a few announcements, books are available behind you. you can purchase them at any register. we are closing at 8:00 o'clock but you can stay through the duration of event but registers will close at eight. if you parked in the back we will validate. v tonight we are very excited to host josh with his new book the taking of k-1 29. an incredible tale of espionage and engineering at the height of the cold war remarking how the cia and the most eccentric mobile spent six years into billion dollars on the submarine k-1 29 after it so to the bottom of the ocean.bo so with bloomberg businessweek and many others a correspondent with the life and times. and is in conversation today with ceo and cofounder of oceangate a privatelyy held company to goes down to depth of 4000-meter including a next petition to the titanic. please join me to welcome our guests b-17 b-17. >> thank you. so as you get into this so what happened with k129? >> this is a story i was curious about that is almost legend. ultimately it was exposed in the 70s then became a buried story the caa never talkedd about which gave rise to the expression that we will talk about later but i didn't know anything about it. but i didn't know more of the broad stroke. but what does that mean? did he actually participate? so we did some research so there wasn't a definitive narrative so as they were trickling out even though it never officially told anybody. and to find survivors that are willing to talk. not straight through but that is how i got interested. because i got interested in deep-sea but but then it was an incredible feat. and then we decided to recover itos 1968. but the soviet submarine went out to combat control but it sang for mysterious reasons. u.s. navy observed this massive search that were coming out of ports clearly looking for something. but today we watch traffic pretty closely. we had a pretty good idea what it was when they abandoned the search they said we can find it but first they had to locate it. they d did. eckstein thousand 500 feet the ocean with very little traffic but the navy had a system because everyone had a specific signature. then listening to the icbm. so that combination of those two things to triangulate. >> why did you end up with the cia? >> it was political to some degree but an ev isn't good at doing things quickly or quietly. and with the blackbird. and then what they were done quietly. >> so it is extremely complicated. so they had to figure out how to get it. but to humans? >> that is the reason the. >> and in 68 it was no one. >> but as far as doing work at that depth it is another to go down and pick it up. >> 2 million pounds. >> why howardd hughes? >> the stuff in between. but you found it you have to get it but that is almost an impossible question because the greatest depth is 200 feet or less than 300 feet so this is 16500 that is exponentially more complicated. but they said who would imagine sr 71? so they kind of felt that with the nuclear apocalypse. we can ask every brain in america. with the engineering concepts that the only way to do that to go down and grab that but not as easy as it sounds. and then to put those on and inflating them. with rocket boosters and shooting it up, but then how do you stop it? so they came up with the concep concept. we can come up with a soft -- with the system sort of like a arcade game. they devised a prototype concept that we think we can do this. so those broad strokes seem possible. so we can't do that either. that's a reminder that that is not normal. so it is up to something. so you have to explain it to the public. so to have covert clandestine program. or research on animals. >> what if is the notion lining ship? so there are rare minerals at ocean the of the mining commit billing -- community would like to get to them but it isn't economically feasible -- feasting ball yet if it is a mining chef nobody can say no is not. >> if it is publicly traded corporation if you tell them the truth you say we don't want to pretend to be ocean mining and somebody that could be possible to say yes? howard hughes. he is crazy. he is eccentric. he doesn't care what people think and clearly and he came from a mining background and said he sensed that nobody would say howard hughes would not do that but they would say of course he would. so that was the plan. he agreed to do it so it was a story they sold to the world. >> there has never been the official release i have heard estimates between 30,800,000,000. and the engineering began in 70 and is also a 650 long shift with 17000-foot steel pipe but then is what they nicknamed clementine. you could not explain that. but to build that as a drydock inside a barge so nobody could see from the outside but the barge submerged the ship that catalina. they reached down the top open and but they have brilliant engineering. and there is of people on the beach all billing this huge crazy howard hughes. so fix months into it i get a phone call out by lax somebody wants to meet you and a guy sits across the table and says signed this it was clearance that this is not a mining project it is a cia operation but it was exciting for different reason but i think he was like darn. then say we really aren't going to the titanic. >> lockheed martin have taken their knowledge applied to a mining company now they are looking for those manganese modules make have a higher due to survey? >> not yet but there were tens of thousands that are working on this. >> yes. >> hundreds of thousands of people were involved national security rests basically one of the head security officers that ran the cover story that ran security so to do the first