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In 1974, far out in the Pacific, a U.S. ship pretending to be a deep-sea mining vessel fished a sunken Soviet nuclear-armed submarine out of the ocean depths, took what it could of the wreck and made off to Hawaii with its purloined prize. Now, Washington is owning up to Project Azorian, a brazen mission from the days of high-stakes — and high-seas — Cold War rivalry.

After more than 30 years of refusing to confirm the barest facts of what the world already knew, the CIA has released an internal account of Project Azorian, though with juicy details taken out. The account surfaced Friday at the hands of private researchers from the National Security Archive who used the Freedom of Information Act to achieve the declassification. The document is a 50-page article quietly published in the fall 1985 edition of Studies in Intelligence, the CIA's in-house journal that outsiders rarely get to see.

In it, the CIA describes in chronological detail a mission of staggering expense and improbable engineering feats that culminated in August 1974 when the Hughes Glomar Explorer retrieved a portion of the submarine, K-129. The eccentric industrialist Howard Hughes lent his name to the project to give the ship cover as a commercial research vessel. The Americans buried six lost Soviet mariners at sea, after retrieving their bodies in the salvage, and sailed off with a hard-won booty that turned out to be of questionable value.

Despite the declassified article, the greatest mysteries of Project Azorian remain buried five kilometers down and in CIA files: exactly what parts of the sub were retrieved, what intelligence was derived from them and whether the mission was a waste of time and money. Despite the veil over the project, its existence has been known for decades. "It's a pretty meaty description of the operation from inception to death," said Matthew Aid, the researcher who had been seeking the article since 2007, when he learned of its publication thanks to a footnote he spotted in other documents. "But what's missing in the end is, what did we get for it? The answer is, we still don't know."

Much of the operation on the scene unfolded as Soviet vessels watched and sometimes buzzed the Glomar Explorer with helicopters. The Americans told the Soviets that they were conducting deep-sea mining experiments. Journalists broke the story in 1975, led by Seymour Hersh, then of The New York Times, and columnist Jack Anderson. The CIA maintained its silence except for declassifying a videotape of the burial of the Soviet seamen that was turned over to President Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s. Now the CIA article, written by an unidentified participant in the operation, brings back to life a time of brinkmanship between two nuclear-armed superpowers as they raced to uncover each other's military secrets. That competition ranged from space, across continents, to the ocean depths.

For Washington, that meant sparing no expense to retrieve a mammoth vessel loaded with nuclear arms, codes and Soviet technology. Yet the disclosed sections of the article hint that not much of value was found, just as long-ago reporting on the episode concluded. It only claims "intangibly beneficial" results such as a boost in morale among intelligence officers and advances in heavy-lift technology at sea. The author argues that the value in mounting the operation was in proving it could be done — an assertion that does not point to a trove of intelligence.

"Lifting a submarine weighing approximately 1,750 tons from a depth of 16,500 feet [5,029 meters] had never been attempted or accomplished anywhere before," the article says. "A government or organization too timid to undertake calculable risks in pursuit of a proper objective would not be true to itself or to the people it serves." To researchers, that sounds like bureaucratic justification for a project thought to have cost more than $1.5 billion in today's dollars. Accounts vary about what was actually brought back. Years later, Russian officials concluded that the CIA recovered at least two nuclear-armed torpedoes, not much of a bounty. In other tellings, most of the vessel broke up and fell back to the ocean floor, yielding little. The article does not settle such questions. Nor does it say why the submarine is thought to have gone down.

The saga began in March 1968 when K-129, carrying three ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads as well as its torpedoes, sank 2,510 kilometers northwest of Hawaii with all hands lost. It took six years to ready the Glomar Explorer, create a winching system and sail to the wreck. The CIA article carefully recounts the engineering hurdles of the operation, discloses the fears of the U.S. crew that Soviets would try to land on the Glomar Explorer and confirms that plutonium contamination was found in the salvage, apparently leaking from retrieved torpedoes. But much else on the salvage is redacted, and the CIA's story ends with the ship going to Hawaii, leaving out what was taken and its significance once investigated back on land. 

The winter holidays have only just ended here, but many Russians are already planning their next European getaway, buying plane tickets and reserving hotels. They are also compiling bank statements, gathering insurance forms, paying fees, taking photographs, making photocopies, waiting in long lines and being interrogated by embassy officials — all to receive a European visa, a kind of permission slip to enter the rest of the Continent that like little else underscores the walls still dividing Russia from the West.

While Estonians and Bulgarians, Latvians and Poles can traipse about Europe unimpeded by the borders and bureaucracy that once bound them to Moscow, Russians must seek permission. To obtain a visa is frustrating and at times degrading, travelers here say, leaving many wondering why Russians seem so unwelcome. “Maybe Russia is just too big, or maybe it is because of our past conflicts,” Mikhail Poponin, 21, a professional skateboarder, said while lining up in subzero temperatures outside the Estonian Embassy for a visa. “Maybe they just think that Russia is a backward country.”

