Project Jennifer

In 1968 the Golf-class Russian sub K-129 sank after a surface explosion in 17,000 feet 750 miles northwest of Hawaii. The Russians either were unsure of the location or dismissive of any retrieval. The Americans, hungry for technical information and codes, proposed an audacious rescue of the ship. They hired Howard Hughes to engineer the effort and the result was Project Jennifer. A huge ship, the Glomar Explorer, was designed to provide a stable "drilling platform" that would lower a mechanical claw three miles to the ocean floor to grasp and retrieve the Russian sub.
This was a gigantic effort. One of the aspects of the effort was deception, the need to disguise their intent. What emerged was a brilliant (and revealing) construct: The ship was to be an underwater miner and its goal was ocean floor manganese which existed in nodules along the ocean floor. I remember this time and it is hard to decide what part of the story is the most interesting. The engineering effort was monumental, the retrieval something out of a Bruce Willis movie but the cover story was just astonishing. Suddenly manganese mining became the imperative of every company and nation. The financial press was filled with detailed analysis of companies in this field , which were well positioned, which not. Scientific American did a big story on the ways and means of underwater mining. But my favorite response was the United Nations. With a new money source fresh in their nostrils, the U.N. began holding hearings on manganese nodules and the problem of undersea mineral rights. Who owned these minerals? Did Howard Hughes have any more right to them than someone without a boat? A committee was formed chaired by representative from The Cameroon, a landlocked African nation. This committee had a lot to say about the value of mining the ocean floor, the financial projections of such an effort and, most importantly, how the profits would be divided up among those people and nations who did nothing to retrieve the minerals but, somehow, had an inherent right to the production. The scene is delicious: A U.N. committee, chaired by a landlocked nation, making statements and rules about a mythical sea mining expedition and then making financial demands on the production.
Somehow these people never see the ridiculousness of the beggar organizing and making the rules for the charity.