The USS Scorpion Buried at Sea

On May 21, 1968, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion, with 99 men, was reported missing and was later found at the bottom of the ocean off the Azores. Could this Cold War incident have been an attack by the Soviet Union in retaliation for the sinking of a Soviet sub? Did John Walker give the Soviets intelligence?

"If the Soviets did in fact sink the Scorpion, navy officials at the time surely would have been mystified at how the Soviets could have overcome the clear technological superiority of an American nuclear submarine. They would not learn for nearly two decades a critical “unknown unknown”—in former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s now-famous phrase—that the only operational U.S. nuclear submarine to be lost at sea may have been caught up in a massive Soviet intelligence operation. By early 1968 that operation had led to the seizure of the electronic reconnaissance ship USS Pueblo and produced the infamous Walker Spy Ring, which ripped open the navy’s top-secret coded communications channels to Soviet intelligence, until the conspirators were identified and arrested in 1985."