black program it was the normal legalese from the each lung -- agency but this is during the cold war. you signed this. safety rests in your hands. so to recruit people from the south that they were more patriotic or less likely to talk because of southern christian but yes. it was amazing. five years. >> our general blewett in the end. [laughter] and then to look at that over operations. who is the catalog for howard hughes today? so probably he is. who knows what he'sbl doing? it is the moon base for the cia. >> so go back to the journalist so the engineering that couldn't bebe tested. and you are building complicated thing. then you come in the next day. so with that understanding who knows what will happen. it was too problematic. but there wasn't time but all of that worked. they could repair them on the fly. but when it came time it worked. so you can imagine it had fingers but it was a failure of the steel and not engineering. so only part of it recovered. the caa would go back but the follow-up would be project matador. they would have gone back to finish the mission but to run a story to have the wrong submarine but this was long before the internet. so the cia gambled this happened during world war ii something where the media have reported that then and never got back to the junk on --dash japanese. so they went to the l.a. times immediately to say don't talk about it what would it take for you to sit on the story? we are trying to steal something they would be unhappy about. so they saw the story they went to the editors and publicists and they all agreed to sit on it. all of them except one radio reporter named henderson. [laughter] he said i don't care. he spent half billion dollars of taxpayer money, the cia is spying i don't trust you. no. he went on the air and announced it to america. and the cia director promised those reporters who sat on it i promise i will call you immediately you can run with that. so he had to do that. so it was just blown and of course atin that point then they cannot back out because now it's really at risk. so it seems as if kissinger but we promise not to go back there if you don't talk about it publicly. they were embarrassed frankly. the navy was humiliated or the soviet intelligence they were locked up in the gulags over this because when the ship was out there that is how good it was. so there was a jewel agreement that the caa enacted a policy. so we will never comment on this again. one of the most closely guarded secrets. that.idn't know about that is how it was almost a legend to say will you talk to us about that? and then say i know what you are talking about. so reporters started to submit freedom of information request. the nature is the agency is obligated by law to either say here is what you're asking for or we cannot give it on account of national security. but if they had done that and they initially have to admit it happened and they go by it neverr happened. this would be considered intelligence. but if it never actually happened and they cannot say we cannot give it to you. so we need something to give the reporters. and then with that cover operation and then to come up with the sprays we can neither confirm nor deny now everybody knows every pr agency in the world it is such a cliché it is called the globe our rule it is the name of the ship that was the request a "rolling stone" reporter so she got this glomar rule we cannot confirm nor deny she was accepted but the judge said we accept this and it became law in the agency and when the caa started the twitter account the first tweet was we can neither confirm nor deny this is our first tweet. [laughter] that shows you how famous of a phrase this became. as a purely lung -- of the kill your case for the agency.se maybe that has happened a few other times. i am not aware. >> trying to get information from the fbi and cia. >> i didn't have a lot of luck there is a yes and mandatory declassification request. i got nowhere frankly. i had a couple of meetings that langley. we are not against the project but we can't do anything for you. how about de- classifying additional material? because there is a heavily redacted history that gave a lot of dates and major events the framework i could not have done the book without them. two i know this happened i know i filed a hundred but got nothing. so just bureaucrat one of those thankless jobs. who decides all you can do is get in trouble. as long as you say no you can't get in s trouble. so you can sue them or take them to court. there are so many boxes of it. so how could i possibly get that? i wasn't going to get anywhere butt luckily human sources that i could find a lot of people so global marine or lockheed martin or ge were all involved. some of the key contractors are still alive. nobody ever told me we could talk about this. how bad would that publicity be? so with 40 years ago to be declassified? >> there is a guy. no computer modeling back m then. so when the bottomless ship it equals the pressure. to see how much pressure. but in particular how did you get my name? but i have nothing to lose. but once people start talking but that deputy director called the underwater reconnaissance office a joint covert decision in the pentagon to cover the pentagon operations. so it is almost the same situation. nobody said i can't. what the hell. talk about it. i spent all afternoon with him and he said now i can tell my neighbors what i did. >> and if you have a trove of documents it can be hard with an academic undertaking. so what advice do you have for the historical narrative? i am in on of those where the main character is still living with