The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History

by Josh Dean

Yes, there are manganese nodules there, Pasho would tell him, but they were particularly deep, much more so than in other locations he’d been studying, and of a lower quality than deposits in other areas. What’s more, that area of the Pacific Ocean was notoriously difficult to operate in, known for bad weather and violent seas. But it was the sampling device designed for a ship the engineers were working on that really didn’t make sense to Pasho. The ship was the Glomar II and it was supposedly being prepared for a prototype mining trip out in the Pacific. Pasho had seen the sketches and models of the so-called sampling device, and he knew that no sane engineer would sign off on a design like that if the real purpose of the mission was to reap sample nodules from the floor. He grew more and more suspicious. The concept—essentially a big clamshell to grab things off the seabed—just didn’t seem right. Pasho wanted to know and have a better understanding of what he was doing, so he typed out a memo explaining his confusion about the project and delivered it to Krutein’s desk.