Project Azorian

The loss of K-129

In 1968 K-129, a Soviet Golf II-class submarine, sailed from the naval base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula and was lost. The United States located the wreck about 1,800 miles north-west of Hawaii, 16,500 feet down.¹

According to the National Security Archive, the submarine sank in mid-March 1968 and the entire crew was lost.³

A ship for ‘mining nodules’

In 1970, after careful study, a team of CIA engineers and contractors concluded that the submarine could be raised. The Hughes Glomar Explorer was built over the following four years.¹

The public knew it as a deep-sea mining vessel owned by Howard Hughes; Hughes supplied the CIA with a cover story about marine research and mining manganese nodules from the sea bed.^1,2

Engineers from the firm Global Marine were among those who worked on the project; the CIA describes the ship’s lead engineer, Sherman Wetmore, and his team of roughly ten engineers working 12-hour shifts.⁴

Summer 1974

The Glomar Explorer arrived over the site on 4 July 1974 and conducted operations there in total secrecy for more than two months.¹

While the 1,750-ton, 132-foot-long section of the wreck was being lifted, it broke apart about halfway up and part of it fell back to the sea bed. The crew hauled aboard what remained in the capture vehicle.¹

The recovered section contained the bodies of six Soviet submariners. They were given a formal military burial at sea; in 1992 the Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates, presented a film of the ceremony to the Russian President, Boris Yeltsin.¹

The leak and the end of the project

On 7 February 1975 the Los Angeles Times published an account of the operation, and on 18 March 1975 Jack Anderson broadcast a nationally syndicated television report on it.²

According to a review in the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence, the operation was compromised when the Los Angeles Times reported a June 1974 burglary at a Hughes-linked company that had provided cover for the project. The planned second recovery attempt, MATADOR, was cancelled.⁵

According to the CIA, by late June 1975 the Soviets had assigned a ship to monitor and guard the site, and the White House cancelled further recovery operations.¹

‘Neither confirm nor deny’

The Ford Administration neither confirmed nor denied the stories in circulation; hence the name ‘Glomar response’.²

The journalist Harriet Ann Phillippi filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for records of attempts to persuade the media not to publish information about the Glomar Explorer. The CIA replied that US Government involvement could neither be confirmed nor denied. In 1976 the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the judgment in the CIA’s favour and required the Agency to file a public affidavit explaining in as much detail as possible the basis for its refusal.⁶

What has been declassified and what has not

The internal history Project AZORIAN: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer was published in a classified issue of Studies in Intelligence in the autumn of 1985; internal evidence suggests it was written around 1978. The CIA first declassified it in February 2010 with significant redactions: withheld were, among other things, cost overruns, how much of the submarine was recovered and what intelligence was derived from it.^3,5

In 2007 the ship was sold to Transocean for $20 million.⁵

What is disputed

The sources differ on these details. We give both versions.

When K-129 sank? The National Security Archive gives mid-March 1968, the review in Studies in Intelligence April 1968. The CIA’s own pages give only the year.^1,3,5
Where and how deep the wreck lay? The CIA Museum page gives about 1,800 miles from Hawaii and 16,500 feet; the CIA article on the exposure of the project, about 1,500 miles and more than three miles; the National Security Archive, about 1,560 miles and about 16,500 feet; the review in Studies in Intelligence, about 1,500 miles and nearly 17,000 feet.^1,2,3,5
How much of the submarine was recovered? The CIA does not disclose this (the passage is withheld from declassification). The CIA Museum page says the section broke apart halfway up, the CIA article a third of the way up. The review in Studies in Intelligence says the wreck had been lifted more than 6,700 feet when two grabber arms snapped, and nearly 100 feet of the forward section, with a missile and its fire-control system, fell back to the sea bed. The National Security Archive, citing the book Blind Man’s Bluff, says only a 38-foot forward section was recovered.^1,2,3,5
How long operations at the wreck lasted? The CIA Museum page speaks of more than two months, the CIA article on the exposure of the project of more than a month.^1,2

Sources

CIA Museum, Project AZORIAN
CIA, The Exposing of Project AZORIAN
National Security Archive (ed. M. Aid, W. Burr, T. Blanton), Project Azorian: The CIA’s Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer, Electronic Briefing Book no. 305 (12 February 2010)
CIA, Honoring the Mission of Project AZORIAN (29 July 2022)
David Robarge (CIA), Review: the film AZORIAN: The Raising of the K-129 (2009) and N. Polmar and M. White’s book Project AZORIAN (2010), Studies in Intelligence 56 (1), 2012
US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Phillippi v. Central Intelligence Agency, 546 F.2d 1009 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (Justia)

Checked: 6 November 2026