the exception of the main character. and a legend within the cia because he wrote on --dash had one of the main program managers. so to be totally unknown but everybody remembered him as a mysteriouse. figure. so on the 50th anniversary they had the 50 trailblazers. this is a landmark operation. time capsule. yes. cia has not invented a time machine yet. [laughter] they did at time capsule. . . . . s i understand, if you are a security officer for the cia, your job is protecting secrecy. it would be so weird to suddenly be like, and overall tell you all the secrets. you work ins these realms. how cool is this design. could you imagine doing that without computers. >> it's amazing what they did in the 60s between going to the moon and blackbird and t to do this without computers, to say nothing and locate where the head is within relation to the actual submarine. >> and they were doing it with side scanning sonars and real-time telemetry. i forget how many k, very primitive computers. when i really got a lot further on thehe bottom of the ocean. i would like to say we are exponentially more advanced, but were not. >> it's been surprising, after the vietnam war andce winning te space race, the thought was we were going to go to the ocean pray they were spending aliens of dollars on rescue, projects like this just seemed logical. seattle and vancouver were the a center, aberdeen, there were areas with great technology and a lot a of people who had worked on it back then and they thought this was the next space race and it sort of fizzled out. >> i heard the same story about the mining guys. global marine was when the cia canceled this operation, they had this ship and spend 300 or 500 million on it. somebody is going to want the spread has dynamic positioning in this platform, we will take it out there and somebody is definitely going to want it. nobody wanted it may made this video, i have a copy from the 6 million-dollar man, they helicopter him out to the ship and he says i can't talk about what the ship was used for, but it's got all this cool stuff on it and nobody would take it. they tried to come up with an ocean mining prototype and ended up in drydock, andnd then eventually was converted into an oil drilling ship and was then scrapped last year actually. but at this time, we know some of the guys who worked on the client lockheed, i think they thought there would be a whole program here and it just hasn't happened. >> when they went to the bottom of the trench in the 1960s, they said the worst t about that was they won the race before it started and i never went back till james cameron goes back in 2012, so through all that time no one went to the bottom of the ocean. >> only three people have been there in history. >> now it's changing. there is a lot more episodes in the robotics. >> can you take me to k29? >> i can neither conform left maximum certainly be interesting. what you think is left out was not. >> the original sub is broken into three pieces so they tried to pick up about 100, 2 million-pound section. there's quite a bit down there, but i mean, reading about this in 1968 was a really bad year for submarine spread the scorpion was lost in the is really sub was lost, the french sub, four subs went down and then throughout the cold war, this made me think, can we start going to submarine racks? >> there certainly some amazing ones. one of the challenges that you found, to just look at a u.s. navy sub or artifact, we found a fighter off miami and you're not allowed to look at it. so we found it and went to them and said we didn't mean to find it, now can we go back and they want to go through the whole process. other wrecks like the titanic you can go look at that and that's pretty clear. the navy considers looking at it disturbing so they don't allow it. >> what about that whole forgiveness, permission thing. >> there some of that. >> i guess you don't want to get on the wrong side of the navy there are a lot of subs out there. >> there's a lot of ship representativshipwrecks per thee battle of the coral sea, number of wrecks from all the different wars in the navy is pretty good about doing it as long as you do it the right fashion and they know who it is, but things like the scorpion that's got nuclear warheads on and things likef tht that only want to many people going around, but it can be done with hope to do that. that's one of the great things about this new world, they talk about the blue economy being a big issue, different countries are looking at how can we expand environmentally conscious, everything from fish farming to rain protected areas in mining oil and gas and the like. keep people are getting a a greater awareness of that and actually going and seeing this with your own eyes as opposed to a video ofli a robot is always appealing. no one wants to watch a video presentation of the acropolis if you can actually go there. i guess you have the t second problem with this that is not the u.s. navy. you have to get the russians permission probably, and there are nukes down there. does anyone even know what the safety precautions are, if you like bouncing around the wreck, i guess you don't want to run into the wreck anyway. i assume that's part of it. that can also help you. you don't get tangled up in it. >> 's the said three nuclear ballistic missiles on it. they did recover to nuclear torpedoes, something we didn't even know they had at that point. there is a rumor they went back using different equipment later and recover the warheads but that's never been confirmed. >> they did a project with a detonated 50 or more h bombs and tested it for radiation per they said the