(7 of 8)
Alerted that the stolen papers could endanger national security, the FBI tried to buy them back, but the deal fell through. Last week a grand jury in California returned a secret indictment in the theft. It reportedly cited only one defendant, Donald Woolbright, who is still at large. But in the process of investigating the theft, local police got into the act, and eventually the Los Angeles Times got a garbled version of Jennifer from a tipster. On Feb. 8 of this year the newspaper ran a story about a CIA-Hughes contract to raise a Soviet submarine supposedly sunk in the Atlantic. The CIA waited with bated breath to see if the rest of the press would pick it up or, worse, if the Soviets would.
Astonishingly, insists the CIA, the Soviets did not, which presumably means that there are some very nervous KGB agents somewhere in the Western Hemisphere this week. But the press kept asking the CIA questions about Howard Hughes and submarines. Eventually, Director Colby moved to suppress the story, pleading national security. His rationale: since Moscow still had not got wind of Jennifer, Glomar Explorer this summer would return in good weather to attempt to raise the rest of the submarine, and secrecy was needed to protect the operation. All this posed a sharp dilemma for editors (see THE PRESS).
Quick Switch. What Colby offered was unusual: briefings on Jennifer in exchange for silence. He seemed to feel that only by being briefed on the stakes involved could the press be expected to join the conspiracy of silence.
A curious turnabout took place once the story did become public: the CIA had nothing more to say about Jennifer. The formula seemed simple if slightly surreal: "We'll tell you something if you won't tell anybody; now that you've told everybody, we won't tell you anything."
Reason for that wall of silence: by not publicly admitting the existence of Jennifer, the U.S. hopes to permit the Soviets to avoid any official response that could damage relations between the two nations. Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev is due to visit the U.S. this summer, and CIA officials remember all too well that Moscow used the U-2 spy-plane incident to ruin a summit in 1960. Last week, when the Jennifer saga broke, the acting Soviet ambassador in Washington sent a strong cable to Moscow advising the Kremlin to make a firm protest to Washington. But Moscow has remained silent, and the Soviet press has not mentioned the matter at all.
Part IV: Puzzling Aftermath
A host of puzzles large and small clings to the Jennifer story. Example: Why was Hughes so anxious to make the CIA connection that the Jennifer partnership represented? According to Robert Maheu, an ex-FBI agent and former manager of Hughes' operations in Nevada, the billionaire had tried for years to arrange a connection with the CIA. Explained Maheu: "He wanted it so that Uncle Sam could never take after him. If he got in a jam with the Internal Revenue Service or the Securities and Exchange Commission, they couldn't afford to touch him because of what he was doing with the CIA." But it was the agency, in fact, that made the initial approach to Hughes about Project Jennifer.