The Secret Mission to Tap Soviet Undersea Cables - Operation Ivy Bells 

It's amazing (to me at least) that today we can listen to RU-vids about things that were the deepest secrets 30 years ago.

$35,000 for international espionage sounds like peanuts even back then.

This is an old story, but one of the coolest Cold War stories ever.

Best stuff I've watched on RU-vid in a while. Similar to History channel before it was 24/7 pawn stars.

This was happening in the 60s and 70s. Imagine what the US is doing today with China...

I worked as a subcable maintenance diver, this is especially ballsy! respect to the crew and divers who pulled this off for 10 years!

My uncle was on Halibut in the late 60s and early 70s. He certainly knew about the operation to tap communication lines as he once casually mentioned it when I was a kid, but he never mentioned it again and never mentioned any other operations. He was a true member of the silent service.

The spin off technology that resulted: Advancement in saturation diving; eventual ship bow thrusters; ship dynamic positioning system.

$35k, to timelessly disgrace your name, not to mention a LONG stretch

There was a book called, “Blind Man’s Bluff” was written about this story by I believe an actual crew member. It is a great read.

Are you telling me that this damn traitor is out of prison and collecting social security!

0:53 "..... Sjw reactor..." Me: it runs on outrage?

The professor tapped a cable and intercepted calls with just coconuts and driftwood. All was well until Gilligan came along!

I can attest that as a Submarine qualified Naval veteran that I had never heard of these missions despite serving 7.5 years active duty. I learned of this after discharge and knew it was true.

"defected from the USSR after telling his CIA guard" huh?????

A thing of note. Paranoid saved as many lives as nuclear weapons did during the Cold War. They had a general idea of what we were doing and we had a general idea of what they were doing. This allowed both side to determine the use of nuclear weapons as unnecessary as each generally knew the other had no real desire to nuke the other first, only in retaliation.

My dad remembers working for data tape in California on a recorder that had weird specifications like the ability to withstand high pressure and long lasting, high density tape.

Yeah boi. Love it when a Dark video drops 👌👌👌👌

It's like a real life James Bond story.

Someone’s been reading Blind Man’s Bluff. Great book! Keep it up I love learning more about these Cold War era intelligence missions!!!!

Blind Man's Bluff is an excellent read. I bought it and read it after my uncle told me about it some years ago and I highly recommend it.

Great video though you have nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness confused.

This Soviet cable had a number of different channels. It wasn't just one line of communications. There was always traffic from many different sources running that cable at any one time. So, if you were just to tap it in a traditional way, you'd hear a hundred different conversations all at once! Nothing would be able to be deciphered. Bell labs had to create a new system that could separate the different channels while using the induction method that was being used with this tap. That was an amazing accomplishment in and of itself!

I really enjoy your videos you clearly do your research. So far you are the only RU-vidr to correctly describe the affects of nitrogen on the body while diving. As a professional diver it really is one of my pet peeves. Thank you and keep up the great content.

Docs: “It was adapted to operate two remote vehicles called fish” Me: hmmm..... creative name!

Jim Bradley and his wife Peggy were good family friends when I was a kid, I used to play caddie when he played golf with my dad. The story about how they found the cables - by looking for the signs - is completely true, he told it to me first hand when I was younger.

It must have been an amazing time to be part of the United States Navy and intelligence community.

I worked for a company whose CEO was a physicist who worked for various government "Skunk Works" in his younger years. He said that the majority of the communications that they had to wade through from this eavesdropping effort was the the russian soldiers where lonely, they missed their girlfriends and that the food stank. He also told me stories of going up in planes that would recover film canisters released from spy satellites and having to maneuver around other "unfriendly" planes that were trying to prevent the air recovery.

S̥p̥o̥i̥l̥e̥r̥ Ḁl̥e̥r̥t̥ It’s been some time since I’ve read Blind Man’s Bluff but I thought it mentions that one team of divers left a cattle skull on the tap to scare the next team that had to visit it.

Ivy Bells FTW! I'm a proud former member of US Naval Security Group, the folks who did this.

Interesting fact: It was called the bat cave. Because it had two huge wings on top of it.