water around it was fine but if you touched the wreckage it was still radioactive. >> they detonated them at the bottom. >> atmospheric detonations, the bikini hole, they set off h bombs with world war ii ships. you can see a funnel cloud and a ship vertical that gets lifted up and in the foreground there are these people palm trees and you can see the other ships on the side. it was quite impressive. >> with observers on them. >> no, they anchored them all out there and put out what would be the effect, depending on where they dropped it they thought it might cracked the earth all open. they had no idea what would reallyal do. >> to the radiation issue was probably a challenge but there's a lot of them around. >> it's funny because they didn't even really know, when they were trying to pick this up, obviously the mission was led by livermore so the mission director was a nuclear physicist, a big shot in the nuclear program which told you they took that part really seriously but a lot of it can even these engineers are like we weren't really told what would happen like what if we do pull this thing up and it's got an icbm with the four head warhead on top and suddenly it's in the ship. >> red wire. you always pull the red wire. >> in the practice dressing up in the radiation year when they were text on board that would immediately start taking this apart and dealing with safety. for the guys who weren't clear in that part of the process were just told don't worry about it. i talked to some of them and they said i was worried about it. i was going be on a ship with a nuclear warhead and have been corroding at the bottom of the ocean. there were a lot of assumptions made that everything is going be fine like juergen not to be poisoned by radiation but also, if the sovietsts attacker can be fine, but they weren't told what happened. the very last minute before the mission went out, ci direct cia director was like what's our defense plan. what happens if we get boarded. it's the mission director said we can't do that because it would be very obvious if the russians come on board. if they come on board there's a chance we can pretend, keep them out of the control room and the claw but how do you hide the marines. that's kind of conspicuous. so the basically overruled them and he's like i insisted be some weapons on board sought the last minute the scree guys in l.a. go out may start buying rifles at the equivalent of walmart. they said they had a bunch of rifles that they hid under somebody's bed which would've been totally pointless. i talked to so many people and no one could tell me with the plan too, the contingency plan was. ivan talk to bobby ray who went on to be a top, one of the most powerful guys in the pentagon that he ran pacific intelligence and he said he wasn't even really sure but that they were listening to the soviet, the nsa was intercepting the radio traffic in a new the situation was intense enough that they had to worry about it. obviously we could've gotten planes out there, it was not a submarine close enough to deal that because we thought if you put a submarine out there, then you're putting the captain of the submarine in a position to start a war. it's not necessarily going to start a war, you can still write negotiate but if the submarine comes up and thinks their ship, tensions rise quickly and this happened with the missile crisis. there is the famous soviet submarine captain who one of them how to make a decision because he couldn't surface to radio his base and he had to decide, he basically saved the planet. he said he decided not fire his torpedo.o. he had nuclear torpedoes that he could've sunk basically three american ships blocked their path to cuba and they were running out of food and it was really hot and i would like to we fire not fire. they ultimately decided we don't do it so let's just hope. his plan was let's just hope nothing happened which is a miracle. nobody wanted to start a war. that's what all this came down to. it's sort of like the point ofhi everything in the cold war was let's do whatever we cannot to start a war. that's not race tension which is why there something like this you're trying to learn as much as you can about them so you know that we have equal or better capacity. in the process of trying to learn about them you haveg tooo things that are upsetting and this is quasilegal, it's actually t against international law to steal another country's military gear, but, pentagon lawyers said the russians look for it, they searched for and the abandonment so they actually relinquished their ownership of it. technically we have a loophole here, but it wasn't like the russians agreed to it. they just that i think will hold up and did. we didn't start a war. >> the resumes conspiracy theories a about this. what was the sub doing up there. >> the nature of the reaction to it, when it became public as a kind of opened up the possibility for all kinds of conspiracy theories. it wasn't like anyone was can say that isn't right. they just basically said whatever you say. so book actually came out in the '90s that showed this theory that it wasy a rogue submarine that have been taken over by kgb crew that wasn't taking its order and it was going to launch a nuclear attack on hawaii and starti a war. it's very convoluted theory about china and vietnam, basically blamed on the chinese, but the book rested on this premise that the location given by the cia which is roughly 18040 was a lie and that the ship was actually much closer to whyy so the submarine would've had to be in missile range of hawaii and the fact that it wasn't, it was 1500 miles away, well