An insurance agent writes a bestseller...
..filled with military secrets...
..that somehow becomes a star-studded film.
MAN: There was so much talk right after Red October came out
that people are leaking information to me.
(GUNSHOTS) Why can't they just give me credit for being smart?
But shocking revelations
now link The Hunt for Red October we all think we know
to the greatest CIA operation in history,
to eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes
and to the fall of Soviet Communism.
I mean, the scale of it is just audacious and epic.
It had a major impact on all of us
and the average person has no clue.
And more ominously, some now believe
The Hunt for Red October connects to
an apocalyptic mission to annihilate America,
thwarted at the last second by a heroic submarine commander.
MAN: He was the one key element that stopped a nuclear war.
It's a hell of a story for a thriller.
It just changed the whole course of history.
The Hunt for Red October,
starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin,
Sam Neill and Scott Glenn
is acknowledged around the world
as one of Hollywood's most exciting,
tension-filled thrillers.
Based on the book by Tom Clancy,
it tells the seemingly fictional account
of a rogue Soviet submarine captain,
played by Connery,
attempting to defect to the US,
and CIA analyst Jack Ryan, played by Baldwin,
who must convince the American Navy
that Connery's character
isn't planning on attacking the US.
Together, the book and the movie
catapult Clancy to fame.
Maybe the best part of this whole experience coming out here,
has been meeting Sean Connery.
I've been watching his movies since I was in high school - he's one of my real heroes.
I was in the navy. In fact, I joined when I was 16.
And the idea that you have submarines
as big as aircraft carriers from World War II
in the drama,
and the other Russian submarines,
it's a whole world.
That side of it is, uh, perfect cinema.
(TYPES)
And Hollywood is just as enamoured with Clancy,
including Hunt for Red October director John McTiernan.
JOHN McTIERNAN: Well, I wanted to make the movie
'cause I loved the book.
It really seemed to be an access
into a world that one knows very little about.
He had actually taken the time to learn something about it,
and then managed to weave it into a good...good yarn.
Even more remarkable, Clancy wasn't a professional novelist.
He was a Maryland insurance agent.
I've been in the business a long time now,
and it's really extraordinary
that this insurance salesman sat down in his house
and wrote that novel.
It...it is extraordinary.
I could tell that there was definitely something there.
I mean, he was so confident.
It's a kind of assurance that goes with good storytelling.
He had likeable characters, there was very witty dialogue.
"'How does a friendly man become a CIA spy?' Borodin asked.
"'I am not a spy sir', Ryan said again."
"He couldn't blame them for not believing him."
But when they send the manuscript out to be fact-checked...
Where's he getting this?
..they have an unexpected shock.
(PHONE RINGING TONE) Hello?
Deb, it's Barry.
He said, "Well, you can't publish it. It's got classified information in there."
The book is filled with some of the Cold War's most guarded secrets
and, yet, somehow, is still published.
It sells
a phenomenal 15 million copies
and becomes the basis for the hit film.
I'm reliably informed that there were revelations in this film
about what submarines do.
Um... And I wasn't aware that these things were secret before. (LAUGHS)
I hope we didn't give away too many state secrets.
Far from giving away secrets, however,
some now believe The Hunt for Red October
was part of a CIA plot
to divert attention from an event that almost triggered a nuclear war.
MAN: The film, Hunt for Red October, was the perfect story
to maintain our way of life and protect us from our enemies.
More than that, based on recently uncovered top-secret information,
it can now be revealed for the first time
that The Hunt For Red October actually plays a key role
in the downfall of Soviet Communism.
But what is the shocking secret story behind it?
And why has it been kept from the public until now?
February 1968.
The Cold War between the American and Soviet navies has ratcheted up.
You have to understand, both politically and militarily,
this was very intense time.
TRANSLATION: There was a war in Vietnam
and there was a constant increase in tensions.
Everyone was operating on a hair-trigger.
(SUBMARINE HORN BLARES)
But with its smaller economy,
the Soviet military struggles
to keep up with the Americans.
