2 things re: the Big Foot Lockin: 1) FBN has a working product! 2) Howard Hughes Lives! (Ice Station ZEBRA reference). Particularly interesting is the coincidence that the WSJ had an article on Howard just this morning:
Notorious CIA Spy Ship Glomar Has a New Mission for Oil Firms (is this the feared Bigfoot?)
interactive.wsj.com
By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
IN THE GULF OF MEXICO -- Two crewmen dangle from a canopy of
machinery that towers over a newly refurbished drilling ship, fumbling with
a huge knot of bolts and metal. Their movements are tentative, their
progress so slow that a drill test planned for the day must be postponed.
Such delays can be expected as a crew of oil roustabouts gets used to
unfamiliar hardware, but this rig is especially unusual: It's built atop the
Glomar Explorer, once one of the world's most notorious spy ships.
Ostensibly commissioned by the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, the
ship quietly retrieved a sunken Soviet submarine in 1974 for the Central
Intelligence Agency and then spent nearly a generation inelegantly
mothballed at a Navy shipyard.
Now, in one of the more classic swords-to-plowshares tales of the
post-Cold War era, the Glomar Explorer is again prowling the high seas,
this time as a capitalist tool. Spurred by oil companies' interest in exploring
deep waters, Global Marine Inc., the original designer, pressed the
government to relinquish the ship under a 30-year, $52 million contract. Its
current customers, Texaco Inc. and Chevron Corp., are paying the
Houston company a total of $260 million over five years in hopes of
drilling four wells a year in the Gulf.
But in keeping with its past, little is straightforward or simple about the
Explorer. The $200 million conversion has hit some rough spots, running
four months behind schedule and $30 million over budget. And though the
updated craft is now a vastly different animal, it can't completely escape its
history.
Curtis Crooke, now-retired president of Global Marine, recalls the day in
1969 when CIA operatives burst uninvited through the door of his
California office. Ordering everyone but Mr. Crooke to leave, the agents
presented themselves as customers interested in "going into the deep
ocean and lifting things."
Subsequent meetings revealed that the CIA was after a Soviet nuclear sub
that sank 700 miles northwest of Hawaii in 1968. The quest was a delicate
one; in the age of detente, spying, always a clandestine business, was
considered especially bad form. They needed a cover story.
"We called it a mining ship, largely because nobody knew what a mining
ship should look like," Mr. Crooke says.
Of course, mining an ocean bottom for minerals is a decidedly unprofitable
pursuit, especially for a lavish, 618-foot vessel like the Explorer. The trick,
Mr. Crooke said, was to find a company discreet enough to keep a secret
but crazy enough to champion such an endeavor without raising eyebrows.
Mr. Crooke said he and the agents began wading through the list of loyal
government contractors, but nobody was considered crackpot enough.
Then inspiration came.
"Howard Hughes! Everybody will believe crazy Howard," Mr. Crooke
said. "It was like a light bulb went on." Indeed, as the architect of the
oft-ridiculed Spruce Goose, an eight-engine, amphibious plywood aircraft
so heavy it barely got airborne in tests, Mr. Hughes was perfect.
The eccentric inventor didn't disappoint. In press conferences, he
advanced the underwater mining story with vigor. He dredged up a load of
authentic manganese "nodules" to pass around and signed smelting
contracts with several metals firms.
The mission, the details of which mostly remain secret, appears to have
gone off without a hitch. But despite steady denials from the CIA, the
Glomar Explorer's real purpose leaked out in 1975, about a year after its
mission. The press had a field day with a tale of government secrecy in the
era of Watergate and international intrigue on the eve of the strategic arms
talks, with some gee-whiz science and a legendary eccentric thrown into
the mix. According to newspaper accounts, the CIA snagged part of the
sub, two nuclear-tipped missiles and the bodies of six Soviet sailors. The
ship's construction budget wasn't disclosed and, to this day, remains a
state secret.
The famously close-mouthed CIA today actually confesses its role. "We
publicly acknowledge that the Glomar Explorer existed and that the CIA
sponsored it," says CIA spokesman Tom Crispell, adding that the Soviet
bodies were buried at sea.
The ship itself was an engineering marvel, with a yawning hull door that
allowed a giant claw access to the deep, a series of thruster engines to
hold it steady in the pitching swell and a cavernous, five-story cargo hold
that ran half the length of the vessel. "It was like something out of Jules
Verne," says Steve Kemp, a junior marine architect with Global who
helped design and build the ship at a yard in Chester, Pa.
Secrecy infused the project, which Mr. Kemp attributes to Mr. Hughes's
paranoia. Shipyard access was restricted and passageways on the vessel
were unaccountably locked. "I thought it was just the nature of the man,"
says Mr. Kemp. Now a chief engineer for Chevron, he reminisces aboard
the Explorer as it trolls the waters about 120 miles southeast of New
Orleans.
Missing Spy Stuff
The swinging hull doors are now welded shut and the opening to the sea,
once vast, is no larger than a backyard swimming pool. The spy stuff that
visitors recall, like recording devices and the red phones, are gone. The
spacious paneled "owner's stateroom" -- presumably intended for Mr.
Hughes -- is an engineering office.
The huge sub-snagging grappling claw has simply vanished. "Whatever the
thing was, it was not with the vessel when we leased it," says Global
spokesman Dave Herasimchuk, adding that the company's lease prohibits
Global from discussing the Explorer's former activities.
Still, the ship remains a technological hot rod, with 12-knot speed and a
tangle of advanced drilling equipment that wows the roustabouts. Drilling is
directed from a cubicle that looks like the Starship Enterprise. Its
command chair, designed by Porsche AG, bristles with joysticks and
panic buttons. "If you don't watch the horizon, you can't even tell we're
moving," says Eric Ford, Global's dynamic-position-equipment operator.
But the machinery has been troublesome. The most recent disappointment
was a leaky tunnel thruster, which forced a haul-out in a Mobile, Ala.,
shipyard two weeks ago. When the side-mounted thrusters operate, the
ship is steady as a pier, even in 16-foot seas and 40 mile-an-hour winds;
without them, the ship would blow off site and snap the drill in a matter of
minutes.
Somebody Else's Money
Dale Sanders, Texaco's on-board drilling supervisor, meets each
disappointment with aplomb, in part no doubt because Global is eating the
expenses during the trials. "There's more steel moving around this ship than
in the average steel factory -- and a lot less space for it to move around,"
he says.
The setup is complex in human terms as well. While Global employees
pilot the craft, the two oil companies split drilling privileges down the
middle, with Chevron going first. Every Texaco employee like Mr.
Sanders has a Chevron counterpart. The crews divvy up the food bills but
maintain separate computer systems and bureaucracies. "It's the first in the
Gulf that I know of that's attempting to merge two companies on one rig,"
Mr. Sanders said. "Everyone gets along real well."
More or less. Issues on the infamous Glomar Explorer these days tend
toward the mundane. The matter of accommodations, for instance, may
require arbitration. Chevron employees have ended up with superior digs,
prompting grumbles from the Texaco workers. While Mr. Sanders sweats
it out on the lower bunk of a shared cubby, his counterpart commands an
oversize stateroom with a private bath. Chevron says when Texaco
employees supervise the drilling, they'll swap bunks.
Mr. Sanders hopes so. "That's an adjustment Chevron's going to have to
make," he says dryly. "It'll be an interesting five years." |