outside the range of these icbms and i know that location is correct because i've seen the classified memos from that meeting where guys on the ship were like trust me, i know where we were. so that theory, people still believe it, it's not true. maybe it was headed that way. the other conspiracy theory that's slightly o more plausible is that it sunk because the american sub trailing it accidentally ran into it. this is what the soviets believed and the russians still believe. every time the story er comes up, the russian media picked it up again and they are convinced that the american sub accidentally, not purposely but accidentally ran into it and the navy covered it up. dan has been covering it up for 40 years. now i have a little bit of a hard time believing that because nobody has talked of 40 years, there were 100 american submariners on the sub. people in the navy hierarchy would've known about it. >> i think thet' theory was if e russian sub was clearing its blind spot if they were being trailed that maybe they accidentally ran over the top of it which would not necessarily cause catastrophic damage. there are some very convincing people in my ear about this theory but certainly no one in the navy has close to confirming it. the sub that the russians want to blame the swordfish which showed up in a japanese port within the timeframe about for some kind of repairs but the repairs don't match up. was too far from the site. there are some people, that's one worth looking into, but the prevailing theory is that some kind of accident occurred when it was either surfacing to do a firing exercise like practicing what a launch would look like in one of the missiles caught fire and burned the fuel and burned a hole in the hole and filled with water, whatever happens, it filled with water before it imploded because otherwise everything inside to be completed crushed. whatever happened seem to be of historical depth. that's a question that may never be answered. >> we should maybe take some questions if anybody has a question. >> i finished the book the other night. it's great. i was wondering if the hatch was open if that's how long it would take to make the sub go down. >> very fast. >> if you look at the fire hoses and things like that you can get thousands of gallons per minute to go through a full-size hatch very quickly and then it gets worse as it is of start to become to the point we get deeper and even more pressure. >> i think that's also true fire so if something had caused a fire on the sub it just goes like crazy because it's enclosed full of oxygen. >> 's of the submarine, i think they have close chambers. >> for a lot of reasons they havens segmented engine segmentd chambers close off print things likemo the idea makes the most sense because if you don't have a close chamber most will crumble a couple thousand feet and you get down to 16000. >> one of the photographs, i've not seen this photograph but some of them saw that there was a guy who was wearing increment weather gear as if he would've been preparing to go up on top. which again would suggest it was on surface or smoke adopts. also i think the snorkel. [inaudible] >> they recovered a number of bodies. >> they did. three intact bodies and remains of several other.nd >> in the buried them in a video that you can watch on youtube. they're very careful, when they went out on the mistral transmission they prepared for that and theyul buried these gus in a respectful manner. >> i thought was interesting for bin laden. >> so how far off was mainland from a submarine. >> about 1500 miles northwest. i haven't read your book, but what's the range of substance. is about that far? >> yes, well the pickup was in the illusions. it's an array and an arc and it was definitely within but it actually turned out. [inaudible] so i don't know if that's a sensitivity of how their calibrated but the solstice readings, they didn't see it but then the air force they said let's look at aztec also. i don't know if it was because they were listening for missile splotched splashdown's or maybe the range was further out. the anomalies were pretty clear apparently, i talked to the former chief acoustic analyst for the navy and he said it's very clear when you see an anomaly because the ocean sounds like the ocean. those systems were the first things that ever heard the sounds of the blue well for instance. we didn't know what undersea animal sounded like until we started hearing these things. so, anything that implodes fire is really clear on the sensors. >> you know if they use that are not. >> i would guess an updated version of it. he's aske escalating the submare base, we thought this era was over. obviously we will maintainin submarines but is like building very expensive submarines. they are making electric subs again and they're bigger and faster and i would suspect because of that we are spending a lot of money on underwater intelligence again. >> you mentioned. [inaudible] >> actually don't know who did the seminar on a that. bucky did everything on the claw and the telemetry, most of that was done out of a covert, where the criminal was built originally so where there was a lockheed office where they did the black work for the electrical work, telemetry and cameras and things. i don't know actually. >> so what became of the parts that were recovered. >> a question. nobody knows well, if someone knows, no one would tell me. most likely it all went to area 51 because of dry secret remote things that were built there. the science and technology director, that was essentially their weapons base so i would guess that's where the analysis went. they