On the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula,
at the Soviet Rybachiy naval base,
K-129, an old Soviet Golf II class
nuclear-armed diesel submarine,
is being rushed back out to sea.
KENNETH SEWELL: They had just got back from a mission,
and within three weeks, they were ordered back to go out on another mission.
This was highly unusual and also very hard on the crew.
It was not sufficient time to recuperate
or sufficient time, actually, for the submarine to be turned around.
Like the captain played by Sean Connery in the Hunt for Red October,
K-129's captain, Vladimir Kobzar,
is an ace in the USSR's highly trained submarine elite.
His First Officer, Sasha Zhuravin,
is also an accomplished submariner.
Well, Captain Kobzar and Zhuravin were true believers.
They were patriots to the core,
um, exceptional people.
They were picked from the best
that the Soviet Union had to offer.
Then, just before departing,
Kobzar and the crew discover
they'll also be carrying a contingent of mystery passengers.
KENNETH SEWELL: Sometimes one or two people would come on a submarine.
They would normally be doing eavesdropping
or intelligence work with radios.
But to have people show up on a submarine with no purpose
would cause great concern.
You know, why are they there?
For the experienced Kobzar and Zhuravin,
it was an unprecedented situation.
In spite of the Soviet navy having assigned them
a seemingly routine mission,
the presence of the mystery passengers and the quick turn-around
suggest it's going to be anything but.
KENNETH SEWELL: It distressed the Commander,
and the First Officer, Zhuravin, especially.
(NIKOLAI SERKASHIN SPEAKS RUSSIAN)
TRANSLATION: Zhuravin told his wife
that he had a bad feeling about this mission
and he was leaving with a stone in his heart.
He had a bad premonition.
(WOMAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN)
TRANSLATION: K-129 should not have gone out.
It should have been another submarine
but they told us the other one wasn't ready.
KENNETH SEWELL: His wife, she had never seen him, you know, cry, ever.
And he was standing there, and he had burst into tears.
I think he knew he was never going to see her again.
In spite of the worrying presence of the mysterious passengers...
..Captain Kobzar and his crew set sail
to their officially assigned coordinates
800 miles from the Hawaiian Islands.
As with the Red October submarine sailed by Sean Connery,
K-129 is armed with ballistic nuclear missiles
capable of destroying entire cities.
With this much firepower on board,
Kobzar knows that the American's submarines
will be trying to track them.
It is a deadly game of cat and mouse.
That's what submarines were doing during the Cold War on both sides.
So, your ballistic missile submarines go out,
try and stay hidden,
be in position if war breaks out to launch their missiles.
And then, of course, the other team's subs,
in this case the United States subs,
are constantly trying to track the Soviets subs,
which means locate them, follow them, stay hidden,
so that if war breaks out, you can destroy their ballistic missile submarines
before they can launch their ballistic missiles.
But unlike the high-tech nuclear-powered Red October
that was the pride of the Soviet navy,
K-129 is a diesel-electric, on the verge of being decommissioned.
The K-129 was old technology.
However, they had outfitted it with
their latest communications equipment,
the microburst transmitter.
It also had nuclear weapons and nuclear torpedoes.
Because K-129 is powered by electric motors,
it must surface for 12 hours each day to recharge its batteries.
This is also when the sub is able to send and receive coded messages
to and from Moscow.
It is at these moments when the sub
is most vulnerable to detection by the Americans.
DEAN: So, it's unusual for a submarine to communicate daily.
That's how you get detected.
So, they tend to stay silent for days at a time.
Then, back in Vladivostok on the evening of March the 8th, 1968,
the wife of K-129's First Officer, Sasha Zhuravin,
is at an International Women's Day celebration,
and has a premonition.
(IRINA ZHURAVINA SPEAKS RUSSIAN)
TRANSLATION: I was with our son
and we were having a good time.
But then, out of nowhere,
I became hysterical, for no apparent reason.
I felt sick.
So, they took me home.
I knew it was Sasha's submarine.
The Russians required their submarines
to phone home, so to speak, every week
or when arriving at certain important points
along their travel route.
