GSF Explorer, formerly USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193), was a deep-sea drillship platform initially built for the United States Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division secret operation Project Azorian to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129, lost during April 1968.
Project Azorian
Because K-129 sank in very deep water, at a depth of 3.0 miles (4.8 km), located 1,560 miles (2,510 km) NW of Hawaii,[7] a large ship was required for the recovery operation. Such a vessel would be detected easily by Soviet vessels, which might then interfere with the operation, so an elaborate cover story was developed. The CIA contacted Hughes, who agreed to assist.[8]
While the ship did recover during 1974 a portion of K-129, a mechanical failure in the grapple caused two-thirds of the recovered section to break off during recovery.[9] This lost section is said to have held many of the most sought items, including the code book and nuclear missiles. It was subsequently reported two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and some cryptographic machines were recovered, along with the bodies of six Soviet submariners, who were given a formal, filmed burial at sea.[10]
The operation became public during February 1975 when the Los Angeles Times published a story about "Project Jennifer", followed by news stories with additional details in other publications, including The New York Times. The CIA, wanting neither to confirm nor deny the story, issued the Glomar response, which set the precedent for subsequent responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.[11] The true name of the project was not known publicly to be Project Azorian until 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSF_ExplorerA few years before this, the Glomar Challenger had been launched and led to many discoveries about ocean bed spreading, plate tectonics, and sea life. Since it had also been built by Global Marine Development Inc. (Glomar comes from the first three letters of the first two words of the business name), a cover of deep sea exploration made sense for the Glomar Explorer.
GLOMAR has become short hand for denial of secret projects:
“Neither Confirm Nor Deny:” The History of the Glomar Response and the Glomar Explorer
February 11, 2014
by Nate Jones
From “Project Azorian – The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer.”
The Central Intelligence Agency’s ability to claim that it can “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of “the use of unmanned aerial vehicles” derives to another vehicle. A boat. An extremely large boat.
The Glomar Explorer, as WNYC’s Radiolab explains, was built by the CIA with help from Howard Hughes for the six year (1968-1974) Project Azorian[1]. Project Azorian was a secret, ambitious endeavor to salvage and examine a Soviet Golf-II class submarine –and its three one-megaton nuclear missiles– which had sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor 1,560 miles northwest of Hawaii. As Project Azorian developed, Seymour Hersh sniffed a story, but the CIA successfully convinced The New York Times to suppress publication. A year later a journalist, Ann Phillippi, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents about the Glomar Explorer and the CIA’s attempts to censor press coverage. The CIA, questionably citing FOIA law, claimed it could “neither confirm nor deny” that documents about either the ship or the censorship existed; a judge agreed. The term “Glomar response” stuck. And so did the the ability for the CIA (and the entire US government) to refuse to confirm or deny the existence of documents in response to FOIA requesters.
https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/neither-confirm-nor-deny-the-history-of-the-glomar-response-and-the-glomar-explorer/
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