In a SECRET/SENSITIVE Memorandum for the Record, dated 2 December 1976, then Director of Central Intelligence George H.W. Bush states:
"Glomar Explorer: I stated to the President that we had leveled, and that the TIME magazine story which was out yesterday was totally false."
According to the December 6, 1976, issue:
TIME has learned that Project Jennifer did in fact succeed: the entire wreck, a 320-ft.-long Golf-class II diesel-powered submarine built in 1961, was recovered virtually intact. Confirms a senior U.S. Navy officer: 'It was all one hell of a success.' Why the partial-recovery story? The CIA remains mum about its motives but the agency evidently had a dual aim. For one thing, it wanted to defend the high cost of Jennifer-about 550 million, all billed to the Navy. At the same time, the agency wanted to avoid unnecessarily embarrassing the Russians, who, U.S. intelligence officials knew, would not fall for the CIA's story anyway."
The meeting between DCI Bush and the President is one of only a handful of documents CIA has released concerning the TOP SECRET PROJECT JENNIFER Glomar Explorer recovery operation, which took place in July 1974.
The alleged target for the recovery was the Soviet nuclear submarine K-129, which had mysteriously sunk to a depth of more that 16,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in March of 1968.
CIA had cleverly created a plausible back story for the operation.
Over a period of many months, TIME magazine slowly shifted from presenting the original back story to releasing bits and pieces of information the CIA Director had asked be withheld for national security reasons.
In the July 29, 1974 issue, which was published as the operation was underway, TIME reported:
"About 100 companies and half a dozen governments are now actively working on nodule-mining technology. Billionaire Howard Hughes seems to be ahead of the pack. With characteristic Hughes secrecy, his Summa Corp. is testing a specially built, 36,000-ton, 100 million deep-ocean mining ship, Glomar Explorer, off Hawaii. The ship stations itself over a potential site, then lowers its TV-equipped mining apparatus, along with connecting pipe, through a large well in the hull. Once the mining gear hits bottom some two or three miles down, it slurps up nodules from the ocean floor like a huge vacuum cleaner."
Having identified the wreckage on the ocean floor and, according to numerous accounts, having explored the site in detail, the NAVY approached the CIA for assistance in mounting the greatest (and most expensive!) recovery operation in history.
Curiously, the historical record and witness accounts provided to author Kenneth Sewell suggest that the NAVY had already recovered something mysterious from the site in 1972.
Sewell, in a postscript for the paperback version of his book" RED STAR ROGUE", writes:
"One of the early dives [of the NAVY's submersible Trieste II] in 1972, an important piece of... hardware was recovered [Sewell assumes this was from the Soviet submarine, and concludes it was probably a nuclear warhead]. "
Sewell goes on to describe " the strange account of how the recovered item was handled."
He writes:
"One of the large food freezers had been emptied to serve as a special storage receptacle on the aft deck of the White Sands [the mother ship involved in the Trieste operation]... The item, which was concealed from the crew members' view by a tarpaulin, was hoisted into the commandeered cooler and sealed inside... the chest and its contents remained under armed guard for the duration of the mission."
Eventually, once the story had been revealed to the public by another media source, TIME decided to come clean and tell their readers what they really knew.
In the March 31, 1975 issue, TIME reported:
"For months, right up to last week, William E. Colby, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, spent a good deal of his time on an unusual undercover task. By phone calls, visits and through his emissaries, Colby made contact with a number of news organizations. His purpose: to persuade them, on national security grounds, not to print a story that they all knew about -- the attempt by the CIA to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the ocean bottom."
Leaks about the secret mission had begun long before the Glomar Explorer had been launched on a mission to recovery something from the depths of the Pacific:
"Seymour Hersh of the New York Times first heard of the salvage operation's code name, 'Project Jennifer,' but without details, in 1973."
Curiously, having recovered an important artifact from the site, and presumably already equipped with a means of recovering additional materials from the bottom, the NAVY approached then CIA Director Richard Helms to launch a mission to recover the entire Soviet submarine.
"Soon his other top aides, who knew nothing about the proposal, became curious about the brisk parade of Pentagon officials and high-ranking Navy officers that passed through Helms' office."
Once the White House gave the OK, PROJECT JENNIFER approached Howard Hughes to contract the construction of the recovery vessel and provide the cover story.
"Everyone, including TIME (July 29), accepted Hughes' account, and the press ran glowing stories about the ship's capabilities... "the Glomar Explorer headed for the open sea on June 20, 1974, ready at last to attempt the culmination of Project Jennifer. By about mid-July the odd convoy reached the site of the sunken Soviet sub. The delicate salvage operation got under way."
Adding to the mystery, documents about PROJECT JENNIFER on file at one of Hughes' offices were stolen in June, just prior to the recovery operation, by a sophisticated operation, including overcoming an electronic alarm system and burning into the document safe using acetylene torches. Some speculated that Hughes or CIA had been behind the break in, "to get rid of incriminating documents."
In 2006, STARstream Research was approached with an offer of "deep background" information which we would find interesting, but would not be allowed to publish. It soon was apparent that the worm on the hook was intended to divert our attention, and then the offer was rescinded.
TIME reported a similar situation concerning the leaks about the Glomar recovery:
"What Colby [who had replaced Helms as CIA Director] offered was unusual: briefings on Jennifer in exchange for silence. He seemed to feel that only by being briefed on the stakes involved could the press be expected to join the conspiracy of silence."A curious turnabout took place once the story did become public: the CIA had nothing more to say about Jennifer. The formula seemed simple if slightly surreal: 'We'll tell you something if you won't tell anybody; now that you've told everybody, we won't tell you anything.'"Today the CIA remains mum about the operation, in spite of Russian confirmation that nuclear warheads had been recovered by the US NAVY during the operation. It seems likely that there is much more to the story behind PROJECT JENNIFER and the Glomar Explorer recovery operation.Even as early as March of 1975, just months after the recovery operation and only a week following the public expose' of the covert attempt to raise a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine, TIME speculated about the possible true nature and requirements of the mission:"... "there is the puzzle of why so many reporters for major newspapers, magazines and TV networks simultaneously stumbled upon the Jennifer trail. On the morning after, some journalists got the feeling that the CIA had actually been helpful all along in getting the story out, while at the same time it apparently tried to suppress the story."Indeed, given the above, and the recent revelation of the Trieste II deep sea dive and recovery of something important off the ocean floor 16,000 feet down, TIME magazine's March 1975 conspiracy speculation opens the door to another possible explanation, drenched in conspiracy and cosmic strangeness:"The last theory goes off into the wild blue yonder, suggesting that raising a Soviet submarine was not Jennifer's mission at all, but the supreme cover for a secret mission as yet safely secure. In part two I'll explore the connection between the CIA's extraterrestrially-inspired remote viewing program at SRI, the "core story" of contact with an otherworldly intelligence, and a tale of an alien cadaver in a body bag.
It's been an interesting year over at STARpod.us, the new STARstream Research website.
Migrating the older Microsoft-based website to a new Wordpress content management based site has been time consuming but the new site promises to be a more efficient way for us to provide you with the latest news from the strange world of weird science, psychic intelligence and perhaps, extraterrestrial alien contact.
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