Authors: Kenneth Sewell
S
HORTLY AFTER THE EXCHANGE
between the spy agency chiefs, presidents Boris Yeltsin and George H. W. Bush went a step further toward resolving some of the major remaining conflicts from the long, undeclared Cold War.
The two presidents announced the formation of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (USRJC). The commission, to be staffed by high-level military men and diplomats, would provide the forum for both nations to determine the fate of their missing servicemen from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. The K-129 incident and Project Jennifer were to become among the most contentious matters before the commissioners. The debate over the lost submarine did not reach the point of rancorous exchanges until the American delegation failed, over and over again, to answer the Russians’ questions and provide requested information.
Whether the American delegation, cochaired by Ambassador Malcolm Toon, knowingly stonewalled the Russians, or was simply unable to provide the information because the CIA would not supply it, is not known. But the Russians, headed by Colonel-General Dmitrii A. Volkogonov, were never satisfied with the United States’ explanations about the K-129.
The Russians began seeking information about their lost submarine and the fate of its crew of ninety-eight from the first plenary session of the commission, held in 1992. In August 1993, at the sixth plenum, held in Moscow, the United States was finally ready with a response.
Ambassador Toon addressed the Russians sitting across the conference table in the Hall of Government Meetings in the Kremlin.
“We have important information on the Golf-class submarine lost in 1968 in the Pacific,” Ambassador Toon began. He reminded the Russians of rumors that had persisted for years claiming their submarine had sunk as the result of a collision with an American submarine.
“At my request, U.S. naval intelligence searched the logs of all U.S. subs that were active in 1968. As a result, our director of naval intelligence has concluded that no U.S. sub was within 300 nautical miles of your sub when it sank.”
Technically, that answer was correct.
The ambassador’s revelation of this heretofore secret information about the precise location of K-129 should have been a bombshell for the ex-Soviet military men. By stating there were no American submarines within
300 miles
of the doomed K-129, the Americans revealed startling information that the CIA had struggled for years to keep secret. The ambassador did not say 750 miles, or 1,700 miles, which, under various cover stories, had been floated as the distance of the wreck site from Pearl Harbor. He instead acknowledged that that no American submarine was within 300 miles of the sunken ship. Ambassador Toon had, in effect, revealed more accurately the true location of the rogue submarine.
The reason the U.S. intelligence could be so precise as to location, and truthful, too, was that the American submarines were indeed more than 300 miles away. There were dozens of U.S. submarines at Pearl Harbor, approximately 350 miles to the southeast of the site where K-129 exploded and sank in its abortive missile launch.
No one appeared to catch this slip of the tongue by an American diplomat who probably did not himself realize the significance of the information he had shared. One of the most revealing pieces of intelligence to come from the K-129 incident had just been casually laid on the table by the U.S. representative.
And there was more to come.
Next, Ambassador Toon stated, “Recently, general, [addressing commission cochairman Volkogonov directly] we learned that the sub’s bell had been recovered. Both I and my colleague Strobe Talbott [also a U.S. representative on the commission] asked CIA Director James Woolsey to allow us to present this bell to you. I’d planned to present it to Primakov…I thought, in the meantime, it would be interesting for you to have a look at the bell.”
A staff member brought the bell to the head table.
The Russian general grunted acknowledgment of the gift, but seemed unimpressed. “I’m sure we’ll find a place for it in a museum. It’s an important memorial and I’m deeply gratified. We’ll tell the relatives.”
Volkogonov, of course, was an army general, and did not recognize the astounding significance represented by this piece of hardware from the K-129. An ex-Soviet submarine admiral, or even a lowly seaman, would have seen the implication of this revelation immediately. This piece of evidence put the lie to years and years of CIA disinformation, cover stories, denied FOIA requests, and protestations of a failed mission. In a single casual moment, the years of clandestine web spinning and building stories within stories was swept away—and no one realized it.
K-129’s brass bell sat on a polished table in the heart of the Kremlin, revealing more than all the leaks to American newsmen, intel from moles in the Pentagon, and background briefings by government officials had uncovered in the three decades since the submarine disappeared.
The bell, now missing its clapper, had originally been permanently fixed by a bolt to a steel bar welded firmly behind the bridge of the Golf submarine. It was located in the center of the conning tower, just forward of the area housing the missile tubes. The fact that the Americans possessed the bell was telling evidence that
Glomar Explorer
had indeed raised considerably more of the boat than was earlier acknowledged by the CIA or admitted to in these talks with the Russians.
Glomar Explorer
was designed to retrieve large sections of the submarine. It is technically impossible for the claw to have retrieved only the small part of the conning tower in which the bell was firmly attached to the boat’s frame. It is unlikely that special efforts would have been selectively expended to locate and retrieve the bell. Most probably, the bell was found when the center section of the submarine was being cut up, after it was raised into the moon pool of the
Glomar.
Thus, the bell was virtual proof that far more than the front thirty-eight feet of the submarine was recovered, as the CIA had steadfastly maintained. The bell was located inside a section more than 150 feet aft of the boat’s bow. If the bell was recovered, then the attack center in the conning tower and the control center were probably recovered as well. Since that compartment, along with the adjoining compartment housing the three missile tubes, was the strongest and most reinforced section of a Golf, it is likely that the entire center of the submarine was raised. The presence of the bell strongly suggests that all the vital parts of K-129 were recovered, and that most of the secrets of that deadly final mission were in the hands of American intelligence agencies.
