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Speaker 1: Hey, I'll use snaffoo fans or snaffo heads, snap snaff snaffoops,

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Speaker 1: snaffoo snaff footies. I don't know what are we gonna

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Speaker 1: call you. We'll figure that out today. I have a

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Speaker 1: very fun treat for you, a little glimpse into my

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Speaker 1: New York Times best selling book, Snaffoo, The Definitive Guide

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Speaker 1: to History's Greatest screw Ups. Yes, you heard that right.

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Speaker 1: It is a New York Times best seller. Baby, I'm

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Speaker 1: so proud of this thing. Oh my gosh. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: listen up. Here's the deal. Father's Day is fast approaching,

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Speaker 1: and we all know what that means. You're scrambling to

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Speaker 1: find a gift for all the great dads in your life.

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Speaker 1: And let's be honest, neckties, golf balls, that's so twentieth century, folks.

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Speaker 1: But never fear. I'm here to help make it stress

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Speaker 1: free for you this year. Yeah, I think you know

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Speaker 1: where I'm going with this. Grab a copy of my

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Speaker 1: compendium of his Greatest screw Ups. It's Dad reviewed and

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Speaker 1: Dad approved, and yours is gonna love it. Trust me,

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Speaker 1: I know I'm a dad. The book is full of

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Speaker 1: thirty plus different snaffoos. Each chapter is its own contained

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Speaker 1: short story. This is the perfect gift. It is great

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Speaker 1: for beach reading, bedside reading. I'm gonna say it, you

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Speaker 1: can even read it in the bathroom. I mean, go

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Speaker 1: for it. I'm not gonna judge. Anywhere you read is

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Speaker 1: a good place to read. Okay. So just to give

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Speaker 1: you a little snapshot or a little glimpse into the book,

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Speaker 1: this week, I have pulled an exclusive chapter from the

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Speaker 1: Snafu audiobook, narrated in its entirety by yours truly. Project

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Speaker 1: Azorian a tale stranger than fiction involving Cold War chaos,

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Speaker 1: a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine, a giant claw machine built

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Speaker 1: to withstand treacherous ocean depths, and everyone's favorite mid century

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Speaker 1: mad cap billionaire, Howard Hughes. Yes, even the legendary Howard

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Speaker 1: Hughes is tied up in this one, so don't forget.

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Speaker 1: The book is available in bookstores everywhere or online at

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Speaker 1: Amazon or of course our own website, Snaffo dashbook dot com.

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Speaker 1: That is Snafu dashbook dot com. And now please enjoy

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Speaker 1: the riproaring adventure of the CIA's Project Azorian. Project Azorian

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Speaker 1: a sub above how the CIA tried to win the

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Speaker 1: world's most expensive and difficult claw machine. In the early

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Speaker 1: hours of June fifth, nineteen seventy four, security guard Mike

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Speaker 1: Davis stood outside the building at seventy twenty Romain Street

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Speaker 1: in Hollywood. As he enjoyed the balmy sixty degree weather

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Speaker 1: the light of the full moon shining through the cloudy

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Speaker 1: Mike suddenly felt something pressing into his back a gun.

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Speaker 1: A group of four burglars grabbed poor Mike and forced

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Speaker 1: him to unlock the door. Why did these thieves want

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Speaker 1: to get inside so badly? Because the building Mike was

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Speaker 1: guarding was the corporate headquarters of Howard Hughes, the reclusive

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Speaker 1: billionaire aviator, film producer, philanthropist, and all around all American

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Speaker 1: weirdo rich guy. Think Jeff Bezos, but with a pencil

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Speaker 1: thin mustache and actually, you know, adventurous. After the burglars

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Speaker 1: forced Mike to let them in, they wheeled in a

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Speaker 1: heavy tank filled with highly flammable acetylene gas. They mazed

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Speaker 1: their way through the Art Deco style two story building

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Speaker 1: before finally marching into an office that contained a safe

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Speaker 1: and a large vault jackpot. Wait a second, you might

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Speaker 1: be asking, The burglars just waltzed right in there. Shouldn't

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Speaker 1: this famously secretive I have some sort of security or

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Speaker 1: alarm system for this building that houses his sensitive, top

