Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew (30 page)

As long as his program had money, Bradley had power, and more of it than any four-stripe Navy captain had a right to expect. He still reported to Rear Admiral Fritz Harlfinger, the director of Naval Intelligence, and through him to Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., who was now the chief of Naval Operations. But power or not, Bradley was still a captain in a town full of admirals, and a mere Naval Intelligence officer in a town where the top spooks reported to the president. There also were more than a few admirals who resented his refusal to take them into his confidence. One man, especially powerful within the Pentagon, insisted that he had to approve every operation before Bradley could send a spy submarine out. It was a directive Bradley found impossible to comply with. "You gave me an order that was not legal," Bradley answered when the irate admiral confronted him. Then he added, "By the way, I don't work for you."

The admiral stared Bradley down for what seemed like a long time. Finally he intoned, "All right. You can get away with this, this time. But I'll tell you one thing, Bradley. You're never going to make admiral."

"So be it," Bradley stood his ground. "So he it." Then with a soldier's flourish, he did an about-face and walked away, the drama of his departure filling him with satisfaction. There would be time enough later to realize that the admiral might just make good on his threat.

At the moment, Bradley was more concerned with his battle with the CIA over control of Halibut. The agency had already snatched command of all salvage operations surrounding the sunken Golf and was still waiting for Howard Hughes to finish building the monolithic salvage craft that would attempt to tear the entire sub from its ocean grave. Most of that was being engineered through the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office, the top-secret Navy-CIA office that was still being run mainly by the CIA. Worse, the CIA seemed hell-bent on broadcasting news of all of the Navy's best submarine missions and taking credit for them.

When those missions were still entirely under Bradley's watch, fewer than a dozen top officials in Washington knew of the Soviets' lost submarine and Halibut's find. Now Bradley saw CIA officers assigned to NURO handing out clearances like candy corn on Halloween. The Velvet Fist photographs, Halibut's abilities, and even other submarine spying missions were fast becoming the main attraction in a circus where having a ticket to the show was more important than the performance, where the labels "top-secret" and "need to know" made the spectacle irresistible.

Bradley saw every briefing as a potential leak. He wanted to be the one to go to Kissinger or his top deputy, General Alexander Haig (Kissinger's chief liaison to the military), and then only when the time was right. Bradley had worked hard to earn his access to the two powerful men. The captain played on his realization that Kissinger was the ultimate bureaucratic infighter, someone who wanted to control everything about foreign policy and covert actions affecting foreign policy. Bradley knew that, more than anything else, Kissinger wanted to choose what would be presented to Nixon and wanted to make those presentations personally. As long as Bradley's missions reaped key intelligence, he knew the door would be open to Kissinger and to Haig. That had been clear the last time Bradley went to see Kissinger about Halibut's exploits.

In 1900, the Navy purchased its first submarine, the USS Holland. She could carry six men.

Almost one hundred years later, the Navy floated a monolith, the USS Seawolf (SSN-21), the largest attack sub ever built.

The last picture of Cochino was taken as she was leaving England in 1949 for the first U.S. submarine spy mission in the Barents Sea. Cochino's commander Rafael Benitez had to speak the worst words any captain could utter: "Abandoning ship."

Tusk traveled with Cochino and saved most of her men. Seven men were washed off Tusk and were lost during the rescue operation.

Cochino's men survived explosions, poisonous gas and stormy seas. Refugees from submariners' hell, they gathered in Norway before leaving for home on board Tusk.

Red Austin may have avoided the group photo, but he penned Cochino's epitaph on the back. He joined the Navy at nineteen looking for action and became a spy on Cochino because he had to have something "spooky" to do.

Gudgeon and diesel boats like her drove the spy program until the Soviets proved beyond any doubt that diesel boats could be too vulnerable.

With the undying belief that nuclear power should and could move submarines, Admiral Hyman Rickover changed the sub force, the Navy, and the course of the cold war.

Nautilus was the first U.S. nuclear powered submarine and the first sub ever to travel submerged to the North Pole.