Project AZORIAN was a CIA project to covertly recover the sunken Soviet ballistic missile submarine, K-129. The K-129 went down with all hands approximately 1,600 miles northwest of Hawaii on 11 March 1968 at a location that was unknown to the Soviets. However, using underwater surveillance technology, the U.S. Navy was able to determine where the submarine sank within about 6 miles. Subsequently, the U.S. Navy submarine Halibut was able to find and photograph the K-129, more than 3 miles down on the ocean floor. This enabled a covert operation to recover the submarine along with materials of great intelligence value. This recovery operation was launched in June of 1974 using a remarkable ship built specifically for this task, the Glomar Explorer. AZORIAN has been the subject of about a dozen books and several documentary films. The early books and documentaries are loaded with disinformation, likely fed to authors and producers by the CIA and the U.S. Navy in an attempt to hide the location of the K-129 wreck site, obscure the capabilities of the Navy's undersea surveillance technology, and create uncertainty about what was recovered from the submarine. Recently published books, however, provide a much more complete and accurate description of Project AZORIAN. In any case, it is not the intention of this eBook to retell the detailed story of Project AZORIAN. Rather, it will focus on solving the two biggest remaining mysteries of AZORIAN: (1) What was the root-cause of the catastrophe that destroyed the K-129? (2) What is the exact but, but never before publicly released, location of the K-129 wreck site?Based on extensive open-source research and conversations with several individuals directly involved in the K-129 recovery operation, this eBook will answer these questions definitively while presenting a sequence of events leading up to the K-129 catastrophe that is consistent with all available evidence.
