BLIND MAN'S BLUFF: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage.

• Author: Ayer, David
• Position: Review

BLIND MAN'S BLUFF: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew Public Affairs, $25

In 1987, just out of high school, I joined the Navy and after a difficult training program found myself as a Sonar Operator on a nuclear attack submarine. Our operations consisted mainly of training work-ups ("drilling and killing") and fleet exercises in which our smaller, older boat would play the bad guy, sneak in through the antisubmarine defenses and torpedo the Admiral's command ship again and again and again. After a series of inspections culminating in our receiving renewed reactor safety and weapons certifications, one ominous day the whole crew filled out their wills and we deployed on a two month "Spec Op." I had no idea what happened on a Special Operation and none of the more experienced sailors would tell me; they took great pride in their ability to keep their mouths shut. That first day on station was the most exciting of my life.

And that was just the first day. After sixty-seven days continuously submerged, and running out of food, we surfaced off the beautiful California coast and pulled into San Diego with a very skinny crew. I am still legally prohibited from discussing where we went and what we did, which is why I will be forever grateful for the book Blind Man's Bluff It is a godsend for veteran submariners who have had to explain away long absences from their families with the simple euphemism "special operations."

With Naval security agents on their heels, The New York Times investigative journalists Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew have made a successful end run around stacks of secrecy oaths and the locked lips of the Silent Service to make public some of the most astounding military operations of the Cold War. It is a surprisingly complete account of how the ultimate stealth war machine, the nuclear submarine, became the ultimate spy platform in a strange marriage between the Navy's "go to hell and back" submarine captains and the CIA's spooks. Together they engaged in the world's second oldest profession, spying, and achieved some amazing successes, as well as the occasional blunder.

This book will be an eye opener for those who think the Cold War was a mere sitzkreig as Warsaw Pact and NATO armies eyeballed each other across the Iron Curtain. Undersea the Cold War was boiling hot, as the U.S. Navy engaged in incredibly aggressive operations against Soviet Naval forces, concealing the...