All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period.
Description
No espionage missions have been kept more secret than those involving American submarines. Now, Blind Man's Bluff shows for the first time how the Navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. It unveils how the Navy's own negligence might have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, thirty years ago. It tells the complete story of the audacious attempt to steal a Soviet submarine with the help of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and how it was doomed from the start. And it reveals how the Navy used the comforting notion of deep sea rescue vehicles to hide operations that were more James Bond than Jacques Cousteau.
Blind Man's Bluff contains an unforgettable array of characters, including the cowboy sub commander who brazenly outraced torpedoes and couldn't resist sneaking up to within feet of unaware enemy subs. It takes us inside clandestine Washington meetings where top submarine captains briefed presidents and where the espionage war was planned one sub and one dangerous encounter at a time. Stretching from the years immediately after World War II to the present-day operations of the Clinton Administration, it is an epic story of daring and deception. A magnificent achievement in investigative reporting, it feels like a spy thriller, but with one important difference'everything in it is true.
Less than a decade after the Cold War, the cat-and-mouse games that U.S. and Soviet submarines played throughout it already seem insane. Still these stories of undersea derring-do are as exciting as any spy thriller, and the authors have a touch of Len Deighton or Jack Higgins. Unlike many works about military intelligence, this one never bogs down in jargon, and even in abridged form it's easy to stay on top of the characters and the action. When Tony Roberts assumes the characters' voices (sometimes dangerous in nonfiction), he has a commendable arsenal for projecting rugged sailors, Russian leaders, and a pretty fine Ronald Reagan. D.B. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Sherry Sontag is an investigative journalist who, before turning to Blind Man's Bluff, was a staff writer for the National Law Journal. While there, she wrote about the Soviet Union, international affairs, and domestic scandals in securities and banking. Prior to that, Sontag wrote for the New York Times. A lifelong resident of New York, she has degrees from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Barnard College.