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Speaker 1: secret shit well reader or listener. There was an alarm system,

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Speaker 1: it just wasn't working. Actually, it had been out of

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Speaker 1: order for some time, and Mike was the only guard

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Speaker 1: on duty. Seriously, this place had worse security than the

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Speaker 1: gas station where my friends and I used to steal

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Speaker 1: packs of gum as kids. The burglars turned on the

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Speaker 1: acetylene tank and grabbed their torches. You know the big

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Speaker 1: heist scene and Thief where James Kahn puts on a

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Speaker 1: welding suit, lights up a long ass torch and drives

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Speaker 1: it straight into a locked metal door as sparks fly everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Just imagine that. And after hours of slowly melting the

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Speaker 1: door off its hinges, one of the burglars took off

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Speaker 1: his suit, wiped his brow, and smirked as he said,

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Speaker 1: we're in. The burglars stormed into the vault and grabbed

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Speaker 1: everything they could. Four hours after first arriving, the burglars escaped,

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Speaker 1: hauling the acetylene tank with them and all their stolen loot.

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Speaker 1: They ended up with quite the grab bag. Sixty eight

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars in cash, two Wedgewood vases, a ceramic samovar,

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Speaker 1: two butterfly collections, three digital watches, and an antique Mongolian

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Speaker 1: eating bowl. Again, Hughes was a rich weirdo. Maybe he

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Speaker 1: was planning on sitting down to a delicious meal of

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Speaker 1: pickled butterflies perfectly arranged in his Mongolian bowl. But even

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Speaker 1: more valuable than those preserved critters and antiques were two

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Speaker 1: foot lockers full of files, documents that would soon cause

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Speaker 1: an international diplomatic scandal. These documents revealed Hughes's participation in

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Speaker 1: a secret CIA plot that involved a sunken Soviet submarine,

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Speaker 1: underwater nukes, and the most difficult claw game in the

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Speaker 1: world the sub It all began six years earlier, on

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Speaker 1: March first, nineteen sixty eight, when a Soviet submarine named

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Speaker 1: K one twenty nine sailed out from a naval base

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Speaker 1: in Petropavlovsk, way out in the Russian Far East and

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Speaker 1: over four thousand miles from Moscow. K one twenty nine

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Speaker 1: was equipped with three nuclear warheads. Each single warhead was

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Speaker 1: nearly seventy times more powerful than the bomb dropped by

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Speaker 1: the United States on Hiroshima. In the case of nuclear war,

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Speaker 1: the sub would fire off its nukes to targets on

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Speaker 1: the west coast of the United States. The sub began

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Speaker 1: its standard peacetime patrol in the North Pacific, but at

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Speaker 1: some point in the middle of March, the Soviets lost

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Speaker 1: communication with K one twenty nine. The sub went radio silent.

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Speaker 1: It's still not clear exactly what happened. A declassified, heavily

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Speaker 1: redacted CIA report published in nineteen eight five simply says

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Speaker 1: that the submarine suffered an accident, cause unknown and sank

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Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred and sixty miles northwest of Hawaii.

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Speaker 1: The report is also mom about how the CIA came

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Speaker 1: to ascertain the location of the sub sinking. According to

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Speaker 1: military historian Matthew Aid, archival documents have suggested that the

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Speaker 1: US Navy's underwater sonar the sound surveillance system might have

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Speaker 1: discovered the location of the sunken sub. Whatever the case,

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Speaker 1: the Soviets had lost a nuke equipped submarine, They fruitlessly

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Speaker 1: searched for it for two months, then gave up, and

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Speaker 1: that whole time the CIA knew exactly where it was.

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Speaker 1: Why was the CIA so interested in the sub because

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Speaker 1: inside was potentially valuable intelligence that could reveal the inner

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Speaker 1: workings of the Soviet Navy codebooks, decoding machines, and burst transmitters,

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Speaker 1: not to mention the nukes themselves, which would still be functional.