actually did a lot of the salvage and recovery, picking a part of the rack on the ship. most of the pieces had been picked out and boxed up and went came in to hawaii, people showed up and certain things were taken right away and put on a plane, other parts were taken up and boxed up and long beach trucks pulled up and crates went out. i would guess those things went to area 51. really sensitive things like they got some books so what been battle plans perhaps or p missie firings, those things probably went back to langley were where the nuclear to peto's would go, i'm not sure. >> there's no value on them. >> it was really total package. actually this was a question that came up in the pentagon meetings about whether we could've afford it or not. the number one thing on the list was the crypto. they wanted to get the crypto machines in the keys. number two was the warheads on the icbm. they were interested in everything from the missile material to then detonation packaging and the guidance systems. and then, so thesa navy guys i talked to said we were really interested in the whole construction and what the valves were part we did know anything about what their subs were built and in what manner and where things were getting made they wanted to know whatot metals thy were using that were better than ours, they were cutting a lot of corners and this is when i started to suspect we were running their military economy into the ground because they were having trouble keeping up so i think they found like two by fours in between some whole portions and they were very good at some things but they were definitely cutting corners and they have a lot more accidents than we did. it was not as big of a deal for them to lose a sub because when this went down they didn't tell the families what had happened. they weren't giving combat pay. they were basically declared lost in an accident and they got meager settlements and the families, the widows, for decades fought for recognition money and finally in the 80s they got more proper treatment and they builtpr a memorial, but it was really a package of things per theyy considered wasa rare opportunity to gain 45 things we never would've gotten in one package. >> how long did the soviets search for? >> seems like they gave up awfully quickly. >> it was weeks, but there's only so much you can do. the ocean is 3 miles deep so they're just looking on the surface per they were looking for oil flicks and parts, they just didn't see any signs of it. i think at some point then it's lost, it's 3 miles down, we don't know what their capability to search, clearly they didn't have what we had, i had a mentioned earlier, the special project that was sent out which was very secret navy special projects and it went out, it was a nuclear sub that never had a surface and it towed these cameras on 15000-foot strings and they were able to film the rack and that's how we knew we could negotiate. i don't think the soviets had that capability because that came out of a branch very small secret branch within the navy i was doing some of this really deep sea work and admiral who was in control of the navy, he was the guy, they had almost hide it from him as he would've said i don't care, my subs only go 1500 feet. everything below it is irrelevant. they almost had to quietly work on this office that he didn't know about. in fact when he found out about it he was pissed like why are you wasting one my submarines so i think thehi soviets just couldn'tse find it. >> and if you don't have an idea where to start, they were just on a mission to go to xyz so might be a lot harder to identify a rough area. >> it took five years, the ship was actually built in little over a year. when things happen they happen very quickly, but the whole thing, there were a lot of moving parts. >> comedy russian sailors were there on the submarine. >> ninety-eight. >> and like id said, they brougt up three bodies and parts of others. i'm not sure if the russians, once they found out where the site was per we did give them accordance if they ever went back to recover the bodies. i'm not sure. i think during the cold warle certainly they do not feel the same responsibility. you can imagine the u.s. people would not have accepted an explanation. certainly we would've wanted to make every attempt possible to recover. but then again scorpion --dash it's just really hard to operate at those depths. they had numerous submarine accidents. they were still losing, i think this is the s deepest any of thm were lost. >> the sad thing about the crew was that they were supposed too go out. it was sort of a coo cruel twist that this sub had come in from another combat duty. i don't know what the shore leave as per there's a guaranteed period of leave but the sub that was gonna go out on the next duty had a mechanical issue and they were going to be able to get it online in times of the basically said hey, you have to go back. half the crew was unavailable but the captain and the xo were basically ordered to do it. they got half their crew in piecemeal their crew which i don't think had anything to do with the accident, but mayay be. one guy, the captain, itas was actually his last mission, he was can get bumped up in command. the human side, and if you watched the video of the funeral, it's touching because the mission director for the explorer gives the eulogy and his speech is actually really poignant. he basically, i'm paraphrasing but he basically says just because our nations are at war, we respect these men as much as we respect our ownor and we hope that someday these actions don't happen because were not forced to do the