The "work" done at Mare Is was headed by a man I had gone thru ET school with at T.I. SanFrancisco in 1958. He went on to OCS, because of my poor eyesight I washed out. LOL Later when he began carrying "the info to which they refer" to the place where I had gone to work in the 70's - we passed each other in the huge building without ever knowing it We only learned about our "close encpounters" when we found each other on the I-net.in 2004. The book Blind Man's Bluff is well worth what ever i costs now days.. Fascinating reading.!!!!!!!!!!!

"Schubmarine" XD

Have an old friend who served as a US Navy Frogman during the 1950s. He told me once about a dives he made off the northern coast of Siberia (out of submarines) during which dives they made adjustments to certain Soviet underwater instruments so they would put out false readings, signals, etc. He said they could have just blown them up, but then the Russians would have known about it immediately. As it was, took 'em awhile to figure out something was amiss with their equipment.

No big deal, my ex frequently tries to wiretap me using a nuclear submarine. It's just that I don't communicate using secret underwater cables.

these 10 min breaks from COVID keep me sane

Prison time and than parole?? Should have been tried, convicted and hung, publicly.

My instructor talked about this a week ago. That's hecking wild. What's great is they didn't have a conduit (hard shell) around the wire so they were able to use a 'vampire' to break the insulator and make contact with the wires.

Blind man’s bluff does an detailed, excellent documentary about operation ivy bells.

Fun fact. USS Halibut was the submarine tasked with and succeed in locating and photographing the sunken Soviet Golf class diesel powered ballistic missile submarine (SSB -Ship, Submersible, Ballistic-Missile) K129, which sank in March 1968, the Halibut photographing the wreck sometime in July or August that year, when the wreck was discovered its alleged that one of the Soviet sailors was found outside the submarine (best description I've found said its was a bare skeleton with boots on), the photos collected in this operation provided the vital data for the project to raise the sunken sub (Project Azorian) which was partially successful in recovering 1/3 of the wreck via the use of the propose built recovery ship Glomar Explorer in 1974. Theres not much out there about this operation (The stuff pertaining to Halibut) but in the documentary I've linked bellow (Nuclear Sharks: The Final Mission 1998) covers it in the most comprehensive manner I've yet seen, while watching do bare in mind that this was a good ten to eleven years prior to just some material on K129 being declassified, so there are inaccuricies but its certainly worth a watch ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tBcN4UYnmv8.html

Came here by accident after watching doctor strangelove Preemptive and retaliatory has a completely new meaning now

Those divers back then had big balls lol.

It's a good thing the U.S. Navy has so many surface ships, so there is plenty of information about the Navy to make public so it is easier to keep subsurface activity secret. I lived in Honolulu and the routes of submarines were never disclosed while surface activity is officially reported all the time.

I am a former commercial diver/ underwater welder and worked with a former Navy Diver who worked on this project in its last few years.

I read about this in Blind Mans Bluff. God Bless America and the men and women that defend us!

@5:30. "establishing the precise location of the 600,000 square mile long cable? What? That doesn't make any sense. Cables are not measured in square miles, and if is meant to be linear, I'm pretty sure the cable wasn't 600k miles long.

Inductive coupling technology was developed by Western Electric Renolda Road Winston Salem North Carolina. My Uncle worked there. Sosus was also developed there as well.

I see you have also read “blind mans bluff”

When i hear diving bell I am reminded of the byford dolphin incident

"USS Halibut" - not the most ferocious name.

Keep these coming bro best videos on RU-vid

The most amazing thing is he was released from prison.

Sink tap releases water on a diagonal thick V @ the point of the V 8 o'clock so the long elongated submarine as boot could be covered/hidden . Thanks uploader

Very interesting my grandfather was a Navy diver around the same time he worked on the MK1 unit that now sits in a field rusting

A top of the line mainframe computer in the late 60s, so what is that like now? Walmart smart phone kind of power?

My Father, Douglas Leon Sawyer and his boss at LLNL Joe Kordas Designed the mechanism that attached to the cable which had 10,000 volts running inside the insulation. Their device drilled through the insulation and allowed the device to be Positively grounded so as not to fry the device. they successfully were able to pierce many different strands in the cable until they achieved the correct communication they were looking for.

Ivy Bells. One of the very interesting bits of spy kit.

You need to slow down and take your time my guy

Oh I remember this book. It was a best seller about the same time as Spycatcher.