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Speaker 1: There was just one problem. K one nine lay sixteen

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Speaker 1: five hundred feet beneath the surface of the ocean. How

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Speaker 1: the hell do you get down there in the first place,

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Speaker 1: And once you're three miles deep, how do you then

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Speaker 1: bring the sub back up to the surface. These questions

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Speaker 1: might have left a recovery effort dead in the water,

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Speaker 1: but with such a tantalizing prize on the ocean floor,

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Speaker 1: the CIA couldn't resist to consider their options. Longtime CIA

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Speaker 1: agent John Perengosky convened a task force in an anonymous

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Speaker 1: office near, of all places, Tyson's Corner, the largest shopping

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Speaker 1: mall in the DC area Today, if you showed up

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Speaker 1: there for a meeting, you could browse the racks at

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Speaker 1: Urban Outfitters and grab a pretzel from Anti Ann's. But

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Speaker 1: there isn't a secret meeting room anymore. At least Perengosky

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Speaker 1: got in ahead of Anti Anne, though, according to the

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Speaker 1: book The Taking of K I nine, he was a

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Speaker 1: fair boss, occasionally even friendly, but no one was immune

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Speaker 1: from his temper. I assume Perngosky wasn't very forgiving if

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Speaker 1: you came back late from lunch at the food court. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: Parngosky assembled a team of scientists, engineers, and submarine experts

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Speaker 1: to brainstorm ideas for the sub rescue mission. Imagine a

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Speaker 1: bunch of suits scribbling ideas on a whiteboard. Maybe they

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Speaker 1: could place buoyant material kind of like a really sophisticated

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Speaker 1: pool noodle under the sub and then hope the material

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Speaker 1: was floaty enough to carry the sub all the way up.

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Speaker 1: Maybe instead of a pool noodle, they could simply generate

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Speaker 1: a buoyant gas like hydrogen or nitrogen through electrolysis, causing

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Speaker 1: the sub to float back up without even touching it.

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Speaker 1: All of these ideas were one hundred percent real and

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Speaker 1: actually considered by the CIA, And yeah, if they sounded

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Speaker 1: hair brained and doomed to fail, you'd be right. But

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Speaker 1: believe it or not, the loution Parngoski and company finally

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Speaker 1: landed on was even more hair brain the doomedest to

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Speaker 1: fail of them all. That's right, folks, Parngoski and company

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Speaker 1: decided to use a literal claw to pick up K

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Speaker 1: one twenty nine from the bottom of the ocean and

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Speaker 1: lift it back up through brute force the claw. The

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Speaker 1: claw would consist of five separate grasping claws connected to

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Speaker 1: heavy duty winches that would be mounted onto a specially

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Speaker 1: built ship. The ship had to be able to withstand

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Speaker 1: the weight of the one thousand, seven hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: ton Soviet sub. The plan was for the claw to

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Speaker 1: descend to the seafloor, slip a sort of metal hammock

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Speaker 1: beneath the sub, and then gingerly lift it back up.

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Speaker 1: You're probably picturing one of those arcade claw games at

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Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese right now, And yeah, that's exactly what

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Speaker 1: I want you to imagine, because think about how hard

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Speaker 1: it is to even pick up a stuffed animal from

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the machine. Those things are impossible to win. Now,

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Speaker 1: think about trying to pick up a submarine that's more

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Speaker 1: than three miles underwater and has the weight of about

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Speaker 1: eight hundred and seventy five passenger cars. What could possibly

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Speaker 1: go wrong? As it turns out, just about everything, and

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Speaker 1: they knew it too. Senior intelligence officers gave the project

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Speaker 1: a ten percent success rate. If you were a civil

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Speaker 1: engineer and designed a bridge that had a ninety percent

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Speaker 1: chance of collapsing, what do you think your boss would say.

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Speaker 1: Would they be like, great, idea, here's an ungodly amount

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Speaker 1: of money to build this bridge that nine times out

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Speaker 1: of ten will catastrophically fail. Well, that's exactly what the

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Speaker 1: CIA decided to do. On October thirtieth, nineteen seventy, two

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Speaker 1: years after K one twenty nine SANC, the agency authorized

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Speaker 1: Project Azorian, the official name for the mission to recover

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Speaker 1: the Soviet sub There were definitely concerns about the mission,

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Speaker 1: especially the constantly ballooning cost. Suspiciously, the declassified CIA report

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Speaker 1: redacts any and all specific dollar figures. What it does

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Speaker 1: mention is how like the making of Apocalypse Now, the

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Speaker 1: project kept getting delayed and going over budget. For example,

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Speaker 1: Project to Zorian was first costed at redacted number in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. In less than a year, it had jumped

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Speaker 1: more than fifty percent to some redacted number. We'll probably

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Speaker 1: never know the exact cost, but Matthew Aid estimates it

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Speaker 1: at half a billion with a B dollars at the time.