In Russia, internal restrictions on foreign travel melted away with the Soviet collapse, and the freedom to go abroad, especially to the 27 countries of the European Union, is cherished. The European Union, however, has been a reluctant host. Russian officials have been pressing their European counterparts for years to at least ease restrictions on Russian travelers. The visa issue has attracted renewed attention in recent weeks as European officials have suggested that they are now willing to consider doing so.

The Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, said in a visit to Moscow that Spain, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, would use its position to push for a less restrictive visa policy. European officials have made similar promises in the past, though most have gone unfulfilled.

A visa to enter the European Union can cost as little as $50, but it is not the money that tends to bother many Russians. It is the suggestion that perhaps Russians could be up to no good. Travelers must provide bank statements showing they can afford the vacation. They must show proof of employment and hotel reservations and plane tickets purchased beforehand, the implication being that every applicant is a possible illegal immigrant. But after asking for extensive amounts of paperwork, the Europeans end up rejecting very few applicants.

Europeans (as well as Americans) have to obtain visas to enter Russia, but the process for getting a basic tourist visa often is much simpler. An interview, for example, is not required. “The current visa regime represents a clear illustration of the fact that Russia and the European Union are actually not the partners that they often declare themselves to be,” said Arkady Moshes, a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “For the common Russian citizen, nothing more clearly represents this lack of partnership like the visa regime. It is not just symbolic. It really affects people.”

The European Union now includes former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland and Romania. But most galling to many Russians is the need to get permission to enter Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, former Soviet republics that are also now European Union members. In Soviet times, all three countries were freely visited on weekend outings and family vacations.

Albina L. Marshalkina, a 70-year-old pensioner, traveled by slow economy trains two days to Moscow from her home Veliki Novgord to apply for a visa at the Estonian Embassy. The train ride, along with piles of paperwork, fees and a weeklong wait for a visa now separate Ms. Marshalkina from her daughter and grandchildren in Estonia. A tense political relationship between Estonia and Russia has made any unilateral easing of the visa process unlikely. “They are there and we are here, and it is so difficult for us to go there and expensive,” she said, bundled against a frigid wind outside the embassy. “I am not concerned with what is going on in Estonia. Let them solve their own problems, but let us see our children and grandchildren. Open the border.”

The reasons for keeping the visa policy in place vary. For one, there is little political will in Europe to change it. While citizens of the European Union also need a visa to go to Russia, few are rushing to get there. Many European member countries also have serious misgivings about large numbers of Russians freely entering the bloc, said Fernando M. Valenzuela, the head of the European Union delegation to Russia. “We know that all these visa things are connected to issues of illegal immigration, or organized crime and drug trafficking, et cetera, ” he said.

While the Spanish government seeks to raise the issue within the European Union during its presidency, he added, no discussion of the matter has begun. Europe is certainly not the only destination for Russians with wanderlust. Turkey and Egypt are hugely popular travel spots, where Russians can easily get visas at the airport. Israel lifted all visa restrictions for Russians in 2008.

Still, people are willing to put up with the process of getting to Europe, where many now conduct business. But the hassle can be trying. “I need to immediately go on a business trip and I have a visa, but my assistant, who I need to bring with me, has to wait six days for a visa,” said Vladimir Drigant, 60, who was at the French Embassy visa center helping his grandson with a tourist visa for a separate trip.

Later, Mr. Drigant’s grandson walked by, looking dejected. He did not have photocopies of all 37 pages in his passport as required, and he was told to come back another day. 

A think-tank close to President Dmitry Medvedev has released a report recommending a radical overhaul of Russia’s political system, including a return to gubernatorial elections, the disbanding of the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry, and Russia’s accession to NATO and the European Union. But have the thinkers come up with anything more than a liberal wish list? And could Medvedev implement their recommendations even if he wanted to?

The report from the Institute for Contemporary Development paints a vision of the future that looks like a liberal’s dream; a multi-party democracy dependent on two centralist parties vying for a middle class vote; a genuinely free press; the FSB and the Interior Ministry humbled; and an unashamedly Western-oriented foreign policy. It also raises obvious comparisons with the policies and ideals of the 1990s. And although President Dmitry Medvedev chairs the institute’s board of trustees (it has even been called “Medvedev’s think tank”), he is more likely to distance himself from the political albatross of the Yeltsin era than to embrace the report’s findings. The rationale is as old as the hills – or at least as old as liberal economic theory. The report’s authors start from the traditional liberal premise that there can be no development of a modern economy – especially the “innovation economy” championed by both President Dmitry Medvedev and his predecessor and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin over the past several years – without an open political society.

For Russia’s liberals (indeed, for economic liberals everywhere) it is practically doctrinal that the lack of political competition in Russia underpins its widespread corruption and the lack of transparency in business life. That is bad enough for any economy, but for one seeking to wean itself off commodities exports to become “innovative,” the argument goes, the monochrome political landscape with its “elements of neo-feudalism and archaic institutions,” are crippling. “Only a free person is capable of inventing something new,” as Igor Jurgens, the vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and one of the report’s author’s told journalists Thursday night. And, as Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center pointed out, even those who do not agree with the liberal premise that economic success is dependent on political freedom agree that the current economic model has to change. “The model of economic growth that relied on energy exports worked extremely well for a few years, but – as some predicted – it has exhausted itself. Both Medvedev and Putin recognize that.”