So, there was an expectation on the midnight on the 8th of March, '68,
for that submarine to... to send a message.
And that was exactly the same time
as First Officer Zhuravin's wife, Irina,
was experiencing her psychological breakdown.
The submarine was supposed to surface for a routine signal,
to say, "Hey, everything's going fine."
And it didn't.
It just vanished.
In an eerie parallel with Clancy's The Hunt for Red October,
the Soviet Navy doesn't know where K-129 is.
Has it sunk?
Has it suffered a malfunction?
Or is it something more sinister?
Has it, like the Red October, gone rogue?
What few people realise is that K-129
was on the verge of starting a nuclear war.
1968, somewhere in the North Pacific.
Soviet submarine K-129,
a seven-million-pound Golf II submarine,
armed with three nuclear missiles,
and 98 souls aboard,
simply disappears without a trace.
It is only now, over 50 years later,
that the shocking secrets behind it can finally be revealed.
But if this is the case,
how is it possible, as some now believe,
that Tom Clancy's 1983 runaway bestseller The Hunt for Red October,
and the film based on it,
appear to be inspired by this secret material?
And...action!
REPORTER: Hollywood's newest sub drama is based on
Clancy's best seller, The Hunt for Red October.
Tom Clancy, insurance salesman,
imagines this very detailed story about a submarine
that's, you know, taken over by a rogue crew.
(SHOUTING IN RUSSIAN)
It does seem pretty unlikely that he would just come up with that,
sitting around one night.
The closer one looks at Red October's success,
the more astonishing the rookie novelist's meteoric rise appears.
The clues start the day the novel is released.
SEWELL: Clancy's book was published
by the Naval Institute Press.
And it would be highly unlikely
that an insurance agent from Maryland
would have a book published.
Not only was it published, I think they ran
60,000 hardback copies in the first printing.
That's a substantial financial commitment.
Um, there was something there. We knew there was something there.
Um, you know, somebody had to be behind that.
LARRY KING: Did you ever think this would happen?
Not in my wildest nightmares, Larry.
I got real lucky. Lucky how?
'Cause Ronald Reagan mentioned the book?
That's what made me a national bestseller and got me noticed.
The events Tom Clancy wrote about in the 1980s remain classified
as some of the Cold War's most guarded secrets.
So, where did he get his information?
Was Tom Clancy who he said he was?
An insurance agent who got lucky?
(GUNFIRE) Or a secret agent?
Someone with connections to people on the inside?
At first glance, Clancy is an unlikely literary star.
So, how did this insurance agent
suddenly become a best-selling author?
His only son, Tom Clancy III,
offers some tantalising clues.
This is the first interview he's ever given.
TOM CLANCY III: This is where it all started,
with three kids in this tiny house,
writing Hunt for Red October there, on the kitchen table.
And my mom would tell him
that he should be selling insurance
instead of writing the book.
Nobody could have predicted that a copy of the book
was going to end up on Air Force One.
And nobody could have predicted that Reagan would have read it.
With the unprecedented endorsement from the President,
The Hunt for Red October story is so successful,
it easily draws in major stars for the film version,
and a massive budget.
But from the beginning, there were suspicions.
TOM CLANCY III: He wouldn't tell you anything.
He was very secretive.
Yeah, he loved being secretive.
Even the FBI is concerned
that Clancy has classified materials
about American and Russian submarine tactics and equipment
in his book.
TOM CLANCY III: And, uh, back then,
the FBI really had to worry about Soviet agents.
And, you know, the FBI took a good, hard look at him.
You, uh, wanted to see me. They asked a bunch of questions.
Mr Clancy, where are you getting this information?
But then, mysteriously, the FBI drops its investigation.
And as his fame grows,
so does his unexplained access to classified information.
He was an insurance salesman even kind of after.
I mean, he was actually actively selling it.
God, it's weird. (LAUGHS)
Why would a successful author continue to sell insurance
after making millions publishing fiction?
Some say the answer is to be found in his client base.
The house where Clancy wrote
The Hunt for Red October
is only 27 miles from
the Patuxent River Naval Air Station,
and 38 miles from the Annapolis Naval Academy.
