Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 006097771X, Paperback)

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

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 006103004X, Mass Market Paperback)

Includes a new afterword describing submariners' responses and reactions and a new appendix of all award-winning subs honored for service in Cold War espionage operations.

With 16 pages of black-and-white photos

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0099409984, Paperback)

Stretching from the years immediately after World War II to the spy operations of the Clinton administration, the authors present extraordinary revelations about undersea conflict between the US and British submarines and the Soviet fleet in an unseen intelligence war. The authors reveal stories of adventure, ingenuity, courage and disaster beneath the sea. They show how the American Navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. They unveil evidence that the Navy's own negligence might have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, in the 1970s. They disclose details of the bitter war between the CIA and the Navy and how it threatened to sabotage one of America's most important undersea missions. The tell the story of the audacious attempt to steal a Soviet submarine with the help of eccentric billionnaire Howard Hughes, and how it was doomed from the start. The authors also reveal how the Navy used the comforting notion of deep-sea rescue vehicles to hide operations that were more James Bond than Jacques Cousteau.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0694521922, Audio Cassette)

No espionage missions have been kept more secret than those involving American submarines. Now, Blind Man's Bluff shows for the first time how the Navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. It unveils how the Navy's own negligence might have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, thirty years ago. It tells the complete story of the audacious attempt to steal a Soviet submarine with the help of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and how it was doomed from the start. And it reveals how the Navy used the comforting notion of deep sea rescue vehicles to hide operations that were more James Bond than Jacques Cousteau.

Blind Man's Bluff contains an unforgettable array of characters, including the cowboy sub commander who brazenly outraced torpedoes and couldn't resist sneaking up to within feet of unaware enemy subs. It takes us inside clandestine Washington meetings where top submarine captains briefed presidents and where the espionage war was planned one sub and one dangerous encounter at a time. Stretching from the years immediately after World War II to the present-day operations of the Clinton Administration, it is an epic story of daring and deception. A magnificent achievement in investigative reporting, it feels like a spy thriller, but with one important difference'everything in it is true.

Read by Tony Roberts.