A few announcements, books are available behind you. You can purchase them at any register. We are closing at 8 00 oclock 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 k1 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 k1 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 4000meter including a next petition to the titanic. Please join me to welcome our guests b17 b17. 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 didnt know anything about it. But i didnt know more of the broad stroke. But what does that mean . Did he actually participate . So we did some research so there wasnt 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 deepsea 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 isnt 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 cant do that either. Thats 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 isnt 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 dont 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 doesnt 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 17000foot 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 arent 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 hesbl doing . It is the moon base for the cia. So go back to the journalist so the engineering that couldnt 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 wasnt 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 followup 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 dont 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 dont care. He spent half billion dollars of taxpayer money, the cia is spying i dont 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 its really at risk. So it seems as if kissinger but we promise not to go back there if you dont 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. Idnt 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 youre 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 cliche 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 didnt 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 cant 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 cant 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 wasnt 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 cant. 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. Its 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 realtime 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. Its 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 milliondollar man, they helicopter him out to the ship and he says i cant talk about what the ship was used for, but its 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 hasnt 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 its 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 millionpound section. Theres 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 youre not allowed to look at it. So we found it and went to them and said we didnt 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 thats pretty clear. The navy considers looking at it disturbing so they dont allow it. What about that whole forgiveness, permission thing. There some of that. I guess you dont want to get on the wrong side of the navy there are a lot of subs out there. Theres 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 thats 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. Thats 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 dont want to run into the wreck anyway. I assume thats part of it. That can also help you. You dont get tangled up in it. s the said three Nuclear Ballistic missiles on it. They did recover to Nuclear Torpedoes, something we didnt even know they had at that point. There is a rumor they went back using different equipment later and recover the warheads but thats 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 theres a lot of them around. Its funny because they didnt 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 werent really told what would happen like what if we do pull this thing up and its got an icbm with the four head warhead on top and suddenly its in the ship. Red wire. You always pull the red wire. In the practice dressing up in the radiation y