MAN: Tom used to love to hang around the navy,
and he particularly used to spend time in Annapolis
and other naval sectors.
And he'd listen and ask questions.
And pretty soon, he was able to piece together
a lot of the key realities of the undersea tactics and technology.
Not everyone, however, subscribes to this view.
Well, Clancy was a typical insurance salesman.
He didn't really run in military circles,
And people that had information about military technology
don't have that conversation with their insurance agent.
If this is the case, then how did Clancy get this information?
And is The Hunt for Red October
more than just a technically accurate submarine drama?
Is it also, as some now believe,
part of a secret history that has its roots in the K-129 mystery?
Was it written both to disguise
how close the world came to nuclear annihilation
and, ultimately, to help America win the Cold War?
The answers to these questions
are tied up in the most basic question of all.
Where is the Russian's missing nuclear missile submarine?
The film Hunt For Red October was exciting.
It was a great story. Had great actors.
VOICEOVER: The Hunt for Red October stars Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin
and Scott Glenn, and is directed by John McTiernan.
But compared to the mission of K-129,
it didn't have nearly the twists and turns
and the subterfuge and devastating consequences for mankind.
In the Red October film, much of the action is seen from inside the sub.
But in the case of the real story,
no-one knows where Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 is,
whether the men on board are alive,
and, if they are, who's in control.
All that matters for certain is that it went missing in the North Pacific
with 83 crewmen,
a contingent of mystery passengers,
and multiple nuclear weapons.
If a submarine didn't report in,
obviously it could be that it was being trailed by an American unit
and it didn't want to give away its position.
It could have, you know, equipment problems.
Although when you get right down to it, the sub could've gone rogue.
But that was kind of inconceivable because these were super patriots.
These men would no more go, you know, defect
than an American submarine captain would.
In the heightened Cold War tension of 1968
where the slightest misstep by a super power
could trigger a nuclear war,
it is a potentially disastrous situation
Moscow must rush to address.
When the sub failed to send its special signal
that everything was OK,
the Soviet high command became very alarmed.
So, immediately they rushed to order a search for the sub
along its assigned patrol route.
The sub hadn't communicated in a few days,
so the area of ocean that it could've covered is pretty vast.
You're talking about hundreds of square miles.
What are you looking for?
You're looking for oil slicks, for pieces of metal,
So, I think a desperate search that seems completely disorganised
is probably a completely natural result.
If K-129 has sunk, the Russians believe
the chance of finding survivors is extremely unlikely.
But retrieving the submarine with its code machines and nuclear weapons
before their sworn enemies, the Americans, is vital.
Their convoy of ships, however,
soon draws the attention of the Americans.
We saw the Russians out there searching in that area,
which was a known patrol box for their ballistic missile submarines,
it was logical to assume that they'd lost a sub.
It's then that the Russians make an explosive accusation.
The Soviet Navy command claimed the K-129 sank
after being rammed by the American nuclear powered attack submarine,
the USS Swordfish.
SEWELL: The Russians were looking for the sub.
And all of a sudden, the USS Swordfish
comes into its home port and it's got a dent in the sail.
What the Russians say is that it was overrun by the US sub,
causing a breach in the hull.
This is something that happened a lot back then.
You're trying to stay in your opponent's blind spot constantly.
So, you're in a pretty dangerous position
if the submarine that you're tailing makes a sudden, and unexpected move.
The American crews even have a classified name for this
Russian sudden unexpected move.
They call it the "Crazy Ivan".
Clancy included it in his book,
and it became one of the most dramatic scenes in the film.
I had that sequence of the Crazy Ivan and the two submarines.
And visually it was very interesting.
But did it happen?
To this day, the Americans continue to deny
that the Swordfish collided with K-129.
I am absolutely certain
the USS Swordfish had nothing to do with K-129.
They ran into some ice floes and pulled in for repairs.
SEWELL: The K-129 was a deep diving submarine
and it had about a two-inch-thick hull of high yield steel,
and steel beams to reinforce it.
