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Spy Ships: One Hundred Years of Intelligence Collection by Ships and Submarines

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Lee Mathers discusses maritime intelligence collection and what we have learned from it.

Image courtesy of interviewee. November 29, 2023

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This video video recounts a personal journey that began in 2007 when the speaker received a conspiracy theory book from a relative, which contained misinformation about a Soviet submarine incident known as Project K-129. Outraged by the inaccuracies and having prior knowledge from their Navy experience, the speaker connected with like-minded individuals, including filmmaker Michael White and acoustics expert Bruce Rule, to research and produce a documentary and accompanying book on the topic.

Over two years, they collaborated on a film and wrote a book which was ultimately published in 2010. During the collaborative work, they discovered new CIA declassified documents that supported their findings, enhancing their research. The speaker continued to investigate the recovery of a reconnaissance satellite film bucket by the Bathyscaphe Trieste, resulting in a well-received Naval History article published in 2014.

Following this work, the speaker participated in presentations at various prominent locations, including the CIA headquarters. They then partnered with historian Norman Polmar to produce a book about the history of bathyscaphe operations. This video video subsequent book, titled "Opening the Great Depths," was published in 2021 and won a naval history award, leading to plans for another book on spy ships.

The upcoming book will specifically address the U.S. and Soviet spy ship operations during the Cold War, highlighting the unique use of technology for intelligence collection. It aims to cover the histories of 130 spy ships in an analytical manner, moving away from sensationalism to present a factual account. The author expresses hopes that the book will be of interest to both the intelligence community and the general public, emphasizing the evolution of espionage from ships to satellites in modern times.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Is a story that starts in 2007 when I was,

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gifted by a book,

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with a book from my brother-in-Law.

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And let's see if I can show it to you. Yeah.

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This book, which I do not recommend to anyone,

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because it's a conspiracy theory,

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and it was a conspiracy theory about something

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that I knew about when I was in the Navy 30 years previous.

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And so I was able to recognize the falsity

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of the information.

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Essentially, the author was making a, a,

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a statement that the Soviets had

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a submarine off of Hawaii that was attempting

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to launch nuclear weapons against Pearl Harbor

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and suddenly sank.

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Well, the K 1 29 Project Zoan, has,

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as it's become known, was the genesis

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of the conspiracy theory, but I knew the facts of it,

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and I was outraged

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that this author was putting this out as fact.

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And I went on the internet

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and I contacted other people that were also

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similarly outraged at this book,

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and eventually ended up in communications with

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Michael White.

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Michael White was a filmmaker in, Austria

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and Vienna, Austria,

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who was putting together a one hour film on the project.

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Ian and he

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and I worked together with two other researchers.

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One was Bruce Rule, who was the world's expert in, in

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acoustics intelligence and submarine intelligence,

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and a gent by the name of Doherty Tom Doherty.

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And the four of us took two years to put together a

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one hour video, and the book

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to support that video was turned over to Norman Polmar

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to put together, and this is the book

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that ended up

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in 2010 being published.

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Well, in 2009,

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Norman Polmar gathered the whole tribe together.

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Um, Michael White came in from Austria

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and Tom Doherty and Bruce Ruel

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and I came in from our respective homes,

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and we spent a week with Norman Polmar at his house

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going over the book, page by page, idea by idea,

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and by some sort of strange coincidence in the middle of

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Michael White stepped forward

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and said, I just found out that the CIA declassified a major

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Azarian document,

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and we were afraid that it would undermine our

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entire research effort, or at least go against it.

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And so we got a hold

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of the document while we were still together

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and found out that the new document supported everything

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that we had in the book, everything we had in the film.

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And, Essen essentially was as a positive development,

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but it was several years before it matured.

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And during those years, I was involved with researching

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another event.

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Ess Essentially, one of the conspiracy theories

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around K 1 29 was

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that the baths Gaf Trieste, a deep diver

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with only three people in it, dropped to the bottom

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of the ocean to do searches in,

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in researching the K 1 29

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and the Baths staff, it took me

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two years of interviewing all the people involved with the

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gas,

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operation in 19 67, 19 68.

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And it turned out that they were recovering a

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photo reconnaissance satellite film bucket

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that is the film from the satellite was actually

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reentered at, into the

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ocean area north of Hawaii.

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And special planes went out

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and snagged the parachute of the film bucket

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and returned the film to Washington DC for analysis.

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I was able to put that story together

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and put a Mag Magazine article

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into the United States Naval Institute's

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Naval History magazine.

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And after two years of research,

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I was satisfied with what I had.

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And, and, the article was accepted

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and I was awaiting its publication, went outta the blue.

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I received a telephone call from the CIAI

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don't know about you, but I don't normally receive

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telephone calls from the CIA.

