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In retrospect, many intelligence experts now play down the potential value of obtaining a code machine and possibly a legible code book. They point out that code machines, Western and Russian models alike, are constructed in a manner that enables the operator to reset circuits and insert new encoding or decoding disks at random so that yesterday's code may give scant clue to today's. Even so, influential U.S. cryptologists at the time believed that an examination of the Russian equipment would increase the possibility that the U.S. might finally succeed in breaking Soviet codes, a feat that in 1968 had still defied the best efforts of the American intelligence community.
Part III: The Story Gets Out
Although so many thousands of people worked on Jennifer in a dozen Government departments and private companies, the project was a remarkably well-kept secret for more than six years. There were occasional suspicions. Famed Oceanologist Jacques Yves Cousteau, for example, said last week that he had always thought Hughes' mining scheme implausible but that "we had to treat it seriously because we all knew that Howard Hughes does not involve himself in uneconomic undertakings." Some knowledgeable defense contractors and electronics makers doubted the Glomar Explorer's stated purpose because of the extraordinary specifications of contracts, such as those for the giant grappling hooks and the cryptographic equipment. The fact that the seamen of the Glomar Explorer were not permitted to frequent the usual Long Beach bars aroused local curiosity.
But the CIA had only two real security scares before the story finally broke. The first came in 1973, when a labor dispute erupted between engineers and the mining complement on board the Glomar Explorer. The engineers resented the fact that the mining technicians, rather than the captain, really ran the ship. That dispute moved quietly into the courts. The second scare came shortly before the Glomar Explorer put to sea to salvage the submarine. A rash of burglaries of Hughes' company offices scattered across the West culminated in the early morning of June 5, 1974, in a break-in of Hughes' two-story communications and storage center at 7000 Romaine Street in Los Angeles.
A group of four or five armed men slipped past a formidable electronic alarm system and heavy locks and overwhelmed the guard. Using acetylene torches, the men burned their way into the safes and filing cabinets that contained some of Hughes' most sensitive documents, including one memo outlining his participation in Jennifer. Since the robbery was executed with such un erring accuracy, some people speculated that either it was an inside job in which Hughes had in effect robbed himself to get rid of incriminating documents, or the CIA did the favor for him. Then a man claiming to represent the burglars offered to return the documents in exchange for $500,000.