BLIND MAN'S BLUFF

Enthralling real-life stories of American submarine spying that read as if torn from the pages of The Hunt for Red October, full of high-tech high-jinks and human drama. With materials combed from newspaper reports, American and Soviet archives, and the testimonies of officers and servicemen that could come forward only with the end of the Cold War, Blind Man’s Bluff looks at one of the hottest theaters of that era—the ocean depths, and how submarines have been used by both the navy and the CIA to gather intelligence and launch covert operations. Many of the actions described will be familiar to fans of military thrillers, but few readers will have heard these exploits described in such detail before. Included in the book are the stories of American tapping of Soviet communications cables in the Barents Sea, how the navy used a mathematical formula to find a lost warhead, and the tale of the legendary Glomar Explorer, a CIA-built excavation vessel. The authors, veteran investigative journalists (Drew is a reporter for the New York Times), have concentrated equally on the interdepartmental rivalry between the CIA and the navy. They paint an intriguing portrait of the internal struggles—for funding, materials, manpower, and the presidsent’s attention—that dictated how the Ccold War was waged. The work does lack a degree of unity. At times, it seems the writers threw in every submarine secret they could possibly scrounge up. But whenever they falter, rest assured that in just a few pages, the next incredible operation stands reliably revealed. (Military Book Club main selection; author tour)