• Complain

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

Here you can read online Josh Dean - The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2017, publisher: Random House, genre: History. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Josh Dean The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History
  • Book:
    The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Random House
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2017
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

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

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

An incredible true tale of espionage and engineering set at the height of the Cold Wara mix between TheHunt for Red October and Argoabout how the CIA, the U.S. Navy, and Americas most eccentric mogul spent six years and nearly a billion dollars to steal the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine K-129 after it had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean; all while the Russians were watching.
In the early hours of February 25, 1968, a Russian submarine armed with three nuclear ballistic missiles set sail from its base in Siberia on a routine combat patrol to Hawaii. Then it vanished.
As the Soviet Navy searched in vain for the lost vessel, a small, highly classified American operation using sophisticated deep-sea spy equipment found itwrecked on the sea floor at a depth of 16,800 feet, far beyond the capabilities of any salvage that existed. But the potential intelligence assets onboard the shipthe nuclear warheads, battle orders, and cryptological machinesjustified going to extreme lengths to find a way to raise the submarine.
So began Project Azorian, a top-secret mission that took six years, cost an estimated $800 million, and would become the largest and most daring covert operation in CIA history.
After the U.S. Navy declared retrieving the sub impossible, the mission fell to the CIAs burgeoning Directorate of Science and Technology, the little-known division responsible for the legendary U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Working with Global Marine Systems, the countrys foremost maker of exotic, deep-sea drilling vessels, the CIA commissioned the most expensive ship ever built and told the world that it belonged to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who would use the mammoth ship to mine rare minerals from the ocean floor. In reality, a complex network of spies, scientists, and politicians attempted a project even crazier than Hughess reputation: raising the sub directly under the watchful eyes of the Russians.

The Taking of K-129
is a riveting, almost unbelievable true-life tale of military history, engineering genius, and high-stakes spy-craft set during the height of the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was a constant fear, and the opportunity to gain even the slightest advantage over your enemy was worth massive risk.

Josh Dean: author's other books


Who wrote The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
ALSO BY JOSH DEAN

Show Dog

The Taking of K-129 How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History - image 1

The Taking of K-129 How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History - image 2

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

The Taking of K-129 How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History - image 3

Copyright 2017 byf Josh Dean

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

DUTTON is a registered trademark and the D colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

here courtesy of Antonio Raspa with minor modifications by Dutton.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING - IN-PUBLICATION DATA

has been applied for.

ISBN 9781101984437 (hardcover) 9781101984444 (ebook)

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Version_1

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.

John Foster Dulles

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Winston Churchill

If ever legends and stories of American technological genius were deserved and not yet realized, they would be about the scientists and engineersthe wizardsof [the] CIA.

Robert M. Gates

For my dad,

who needs to stick around

for a few more books

CONTENTS
PROLOGUE Unexpected Visitors NOVEMBER 1969 A s he often did in the morning - photo 4
PROLOGUE
Unexpected Visitors

NOVEMBER 1969

A s he often did in the morning, Curtis Crooke was reviewing projects with members of his engineering staff when his intercom chimed. A resolute rail of a man with buzzed hair and metal-rimmed Wayfarer-style glasses, Crooke, then just forty-one, was one of the most influential minds in the emerging field of deep-ocean drilling, directing all engineering for his employer, Global Marine, from a large office on the second floor of its headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. The building was an area landmark, an ornate art deco tower with a soaring three-story lobby, known as the Fine Arts Building, and informally as the Havenstrite Building, for the eccentric oil wildcatter Russell E. Havenstrite, who once occupied its posh full-floor penthouse.

Global Marine was only nineteen years old but already an industry leader, with the most versatile offshore drilling fleet in the world, according to its 1968 sales brochure. In just two and a half years, from 1965 to the middle of 1967, Global Marine had designed and built five heavy, ocean-going, self-propelled drilling shipsincluding two four-hundred-foot, eleven-thousand-ton vessels that were the largest of their kind ever builtand every one of them came to be under the direction of Curtis Crooke, who had been with Global Marine since its founding.

Crooke grew up in New York City as the youngest of four kids. His father, a GMAC executive, was wounded in World War I and eventually died of complications from those injuries when Curtis was only seven, but he left the family well-off, and Curtis had a happy, uneventful childhood and adolescence in Forest Hills, Queens, home of the US Open at the West Side Tennis Club, until going west for college, to learn everything he could about boats and the ocean at UCLA and then UC Berkeley.

Dozens of talented men worked under the handsome, charming, disarmingly easygoing Crooke, who favored loosely knotted ties and off-the-rack button-downs at a time when executives wore suits. He drove a red Ferrari 250 California, typically very fast, and was known for being the calm, reasonable person in any room. Crooke was the only man on the executive floor who never closed his office door, which endeared him to his engineers, who loved him and the work. They came to Global Maine for the opportunity to build ships and plunder the deep ocean, a realm that, in 1969, was as much of a mystery to humankind as outer space. Crooke was a development engineer himself, with experience in fluid mechanics, hydrodynamics, and oceanography, but his real talent was in management and business development. He was a born leader so comfortable in his position and skin that he often took afternoon naps upright in his chair with his feet on the desk and the door wide open.

Ive got a man on the phone who says he needs to see you, Crookes secretary said, interrupting the meeting.

Who is he? Crooke replied.

He wont tell me, but he says its extremely important.

Tell him Im in the middle of something and please take a message.

Crooke resumed the conversation with his engineers, but moments later, the intercom sounded again. This time, his secretary reported that the man was very persistent and wasnt taking the hint. He wanted Crooke to know that he was a potential customer with a large piece of business requiring immediate attention. He absolutely could not wait.

This was certainly unusual. Crooke was annoyed but also curious about the man and the message he so desperately wanted to share. Still, he was in a meeting. Crooke asked his secretary to tell the man that, as hed already stated, he was busy, but hed be willing to see him later that morning, when the schedule cleared, if she could set something up.

Five minutes later, the intercom buzzed again.

Im sorry, Mr. Crooke, but now the man is here, with two other men, and he says he needs to see you immediately.

The engineers sitting around Crooke looked at their boss, wondering how he might react. And he was chewing on that notion himself when his door opened and three men, all in suits, strutted through. The one who appeared to be in charge was about forty and of average height but thick in the shoulders and middle. He had black hair, parted on the left and slicked back, and as soon as he and his colleagues were through the office door, he closed it behind thema brash display even more jarring to Crooke because he rarely ever shut that door himself.

The entry was so sudden, so surprising, so brazen, that Crooke just stared up at the intruders through the tinted lenses of his glasses. He apologized to his engineers and asked if they could resume the meeting later.

As soon as they left, the man with the slicked hair spoke.

Mr. Crooke, Im John Parangosky, he said. This is Alex Holzer and Paul Evans, and we all work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I assume you know what that is. Now, he said, approaching the round table where Crooke had been sitting, do you mind if we sit down?

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

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

Look at similar books to The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


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

Discussion, reviews of the book The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.