Kursk Researcher Is Frustrated By Conspiracy Talk

Since 08-09-05

Excerpted from NSL Update 08-02-05

By Robert A. Hamilton, New London Day, 24 Jul 05

Groton - When he pitched a book on a Russian submarine disaster to his editors at HarperCollins, Ramsey Flynn said it would be an opportunity to do a definitive examination of how the Kursk was sunk five years ago and preclude years of debate over various conspiracies.

But Flynn, who had a reputation for "what really happened?" kind of stories in magazines that examined big events in great detail, told members of the Naval Submarine League during a meeting Friday at the Submarine Veterans hall that his book, "Cry from the Deep," hasn't prevented people from looking for explanations that rely more on intrigue than evidence. For instance, on Monday Canadian television will air a French documentary that contends the USS Memphis, which the Navy has acknowledged was in the area when the Kursk was lost, shot it with a Mark 48 torpedo.

The conspiracy theorists speculate that Memphis was nearby when Kursk opened its torpedo doors for an exercise, misread the maneuver as a hostile act, and shot the Kursk to protect itself.

Flynn said the "evidence" that is cited is a small hole in the hull, which in fact is a hole left when a structural member between the inner and outer hulls of the Kursk was ripped away by the massive internal explosion that ripped the front end of the Kursk apart - an explosion that all evidence shows was caused by an accident with one of Kursk's own torpedoes.

At one point in his research, he was interviewing a Russian admiral who was trying to explain another theory, how the Memphis might have collided with the Kursk, which was about three times the size of the Memphis, crippling the Kursk but not damaging the Memphis at all.\

The admiral's theory, which he was demonstrating with submarine models, had the Memphis coming at the Kursk upside down so its hardened sail planes might have ripped into the Kursk.

"I was trying to keep a poker face, but I started to crack up," Flynn said.

"I told him, 'This is not making sense.'" But even today, there are adherents to the collision theory.

Flynn said instead of speculating on the cause of the accident, he pounded the pavement in Moscow and other Russian cities, as well as in this country, conducting more than 300 interviews and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, including Russian forensic material and a transcript of conversations between the Kursk and its command ship.

One thing he learned is that the Kursk had conducted a drill the day before the accident, which eerily replicated the scene that played itself out in the torpedo room 24 hours later, so the captain apparently knew that an explosion and fire in the torpedo room was a distinct possibility. "I find that very fascinating, that they rehearsed it," Flynn said.

Flynn said the hero of the saga was then-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who tried to contact Russian President Vladimir Putin the weekend of the accident to offer aid, but was told Putin would not be available until Monday.

Flynn said the official who came off looking bad was then-Defense Secretary William Cohen, who was informed of the accident Saturday, as soon as word came back to Washington, but who did not even share it with his submarine rescue experts at the Pentagon.

"At that point, everyone on board was most likely dead," Flynn said. Flynn said the way Putin approached the investigation, making most of the details public, seemed to bode well for the democracy that was starting to take hold in Russia. Since then, it seems the country has slipped back toward totalitarianism, though he thinks eventually Russia will take a "third path."

"I don't think it will be democracy as we know it," Flynn said. Instead, he expects the government that will emerge will muzzle the populace, but not as much as might have been expected under Stalin, more of "a kinder, gentler dictatorship."