GEORGE PETRAS on USA TODAY | 18 September 2017
“As you can guess from the spoiler-alert title of The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History, the CIA was able to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine and study it for military secrets.
What you don’t know, however, is how this amazing covert recovery was accomplished — the feats of maritime engineering and the spy agency’s chutzpah in conducting the operation in the public eye, disguising it as an undersea mining venture for a company owned by reclusive and eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.
That synopsis may sound like something from a lower-shelf Clive Cussler naval-adventure novel, but it’s a true story, meticulously chronicled by author Josh Dean (Dutton, 404 pp., ***½ out of four stars).”
