New sources say C.I.A. attempt to grab Soviet sub. failed

Press, 11 December 1976, Page 8

New sources say C.I.A. attempt to grab Soviet sub. failed

By SEYMOUR HERSH, of 'the “New York Times,” through NZPA New York The United States Central ■ Intelligence Agency’s attempt in July, 1974, to salvage a Soviet submarine failed when an error in judgment resulted in damage to a huge claw that was to have retrieved the submarine from a depth of three miles, according to two former members of the project. Wayne Collier, of Houston, who was in charge of recruitment on the project for the C.1.A., and his brother, Billy, who served as a cutting-torch handler, said •that at least two prongs of the claw were severely bent iback as CJ.A. technicians itried to grab the 320 ft long iSoviet submarine on the i ocean floor 750 miles north of Hawaii, where she hadi sunk in 1968. The claw was: unable to support fully the: vessel as she was being lifted, and she broke into two large pieces, the brothers said. | The front section, less

than a third of the submarine, was brought to the surface. according to high-level intelligence officials. The C.1.A., which spent four years building a com-puter-run submarine-rescue ship, the Glomar Explorer, was forced to cancel a second attempt to recover the main section of the vessel after newspaper publicity about the operation early last year. The Glomar Explorer was built under elaborate cover and was considered — under the code names Azorian, Jennifer, and Matador — to be one of the Government’s closest secrets. In a series of interviews, the Collier brothers also provided an insight into the; C.l.A.’s extensive efforts to : recruit, train, and direct the; 125 crew members of thei Glomar Explorer without at-; tracting public attention. Their detailed account of the operation’s basic failure

— the inability tq retrieve all of the submarine, including the code room and three nuclear-tipped missiles — wu independently!

verified by the “New York Times” in interviews with another crew member and high Government officials with first-hand knowledge of the operation.

The Collier brothers’ description of the unsuccessful mission is at variance with published reports, including one in “Time” magazine alleging that the C.I.A. operation did recover all of the submarine, and one in “Science” magazine speculating that the vessel might have been recovered in pieces. Such reports, which have drawn official “No comments” from the Pentagon and the C.1.A., were depicted as fallacious by the Collier brothers and by sources of the “New York Times” inside the intelligence community. Richard Duncan, deputy chief of correspondents for “Time” magazine, acknowledged, “We’ve run into questions on our own about the story we published, and we’re still investigating. I’m not willing or able to say now that our story is wrong.” John Walsh, editor of the

news and comment section of “Science” magazine, said that his magazine’s article “clearly distinguished between fact and speculation. We think that it added important information, and feel it is correct in its basic analysis.” Wayne Collier, who is 33 and is now in the oil business in Houston, also said that some crew members of the Glomar Explorer, including his brother, were exposed to radio-activity from corroded nuclear warheads during the C-I.A.’s subsequent analysis of the recovered section of the Soviet submarine. Mr Collier added that he and his brother were considering legal action against the intelligence agency. “I feel it was negligence on the part of the agency,” Wayne Collier said. Since leaving his iob at the Glomar Explorer. Wayne said, his brother Billy — who weighs 240 lb and is known as “Bimbo” to his friends — has felt weak. “It’s as if he doesn’t have any energy.” Wayne Collier said. In addition, he said, Billy’s wife suffered a miscarriage three months ago.

Wayne Collier said he did not know whether the other crew members who were exposed to the radio-activity were suffering from similar ailments. The Glomar Explorer was widely reported to be a revolutionary ocean-mining vessel built for Howard Hughes’s Summa Corporation. The late Hughes’s known eccentricity, and his agreement to pretend to own the ship, were key factors in shielding the vessel’s ultimate mission for the C.I.A. for nearly four years. Wayne Collier and his literary agent, Michael Larsen, of San Francisco, have made available to the ‘Times” his diaries and notebooks dealing with the Glomar Explorer, more than 150.000 words that, he eventually hopes to pub-! lish.

Although Wayne Collier did not directly participate in the recovery operation, his account of what went wrong has been corroborated in subsequent interviews with a number of high-level intelligence officials and others in the Government whose information on the project was reliable in the past.