After this session, when the Russians returned home with the bell, former Soviet submarine admirals would have recognized the astounding evidence they had been handed. Whether this was an intentional admission by someone in the CIA or an oversight of breathtaking scope is unknown. But when the Soviets came back to the next plenary sessions, their demands for information about their lost boat became more angry and more blunt.
In the Eighth Plenary Session, held at the Pentagon in Washington in February 1994, Ambassador Toon noted, “certain unpleasantness had crept” into the commission’s relations.
“We are continuing our research for further information on the Soviet Golf-class submarine,” Toon assured General Volkogonov, noting that formal requests had been made of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“We will look again and work harder,” promised Denis Clift, U.S. cochairman for the Cold War Working Group of the USRJC.
The former Soviet military men were incensed.
“After press reports that documents were raised from the submarine, we cannot accept an answer that nothing was found. It concerns 300 families of 98 crews members,” a Russian colonel on the working group angrily replied. “Since we do not know the circumstances, the pension (for the families) is only 30 percent of the serviceman’s salary. This is purely a humanitarian effort; it does not matter why the submarine sank.”
The meeting ended angrily, with the U.S. delegation promising to “investigate more fully the circumstances of the loss of the submarine, and the possibility of the return of documents and personal effects recovered.”
This demand for personal documents belonging to the lost crew and recovered by the
Glomar Explorer
may have also produced an unexpected piece of evidence. At one of the subsequent plenary sessions, a photograph or negative of a man dressed in a Soviet navy uniform was given to the Russians. The photograph was reportedly of a person whose body was found at the wreck. Russian naval investigators combed the old Soviet navy rosters and circulated the picture among veterans who had served at Rybachiy Naval Base at that time. They ran the picture in veterans’ publications and Russian newspapers, requesting that anyone who knew the man assist in identifying him. No one came forward.
This man was obviously not a Soviet submariner, because records on these elite seamen were meticulously maintained. Then why was he on the doomed ship? Had the lower-echelon investigators accidentally stumbled onto the photograph of one of the KGB operatives?
The Tenth Plenary Session of the USRJC opened again on a rancorous note with Ambassador Toon stating, “In the past, you have raised with me the Golf-class submarine case both privately and in plenary sessions, expressing your concern that not all information pertinent to the loss has been made available to your side. Just before my departure on this trip, I met with our most authoritative officials and experts at the highest levels of my government on the subject. I can offer the following:
“I can state that the U.S. had nothing to do with the loss of the submarine. Further, we do not know why the submarine was lost.
“I have been asked, if this is the case, how did the U.S. locate the submarine on the bottom of the Pacific. The answer, first, is that Soviet search and rescue efforts tipped U.S. armed forces off to the fact that something had happened in the Pacific. This then allowed us to review data from our sensors in the Pacific after the fact. That review of data led us to identify the location of the submarine.
“We do not have the submarine’s log. We have turned over to the Russian side all humanitarian items and information relating to this loss. There is nothing further I can add. The U.S. side has completed its contribution to this aspect of the work of our Joint Commission.”
In the Eleventh Plenary Session, held in Washington, D.C., in December 1994, the Russians were even angrier, and demanded the U.S. delegation turn over the logs from the USS
Swordfish,
which they still maintained had sunk K-129 in a collision. An American commission member again stated, “We have done everything possible to research this incident and have provided you everything we had on the incident.”
The ever more bitter exchanges continued in subsequent plenary sessions of the POW/MIA commission for five more years, and came to a head in the Sixteenth Plenum of the USRJC, held in Moscow, in November 1999.
Russian Federal Security Service’s Colonel Vladimir Vinogradov opened the Russian side of the meeting with an angry challenge to the Americans. High-level military and civilian leaders from both countries were present when the intelligence officer loudly complained that the Americans’ previous responses to inquiries about the K-129 incident were inadequate.
“I do not understand the Commission’s difficulty on this matter,” said an obviously perplexed Colonel Vinogradov. “Our inquiry has taken on the psychology of a criminal that had been caught and claims that guilt must now be proved.”
Denis Clift again argued that all the information the Navy or CIA had on the incident had already been given to the Russians.
“The U.S. has provided Russia with a full explanation of the incident. It would be difficult to say more,” said Clift, who was at the time with an organization known as the Joint Military Intelligence College. “Last year the CIA reviewed its files again to be absolutely sure there was no more information.”
Clift said the CIA’s letter had been turned over to the joint commission’s previous session, and that former CIA directors Gates and Woolsey met with President Yeltsin to brief him on the incident. Clift added that the K-129’s bell had been returned to the Russians.
Vinogradov replied that the Russian experts were still doubtful about the information they had received on the K-129 incident.
Despite the logical need for military secrecy concerning the K-129 affair ending with the Cold War in 1991, there is obviously a continued sensitivity about the release of any information to the rank and file in either Russia or the United States. No additional information about the K-129 incident has been provided to the Russians in the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs.
Several months after the stormy POW/MIA session in Moscow, another submarine tragedy ripped open old wounds over the K-129 incident, and this time the anger of former Soviet submariners swept into the open. The newest Russian nuclear cruise missile submarine, the
Kursk,
sank in the Barents Sea near Murmansk on August 12, 2000, carrying 118 sailors and officers to their death. The immediate response from former Soviet submarine officers was that the cause had to be a collision with a NATO spy submarine.
“Russia’s initial suspicion of a sinister American role in the sinking of
Kursk
is rooted in distrust of U.S. motives—distrusts so firmly held that Russian officials still press for answers in the sinking of a Soviet sub in 1968,” read a lead story in the
Washington Post.