The GLOMAR

[Shanet Clark]

Perhaps the most interesting and disturbing angle on Hughes, the CIA and the Watergate burglaries is the GLOMAR project.

I believe Hughes Tool got a highly classified project contract to build a special deep-sea platform "winch" ship and help the US agencies find a Soviet sub, and this project turned into a major cover-up and blackmail routine.

One of the cover stories, or disinformation, concerning the special deep sea salvage ship concerned UFO's. This was a ruse to cover the fact that a private company was sesarching for a downed nuclear sub in the Pacific (Indian?) Ocean.

By granting this contract to Hughes, the Military and CIA gave Hughes a huge opportunity to engage in extortion.

Its late and I haven't run a search engine on "GLOMAR HUGHES" but I'll bet some of "our" characters pop up. It is a very similar scenario to the THRASHER project, which featured BENDIX Corporation.

Perhaps the GLOMAR facts were part of the PLUMBERS/GREENSPUN Las Vegas intrigues, but certainly the GLOMAR project gave Hughes a whip hand in dealing with politicians like Richard Nixon.

I am going on memory here, but I am sure some other members can provide some details about this operation.

[Pat Speer]

Glomar is still controversial. I think it was called Project Jennifer. Hughes was always pushing Maheu to try and work out a merger between Hughes Tool and the CIA, so that Hughes could hide his assets from the IRS, etc. Anyhow, supposedly it was decided by the CIA to use Hughes as a cut-out, because no one would think the better if Hughes was building some weird shaped ship to try to mine the ocean bottom. I remember seeing it when I was a kid. Well, they supposedly made one attempt on the Russian sub but it broke in half, and they couldn't get the nukes. I think this is a cover story. I believe they got the nukes they were after. I think this because they acknowledged burying at sea some Russians they found in the half a sub they did recover. They eventually sent the Russian Govt. a tape of the burial to show that we treated their dead with respect. If the sub broke in half I'm skeptical so many bodies would be found inside.

After Hughes' records were subpoenaed by the Watergate Committee, due, in no small part, to Maheu's talking about the Hughes bribes to Rebozo during his breach of contract suit against Hughes after Hughes had him fired, someone broke into Hughes headquarters and stole his personal memos. The CIA got involved, wondering what happened to memos about the Glomar project, and whether their cover was broken. Well, someone in the LAPD told the L.A. Times what happened, and the Times ran the story. William Colby called up the Times and all the other papers and briefed them on the project, and told them the CIA was gonna make another run, and asked them to bury the story, to which they all agreed. Seymour Hersh and Jack Anderson broke the silence after a few days, however, when they realized that something didn't smell right. Anderson, if I remember correctly, was concerned because the CIA admitted the project cost 300 millions, and had paid Hughes a fortune just to use his name (the CIA ran the project) and had only recovered half of an obsolete submarine. He decided the American people should know about such things. Once the story broke the CIA reportedly abandoned all plans to go back and get the other half of the sub. It may be there still.

When reading about the theft of Hughes' papers in Citizen Hughes, I figured out the identities of the burglars. It turned out I knew one of them. I contacted the daughter of the ring-leader and asked if I could tell the story in a screenplay. I told her I'd pay her if I sold the screenplay. I got no response. I'm still thinking about writing the screenplay, only changing the names around a little.

Edited April 29, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Evan Burton]

Yep, it was called Project JENNIFER and the ship was called the GLOMAR EXPLORER.

In 1968, a GOLF-II diesel-electric ballastic missile sub sank with all hands in the Pacific northwest of Hawaii. The US detected the location & fate of the sub through the SOSUS network, but the USSR did NOT know where it sank. They searched but never found the location.

The GLOMAR EXPLORER was built to raise the sub. The cover story was that it was a undersea exploration & mining vessel built to mine manganese nodules from the ocean floor.

It went to the site in 1974 and commenced operations. It was designed that when the sub was raised, it would be brought directly (through an opening in the hull) into in a large pool built into the ship and hidden there.

The sub broke intwo during the recovery, and only the bow section was recovered. The US still recovered a number of SS-N-5 nuclear missiles from the bow.

Recovery of the missiles did a lot to aid the US in determining the capability of Soviet ICBMs, both in their accuracy and yield.

The fact that bodies were also recovered is not surprising. Whatever emergency happened to sink the sub (missile explosion?), one of the first reaction would have been to close all watertight doors and hatches, sealing the various compartments. There would have been crewmembers in many of those compartments.

I believe they also recovered some of the crypto equipment / codes.

The GLOMAR EXPLORER transferred to the US Navy in 1976. They tried to lease it out for mining exploration but it was generally unsuccessful. Most of the time it remained in the "mothball fleet". It was used by the NSF as a research vessel, and even by the EPA.

It was used as a dock / mother ship for the trials of the SEA SHADOW, the USN "stealth ship".

The last I heard it was back in mothballs with SEA SHADOW inside of it.

[Pat Speer]

Yep, it was called Project JENNIFER and the ship was called the GLOMAR EXPLORER.

The sub broke intwo during the recovery, and only the bow section was recovered.  The US still recovered a number of SS-N-5 nuclear missiles from the bow.

Recovery of the missiles did a lot to aid the US in determining the capability of Soviet ICBMs, both in their accuracy and yield.

The fact that bodies were also recovered is not surprising.  Whatever emergency happened to sink the sub (missile explosion?), one of the first reaction would have been to close all watertight doors and hatches, sealing the various compartments.  There would have been crewmembers in many of those compartments.

I believe they also recovered some of the crypto equipment / codes.

The GLOMAR EXPLORER transferred to the US Navy in 1976.  They tried to lease it out for mining exploration but it was generally unsuccessful.  Most of the time it remained in the "mothball fleet".  It was used by the NSF as a research vessel, and even by the EPA.

It was used as a dock / mother ship for the trials of the SEA SHADOW, the USN "stealth ship".

The last I heard it was back in mothballs with SEA SHADOW inside of it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks, Evan, for that clarification of the story. The watertight hatches makes sense, and has convinced me they very well could have found bodies. Still, wasn't the official story that they recovered no nukes? Didn't they lie about that? The CIA story as per Colby just seemed a little convenient

[Shanet Clark]

There is a lot of material on the web concerning Project Jennifer.

I googled GLOMAR HUGHES and found a ton of conventional material.

Thanks