CIA's $800M Lie: They Built a Fake Mining Ship to Steal a Nuclear Submarine

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]In 1974, [music] the CIA spent $800 million on the most expensive lie in Cold War history. They told the world they were mining the ocean floor. They were actually stealing a nuclear submarine in the Pacific Ocean 16,000 ft underwater. A Soviet nuclear submarine called the K-129 had sunk 6 years earlier. The Russians couldn't find it, but American intelligence had been watching. The CIA knew exactly where it was, and they wanted what was inside. Nuclear warheads, Soviet codebooks, the bodies of enemy [music] sailors. So, they built the Glomar Explorer, a massive ship disguised as a deep-sea mining operation. Howard Hughes provided the perfect cover story. The world believed they were collecting rocks from the ocean floor. In reality, they were attempting the most ambitious theft in military history. [music] The operation worked, sort of. The submarine broke apart during recovery, but the CIA still pulled [music] up nuclear weapons, classified Soviet documents, and the remains of Russian crew members. For months, America secretly possessed enemy nuclear warheads, and the bodies of sailors whose families never knew what happened to them. When journalists finally exposed the truth, it created a diplomatic crisis. The Cold War had crossed a line nobody wanted to admit existed.