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Speaker 1: That's over three billion dollars in today's money. How much

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Speaker 1: is three billion? It's more than the individual GDP of

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Speaker 1: thirty five sovereign nations. In other words, this CIA floating

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Speaker 1: claw machine was more expensive than entireier economies, which damn

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Speaker 1: that makes paying a quarter to play a claw game

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Speaker 1: at chuck e Cheese seem like a bargain. The voyage,

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Speaker 1: the CIA had one last problem with Project disorient How

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Speaker 1: do we keep this thing a secret? We can't actually

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Speaker 1: tell everyone we're building a giant claw ship to retrieve

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Speaker 1: a Soviet submarine. By nineteen seventy one, the United States

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Speaker 1: and the USSR were in a period of detante. The

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Speaker 1: two countries had signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, and a mission to essentially steal a

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Speaker 1: Soviet sub wouldn't be great for diplomatic relations. So the

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Speaker 1: CIA needed a cover story and decided to reach out

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Speaker 1: to Howard Hughes. Could Hughes pretend to be constructing a

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Speaker 1: research vessel equipped with a giant claw for the purpose

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Speaker 1: of mining deep sea metals. Hughes was in many ways

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Speaker 1: a perfect choice. He already had a reputation as a

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Speaker 1: seat gritive eccentric billionaire who invested in all sorts of

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Speaker 1: expensive projects and already had a stated interest in deep

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Speaker 1: sea mining. He had also previously collaborated with the government

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Speaker 1: to develop satellites for classified intelligence purposes, and sure enough,

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Speaker 1: Hughes was more than happy to help construction on the

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Speaker 1: Hughes Glomar explorer. Hughes also agreed to let the Claw

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Speaker 1: ship be named after him. Began in nineteen seventy one

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Speaker 1: in a shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania, a half hour south

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Speaker 1: of Philadelphia. In November nineteen seventy two, the ship was

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Speaker 1: christened in the usual way, smashing a bottle of champagne

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Speaker 1: on the hull. Not that things exactly went to plan.

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Speaker 1: The person who was supposed to smash the bottle missed

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Speaker 1: twice and had to throw a third bottle at the

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Speaker 1: ship as it cast off. Not everything as an omen,

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Speaker 1: but sometimes such occurrences are a little on the nose.

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Speaker 1: The CIA was able to maintain this cover for quite

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Speaker 1: some time. When the hGe, let's call it the hGe,

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Speaker 1: so I don't have to keep saying Glomar finally set

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Speaker 1: sail in nineteen seventy three. The Los Angeles Times noted

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Speaker 1: newsmen were not permitted to view the launch, and details

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Speaker 1: of the ship's destination and mission were not released. The

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Speaker 1: press chalked up the secrecy surrounding the ship and its

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Speaker 1: mission to Hughes his own propensity for privacy. The hGe

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Speaker 1: first sailed from Pennsylvania to Bermuda. Because it was too

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Speaker 1: big to pass through the Panama Canal, it had to

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Speaker 1: sail all the way around the southern tip of South America.

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Speaker 1: After making a brief pitstop in Chile, the hGe sailed

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Speaker 1: on and reached its destination of Long Beach, California, at

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Speaker 1: the end of September, where it stayed at harbor for

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Speaker 1: several months in preparation for the recovery mission. It also

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Speaker 1: kept experiencing mechanical failures. Literal cracks started showing in the hall,

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Speaker 1: which divers had to seal up. This thing was pretty

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00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:01,120
Speaker 1: much held together by duct tape and a prayer. The

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00:16:01,200 --> 00:16:04,920
Speaker 1: crew couldn't fix everything and eventually just gave up. One

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00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:08,440
Speaker 1: small but persistent seal leak was never corrected, and the

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00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:12,160
Speaker 1: seepage of a few gallons per hour was accepted. Thus,

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Speaker 1: the hGe lived with a small puddle in the starboard

