Howard Hughes and the Glomar Explorer by Gregory Simonds

A billionaire's ship, the CIA and a dead Soviet submarine.
In 1968, a Soviet nuclear submarine vanished beneath the Pacific Ocean.
The United States found it-and decided never to admit it.
Project AZORIAN was one of the most audacious covert operations of the Cold War: a secret CIA mission to recover a Soviet ballistic missile submarine from nearly three miles below the ocean's surface. Disguised as a billionaire's deep-sea mining experiment and hidden behind layers of legal silence, the operation pushed engineering, espionage, and ethics to their breaking point.
This book reconstructs that mission with forensic precision.
Drawing exclusively from declassified CIA histories, court records, congressional investigations, and authoritative journalism, it traces how U.S. intelligence located the wreck of K-129, engineered the unprecedented Hughes Glomar Explorer, and executed a recovery attempt so sensitive it reshaped secrecy law itself. Along the way, it reveals how silence became policy, how oversight failed to keep pace with capability, and how the now-infamous "Glomar response" was born.
But this is not just a technical history.
It is a study in power-how modern states decide what can be done without explanation, how moral questions are deferred in the name of national security, and how truth is managed long after the operation is over. From the burial at sea of Soviet sailors to the legal doctrines still used to deny information today, the legacy of AZORIAN reaches far beyond the Cold War.
Meticulously sourced, ethically grounded, and written with the tension of an investigative documentary, this book exposes what happens when secrecy works exactly as intended.
Some operations fail and disappear.
This one succeeded-and was buried on purpose.
Early Reviews
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"A fact-based intelligence history."
This is how you write about secrecy without sensationalism. Precise, unsettling, and deeply researched. I couldn't put it down.
- David K., Cold War historian
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"The best account of Project AZORIAN ever written."
Reads like a thriller, but never sacrifices accuracy. The ethical questions linger long after the last page.
- Marianne L., former naval analyst
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Quietly devastating."
This book shows how power actually operates-through silence, paperwork, and decisions no one votes on. Essential reading.
- Jon R., investigative journalist
⭐⭐⭐⭐
"A rare balance of engineering, espionage, and conscience."
The technical detail is astonishing, but it's the moral restraint that makes this stand out.
- Alex P., defense policy researcher

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