Glomar Explorer

Robert M. Gates, on the first visit by a CIA director to Moscow, told Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Friday about one of the U.S. intelligence coups of the Cold War--the raising of a Soviet submarine by the spy ship Glomar Explorer, Russian sources said.

Robert M. Gates, on the first visit by a CIA director to Moscow, told Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Friday about one of the U.S. intelligence coups of the Cold War--the raising of a Soviet submarine by the spy ship Glomar Explorer, Russian sources said.

Federal investigators may use a miniature Navy submarine, or a deep sea recovery ship like the one the CIA used to haul up parts of a sunken Russian submarine, to retrieve the cargo door that tore off a jumbo jetliner near Hawaii in February, hurling nine passengers to their deaths. Lee V. Dickinson, a National Transportation Safety Board member who is heading up the investigation into the accident aboard United Airlines flight 811, said Tuesday that recovery of the door from 15,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific is not essential to the probe.

Federal investigators may use a miniature Navy submarine, or a deep sea recovery ship like the one the CIA used to haul up parts of a sunken Russian submarine, to retrieve the cargo door that tore off a jumbo jetliner near Hawaii in February, hurling nine passengers to their deaths. Lee V. Dickinson, a National Transportation Safety Board member who is heading up the investigation into the accident aboard United Airlines flight 811, said Tuesday that recovery of the door from 15,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific is not essential to the probe.

The Glomar Explorer, the 618-foot CIA mystery ship that raised pieces of a sunken Soviet sub from the ocean depths in 1974, will not be scrapped or sold to private industry, a Navy spokesman said Monday. The ship will stay at its berth with the reserve, or mothball, fleet in Suisun Bay, about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco, said Capt. Jeff Rennard. He had said earlier this year that the Navy considered turning the Glomar Explorer into scrap, selling it, or calling the vessel to active

Within hours of learning that a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine had gone down Friday near the Arctic Circle, naval analysts and intelligence sources began talk of retrieving what could be a treasure trove of top-secret data from the sunken vessel. For decades, the lure of treasure--whether it be gold bullion or an intelligence gold mine--has prompted scores of efforts to raise sunken ships. The value of the "finds" has made advances in recovery technology all the more crucial.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR was clearly visible over the weekend about 60 miles off the Kamchatka peninsula in the Bering Sea. In a sign of how far the Russian navy has come since the 1980s -- and of how far it has left to go -- it asked for help in rescuing a small submarine and its seven-man crew trapped 600 feet below the surface. Not that long ago, the Kremlin would never have made such a request for fear of exposing technological secrets. But the effort involved three former enemies of Moscow.

Scores of old rusting ships line a channel of an inland bay northeast of San Francisco, looming out of the fog like a fleet of Flying Dutchmen condemned to sail forever. And they will, if Charlie Johnston has his way. Congressional critics want to junk the 66-ship Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, but Johnston, caretaker of the "ghost fleet," says that the ships are ready to weigh anchor if the nation needs them again.

LEON E. PANETTA and retired Adm. James D. Watkins were on Capitol Hill last week lobbying for a treaty that, depending on how you look at it, is three to 25 years overdue for a Senate vote. As co-chairmen of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative and former heads of two major blue-ribbon panels on the state of our seas, they recently gave the government a C-minus in ocean policy. One of the categories that helped drag that grade down was international leadership -- in which the U.S.

When the Pac Baroness sank off the Santa Barbara coast after colliding with another vessel in a thick morning fog three weeks ago today, environmental concerns immediately arose. The freighter had taken with her 23,000 tons of finely powdered copper, iron and sulfur concentrates. Would they pose a major threat to the marine environment? At 1,480 feet, how quickly would the copper oxidize and enter the food chain? Not long ago, answers to such questions might never have been attainable.

A crippled Soviet nuclear-powered submarine that was racked by an enormous explosion Friday sank today in 18,000 feet of water in the Atlantic Ocean, taking its 16 nuclear-tipped missiles and nuclear power plant to the bottom, Pentagon officials said. Lifeboats that removed a skeleton crew were seen in the water 30 minutes before the sub sank, officials said. Three crewmen were killed in the original explosion Friday, Soviet authorities said. Preliminary air and water samplings taken by U.S.