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00:16:15,440 --> 00:16:19,560
Speaker 1: wing well kind of embarrassing. Imagine a real estate agent

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Speaker 1: trying to sell you a house and explaining that there's

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Speaker 1: a permanent puddle on the top floor because the roof

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Speaker 1: isn't fully sealed. But the CIA had already invested too

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Speaker 1: much time and too many resources into this over budget,

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Speaker 1: creaky ass claw ship. I guess you could say they'd

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Speaker 1: fallen into the sorry sunk cost fallacy. So sorry. On

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Speaker 1: June seventh, nineteen seventy four, President Nixon personally gave the

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Speaker 1: official and final green light to recover the sub. It

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Speaker 1: was showtime the moment of truth on Independence Day, as

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Speaker 1: fireworks exploded over cities across the country in celebration of

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Speaker 1: America's one hundred ninety eighth birthday. The hGe traveled to

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Speaker 1: a spot one thousand, five hundred and sixty miles northeast

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Speaker 1: of Hawaii, where K one nine lay at the bottom

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Speaker 1: of the ocean. John Prengosky, the CIA agent who had

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Speaker 1: come up with the whole claw idea, was closely monitoring

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Speaker 1: the mission back at headquarters, but when the hGe arrived

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00:17:28,160 --> 00:17:31,840
Speaker 1: at the site, the mission was very nearly thwarted. The

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Speaker 1: crew noticed Soviet helicopters flying overhead taking photos. Plus Soviet

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Speaker 1: Navy ships kept surveilling the hGe. One vessel named Chasma

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00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:46,200
Speaker 1: came within a mile of the hGe and center radio transmission.

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Speaker 1: What are you doing here, the Americans replied, we are

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Speaker 1: conducting ocean mining tests, deep ocean mining tests. After a

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Speaker 1: few more tents back and forth, Chasma signed off with

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Speaker 1: I wish you all the best and went on its

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Speaker 1: merry way to Petropavlovsk, the port city that K one

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Speaker 1: nine originally set out from. The Soviets were none the

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Speaker 1: wiser about hge's true purpose, But even with the Soviets

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Speaker 1: off their backs, the crew still had to worry about

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Speaker 1: maintenance issues, which just kept getting worse. One mechanical failure

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Speaker 1: caused a display of noise, fire, sparks and smoke primarily

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Speaker 1: and spastik shaking of the derrick. And as I always say,

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Speaker 1: whenever there's spastik shaking of the dereck, things aren't looking good.

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Speaker 1: The crew in general weren't confident about the chances for success.

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Speaker 1: In fact, they had nicknamed the claw Clementine since they

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Speaker 1: figured the sub was lost and gone forever. But it

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Speaker 1: was too late to back out now. Just after midnight,

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Speaker 1: On July twenty first, the world's most expensive and difficult

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Speaker 1: claw game began. The ships on board computers flashed with

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00:18:57,840 --> 00:19:02,280
Speaker 1: real time info and photos. The massive winch slowly unspooled

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Speaker 1: miles and miles of piping, with Clementine descending into the

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Speaker 1: deepest reaches of the Pacific. According to the book blind

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00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:14,040
Speaker 1: Man's Bluff, one man who recruited sailors for the crew

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00:19:14,119 --> 00:19:17,600
Speaker 1: later compared the mission to lifting a twenty five foot

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Speaker 1: long steel tube off the ground with a cable lowered

289
00:19:20,840 --> 00:19:23,359
Speaker 1: from the top of the one hundred ten story World

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Speaker 1: Trade Center on a pitch black night, haunted by swirling winds.

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Speaker 1: So you know, everyone was set up for success. Down

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Speaker 1: Clementine went not much lives sixteen thousand, five hundred feet

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Speaker 1: beneath the surface of the ocean. That depth is considered

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Speaker 1: the abyssle zone, where there's no sunlight and the temperature

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00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:48,800
Speaker 1: is just above freezing. The water pressure can reach up

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Speaker 1: to six hundred times the pressure of the atmosphere. The

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00:19:52,520 --> 00:19:55,879
Speaker 1: only things swimming around are freaky looking sea creatures with

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Speaker 1: creepy names like faceless fish and fang tooths. It took

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00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:06,320
Speaker 1: eleven days for Clementine to reach the bottom of the ocean.