I had to write an essay on the USS Parche, one of the other subs involved in this operation. Apparently my squadron's maintenance control wanted to have people present a 5 minute naval history presentation like once a week for a bit but it fell through and I was like the only person who was told to write one. We still have homework in the Navy I guess

His script is copied word for word from a Wikipedia page if you look this up.

I meet a man who did this, he''s a medical doctor. Probably retired now, I met him a decade ago. Did this in Eastern Russia.

Fantastic story. Thanks.

I have an coworker who was on the Seawolf. I knew what he may have done so I asked what kind of shenanigans he was doing in Russia. Sure enough, he was part of the wire tapping. But was not on the mission where they almost lost the sub. He was on the sub the mission before and after.

Loved this! And next time pls dont snort the white stuff before making a vid! Jk cheers!

you do an excellent job here on dark docs thumbs up

We also had cable taps near Murmansk, those were never found by the Soviets, and Pelton did not know they were there. According to Blind Man's Bluff they were removed around 1992. Blind Man's Bluff also claimed that in the mid 80's the Soviets experimented with cable tapping near Scotland. This was apparently abandoned by the Soviets after divers were killed, and they believed it too challenging.

Amazing Story, never heard it before. Makes me want to know more. Any one aspect of this story could be a video on it's own. So well presented (By that I mean "terse" is good, very good). Love the fade-to-black ending with no jarring "Please subscribe" begging noises at the end. The story itself felt like an episode of the 60's TV show "Voyage to the Bottom Of The Sea" - these things really happened. Wow.

The narrator is the one person Eminem was affraid to diss.

Next up on where has quarantine taken me today....

A good neighbor or mine designed the docking and navy seal transfer. He had pictures of the seals on a mission in them.

Blind Man's Bluff is great book with lots of details on this and other very secret sub activities.

I would have done the same for less lmao 👏💰 💰

Great stuff ! Blind mans bluff is a splendid book. Well worth the read. Always a pleasure to watch thanks for sharing

He should talk more slowly, no need to rush everything.He sounded like he has something else to do and dont want to waste time talking to us.

This was part of the Venona Project, declassified in 1995. Augment that with the Mitrokhin Archive. DD you will have material for years.

Beautiful story. Thank you.

This story, the Corona program, and anything SR-71/A-12 related are my top 3 cold war spy pinnacles. Are there any others that come close?

Big fan of the channel and content. Any chance you dial back the narration speed? No problem if not. I adjust the playback speed to 75% with all the vids from this channel.

I'd like to visit that museum.

Spy versus Spy. Just like in the MAD Comic Books.

Damn that updated USS halibut is a badass ship.

Bell labs was one incredible place in its day.

The device at 6:03, made by Bell Labs, is the ONLY unclassified picture we'll probably ever see. This pic is from the Russians, when they were told it was down there...they pulled it up, and took that very picture.

Absolutely fascinating. Another winner!

Wow amazing video, thank you so much for your hard work

They have our tech still in a museum! Thats crazy though

Maybe talk about abandoned cities in later videos

I was reading a submarine accident book, I think it was in the Mediterranean Sea, some USSR divers were breaking into a cable, & their sub got ordered to cut lines & run.what a grim way to find out

Best channel ever.

Great video Thank you for Sharing Australia

We needed a USS Halibut V2: Pipeline Edition. *USS Jimmy Carter has entered the chat*

Do a video on the seawolfe incident. Please please please

These dark docs are fascinating. Not too long to lose interest.

One of the most classified operations during the Cold War. NSA history is fascinating.

Dark Docs: Great Channel!

Is the scratchy effect on the footage necessary?

Saturation diving is maintaining divers at a working depth pressure for days or even weeks with only one decompression profile when they are brought from the saturation depth to surface pressure. It allows divers to work extended times without repeating decompression after each dive. Nitrogen Narcosis is one reason that Helium / Oxygen mixtures are used, but the main reason is blending the gas mixture to not develop oxygen toxicity which will result when breathing air beyond a certain depth. Decompression sickness has nothing to do with nitrogen narcosis. How do I know? Trained commercial diver, hyperbaric medic and life support tech for mixed gas and saturation diving.

Excellent channel.

What a code - Bat Cave !!! By the name itself, only batman knows it.