Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage - Hardcover

Sontag, Sherry; Drew, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1891620088 ISBN 13: 9781891620089

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 1998

Synopsis

Over the course of five years, investigative reporters Sherry Sontag and Chris Drew interviewed hundreds of men who had never spoken about their underwater lives—not even to their wives and children. They uncovered a wealth of classified information: the tapping of undersea Soviet telephone cables, the stealing of Soviet weapons, the tragic collisions of enemy submarines. They tell of medals awarded in secret and deaths disguised with disinformation. Blind Man's Bluff is a critical work of history that reads with all the excitement of a Tom Clancy novel and all the tragedy of Das Boot.

About this title

About the Author

Sherry Sontag is a former staff writer for the National Law Journal and has written for The New York Times.

Christopher Drew is a special projects editor at the New York Times and has won numerous awards for his investigative reporting.

Annette Lawrence Drew, the book's researcher, has a Ph.D. from Princeton.

Reviews

In an unusually successful amalgam, veteran journalists Sontag and Christopher Drew combine a gripping story with admirable research to relate previously unknown information. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. depended heavily on submarines for intelligence gathering, whether tracking Soviet missile subs, monitoring Soviet harbors and missile tests or, in some cases, retrieving lost Soviet equipment. The U.S.S.R. responded with everything from comprehensive espionage operations to depth charge attacks on particularly intrusive snoopers. The broad outlines of this clandestine confrontation are relatively familiar, but the details have largely remained secret. Although the authors have based their book largely on interviews with submariners, intelligence operatives and politicians, they recognize the possibility of distortion and back up personal accounts with an elaborate and convincing system of verification. While necessarily incomplete, the resulting work depicts what was arguably the most successful long-term, large-scale intelligence operation in American history. From captains to seamen, the participants combined technical proficiency, insouciant courage and a cheerful scorn for regulations that often interfered with their missions. That mind-set was hardly calculated to avoid direct confrontations, and accidental collisions were not uncommon. The authors nevertheless make a solid case that the risk of a destabilizing incident was far outweighed by the gains of the campaign?especially given the depth of mutual ignorance during the Cold War.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Two investigative reporters and a researcher have joined forces to produce an excellent history of U.S. submarine espionage operations that reads like a Tom Clancy novel. They take the story from the early days of the cold war, when we lost, by accident, the diesel submarine Cochino on a spy mission and nearly lost the Gudgeon to Soviet antisubmarine forces. They continue through the shift to nuclear submarines, the loss of the Scorpion (destroyed by defective torpedoes after completing a spy mission), the role of the Halibut in finding the Soviet missile boat later salvaged by the CIA's Glomar Explorer, and the cable-tapping operations in which the Parche won more presidential unit citations than any other submarine in American history. They also cover open-sea efforts to shadow Soviet submarines, which occasionally led to dangerous collisions, and add to our knowledge of the horrendous safety record of the Soviet nuclear navy and the vices and virtues of Hyman G. Rickover, father of its American counterpart. Roland Green

Journalists Sontag and Drew have strung together about a dozen investigative pieces on submarine espionage activities during the Cold War era. The stories are exciting, the personalities border on the eccentric, and the constant turf battles among various U.S. government agencies in these often top-secret submarine activities make for intriguing reading. Have you ever wondered what it must be like to stalk a Soviet sub armed to the teeth with nuclear missles? Or serve on a U.S. sub in Russian waters with Soviet antisubmarine ships using you for target practice? While these true-life stories are exciting, much of the book is actually an account of how the CIA, U.S. Navy, Congress, and other agencies all used the American submarine force to further their own political ends. While not packing the literary punch or style of Edward L. Beach's World War II naval classic Run Silent, Run Deep, this is hard-core investigative reporting at its crispest. Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.?Stephen W. Green, Auraria Lib., Denver
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 2: . . . There could have been as many as eight ships above now, and they seemed to have created a diamond-like pattern on the surface, one ship passing over the Gudgeon, then the next coming in for a run. Throughout, the Gudgeon kept track of the Soviets, and fire-control men kept her torpedoes aimed. But there was a general "no shoot" policy for spy subs: don't shoot unless shot at. And so far, the hand grenades had not been replaced by heavier explosives.

The siege continued, twelve hours, twenty-four hours. Nobody remembers Bessac leaving the control room, or Coppedge either. If they were getting any sleep at all, it was in quick catnaps. Most if not all of the crew were foregoing sleep as well, even the men confined to their bunks who lay tensely listening to the siege.

It was chokingly painful just to move about, to breathe. The short trek from the chiefs' quarters to the control room left a man panting, eyes watering, as if he'd just run four miles. There was, of course, no cooking on board. Instead, the mess crew handed out cold sandwiches. Smoking was banned, and it was nearly impossible to light a cigarette anyway in the oxygen-depleted atmosphere. Still, a few men found airpockets where they could light up and sneak a puff or two.

The men bled oxygen into the ship from the large O2 canisters affixed outside the hull, two aft and two forward. But adding oxygen could do nothing to reduce the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide that were building to dangerous levels. Nearly everyone had pounding headaches. Some men were close to passing out.

Canisters of lithium hydroxide crystals were placed around the sub to absorb some of the excess carbon dioxide. Some of the crystals were spread out on mattresses to help the process along. But the CO2 levels remained way too high. And the crystals could not absorb the carbon monoxide, the colorless, odorless gas that could eventually lull everyone on board into a permanent sleep.

Bessac kept the sub moving, kept looking for that temperature layer. But by now the batteries were so low that Gudgeon couldn't move any faster than three knots. And the Soviets kept passing over, herding the Gudgeon like a wayward sheep back and forth, sideways, diagonally, drawing spokes in a wheel defined by enemy boats. With each pass came the sonar, then the grenades.

Wednesday, August 21, early morning: no change. Wednesday afternoon, no change. Wednesday, early evening, Gudgeon had been under siege for nearly forty-eight hours and underwater for nearly sixty-four hours. Bessac had dutifully noted the distance traveled in his logs over these two days as zero. Something had to be done, something drastic.

Coppedge began walking through the boat, telling the crew the Dugeon was going to have to try to snorkel, try to "stick our nose up." For most of the siege the men had been at relaxed battle stations. Now they were called to full battle stations. They had to get fresh air. They had to send a message for help. They had to alter the status quo or die."

Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1891620088
• ISBN 13: 9781891620089
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384