Blind Man's Bluff

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Summary: true to life
Review: I felt that this book was an excellant representation of what the old sub force of the U.S. Navy was like. I am in the sub force right now and I am very jealous of what they went through only because that was the real thing. The Navy today is not the same as it was then and it never will be. Once again the book is excellant and should be read by everybody so that way people will know it takes to be a SUBMARINER. Also what the boys went through everyday of their lives onboard each boat and how they left as Boy's and came home as Men.

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Summary: Ignorance is bliss!
Review: I'm glad I knew nothing about this during the Cold War. I devoured the book, start to finish, on a single transcontinental flight. In my opinion, the book is interesting but anecdotal. However that's exactly the level of interest I have in the subject. I'm sure the Clancyites amongst us find it superficial, but I don't read Clancy (except for *Hunt for Red October*...a coincidence). So if you're put off, thinking that the book will be a drab recounting of infinitesimal cold war detail, don't be. It's interesting and worth reading.

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Summary: Fascinating Account of Submarine Espionage
Review: Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (New York: Public Affairs, 1998) 329 pp. Reviewed by Marshall Lee Miller At the height of the Cold War, U.S. intelligence dug a secret tunnel several hundred yards under the Berlin Wall and tapped into communication lines of the Soviet military between Berlin and Leipzig. It was one of our proudest espionage coups, marred by only two niggling facts: those particular lines carried information of only marginal value, and the Soviets had apparently been tipped to the tap from the beginning by one of their British double agents. Now we learn the details of similar but far more impressive feats of espionage carried out by the unlikeliest of sources - U.S. Navy submarines. Beginning in 1949 with an ill-fated diesel submarine named the Cochino, the Navy first concentrated on lurking near Soviet ports and eavesdropping on their radio communications and weapons testing. By 1960 the U.S. nuclear sub Skipjack could sneak with impunity into the secret Soviet naval base at Murmansk, close enough to get a periscope view of the piers only 40 yards away. American submariners also became adept at trailing their noisier Soviet counterparts, sometimes for many weeks at a time. This was highly dangerous, for periodically the Russians would whirl about in wild maneuvers, such as the "Crazy Ivan," to detect would-be pursuers. This risky game, code-named Operation Holystone, gave the U.S. Navy a precise understanding of Soviet technology and techniques, as well as the confidence that it could keep Soviet ballistic missile "boomers" under regular surveillance. These stories in a book by Sherry Sontag and Mt. Vernon Christopher Drew, Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, are well told, but many are already familiar to fans of novelist Tom Clancy and other writers. What has pushed this book onto the best seller list and eight reprintings, however, are the revelations about Operation Ivy Bells - the tapping of the Soviet underwater communication cables, beginning with its submarine base in the Sea of Okhotsk in 1972. The information collected by the U.S. sub Halibut in the Pacific proved so valuable that in 1979 a mission was authorized by President Carter to tap the cable of the top Soviet naval base for the Atlantic. To get to the Barents Sea undetected, the U.S. sub Perche had to sneak there the long way via Alaska and the Arctic icecap. The result was an intelligence bonanza even better than the first one. These were not one-time missions. The monitoring pods with their recording had to be serviced regularly to retrieve the accumulated data. This meant considerable risk of exposure or worse for the submarines, and one trip almost ended in disaster for the aging sub Seawolf. Nevertheless, although the Okhotsk tap was betrayed around 1980, the Barents tap--the "crown jewels"--continued until the demise of the Soviet Union itself. The espionage stories are so interesting, in fact, that a reader might be tempted to skim over the early chapters on the loss of the submarines Threasher in 1963 and Scorpion in 1968. These led to the development of the techniques later used in the tapping, but they are intriguing in their own right. The latter episode is a must-read account of how preconceived notions can impede the investigation of a tragedy. I had one small disappointment with the book. Despite the fact that the authors hired a Russian researcher to interview former Soviet submariners, the results unfortunately do not give us as much a window into the activities of the other side as I would have liked. But what there is proves fascinating. The 1970 hit-and-run collision of the U.S. submarine Tautog and a Soviet Echo-class submarine destroyed the career of naval hero Commander Buehle Balderston and was thought to have destroyed the Russian ship with the loss of 90 men. The researcher, however, located and interviewed the retired Soviet captain, Boris Bagdasarian, in Moscow and learned how his boat had survived. The Okhotsk story almost surfaced publicly during the congressional investigations of the CIA following Watergate. But this is, I believe, the first detailed account of the ultra-secret operations in the Barents Sea. It is a enthralling account, well-written and nicely researched. The book by a native son of Mt. Vernon certainly deserves the wide readership it has attained. - MLM 740 words torpedo2.mil _______________________________ Marshall Lee Miller is a Washington, D.C. lawyer, formerly a senior U.S. government official and Soviet Military editor of Armed Forces Journal International.

