BLIND MAN'S BLUFF: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. - Review - book reviews

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1998 by David Ayer

BLIND MAN'S BLUFF: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew Public Affairs, $25

In 1987, just out of high school, I joined the Navy and after a difficult training program found myself as a Sonar Operator on a nuclear attack submarine. Our operations consisted mainly of training work-ups ("drilling and killing") and fleet exercises in which our smaller, older boat would play the bad guy, sneak in through the antisubmarine defenses and torpedo the Admiral's command ship again and again and again. After a series of inspections culminating in our receiving renewed reactor safety and weapons certifications, one ominous day the whole crew filled out their wills and we deployed on a two month "Spec Op." I had no idea what happened on a Special Operation and none of the more experienced sailors would tell me; they took great pride in their ability to keep their mouths shut. That first day on station was the most exciting of my life.

And that was just the first day. After sixty-seven days continuously submerged, and running out of food, we surfaced off the beautiful California coast and pulled into San Diego with a very skinny crew. I am still legally prohibited from discussing where we went and what we did, which is why I will be forever grateful for the book Blind Man's Bluff It is a godsend for veteran submariners who have had to explain away long absences from their families with the simple euphemism "special operations."

With Naval security agents on their heels, The New York Times investigative journalists Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew have made a successful end run around stacks of secrecy oaths and the locked lips of the Silent Service to make public some of the most astounding military operations of the Cold War. It is a surprisingly complete account of how the ultimate stealth war machine, the nuclear submarine, became the ultimate spy platform in a strange marriage between the Navy's "go to hell and back" submarine captains and the CIA's spooks. Together they engaged in the world's second oldest profession, spying, and achieved some amazing successes, as well as the occasional blunder.

This book will be an eye opener for those who think the Cold War was a mere sitzkreig as Warsaw Pact and NATO armies eyeballed each other across the Iron Curtain. Undersea the Cold War was boiling hot, as the U.S. Navy engaged in incredibly aggressive operations against Soviet Naval forces, concealing the dangers from the American leadership, often going so far as to falsify patrol reports. Thousands of sailors ventured into harm's way as American subs maintained year round vigils off the Soviet coastline, even venturing into its territorial waters as they carefully cataloged the latest Soviet weapons developments.

In one of the more gripping incidents detailed in the book, the USS Seawolf was on the bottom of the desolate Siberian Sea of Okhotsk, tapping undersea telephone cables, when a powerful storm threatened to bury her in the seabed. In a desperate moment, Seawolf's captain contemplated detonating the high explosive scuttling charges that would prevent his submarine and its crew from falling into Soviet hands.

One disturbing revelation may lay to rest wild rumors that have circulated in the submarine community for decades regarding the USS Scorpion. Lost with all hands in the Atlantic in 1968, the Soviets were often accused of torpedoing the boat. Presenting new evidence, the book's authors make the case that the tragedy was caused by a weapons malfunction and could have been prevented by the Navy with a simple modification to its torpedoes.

Packed with real life adventures that Tom Clancy could only have guessed at, the book is more than a collection of sea stories. It reveals how submarine operations during the Cold War had a profound impact on strategic decisions made in the Kremlin and Washington. While the superpowers conducted peacetalks, their submarines, armed with nuclear weapons, were colliding with each other on a regular basis.

In November 1969, when U.S. and Soviet relations were moving towards detente, the USS Gato collided with a Soviet Hotel class missile submarine in the Barents Sea a mere two days before arms control talks were to begin in Helsinki, Finland. Though there were no injuries and neither sub was seriously damaged, the Soviet Navy believed the Gato had sunk. They scoured the Barents for her corpse, which Soviet negotiators could have used as proof of American bad faith in the negotiations. Following the orders of Atlantic Fleet Commanders, the Gato's Captain falsified patrol reports to indicate he had discontinued his patrol two days before the collision. President Nixon was not apprised of the accident. Thus the Navy was able to continue high-risk operations despite the fears Soviet and American leaders often expressed that World War III would begin with just such an incident. Submarine collisions aren't just a part of Cold War history: in March 1993 the USS Grayling collided with a Russian Delta IV missile submarine, prompting President Clinton to give Russian President Boris Yelstin a formal apology.