Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage - Softcover

Sontag, Sherry; Drew, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1610393589 ISBN 13: 9781610393584

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2016

Synopsis

Discover the secret history of America's submarine warfare in this fast-paced and deeply researched chronicle of adventure and intrigue during the Cold War that reads like a spy thriller.

Blind Man's Bluff is an exciting, epic story of adventure, ingenuity, courage, and disaster beneath the sea. This New York Times bestseller reveals previously unknown dramas, such as:

• The mission to send submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables.
• How the Navy's own negligence may have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, in 1968.
• The bitter war between the CIA and the Navy and how it threatened to sabotage one of America's most important undersea missions.
• The audacious attempt to steal a Soviet submarine with the help of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and how it was doomed from the start.

A magnificent achievement in investigative reporting, Blind Man's Bluff reads like a spy thriller, but with one important difference-everything in it is true.

About this title

Review:

Little is known--and less has been published--about American submarine espionage during the Cold War. These submerged sentinels silently monitored the Soviet Union's harbors, shadowed its subs, watched its missile tests, eavesdropped on its conversations, and even retrieved top-secret debris from the bottom of the sea. In an engaging mix of first-rate journalism and historical narrative, Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew describe what went on.

"Most of the stories in Blind Man's Bluff have never been told publicly," they write, "and none have ever been told in this level of detail." Among their revelations is the most complete accounting to date of the 1968 disappearance of the U.S.S. Scorpion; the story of how the Navy located a live hydrogen bomb lost by the Air Force; and a plot by the CIA and Howard Hughes to steal a Soviet sub. The most interesting chapter reveals how an American sub secretly tapped Soviet communications cables beneath the waves. Blind Man's Bluff is a compelling book about the courage, ingenuity, and patriotism of America's underwater spies. --John J. Miller

From the Author:

"We've spent our careers as investigative reporters, but this was by far our most challenging story. For one thing, naval investigative agents trailed us, actively discouraging sources from speaking. Still, over the course of five years of research, we eventually interviewed hundreds of men who had never spoken about what they'd done-not even to their wives and children. . . . We'll always remember just how relieved they were to sit down with us and finally tell someone, 'I did this. I was there, too.' They were silent heroes, and this book is their story."

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1610393589
• ISBN 13: 9781610393584
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448