Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support





























































« When The Marathon Runs Through Deliverance - [Niedermeyer's Dead Horse] | Main | College Football Thread...Week Two [CBD] »
September 12, 2015

The Glomar Explorer

The Glomar Explorer was a giant ship built by the CIA for one purpose: to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the ocean floor. It was later turned into a drillship. With falling oil prices, however, it looks like it's finally going to be scrapped. From Dri's link in the sidebar:

The ship’s origin story began in March 1968, when a Soviet Golf II class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, the K-129, sank in the Pacific Ocean. This was at the height of a high-risk cat-and-mouse game between the USA and the USSR. After the Soviet Navy failed to pinpoint the location of the wreckage, the US Navy found it. So the CIA decided to raise it off the seabed.

The cover story was at least as interesting as the the mission itself.

From about 1970-74, the CIA managed to convince the world that billionaire inventor Howard Hughes had decided to invest millions to mine “manganese nodules,” balls of heavy metals that lie on the ocean floor. Via fake press releases, events, technical specs and front companies, the CIA convinced the world that Hughes was leading a new ocean-mining rush.

This cover story was so good, in fact, there was a public outcry over deep sea mining. I recall it from when I was in grade school. Environmentalist progs were up in arms about how ocean life would be adversely affected. The controversy even made its way into the Weekly Reader and my Saturday morning cartoons. (Sidebar: A lot of left-wing garbage made it into cartoons back then. There was a big movement at the time about violence in cartoons, for example. It was assumed that kids, who play fight any time the sun is out, couldn't tell the difference between dramatic violence and real violence. This stupidity ruined some great cartoons. The violence of earlier cartoons like Superman and Jonny Quest was deemed too great, as if kids were going outside and hitting each other with giant hammers after watching The Roadrunner. But left-wing agitprop was fine, and it suddenly appeared everywhere on Saturday mornings.)

Anyway. Idiots assumed, naturally, that shallow waters would be affected and that coral reefs would be targeted and torn to pieces. One of the cartoons I watched--some undersea adventure cartoon--depicted the heartless, evil corporation using giant undersea vacuum cleaners to suck up manganese nodules. The machines even looked like a giant Hoover vacuums. And in their overarching corporate greed, they were driving these dastardly machines over delicate coral reefs--as if deep sea manganese nodules can be found in shallow atoll and reef waters. But it was useful agitprop, I guess. I assume it was agitprop, because how stupid would it be to confuse deep sea and coral reef waters?

The fact that these environmental progs wasted so much time and effort reacting to a CIA cover story--and that Howard Hughes' very public effort to mine the ocean floor was total bullshit--makes it all satisfyingly laughable.

The point is, a CIA cover story that makes it into your Weekly Reader and your Saturday morning cartoons is one heck of a cover story. I'd love to see a movie treatment of this, the Argo version.

Wikipedia entry.

Theories on manganese nodule origin.


digg this
posted by rdbrewer at 12:10 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Thesokorus: "I've been suggesting for years that Melania should ..."

whig: "Heh. Reminds me of people drawing dicks in the ant ..."

Chuck Martel: "Father Of Loudoun Rape Victim Dealt Another Blow I ..."

Kindltot: "[i]Today's weirdo leftist (but I repeat myself) Dr ..."

Emmett Milbarge: "I read this as a Chinese national implicated Biden ..."

Chairman LMAO: "Nice "Election" reference ace. Reese killed that ..."

Minuteman: "I'd vote for Kennedy before Pence. I know where ..."

Tracy: "As much fun as a Chris-WHO?!?-Sununu run would be, ..."

Moki: " I guess that would have to be it. Somebody once ..."

Drink Like Vikings: "The thing the gay flag needs most is a symbol. Put ..."

FenelonSpoke: "Posted by: RedMindBlueState at June 05, 2023 07:25 ..."

Ben Had: "Pence and Haley's validation by association is ty ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64