Sunken Soviet Submarines and Central Intelligence: Laws of Property and the Agency

In a series of newspaper columns and stories beginning March 19, 1975 the American public was told apparently correctly about the partial success of the Central Intelligence Agency in raising a Soviet submarine, its equipment, and dead crew from the Pacific Ocean floor. The location of the pertinent activities was reported to be well beyond any state's claim to territorial waters, continental shelves, contiguous zones, or other asserted inhibiting zones. The CIA vessel, The Glomar Explorer, was disguised as a commercially operated oceanographic research vessel. No international legal implications seem to have been perceived by the newspapers in the American intelligence activities.