 this is champagne. Well I'd like to thank this blog for the book the morning the next morning I should like that. But you did a wonderful job of telling what will not be able to talk about. Well one very much. It's not really right when I tell people to tell people that it's sort of nice for you to be able to see give the folks in your life an idea if we are. Absolutely and I particularly like the soft cover because it shows What boat did what not what they did when they did it that they did something. Yeah well it's a funny what he's referring to as we added in our soft soft cover in Appendix an awards and decs if interest only not the Navy did not have one of those where you could look at a 7 to see what awards it won over the years. We had to go through just tons and tons of

printouts where every book for every year of every kind not just every segment every ship every boat every like you know read about practically if they if they did a thing that got a merit it said Haitian was listed and we pulled up a submarine for two reasons the first because you sort of an interesting sort of little history of just how many of these subs were involved. But also we realize that in order to tell the story and it crisply and we could really credit every submarine out there that is remarkable things and we want the guys to be able to look up their severance and say Here we are. Does it did it did it did it. So did you find your boats and there actually are some of them yes. Some of them though. I've started out all these summer aren't you. You did tell the story that the diesel did back in the late 50s. We did we tell all about the gudgeon. Well the gudgeon but there was some others did that. Yeah part of the problem is we were trying we needed to we told the story of the Chino which was the first by a sub that went out and unfortunately it sank but luckily we were able to save most of the men of the

sub the tusk that did the saving actually lost six of its crew members of the rescue effort and then we tell the story about the gudgeon and we use a gudgeon chapter to summarize diesel boats and then move on to the next just because we were afraid of not telling the story fast enough it was always us this this bridge between great stories because we had access to so many of them and trying to keep the book moving and from what I hear from some of the several hours they were preferred we had gone into more detail on more about it. Gotta agree with you that was a super book and I know you were constrained the space and the interest costs and whatnot but it is amazing to me that somehow somebody allowed you to tell that story and get allowed you to get the information. Obviously there was some informal you you can talk to them words out because if you look at it submarines a very very expensive. If it's not you.

Well and also the submarine force is being sunk by its own sons after the Cold War because nobody knew what they had done. There was very little incentive to keep funding them. And but it was left when the Navy would put out periodic leave. Everybody remember your secrecy Oh but they never threaten Chelsea you're right. The message was a little bit mixed and what we were doing is very specifically not going after ongoing missions. In fact if I called a guy a blow a very high rank who was on a boat like an 81 and it turned out when I was calling him 8 years later he was still active. I would beg off and that was to protect his his life because his career because you don't want somebody to lose their commission because they talk to you but was also to underscore the fact that we weren't trying to undo the missions that were going on now but it was time. Since the Cold War was over at a certain point you have to evaluate what was done and decide if you thought it was worthwhile or not. And the Navy was being much much slower than anyone else including the CIA to declassify these things. What we did to protect to make sure we weren't doing any harm is we actually went to several of the very high

ranking people who had tried hardest to fight us to stop us. And we showed them the book and we said if you think something has to come out of here for national security reason speak now or forever hold your peace. And what they end up doing is giving us just a few more details. Well you know in the future if you do it like this you've done a good job. So the book came out we weren't asking for permission because journalists don't do that but we thought it was responsible to ask for their advice. We have a one think last call we have somebody else here is on a car phone line number one. Hello. Yes I love that book. I read it three years ago. And what I like about it comes through in your interview today the fact that it's a beautiful story and it's filled with smaller stories that are fascinating. Yeah it's not rabbit. I mean the missions are told through the guys. We don't give you a dry history because these guys were just so remarkable and such wonderful people. I mean Chris and I and we had no military background at all and we were both liberal Democrats and we realize that what these what these men were doing was incredibly important and you know I think the Navy I did did

several years like that they like the fact that we're not typical military people who could see the value of what they did. If if you were doing a story on the loss of the recent loss of a good Soviet submarine and impudent handling of it what would be the story line and why would you attack that. Well I have done that story a couple of times including for the Wall Street Journal and what I said is this that our ability to rescue submariners at sea is very poor we had deep submergence rescue vehicles but what we can do with those is if we know someone's going a test. We make sure he takes that died in water shallow enough to be recoverable and we have a D s or D on car. If our guys had gone down the Barents and we had sent out a call for help from you know instantly we could have gotten there on time. First there was no way that I mean it works now out there. There are a few men that live maybe 25 men or so that live for some hours but there was no way we could have gotten there and gotten down to them faster than in three days and separates because submarine and submarines just don't go down gently.

The submarine force is always looked at rescue effort and rescue capacities and something to sort of calm the public. But most times a submarine goes down it goes down below crushed up where it goes so deep that it literally implodes because the water pressure gets bad and then even if you go down a scorched it in recoverable waters unless you have the assets right on hand you're not going to get there fast enough. Now having said that that doesn't excuse Putin Putin what Putin did will forever make him guilty of two things that I think are horrible. The first is the families of those men. Well I always wonder if their boys could have been saved or some of them and for letting that. And if they had seen in an instant an international waste to the scene at least it would have given them the peace that everything that could have been done was for taking that piece away from them. Putin is guilty and he's wrong. Also you know French. Ships are not made when two countries are each other's throat. They're made at moments when two groups come together and help each other. If you don't know what's going to happen later between the U.S. and Russia and the

fact is the last opportunity appeal to have that bonding experience he got so defensive Oh we're not going to be saved by the you know big brother across the ocean that he put God that he really could've taken great strides toward the two peoples bonding. If he had let lab it to happen so he threw that away to the Soviet Union used to have assets that could have saved its men including deep sea sea divers deep sac divers. But they're taking apart the boats that supported those tires because these guys have to bring special gas mixers and everything else. That's why they were stuck calling to to ultimately Norway and Britain and then it by then it was too late. So he should have acted faster. And for the men what would not have been different I believe the end for the families and maybe internationally would have been I want I want to ask you a quick you know unfortunately coming the point we have a minute or two left but the young the Russian military continues to say that they believe the curse could hit another submarine. And that's what

happened. A foreign submarine that was mine. Entering the Russian naval exercises in the back seat what do you what do you think happened. I believe that it's either that is borderline either enormous denial or borderline Bowl. First off we're is I mean there were two sets to the two explosions of course. One measured 3.5 on the Richter scale. Where is this phantom boat aspirant boat or submarine that had that kind of massive collision you know. And number two we were at a point in time when we when we have collisions we both actually had a collision. The fact that we'd be somehow at that close to the military action and there were like 23 Russian boats around as part of this military exercise. So imagine a severely damaged foreign U.S. or British or something trying to escape after these massive explosions clanking all the way to end you know and there's no sub that's come up with that kind of damage.

I think it's very hard for people to believe that their own cursed technology killed their guys but I really believe that it was probably a sub Raptor paedo which means a tribunal that was powered by rocket fuel so that you have the fuel goes up and the warhead goes up. There has been no evidence other than the Russians crying foul that anybody else was involved and believe it we cracked down some pretty good collisions where we were involved it does happen I just don't believe it happened in this case. Well I'm afraid we're going to have sad because we've used our time but certainly for people who want to read more on the subject you look for the book Blind Man's Bluff. It is now published in paper by perennial by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew with Annette Drew Sontag thanks very much for talking. If you want to get to my web my e-mail address. They want to ask some more questions it Sherry. They are why Panix P and I x dot com. All right well thanks very much again for being our guest today. We appreciate it.