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Uh, and he had found my footprints

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at the, my research footprints, the people

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that I were talking to.

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Uh, he had found my footprints

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and asked to be put in contact with me

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because he wanted to interview the people

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that I had interviewed,

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because he was putting the same story together

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about the bath staff re recovering the,

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hexagon film package.

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Then the historian asked for something

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And, and he asked that I stop my article

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and not publish before he published his article.

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And I must have hesitated or something

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because, he immediately said, well, maybe,

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maybe we can work something out.

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If you agree not to publish

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before we get our article into the public domain,

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then I will forward to you all the declassified information

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that I've got on this.

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And it's all been recently declassified

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because we're putting it out publicly.

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So I rewrote the article,

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and then I noticed that amongst the information

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that the CIA had

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provided was a full description of not just what the,

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the Bathos staff did to recover the Hexagon

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film, but also how the

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people searching for that film bucket on the bottom

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of the ocean had found it.

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The search for the film bucket was a technological triumph

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because the, the film bucket was the smallest item

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ever found on the ocean floor, the, the,

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the smallest technological loss, smallest piece of equipment

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that was ever lost on the, the full

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depth 20,000 foot deep ocean.

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I was able to contact the Scripps Institute

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and conduct a couple interviews with them,

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and one gentleman by the name of Tony Boman was able

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to go into the archives

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and forwarded to me the s log on that mission,

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which allowed me to write a completely different story

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that went into the Naval Institute, which included not only

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what the Bathos Scaf Tris did in order to recover it,

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but how the Bath iScaf target was found,

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which, like I said, was a technological triumph.

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And, that needed

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to stop the presses at Naval history once again.

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And I finally, on the third round, gave 'em the article

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that was eventually published.

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It couldn't be published until the CIA put out their

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document, but my article came in

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in February, 2014

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and, was, was published and,

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and was well received.

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Then I received another call from the CIA,

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and this time it was

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because the CIA was so enthusiastic,

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the results of both of our articles that they wanted

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to put on a dog and pony show.

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So we went to the first dog

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and pony show that included myself and my co-author

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and the CIA historian

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and one of the pilots that was in the Bath, SCA Triste,

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at that recovery.

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And again, the, the CIA was

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so enthusiastic about that dog

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and pony show that they decided

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to put it on at three locations in

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Washington dc.

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So in the spring of 2014, we went to,

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Washington and put on the dog

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and pony show on the recovery of the baths,

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the baths recovery of the Hexagon Film package,

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first at the CIA headquarters at

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Langley, then second at the US Naval Museum in Washington,

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DC and finally at the Naval, at the Air

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and Space Museum at Chantilly, Virginia.

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And incidentally, the Air

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and Space Museum put that entire program on film,

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and it is available on the internet.

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After that, Don Walsh,

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who had earlier been the pilot of the Baths when he,

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in 1960, went to the bottom of the Mariana's Trench.

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He and I were part of that, dog and pony show,

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and we went to Norman Polman's house for dinner one night

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at the dinner, Norman Polmar approached me

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and asked if I'd like to collaborate on a book,

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and I said, of course, I've been hoping that you would call

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for the last four years.

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The book he wanted to put out was a history of the Tris.

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I had so many contacts with the Tris community that,

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a, a book was a natural for us,

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and it took us five years of,

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of research and we produced this book, the,

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opening the Great Depths,

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which went out in 2021.

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And in 2021, we were very pleased to

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receive the John Lyman book, award

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for Naval history for that book.

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So as a collaboration, it worked out very, very well,

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and we agreed to start to work on the second one,

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which is Spy Ships.

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A spy ship is any ship which is solely

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dedicated to electronics intelligence collection.

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So that would mean communications intelligence,

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electronics intelligence, acoustics intelligence,

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but it's a dedicated ship with special equipment

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and special teams of, of intercept operators

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that the mission is solely to be a spy ship.

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Now, spy ship is not a term

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that the community likes to hear.

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The intelligence community likes to hear things like

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reconnaissance or, intelligence collection

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or, intercepts or things like that.

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But these are things that the, the general

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population would consider to be a spy ship.

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And even though it rubs the community the wrong way,

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we decided to title the books Py Ships.

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The United States was in a position throughout the Cold War

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to have communications intercepts and,

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and electronic intercepts, land sites throughout the world,

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in Asia, in Africa, in Europe,

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in Greenland, in Iceland,

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and the just hundreds

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of intercept stations all over the world.

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And so spy ships as a requirement to

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gain information that couldn't be

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otherwise obtained

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by the normal intercept stations,

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ground stations all over the world was,

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of marginal value to the United States.

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The United States essentially only put to sea 12 spy ships,

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and they only operated these ships from the years 1960

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to 1970.

