Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage

by Sherry Sontag

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.