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I just finished reading the best-seller Red Star Rogue, a splashy, pseudo-history about the loss of a Russian submarine not far from Hawaii. It's interesting that the best reviews that the publisher could find to quote in the blurbs were from Flint, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio, not exactly the most influential newspapers in the world. The book is an inflammatory mix of a few solid facts, some not-totally absurd reasoning, some fibbing about the inconvenient facts and outright literary fabrications. Looking through the notes, the main author, actually more the researcher, used a lot of Internet info. That instantly says to me *not all that reliable.* The person who actually did the writing (you'd call him a ghost writer, except he's named on the cover) followed the story of the researcher and skillfully arranged the book so that the inconsistencies in facts and logic don't seem so obvious. But they are there.
The book is easily dismissed as not to be believed, but apparently a lot of people have bought the book, so you can expect the story of a botched nuclear attack on Hawaii to become part of paranoid, conspiracy-loving culture from now on. The story basically is that the KGB commandeered a Soviet Navy submarine in March 1968 with the idea of destroying Pearl Harbor and Honolulu with it. Why? So that the Chinese would get blamed, the US would blast China out of existence in revenge, and the rest of the world would cheerfully flock to the Russian Soviet cause as the only super power that wasn't totally insane. According to the authors the plot failed because of an American designed(!) fail-safe device which the plotters failed to disarm which ended up destroying the sub. Even the authors make it plain that that kind of second-hand plot against China would have been doomed from the start, but they seem to think that the people running the KGB were that stupid. Now I will be honest, in the mid to late 1970's I was trying to bring people's attention to Mikhael Suslov, the very real person who is the prime villain of the book. Also the moment people started saying how wonderful it was that Yuriy Andropov (the subordinate villain of the book) was taking over as head of the Soviet government, I was telling anyone who would listen it was not a good thing at all. But I never believed either of those very evil men was profoundly stupid, which the authors do assume. The authors claim the supposed plot largely ended the career of Suslov. His career was certainly not over before 1970. It may well be he took some heat after 1968 for a year or two. But that was most likely over a Kremlin squabble about the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968. If he did slip a bit, afterward he rose to his old power. They also claim that the KGB was put in it's place soon afterward. I don't know about that, one way or the other. But if it was, it neither slowed its general nefarious behavior, nor reduced the influence of Andropov for long.
The authors claim the American public knew nothing of the sinking of the submarine around the time it happened. This was absolutely untrue. When a Russian surface fleet came to that area of the sea and started milling around, the press mentioned it along with the logical conclusion that the Russians had probably lost a submarine. Later the author says that the American public knew nothing of the recovery of the Russian submarine a few years later. The fact is, as the authors basically admit later, it was no secret at all. In fact, it was so well known what they were doing that the CIA was forced not to lie about the operation, but to misdirect people's attention from the site of the actual wreckage, and to lie about the success. The authors do correctly point out some of the successful subterfuge, but they fail to understand that the government often makes people swear to keep things secret which are not all that secret, simply so they won't blurt out more important things in the process. In much better histories than this you will see authors confusing the open government pronouncements of a period with what the people knew. Thus things which look like a giant cover up if you follow the paper trail may be simply a way of keeping a much narrower range of secrets. A prime example of this would be the American bombing of Cambodia late in Vietnam War. Absolutely everyone of age in the country, knew it was going on, and there were published pictures to prove it. But, the government insisted it wasn't happening. That kind of behavior quickly increased the number of anti-war protesters, but perhaps it did help hide some deeper co-lateral secrets. The point is that if you followed the chain of official government pronouncements now, you would get the idea that no Americans knew about the bombing of Cambodia till after the war was over, an absolutely false conclusion.
Oh, and by the way, I do *not* recommend the book to all my friends. ;o)
The book is easily dismissed as not to be believed, but apparently a lot of people have bought the book, so you can expect the story of a botched nuclear attack on Hawaii to become part of paranoid, conspiracy-loving culture from now on. The story basically is that the KGB commandeered a Soviet Navy submarine in March 1968 with the idea of destroying Pearl Harbor and Honolulu with it. Why? So that the Chinese would get blamed, the US would blast China out of existence in revenge, and the rest of the world would cheerfully flock to the Russian Soviet cause as the only super power that wasn't totally insane. According to the authors the plot failed because of an American designed(!) fail-safe device which the plotters failed to disarm which ended up destroying the sub. Even the authors make it plain that that kind of second-hand plot against China would have been doomed from the start, but they seem to think that the people running the KGB were that stupid. Now I will be honest, in the mid to late 1970's I was trying to bring people's attention to Mikhael Suslov, the very real person who is the prime villain of the book. Also the moment people started saying how wonderful it was that Yuriy Andropov (the subordinate villain of the book) was taking over as head of the Soviet government, I was telling anyone who would listen it was not a good thing at all. But I never believed either of those very evil men was profoundly stupid, which the authors do assume. The authors claim the supposed plot largely ended the career of Suslov. His career was certainly not over before 1970. It may well be he took some heat after 1968 for a year or two. But that was most likely over a Kremlin squabble about the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968. If he did slip a bit, afterward he rose to his old power. They also claim that the KGB was put in it's place soon afterward. I don't know about that, one way or the other. But if it was, it neither slowed its general nefarious behavior, nor reduced the influence of Andropov for long.
The authors claim the American public knew nothing of the sinking of the submarine around the time it happened. This was absolutely untrue. When a Russian surface fleet came to that area of the sea and started milling around, the press mentioned it along with the logical conclusion that the Russians had probably lost a submarine. Later the author says that the American public knew nothing of the recovery of the Russian submarine a few years later. The fact is, as the authors basically admit later, it was no secret at all. In fact, it was so well known what they were doing that the CIA was forced not to lie about the operation, but to misdirect people's attention from the site of the actual wreckage, and to lie about the success. The authors do correctly point out some of the successful subterfuge, but they fail to understand that the government often makes people swear to keep things secret which are not all that secret, simply so they won't blurt out more important things in the process. In much better histories than this you will see authors confusing the open government pronouncements of a period with what the people knew. Thus things which look like a giant cover up if you follow the paper trail may be simply a way of keeping a much narrower range of secrets. A prime example of this would be the American bombing of Cambodia late in Vietnam War. Absolutely everyone of age in the country, knew it was going on, and there were published pictures to prove it. But, the government insisted it wasn't happening. That kind of behavior quickly increased the number of anti-war protesters, but perhaps it did help hide some deeper co-lateral secrets. The point is that if you followed the chain of official government pronouncements now, you would get the idea that no Americans knew about the bombing of Cambodia till after the war was over, an absolutely false conclusion.
Oh, and by the way, I do *not* recommend the book to all my friends. ;o)
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What other truths do you suspect the "official" secrecy about the Cambodian bombing covered up?
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The book's style reminds me of Velikovsky, and even Marshall McCluhan. You spout enough facts in between the far-fetched, made-up parts of your theory and someone will believe you.
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I think the only submarine fiction I've read was The Hunt For Red October back a year or so after that came out.