things that were doing. they want to be there, they don't want to play with us, we do want to fight with them, sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do and accidents happen. when the director of cia then went to moscow and 92, he took a copy of that video and the diving bell from the submarine as tokens of friendship or whatever, just to show that we treated your guys well. >> today recover bodies then? >> yes, three and parts of others. unidentifiable. it had been down there for five. >> bodies were buriedth at sea o some of that that they found became more valuable after it was public, public knowledge that they recovered the cryptography for example once the russians knew we had it then we just change everything. >> we change the keys anyway and it would've been assumed that when the sub sank they change the keys but is still valuable because you can see what kind of machines are using so they could reverse engineer sort of like we worked on enigma and purple in the war, it would've given us a look at the kind of machines are using but also you can do is look at the messages intercepting for the year before so there picking up all this chatter all the time and they keep them in case someday we can read them. >> you can go back and you would learn a lot, you would know all about the movements and how often they're communicating in the things are telling each other, it wouldld be valuable. >> any other questions. >> what about the clearances, did the 80-year-old man in the nursing home, did he get a call from anybody. >> he did not. no one. >> you and put anybody in jail. >> i have not put anybody in jail, not yet. >> there was really nothing that they were telling me that was still going to be sensitive. the one thing, if that was true, if there was a collision they were covering up in summary told me they were covering up, that could get someone in trouble. the navy still doesn't talk about it. the crew has never spoken to the media. i was in communication with a couple of them and they're just like it's not worth it to us. >> does the fbi or the cia review the book before it was published. >> know. >> did they ever asked to. >> they would love to well, the only thing they tried to do, in a couple cases retired cia officers are supposed to always get their interviews approved, especially if it's on a sensitive subject so there are a few cases where they had called public affairs at langley and asked if they had permission to talk to me because they knew i had met with langley and i had at least their quasi- herbal, and in thoseas cases what they were always told was you need to write out what you're going to tell him, send it to us, will run after the clearance and tell you if it's okay. will that would take years basically so they would call me back and say hey, i have to do this thing and i would say you don't know what i can ask you so how would you write out your answers. eventually all those people said screw it. >> did anyone read your book before pre-publishing. >> no, i mean i gave it to some engineers who worked with contractors to make sure i wasn't screwing up the engineering because that stuff got very technical, but nobody read it for sensitively reason. >> really, wow. >> did you ever find anyone who is connected with howard hughes. >> no, but the howard hughes archive at the american university has a lot of materials. the riders of one of his big biography gave me access to that and that was a treasure trove of stuff. everything i needed from the hue side was in there. i guess i didn't answer earlier, how much howard was involved remains a mystery. that was in his like living at the desert, soiling himself and watching movie all day. so i think he gave his approval but he wasn't, on a day-to-day basis wasn't very involved but he had a group of key lieutenants, for five very important leaders of his groups. he trusted mormons specifically. the cia atad that time was heavily, the leadership, there was a lot of mormons working in leadership and they're very loyal and hughes, all of his main people were involved in this project and they were all mormons. the guy, paul reeve who ran the front was basically the front of the mining project. he was essentially an actor, his job was to be like i'm the mining guy and i'm in a come to your conference. when the story broke in the media, they were actually at a conference and the story was told to me, he had been given some speeches and he did the break in the conference and he'll be up next or whatever and he finds out that the stories broke and he's just like i'm out here and he never gave a speech. he was like there's no point in me doing this anymore. howard died within a year, very shortly afterwards hery died. this was the last big thing that happened in his lifetime, bututo one that i met could confirm that they had ever seen him for they think he was like on phone calls sometimes and there is a couple meetings and hotels were there was a guy who would leave the room and come back as if maybe he was next-door, but nobody saw him. >> what's the angle with the mormons? they seem to have a better way of protecting secrets? >> i don't know, they were considered to be very loyal maybe it's sort of like in that. they were very involved with the cia. there were a lot of cia officers who were mormon. >> is probably like when i said the crew, they liked christians from the south, maybe something about being devout, and actually are if you're patriotic and you're devout, you're probably, will certainly the mormons don't drink so you're more likely to spill secrets at the bar so maybe that had something to do with it, but i don't