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Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: M. Todd Bennett, "Neither Confirm Nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Description: When the Soviet K-129 submarine sank in the Pacific Ocean in 1968, the CIA saw a possible treasure trove of intelligence information on Soviet military codes. The race was on to devise how exactly to retrieve this potential information from the bottom of the ocean. After years of careful planning, the result was one of the most audacious espionage missions of the Cold War. The wreck of the K-129 would be recovered intact under the cover of a deep-sea mining operation, funded by business tycoon Howard Hughes. Unfortunately for the CIA, the winds of public opinion about its secret operations...