Blind Man's Bluff

Little is known--and less has been published--about American submarine espionage during the Cold War. These submerged sentinels silently monitored the Soviet Union's harbors, shadowed its subs, watched its missile tests, eavesdropped on its conversations, and even retrieved top-secret debris from the bottom of the sea. In an engaging mix of first-rate journalism and historical narrative, Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew describe what went on.

"Most of the stories in Blind Man's Bluff have never been told publicly," they write, "and none have ever been told in this level of detail." Among their revelations is the most complete accounting to date of the 1968 disappearance of the U.S.S. Scorpion; the story of how the Navy located a live hydrogen bomb lost by the Air Force; and a plot by the CIA and Howard Hughes to steal a Soviet sub. The most interesting chapter reveals how an American sub secretly tapped Soviet communications cables beneath the waves. Blind Man's Bluff is a compelling book about the courage, ingenuity, and patriotism of America's underwater spies. --John J. Miller

"We've spent our careers as investigative reporters, but this was by far our most challenging story. For one thing, naval investigative agents trailed us, actively discouraging sources from speaking. Still, over the course of five years of research, we eventually interviewed hundreds of men who had never spoken about what they'd done-not even to their wives and children. . . . We'll always remember just how relieved they were to sit down with us and finally tell someone, 'I did this. I was there, too.' They were silent heroes, and this book is their story."