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So it was a rather limited

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operation, and it ended up with two ships, the liberty

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and the Pueblo being lost for one reason or another.

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So it wasn't a very positive,

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results for the effort.

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And so it was shut down pretty early.

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The Soviet Union, on the other hand,

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did not have a worldwide collection

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of ground intercept stations.

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They had a station in Cuba.

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They had its stations in northern, in North Africa,

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and in other locations that were, amenable

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to the communist system.

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But for the, for the Soviets

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spy ships were a major source of information.

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And over the years from 1951, they were,

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they started earlier than we did.

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We started in 1960,

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but the Soviet started their spy ship program in 1951

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and ending on the date of the publication of this book,

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they have had 100 spy ships.

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And it's all the way from people, of spy ships

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that only had maybe a dozen, sailors on board

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and only a few technicians to ships that were

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larger than a cruiser in one case, larger than a battleship.

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And so the, the Soviets have been, and,

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and now the Russians are, are much more interested in the

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operations and utilizations of, of, of ships for

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electronics intelligence.

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Other nations have also operated spy ships,

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but mostly in one and twos.

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China now has, I believe, eight.

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Uh, so, so they're, they're quite interested.

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And just like the Soviets in Russia,

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they do not have intercept stations all over the world.

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So for the Chinese, a spy ship makes economic

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and operational sense.

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But, most spying,

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most electronic spying today

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has moved into orbit.

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And now, rather than the drips

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and drabs that a spy ship can produce

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or did produce over the years, the

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satellites provide a, a flood of information

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because you can put as many satellites in orbit

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as you need in order to maintain the level of, of

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surveillance that you want.

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The general audience would recognize the USS liberty

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as the most, famous

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of the spy ships the United States ever had.

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Uh, the other one

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that was similarly in the news was the Pueblo,

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which was seized by North Korea.

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But in the case of the liberty and,

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and the Pueblo, we recognized these chapters as

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probably the heart of the book, part

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More people will be interested in those two chapters than

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probably the rest of the book combined.

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And we made a early decision that

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because of the public interest and

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because of the fact that there had been many books written

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on both ships, I,

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I think there's over a dozen books written about the liberty

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and half that number lit, written about the Pueblo.

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And the, a lot of these books were highly emotional

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because obviously in the case of the Liberty, 34 people died

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and over 170 people were wounded.

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So an attack on a US Navy ship causing deaths is going

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to have repercussions within

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not only the intelligence community and the naval community,

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but the entire population of the United States

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and the entire population of Israel.

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So we made the decision that we were going to

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pretty much ignore

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and not address the existing,

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periodicals, the existing

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books written on the Liberty and the Pueblo.

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We were gonna go back to original documentation.

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And since the Liberty

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and Pueblo incidents both were over 50 years old,

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a great deal of the information of it

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has been since declassified.

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Not only has the CIA and the NSA

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and Navy declassified nearly everything

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but so has the, Israeli government,

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and by going to both sources, original documentation,

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we were able to lay out a minute by minute

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factual representation of what happened that day.

18:53.425 --> 18:57.925
It was challenging emotionally to tell the story,

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but it was necessary

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to tell the story without the emotions that have been

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pervasive in earlier renditions.

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Uh, we were, quite frankly, both of us are,

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are quite proud of those two chapters

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because we were able to meld the information

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that came from the United States

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and from Israel into a coherent hole.

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And the, the whole of the story is something

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that I don't really want to talk about here.

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I don't wanna talk about it

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because I would rather that the reader

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have an opportunity to see the entire

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event laid out in an unemotional historical manner

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and make their own decisions from, from that reading.

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Why the book, why a book about py ships?

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And essentially, it can be summarized in a statement

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that Norman Polmar once told me.

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He said, never write a history unless it's done.

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Meaning you don't write a World War III history in 1943.

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You wait until 1945 until it's done,

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and then you write your history.

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Well, the, the same is the case for Spy ships.

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The, there has never been a book specifically about

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intelligence collection by ships

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and submarines up until this book.

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And it was two, it was for two reasons.

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One is because people in the intelligence community don't

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talk about current operations, because it's classified.

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But secondarily that the use of spy ships were pervasive,

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and it was an agreement between all countries

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that you don't talk about it.

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That was a protection for the crews and the ships,

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because people who might become cognizant

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of these activities might become violent,

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as we saw with North Korea.

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Now that it's history, now that

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the satellites have taken over the vast majority of the work

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that that spy ships do

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and did, we can tell the whole story.

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And, we have laid out 130 ships

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and what they've done, how, how they work, who worked them,

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and what they've accomplished.

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And I, I'm hopeful that,

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not only the intelligence community

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and the naval community will find it interesting,

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but that the general population will too.

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