The part of the Swordfish was damaged was the sail,
which is a very thin metal,
so there's no way it could have penetrated the hull of the K-129.
But Russian suspicions about the Swordfish continue to this day
because of the Americans' determination
to keep everything concerning it classified.
Something Clancy himself discovers
when he yet again falls afoul of a navy censor.
..is classified.
One of the officers told me the book should not be published
for reasons of security.
What he was really worked up about
was something called the Crazy Ivan turn.
He was annoyed that I knew what that was
and I told him that one of my clients had told me
what Crazy Ivan was and I just sort of filed it away and used it.
I honestly couldn't even tell you which one told me this
because I have insurance for maybe seven or eight of them.
But in spite of this warning,
somehow, Clancy again seems immune to the censor.
The Crazy Ivan manoeuvre remains in both the book and movie.
Back in the North Pacific,
after weeks of searching unsuccessfully for their lost sub,
the Soviets give it up for lost.
I could probably, in 1968, point to an area of the Pacific
and tell you your submarine is there
and the Russians still couldn't have found it.
They just literally did not have the capabilities
to see that beyond a certain depth.
They basically have to write it off.
So as much as you might be panicking
about the fact that you lost a nuclear missile,
I think you're confident that your opponent has no means of retrieving it either.
But the Russians' confidence is misplaced.
In a twist to the Red October plot about a Soviet captain
desperate to get his sub into the hands of the wary Americans,
in the case of K-129 the Americans are determined
to get their hands on a sub the Russians have abandoned.
The intelligence it contains, they believe,
could tip the Cold War in America's favour.
So basically, the Soviets lost a submarine during this period.
We know that because we observed a massive search that was abandoned.
Could we find it? What do we do?
I mean, it's beyond a needle in a haystack.
It's like a needle in a thousand haystacks.
Then, a University of Hawaii oceanographic research vessel,
the Teritu, makes a startling discovery.
SEWELL: 400 miles south of the K-129's patrol area,
a University of Hawaii research vessel came across an oil slick.
(CRACKLING)
When they tested it for radioactivity...
(CRACKLING)
..it had bomb-grade material mixed in it.
Had the Soviet navy been mounting an attack on American forces
in Pearl Harbor?
And if they had, were other attacks imminent?
It was something that we really needed to investigate.
The 1990 smash-hit film, Hunt for Red October,
tells the story of a Soviet submarine captain,
played by Sean Connery,
attempting to defect to the American Navy,
and a CIA officer, played by Alec Baldwin,
who must convince the Americans
that Connery isn't secretly planning a double cross.
This story, it can now be revealed,
was inspired by one of the most closely guarded secrets
of the Cold War,
the events behind the missing Soviet submarine K-129.
In late March 1968,
after the Soviet Navy abandons its search for K-129,
Dr John Craven, head of the US Navy's top-secret Special Projects division,
is alerted to the radioactive oil slick
320 miles from the American naval base at Pearl Harbor,
and 400 miles south of where the Russians were searching.
Dr John Craven is a legend in the submarine community.
He was the chief scientist on the Polaris....program.
Later on, he did special operations
for mostly the intelligence agencies.
I got to know him personally.
He was a genius. He had several PhDs.
He was a true Renaissance man.
DR CRAVEN: In the 1960s,
I was director of the Deep Submersion Assistance Project,
and classified at the time a number of intelligence projects.
Dr Craven was involved with trying to figure out
why the Russians were up in the control box
looking for the sub.
And the fact that that oil slick had bomb-grade material mixed in it
was something that he really needed to investigate.
Craven turns to the top-secret SOSUS listening system
the Americans have deployed in oceans around the world.
DEAN: So, anchored to the seafloor you've got a series of hydrophones
that listen to submarines.
And submarines all have a unique signature.
No two submarines sound the same. It's almost like a fingerprint.
So, the way their screws turn in the engine,
some combination of factors creates a sound that's unique.
Plus, there's a second system.
There are sensors mounted alongside the hydrophones
that are listening for any ballistic missile tests in the oceans.
There is no evidence of an imminent coordinated Soviet attack.