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Summary: A Wife of a Submariner
Review: I have been the wife of a sea-going submariner for the last 6 and half years. He has never been able to really share with me the things that he does. Reading this book I have a new found respect and pride for my husband and all submariners. I know that most of you who have been 'in the trenches' may know the real stories. However, those of us who stand on the peir waiting for that first glimpse have little to no knowledge of what you go through. Reading these stories made me feel a little more connected to my husband. It also gives me tremdous pride in what he does and what he has done all these years. He has given up years of his life to protect me and all of us, just as many of you have. I have, at times, hated the Navy for taking him away from me but reading this book I understand why. For that I am grateful.

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Summary: Incredible book! Truth better than fiction...
Review: Amazing! I read this book with my jaw agape from the beginning... and it just kept getting better as it moved thru history. Amazing insight into the minds of the military and sub/naval operations in paticular. Well researched! I have such newfound, awesome respect for our military intelligence operations, sub forces, and the men who dedicated their lives to it. Quite the eyeopener to say the least. A very good read and a definite page-turner. Would love to see more comments from actual sub force's men who have read this book. I would love to read another book on the subject, but am afraid of "the letdown" ocurring after reading this very fine, wide ranging, captivating book. Any suggestions?

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Summary: An uncritical mixture of truth, falsehood, and anecdotes
Review: Here is an example of the author's gullibility. She repeats without comment the Soviet claim that a piece of espionage equipment they found had a US Government ownership label on it. It is standard practice in all of the intelligence agencies in the world to remove identifying labels from items they are going to leave in other countries.

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Summary: A number of details are fiction.
Review: As a former crew member of the Seawolf, and one of the nuclear trained enlisted personnel that was caught in the post overhaul enginroom fire, referenced on page 220 of the book,(in fact I was the enginroom supervisor during the event)we had successfully restored the reactor plant and the steam plant, restoring the ships electrical power and answering bells on nuclear power prior to going topside. NOT A SINGLE MEMBER OF THAT WATCH SECTION WAS CARRIED TOPSIDE. WE did our job, restored the ships power and propulsion and were given the "treat" of breathing fresh air for what I consider a "controlled recovery" from a serious incedent. We did our job and did it well enough to laugh at an outsiders interpretation almost 20 years after. Thank you Admiral Rickover, for the investment in our training that prevented the more serious ending the book porttayed.

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Summary: Sub-vet likes it
Review: Nice account of the dawn of underwater reconnaisance. Authors cover it all from Cochino to Johnny Walker Red, they should have made a footnote regarding the general feeling from men in the fleet regarding Walker. Hard to put down, not as humourous as the lifestyle itself can be. Enjoyed the EB Greening stories, and yes they really do occur.

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Summary: Great Book, Wish it Had More
Review: A great book. I only wish that it had more about the projects. It would be great if some of the participants could write a book about their experiences. The authors should write a follow-up as more information becomes available.

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Summary: An excellent, well researched and documented 'sub-spy' book.
Review: After reading "The Jennifer Project", "Spy Sub", and "A Matter of Risk", I found "Blind Man's Bluff" to be both an excellent summary as well as 'correction' factor of the other three books. For example, "Spy Sub" went to great lengths to hide the name of the U.S. Submarine in it's text, but "-Bluff" had the exact same photograph of the submarine in question but WITH the SSN number and name. "Blind Man's Bluff" will become a classic of it's subject matter.