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Speaker 1: Using the built in cameras, the crew carefully maneuvered the

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Speaker 1: claw to grasp the sub, only for them to miscalculate

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Speaker 1: and slam the claw into the seabed. Whoops, But Clementine,

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00:20:20,359 --> 00:20:24,240
Speaker 1: faithful old Girl, was still intact. They went in for

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00:20:24,280 --> 00:20:29,400
Speaker 1: another attempt, and this time were right on target. Clementine

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00:20:29,480 --> 00:20:32,800
Speaker 1: latched onto the sub and gingerly began lifting it up

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00:20:33,240 --> 00:20:37,600
Speaker 1: at an agonizingly slow rate of six feet per minute.

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00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:40,439
Speaker 1: It took another eight days for the claw to rise

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00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:44,600
Speaker 1: from the crash site. Imagine the crew's excitement when, after

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00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:48,040
Speaker 1: waiting for more than a week, the claw finally returned

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00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:54,159
Speaker 1: to the surface to quote another American military vessel mission accomplished,

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00:20:55,119 --> 00:20:59,679
Speaker 1: and then imagine their disappointment when the claw emerged with

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00:20:59,800 --> 00:21:03,240
Speaker 1: only a thirty eight foot long section of the front hull.

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00:21:04,080 --> 00:21:07,119
Speaker 1: About two thirds of the sub had broken off on

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00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:11,080
Speaker 1: Clementine's way up. Three of the five grasping claws had

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00:21:11,160 --> 00:21:15,199
Speaker 1: cracked and sunk, with only two claws still holding the

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00:21:15,280 --> 00:21:19,560
Speaker 1: highly fragile sub. The sub then split off and sank

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00:21:19,600 --> 00:21:24,240
Speaker 1: as well, along with the nuclear missile codebooks, decoding machines,

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00:21:24,600 --> 00:21:30,040
Speaker 1: and the burst transmitters. Essentially, they lost everything the CIA

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00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:34,000
Speaker 1: was dying to reclaim. What the Claw did recover were

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00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:36,960
Speaker 1: the bodies of six of the sub's crew members, who

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00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:39,399
Speaker 1: were trapped in the front ten percent of the sub.

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00:21:40,119 --> 00:21:43,879
Speaker 1: Prengosky had ordered that any recovered bodies would be given

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Speaker 1: a proper funeral. The Soviet crew members were buried at

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00:21:47,960 --> 00:21:52,119
Speaker 1: sea with full military honors. The funeral was filmed, and

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00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:54,960
Speaker 1: the recording was given to the Russian government a year

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Speaker 1: after the Soviet Union's collapse. There's honestly something touching about that.

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Speaker 1: The crew of K one twenty nine may have been

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00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:06,360
Speaker 1: working for America's sworn enemy, but they certainly didn't deserve

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Speaker 1: to die in the depths of the Pacific, thousands of

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00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:13,440
Speaker 1: miles from home. At least after their deaths they were

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Speaker 1: treated with a little humanity. And so it was that

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00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:19,679
Speaker 1: on August eighth, nineteen seventy four, with most of K

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Speaker 1: one twenty nine still at the bottom of the ocean,

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00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 1: the Hughes Glomar Explorer began its voyage home. The blowback. Well,

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00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:34,520
Speaker 1: the CIA told itself, at least we were able to

336
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:37,000
Speaker 1: maintain our cover story, and no one's the wiser that

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00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:40,440
Speaker 1: our mission failed. Some in the government even believed Project

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00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:43,640
Speaker 1: Azorian to be a success. In a post mission White

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00:22:43,640 --> 00:22:48,119
Speaker 1: House meeting, Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger declared that the

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00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:52,119
Speaker 1: operation is a marvel. The CIA figured that even if

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00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:55,640
Speaker 1: they didn't recover the entire sub they'd proved that it

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00:22:55,720 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 1: was at least possible. John Perengosky pushed for a second

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Speaker 1: day attempt, which was scheduled for July nineteen seventy five.

