Our quotations from what Reagan and Gorbachev said to each other in Reykjavik all come from Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, ch. 36 ("What Really Happened at Reykjavik"). Shultz notes in that book that he usually kept careful notes of his meetings with key leaders and/or contemporaneous notes taken by others.
Interestingly enough, Shultz told us in an interview that while he supported risky, "military-oriented" intelligence missions like the cable tapping, he also thought much clandestine intelligence was overrated. "The most important information-people have to keep reminding themselves-is what you get by just common observation," he said. "I always felt-I don't want to distinguish among newspapers-but I always felt that the dispatches of Bill Keller, who wrote for the Neu.' York Times, were about as rewarding reading about anything that was going on as anything I read. And he didn't have any clandestine sources or what not. He was just a smart guy who got around.
"And I think that as a general proposition, the basic State Department reporting, using open sources, and observation, and talking to people, give you the basic picture. Sometimes you can be even misled by what you pick up in some clandestine way. Because there is a feeling that if you got it by some secret means, it must be very important." Laughing, he added: "And it may he that it's not anywhere near as important as things that are just obviously there."
Main interviews: Admiral Carl Trost and other current and former top Navy officials.
Government documents, books, articles, and other sources: Admiral Crowe describes Marshal Akhromeyev's visits in detail in chapter 16 of The Line of Fire. Admiral Trost, in an interview, described the meeting with Akhromeyev in the Joint Chiefs' "Tank" as well as his own travels to Russia and conclusions about the Soviet Navy. Akhromeyev committed suicide after the failed coup against Gorbachev in 1991.
The activity of the submarines in Squadron 1 I was included in its official command history for 1988.
Bush wrote to Gorbachev to offer the Soviets help after their prototype for an advanced "Mike"-class nuclear attack submarine sank in 8,400 feet of water 270 miles north of Norway. It sank after a fire broke out on board, and 42 crew members were killed.
Transcripts of speeches from the Naval Submarine League's convention in 1990 were reprinted in the organization's quarterly magazine, the Submarine Review, later that year. The role of U.S. attack submarines in the Persian Gulf War and details of the Navy's new "From the Sea" maritime strategy have been described in numerous news articles and in brochures prepared by the Navy. The Navy publicly released a report of an investigation into the collision involving the USS Baton Rouge, and we also drew from news articles about both that and the Grayling collision in the New York Times and the Washington Post, which published the quote from the unnamed senior administration official wondering whether top Navy officials "read the newspapers" before undertaking such missions.
There also have been numerous articles in the major daily newspapers, the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and the Submarine Review on the plans for, and capabilities of, both the new Seawolf and the proposed NSSN attack submarines, as well as extensive coverage on how much the submarine force is being cut back from cold war levels. The Submarine Review's practice of reprinting Sub League convention speeches from top Navy officials has made it easy to keep track of all the changes in the sub force, from new technology to the new roles and missions. One recent article in the general pressRichard J. Newman, "Breaking the Surface," U.S. News & World Report, April 6, 1998, pp. 28-42-also provides a comprehensive look at what the sub force is focusing on now.
Two articles noted the USS Parche's move from Mare Island to a new port in Washington State: Ed Offley, "Secret Nuclear Navy Submarine Finds New Home," Seattle Post-Intelligencer [the article title as it appeared in the Times-Picayune (New Orleans), November 24, 1994]; and Lloyd Pritchett, "Will Top-Secret Sub Be Able to Slip into Area Quietly?" Bremerton Sun, August 8, 1994.
Both Offley's and Newman's stories suggest that Iran and China would be good targets for cable-tapping by the Parche.
Gates's decision to bring the videotape of the funeral held for the men on the Golf was ultimately motivated by the fact that the United States wanted to inspire Russia to offer up information on missing American servicemen in Vietnam. Before that, "We had never confirmed anything to the Russians except in various vague senses," he said in an interview. "Shortly after the USSR collapsed, the Bush administration had told the Russians through an intermediary that we couldn't tell them any more about what had happened on Golf/Glomar. But then when we started asking the Russians about what had happened to U.S. pilots shot down over Vietnam, and if any U.S. POWs had been transferred to Russia and held there, they came back and said, `What about our guys in the submarine?"'
At the time, the administration told the Russians only that there were no survivors and that there were only scattered remains. Later, Gates says, "It seemed to me, as I was getting ready for the trip, that there would be symbolic value in terms of assuring the Russians that, from the CIAs standpoint, the cold war was over." It was then that he decided to give them information about the Glomar. He planned the move as a surprise, he says. "We didn't tell the Russians what I was bringing. We told them I was bringing a gift for Yeltsin of historic and symbolic importance. They were dying to know what it was. For once, we kept a secret. I guess Aldrich Ames was not brought into the picture."
Main sources: U.S. and Russian submariners and navy officials, Joshua Handler, Alexander Mozgovoy, and news articles cited in the text.
Main sources: U.S. and Russian submariners and navy officials, and articles in Russian newspapers and magazines. The most detailed account of the reactor accident on the Hiroshima came from the May 1991 issue of Soviet Soldier, in an article titled "Ivan Kulakov Versus a Nuclear Reactor," pp. 28–31.
Since the end of the cold war, the Russian Navy has been much more open about what went on than the U.S. Navy, and numerous articles have appeared in the Russian press detailing submarine disasters and disclosing other problems. Our researcher, Alexander Moz govoy, wrote some of these articles for various publications. Several articles have described the travails of the K-19 and the drama of the reactor accident that killed eight of its crew members in 1961. (An additional twenty-two men ultimately died from radiation poisoning.) The episode involving the USS Baltimore and the Soviet Zulu 1V sub was first reported in the series in the Chicago Tribune and the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press in 1991.