Project Azorian - New Eyewitness Account

New Eyewitness Account

W. Craig Reed, in Red November: Inside the Secret U.S. - Soviet Submarine War (2010), delivers an inside account of Project Azorian provided by Joe Houston, the senior engineer who designed leading-edge camera systems used by the Glomar Explorer team to photograph K-129 on the ocean floor. The team needed pictures that offered precise measurements to design the grappling arm and other systems used to bring the sunken submarine up from the bottom. Houston worked for the mysterious "Mr. P" (John Parangosky) who worked for CIA Deputy Director Carl E. Duckett — the two leaders of Project Azorian. Duckett later worked with Houston at another company, and intimated that the CIA may have recovered much more from the K-129 than admitted to publicly. Reed also details how the mini-sub technology used by the submarine Halibut to find K-129 was repurposed for subsequent Operation Ivy Bells missions to wiretap underwater Soviet communications cables.

In a documentary film titled Azorian: The Raising Of The K-129, which was produced by Michael White and released in 2009, three principals who participated in the design of the Hughes Glomar Explorer heavy lift system and the Lockheed capture vehicle (CV or claw) gave on-camera interviews. These individuals were also on board the ship during the mission and were intimately involved with the recovery operation. They are: Sherman Wetmore, Global Marine heavy lift operations manager; Charlie Johnson, Global Marine heavy lift engineer; and Raymond Feldman, Lockheed Ocean Systems senior staff engineer. These three, plus others who were not on board during the recovery but were cleared on all aspects of the mission, confirmed that only 38 feet of the bow was eventually recovered. The intent was to recover the forward two thirds (138 feet) of the K-129, which had broken off from the rear section of the submarine and was designated the Target Object (TO). The capture vehicle successfully lifted the TO from the ocean floor. On the way up, a failure of part of the capture vehicle caused the loss of 100 feet, including the sail, of the TO. In late Oct of 2010 a book, "Project Azorian: The CIA And The Raising of the K-129" by Norman Polmar and Michael White was published. The book, based on the film, contains additional documentary evidence about the effort to locate the submarine and the recovery operation.