But there is something else.
Around the time of the K-129's disappearance,
these sensors off of Hawaii
picked up something that sounded different.
And when the analysts go back and listen to the results...
..they're like, "That's weird.
"That doesn't sound normal.
"Did something happen to that submarine?
"Like, did it blow up?"
(EXPLOSION)
Craven also checks the US satellites that orbit the earth
looking for rocket launches.
A rocket, when it launches, will give off a spectrum
of radiation depending on the type of fuel being used.
He found that they did have a flare.
But since no missile appeared on radar,
it was dismissed as an anomaly.
By using this information
and calculating the flow of the radioactive slick,
Craven arrives at a probable search area.
It is approximately
370 miles from Pearl Harbor.
Craven also realises something else.
Even though he's still sworn to secrecy,
he hints that K-129,
in straying 400 miles from where the Soviet command had sent it,
was most likely in violation of its orders.
You have a serious question as to why that submarine
was not where the deploying party thought it was.
You know then that they have
a serious problem of command and control.
Command and control.
While his language is careful, his meaning is clear.
Whatever happened on K-129 was unauthorised, serious
and consistent with having gone rogue.
The K-129 was ordered to go to its patrol box.
It actually went right through it,
didn't even pause and went 370 miles from Pearl Harbor.
It had disobeyed orders.
It was a rogue submarine, just like the submarine in the film Hunt For Red October.
For the Americans, finding K-129
is potentially a treasure-trove of Soviet military intelligence.
But while Craven now has a target area to look for it,
he and his team face a seemingly impossible challenge.
The waters in this area are over three miles deep,
and if the Russians catch them searching,
they'll consider it an act of war.
In the blockbuster film, Hunt For Red October,
the Soviet navy frantically searches for its rogue submarine
captained by Sean Connery.
But in the real-world case of the Soviets' missing K-129,
it's the Americans determined to find it.
DR CRAVEN: The naval submarine intelligence people
called me in and asked me if I could modify existing submarines
to find hardware on the deepest part of the ocean
that was of great intelligence value.
Craven devises a plan
to equip a specialised submarine called Halibut
with a mobile deep-sea camera.
I chose Halibut because it had a large hangar
in which we could put large amounts of equipment.
Roger Dunham is a young submariner
assigned to the secret submarine in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
When I got on the submarine
nobody had any idea about what it was supposed to do
except to search the bottom of the ocean floor.
What we would be searching for we did not know.
Civilians came aboard. They stayed pretty much among themselves.
We did not know what their credentials were.
They were very serious. They were studious.
They were obviously very, very intelligent people
who were closely involved in the operations.
Halibut now completely disappears into the shadowy world of black ops.
They never told us what they did
but it wasn't something we needed to know
to fulfil our activities and the operations of the submarine.
To ready the submarine for its mission,
Craven's team has cut bay doors that open and close in its bottom.
Through this hole, a complex photography vehicle
known simply as 'the Fish' can descend on a tether down 25,000 feet.
To this day, that special project sub program is still top-secret.
It has its own contingent of people on board
who are not navy people, like, the "civilians", right?
They work in their special room
and they work for the NSA and the CIA.
And they're down there to figure out secrets about the Soviet navy
without the Soviet navy knowing that we're doing it.
The only people that were aware of the mission was the captain
and the executive officer, and an intelligence officer.
The task of finding K-129 tests them to their limit.
The secret search is deeper and more difficult than any ever conducted.
The Fish must scour the ocean floor over three miles below,
and it must do it blind.
If you picture an airliner flying at 20,000 feet
lowering a device on the end of a cable all the way down
you'd get some concept of what the technological difficulties were.
We're talking 1968. There were no computers, no GPS.
You know, primitive systems.
And yet, this submarine was able to take very clear photographs
of 16,000 feet under the ocean.
And as the weeks pass, the only thing outweighing their exacting task
is the danger they face.
DR DUNHAM: The mood was intense.
We were running low on uranium, and things kept going wrong.
Go! Go! Go!
We lost a man and we lost the reactor,
with an emergency shut-down.