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Speaker 1: Hopefully they could keep the nosy press from catching on

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00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:12,159
Speaker 1: one more time, but alas. Back on June fifth, nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy four, while the hGe was docked thirty three miles

347
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:19,359
Speaker 1: south in Long Beach waiting to launch out into the Pacific,

348
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: a group of four burglars broke into the Hughes corporate

349
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:27,520
Speaker 1: headquarters and stole top secret documents that revealed the true

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00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:31,960
Speaker 1: purpose of the ship. The press discovered these documents, and

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00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:36,560
Speaker 1: Azorian's cover story was finally blown in February nineteen seventy five,

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00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:40,840
Speaker 1: when The Los Angeles Times published the first article revealing

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Speaker 1: the actual mission of the hGe. The following month, our

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00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 1: goodpal Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Jack Anderson, you'll remember him,

355
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:54,480
Speaker 1: from Operation Popeye broke the story of Azorian on National TV,

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00:23:55,440 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 1: and surprise, surprise, our other legendary journalist, Seymour Hirsch, also

357
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:02,959
Speaker 1: wrote about the failed mission for The New York Times.

358
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Speaker 1: Anyone else missed the glory days of Gumshoe reporters like

359
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 1: Anderson and Hirsch. Hirsch spoke to an anonymous Navy admiral

360
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Speaker 1: who pointed out that even if the CIA did recover

361
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Speaker 1: the secret Soviet codebooks, which would have been seven years

362
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: out of date by that point, the codes wouldn't mean

363
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:24,920
Speaker 1: much because they were automatically randomly scrambled every twenty four hours.

364
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Speaker 1: By June nineteen seventy five, all this bad press forced

365
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:34,440
Speaker 1: the CIA to cancel the planned second recovery attempt. John Parrengoski,

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00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:38,720
Speaker 1: the agent who had spearheaded Project Dozorian, had retired by then,

367
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Speaker 1: and naturally, the Soviets weren't happy about the news either.

368
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 1: The USSR ambassador to the United States pressed for more

369
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:50,879
Speaker 1: details about Project Desorian. Perhaps the Soviets were embarrassed that,

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00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 1: despite heavily surveilling the hGe, they'd failed to ascertain its

371
00:24:55,359 --> 00:25:00,879
Speaker 1: true purpose. American journalists also kept digging. The journalist named

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00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:04,680
Speaker 1: Harriet and Philippi filed a Freedom of Information Act request

373
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: for more info. Walking a diplomatic tightrope, the CIA stated

374
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: that they could neither confirm nor deny the agency's connection

375
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:17,880
Speaker 1: to the Hughes Glomar Explorer's true mission. It's the perfect

376
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: non denial denial. Maybe this thing isn't true, but if

377
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 1: it is true, we can't tell you about it. A

378
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: court case the following year upheld the CIA's quote refusal

379
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: to confirm or deny existence of records, and Philippe's Foyer

380
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 1: request was thrown out. You've probably heard this phrase. Of course,

381
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,680
Speaker 1: it became so widespread and infamous that today it's known

382
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: as the Glomar response. In perhaps the worst example of

383
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 1: branded accounts on Twitter now x at CIA's first ever

384
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: tweet in twenty fourteen was we can neither confirm nor

385
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: deny that this is our first tweet. Hilarious. As for

386
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: the Hughes Glomar Explorer itself, in nineteen seventy six, the

387
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: US government tried to auction it off to the public.

388
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:09,679
Speaker 1: The maximum offer they received was two million, which was

389
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:13,800
Speaker 1: nothing compared to the estimated total mission cost of five

390
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: hundred million. Again, the actual mission cost is still classified info.

391
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 1: The hGe was put into storage, and over the decades

392
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,879
Speaker 1: was leased to various private interests to drill for oil

393
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 1: and to actually mine for deep sea medals, before finally

394
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 1: being completely scrapped in twenty fifteen, all fifty one thousand

395
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,880
Speaker 1: tons of it. In an ironic twist, there's probably more

396
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 1: of K one twenty nine left than the massive claw

397
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: machine that was built to recover it. Maybe James Cameron

398
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:48,159
Speaker 1: can build another deep sea explorer and try to recover

399
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 1: the sunken Soviet submarine himself. But on the other hand,

400
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:58,959
Speaker 1: perhaps it's best to let sleeping subs lie