P. Rice
Collector’s Notes for Blind Man’s Bluff
Espionage is by definition shrouded in mysteries and secretive action, and no period in American history contains a greater cache of espionage than the period that began immediately in the wake of World War II, a time during which the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an intricate web of carefully guarded movements and counter-movements, each spending as much energy on monitoring the other as in planning its own actions. These secretive maneuvers fed the imagination of novelists and moviemakers who portrayed the secret agent combatants as technologically advanced spies waging battle on the silent front of a geopolitical contest known as the Cold War. In the waning decades of the twentieth century, the close of the Cold War brought about startling revelations previously withheld in the interests of national security, and the world began to learn that the imaginative exploits of the secret agents had in many ways mirrored reality.
As in the Hollywood depictions, the Cold War was indeed waged primarily by cameras, advanced sonar, and various complicated eavesdropping equipment. While citizens of the world shuddered collectively at the possibilities of a nuclear holocaust, US submarines were busy deep beneath the oceans watching Soviet harbors and shipyards, monitoring Soviet missile tests, and shadowing Soviet ships. The crews of those submarines, as many as 140 on a single sub, faced hazards far worse than those that confront surface vessels, even in more traditional wartime circumstances. The ocean pressure alone could easily crush the steel hull of a submarine that strays too deep. With such high risk ever-present, the submarine program was manned entirely by volunteers, and those daring submariners silently formed the nation’s front line of defense against the Soviets for almost fifty years. Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Espionage is the story of those submariners and the vessels they inhabited.
The dramatic narrative unfolds like a novel with sharp character development and intriguing plotlines, but the historical details are ever present to remind the reader that Blind Man’s Bluff is a thoroughly investigated history and not a work of fiction. The personalities that dominate the action are unforgettable, as are their remarkable exploits. Among the heretofore unsung heroes are Charles R. MacVean, commander of the nuclear attack submarine Seawolf; Commander Whitey Mack of the Lapon, who boldly outraced torpedoes and dared to trail a Soviet Yankee missile boat throughout a patrol; Captain Jim Bradley, who used his childhood memories of the Mississippi River to guide America’s undersea cable tapping missions; and Commander Richard Buchanan of the Parche, a submarine whose crews were awarded a total of seven Presidential Unit Citations.
Tragedies and near-tragedies are crucial elements in the drama, beginning in 1949 with the accidental loss of the diesel submarine Cochino and the heroic but futile struggle of Commander Rafael C. Benitez and his crew to save the floundering ship. In 1968, the Scorpion and her crew were lost following the completion of a secret mission, apparently the victims of a defective torpedo that exploded and sent the ship to the ocean floor. The Gudgeon, with Norman G. “Buzz” Bessac at the helm, was held underwater and under siege for forty-eight hours, narrowly escaping destruction by Soviet antisubmarine forces. Commander Buele Balderston’s rising career was shattered when the Tautog crashed with a Soviet Echo II sub. And in the midst of power struggle between nations, bitter internal conflicts raged between the CIA and the Navy, battles that threatened to capsize one of the country’s most important undersea missions as the Halibut, captained by C. Edward Moore, sought to locate a Soviet missile boat that was later salvaged by the CIA’s Glomar Explorer.
Authors Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew spent six years sifting through American and Soviet archives and conducting hundreds of personal interviews with submariners, government officials, and intelligence officers. Included in the study is extensive information about the history, size, and capabilities of the various classes of submarines as well as a detailed examination of submarine tactics and technology. The research is thoroughly documented with notes on sources, although the anonymity of many of the interviewees is understandably maintained due to the ongoing fear of reprisals. The appendices include a section devoted to documenting submarine collisions and a section of highlights from the Soviet point of view. Complementing the text are maps, diagrams of submarines, and sixteen pages of black and white photographs.
Sherry Sontag is a former staff writer for the National Law Journal where she wrote and researched extensively about the Soviet Union and international affairs. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she has also written for the New York Times where co-author Christopher Drew is an investigative reporter and projects editor. Prior to his tenure with the Times, Drew worked in the Washington, D.C., bureau of the Chicago Tribune writing about national security issues. He has won two awards from the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Bound in genuine leather adorned with accents of 22-kt gold on the spine, this special Easton Press edition of Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Espionage is printed on specially-milled archival quality paper and is designed to last as an indispensable addition to your Leather-Bound Library of Military History.
the presidency by an electoral vote of 277 to 145. Returning to his private law practice in Indianapolis, Harrison remained active in public life until his death from pneumonia in 1901.
The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison is a fascinating portrait of the twenty-third president and a scholarly analysis of the policies and administration of one of the most underrated American leaders. Authors Homer E. Socolofsky, professor of history at Kansas State University, and Allan B. Spetter, associate professor of history at Wright State University, have provided the authoritative study of a quiet president whose influence on geopolitics continues to gain recognition.
This Easton Press edition of The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison is handsomely bound in genuine leather adorned by accents of 22kt gold on the spine. Printed on archival quality paper specially milled for this edition, The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison is designed to endure for generations as an indispensable addition to your Library of the Presidents collection.