know. >> did you get a chance to determine if the russians were involved. >> i did go to russia, the answer is no. luckily i was ablese to do something else when i was there, one of the widows was supposed to meet with me and one of the admirals was supposed to meet me and they both canceled when i got there. >> had actually taken a train out tour town and she called my translator and canceled only got there. she just that i don't trust americans. i said you could've told me that before i got on the train. she said she'd do it for a thousand dollars. i said no. i was like come on, i came all the way here. you could've told me you don'tou trust me before i got here. but that woman, her husband was the xo and she was very instrumental in getting, she fought the story for decades, trying to get the leadership to acknowledge honor, pay them what they deserved so she was pretty bitter all around and i think she felt like she had talked to enough people and again, she could've told me that before i got there, but i understood. >> i think even the new york times wrote multiple articles. >> i bet that's not unusual. there were so many accidents in ships and subs, there just wasn't that responsibility like we had to be upfront with the families. we see this a little bit now with covert operations. might take a while, but we ultimately feel like we need toi tell people what happened to their family members. in the soviet union, that was in the silly the case. there like this is bigger than you. >> she was very brave. i wish i had been able to meet her. i sent my translator book and i haven't heard anything. >> all right. >> are you going to sign some books? >> sure. >> thankoi you. [inaudible conversation] >> you are watching the tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. book tv, television for serious readers. >> a familiar face on your screen here on book tv, ed henry of fox news, we think of you when it comes to politics and the president, but not jackie robinson. >> or baseball or anything else and so when i first started putting together this a lot of people said why in the world are you writing about baseball. they, cookie-cutter and say we know you for one thing, and i believe you've got have a passion for something else. i eat, drink and sleep politics and it's awesome, but you've got have another fashion in baseball something i've loved since i was little kid. my father instilled that me, passed it onto my son, we go to yankees games, but ten years ago i was at a dinner party in washington and i thought i'd get some political gossip, the belgium ambassador's house and he served pigeon which was disgusting and i said what in the world is going on. i started open it up and there were little bones in there. the woman next to me said you can eat the bones. it's not pigeon, it's called squab, it's a delicacy. i said what's happening here in the world series was going on then i turned to this older woman i said i'm gonna leave early, you go watch the world series purchaser you a baseball fan but i said i love baseball. she said my late father-in-law had a major role in baseball but the story has never been told. peter, i sat back down. i sat back down. her father-in-law was the minister in brooklyn in 1945 in the general manager of the dodgers knocked on his door in despair and was secretly thinking about pulling out jackie robinson and so the point is, no one had ever told the story and she told me. so i set out as a journalist to confirm it. at the end of this 45 minute meeting with the minister i said i'm assigned jackie, it's the hardest decision of my life i needed to be in god's presence to know if it was the right thing to do. that gave me chills when i first heard it. so i set out on a journey to confirm that it was true as a journalist, but also dig deeper and more importantly jackie robinson's faith journey. there's been a million books, civil rights, baseball, it's all wonderful and the movie 42 but we call it 42 faith, the rest of the jackie robinson story because as i was researching and writing, i was thinking about paul harvey, the great radioman who would say now you know the rest of the story. so they baseball in here, but i think this is the secret ingredient that help jackie overcome the discrimination. you have a white man in a black man who had almost nothing in common. different parts of the country but they both love baseball and they both had a deep faith in god. and so, people have been reading it, hearing that message and i think now more than ever when were divided it's a story about coming together. >> was jackie robinson becoming part of the brooklyn dodgers? >> wasn't politicized at the time? was it carried on the front pages? what i was struck by, it wasn't necessarily politicized, not that many people really noticed it at first. some of the early games you now hear people saying you probably served millions of people who heard they were at jackie's first game, i think the attendance was something like 25000 people. opening day, jackie robinson, april 15, 1947, who wouldn't want to be at that game, one of the great cathedrals of baseball but it wasn't even a sellout. as i researched it, there were other players who were rookies and 47 who got more writeups and they sell well there was also this black player who might be the first, they weren't really sure if he was gonna make it and boy did he make it. he wasn't just about baseball. he changed america for the better. >> ed henry, thank you for a few minutes. >> thank you. >> thank you also much for your patience. we are delighted to all be gathered here today.

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