Because K-129 is in international waters,
any search and retrieval operation must be completely clandestine.
An American incursion risks a lethal Soviet response.
Every day the Halibut goes back and forth
increases the chance of being caught by Russian patrols.
As in The Hunt For Red October,
maintaining silence is a matter of life or death.
In spite of the danger, Halibut must hold a stable depth
300 feet beneath the surface
with the Fish tethered a full three miles below.
Just imagine a submarine running a grid pattern back and forth,
back and forth, so that they don't miss any area
for hundreds of square miles.
For months at a time, dragging a cable with a camera on the end,
taking thousands of pictures every day
that then go into a darkroom
and some poor guy has to go through them.
And we know that that guy didn't really know what he was looking for.
It's like, "Go and find something weird in the ocean and tell me when you've found it.
"You're going to know it when you see it,
"but I'm not going to tell you that you're looking for a submarine,
"but trust me, you're going to know it when you see it."
Then, in their position 300 feet below the surface,
the Halibut is suddenly rocked by a series of shock waves.
A Soviet ship above them is dropping charges into the water.
At that point the Soviets were looking for us,
there were many detonations going off in the water,
where there should have been no noise at all.
It's a desperate situation made worse
because knowledge of the Halibut's mission
is limited to the American president
and only a handful of others.
There will be no-one to save the crew if the Soviets detect the sub.
In the hit film Hunt For Red October,
the defecting Soviet captain, played by Sean Connery,
must take evasive action to avoid being sunk by his own navy.
Similarly, the American spy sub, Halibut,
while searching for the missing Soviet submarine K-129,
also finds itself under attack from the Russians...
..forcing the captain to take evasive action.
He guides the sub into a pocket of cool water
hundreds of feet below...
..and waits.
(EXPLOSION)
It is hoped the warmer water above it
will help deflect the shock waves.
We were very, very quiet.
Fortunately for all of us we were able to remain there
and remain undetected.
Despite being constantly stalked by the Russians,
the Halibut's Special Ops team
continues to search for the K-129 wreck.
Then, on August 20, 1968
four and a half months after it goes missing,
the photo technician finally sees something he recognises.
And you know suddenly it's like, "Oh, my God, we've found it,
"and it's in pretty good shape."
You know, it doesn't look like a submarine sitting in port,
but it also doesn't look like a submarine that's been crushed like a tin can.
This is a submarine.
And you're in a submarine.
That can be you there except for the grace of God.
Craven's team sets to work photographing the wreck
from every possible angle.
In total, 32,000 pictures are taken on the mission.
To this day, not one of them has been de-classified,
but a few have leaked.
I've seen the images. They are remarkably clear.
They are taken at three miles under the ocean in 1968. Very clear.
Even at first glance, they offer tantalising evidence
about what sunk K-129.
The submarine has sustained massive structural damage
to its mid-section.
After three weeks, taking detailed photographs of the K-129 wreck,
Halibut returns to Pearl Harbor.
The commanding officer came up out of the submarine
with a briefcase filled with photographs.
It was deemed of sufficiently high intelligence
that it did not go through the normal intelligence review channels
but went directly to the top.
Here you are, sir.
President Lyndon Johnson is one of the very few to see the photographs.
He honours the crew with the Presidential Unit Citation,
the highest award a submariner can receive.
The irony is not one of the men knows why he has been decorated.
However, for Craven, the photos identifying K-129's location
400 miles south of its patrol area
confirms his suspicions - K-129 had been rogue.
They also reveal something even more sinister.
The photographs of the submarine that I saw laying on the bottom
showed the damage to tube number one,
with a wrecked missile kinda hanging out the top.
The photos suggest the very real possibility
that K-129 was in the process of firing a nuclear missile
when it sank.
And if it was, what was its intended target, and why did it fail?
After seeing the photos, one thing becomes paramount
to the newly sworn in president.
Nixon wants to get his hands on K-129.
He believes it offers him the one thing he's always wanted -
to break the Soviets.
He demands his forces raise the stricken sub
and do it in secret.