In politics, the authors envisage a multi-party system formed around two rival parties – one of the center-left and another of the center-right, who would represent the interests of “traditional industry” and the new “middle classes” respectively; communists and right-wing populists would be pushed to the political margins; the state would relinquish its control of the media and especially the monopoly of federal channels on television.

To ensure transparency, major institutions would undergo dramatic reform. The FSB, so often accused of wielding disproportionate influence in politics, would be broken up into counter-espionage and counter-terrorist parts; the Interior Ministry, currently rocked by police brutality and corruption scandals, would be split up and decentralized. The bribe-taking traffic police force would be completely destroyed. The army would be slashed from 1.1 million mostly conscript troops to between 500,000 and 600,000 volunteers.

As for foreign policy, Russia would embrace every kind of international grouping open to it, from the World Trade Organization to the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe, and in the long term consider membership of the European Union and “conclude negotiations” with NATO but not necessarily join (as has been suggested in both the domestic and international press). “We never said ‘join’ - we said Russia should conclude its negotiations with NATO,” said Yevgeny Gontmakher, an expert at the Institute for Contemporary Development. “And anyway, if Russia were to join NATO it could not do so in its current form – the alliance itself would have to be reformed first.” Both Gontmakher and Jurgens insist that their vision is long term, and concede that it lacks clear policy measures that would help achieve their vision. “Since Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s time, we’ve been reforming, but we’ve never had a picture of where we wanted to end up,” said Jurgens. “This is our picture.”

That is one problem. The public’s (and the political establishment’s) aversion to anything remotely associated with the 1990s and Yeltsin is another. But by far the greatest is that even if the powers that be come to accept the liberal economic premise the idea is based on, they have good reasons to resist it. “The problem at the moment is that any of these reforms means relinquishing power and reducing the role of the state,” said Lipman. “And that would undermine the position of the current decision makers. So the preservation of the status quo is higher on their list of priorities than making Russia a more prosperous economy,” she said.

It is certainly true that Medvedev does not seem to share the report writers’ vision. He has previously dismissed calls to reinstate gubernatorial elections, and has called for the further federalization, rather than decentralization, of the Interior Ministry. “If it were meant as a practical recommendation for the government, the report would be ‘step one,’” said Lipman. “But if they thought Medvedev would even listen to them, they’d probably be advising him in private, and would not say this in public.” Perhaps so. But the authors themselves played down their links to the president. “He’s a politician, and as a politician I doubt he’ll say what he thinks. But it’s not really for the president,” said Gontmakher. “Above all, it’s for society. We want to start a discussion.”  

Twenty four of the largest phone operators have banded together to challenge the dominance of mobile app stores, such as that operated by Apple. The Wholesale Applications Community, as it is known, aims to make it easier for developers to build and sell apps "irrespective of device or technology". The alliance, which includes Vodafone, China Mobile and Sprint, has access to more than three billion customers. Analysts said it was an attempt by operators to "regain control of apps".

However, research firm CCS Insight warned that operators "have a poor track record with this type of industry consortium". The app market is currently a lucrative business for mobile firms. Analysts at Gartner have predicted that spending on the specialist pieces of software will hit $6.2bn (£4bn) this year with the number of downloads rising to 4.5 billion from 2.5 billion last year. It predicts that downloads will top 21 billion by 2013, yielding almost $30bn.

Apple currently dominates the app market, with more than 3 billion downloaded from its app store in 18 months. Blackberry, Google, Nokia, Symbian and Microsoft all offer their own app stores. As a result, developers often have to create different versions of apps and go through separate approval processes for each individual store. The Wholesale Applications Community aims to overcome this fragmentation by offering a single "open platform that delivers applications to all mobile phone users". It aims to develop a common standard for applications in the next 12 months.

As well as the 24 network operators, the work is also supported by hardware manufacturers such as LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, as well as industry body the GSM association. The consortium's approach to simplify application development and distribution is echoed by software firm Adobe. The company has announced that it will begin to offer its AIR platform on mobile devices, starting with phones running Google's Android operating system. AIR is currently available on desktops and allows developers to build desktop applications for services that are more commonly found in the browser.

For example, there are a number of Twitter applications that use AIR. Until now it has been unavailable on smart phones. The technology could make it easier for developers to create and publish apps that can run on many different platforms at the same time. Apple has traditionally spurned some Adobe software - such as Flash - on its iPhone. However, Adobe has now built a tool that allows developers to build an app for phone running AIR and easily publish a slightly different version which should also run on the iPhone. "We enable developers and content publishers to deliver to any screen," said David Wadhwani of Adobe. The announcements were made at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which runs form 15-18 February. 

What a difference 30 years makes — in sports, and in politics. Now, as the United States team prepares for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, do we really care if we beat Russia?

How quaint it all seems now, and yet, how significant — my memories of writing about the baby-faced bunch of Americans who were preparing for the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, New York. Herb Brooks’s eyes narrowed. I sensed he was making a fist. He began to explain to me what it took, what he planned, to defeat the vaunted Soviet Olympic hockey team, the overwhelming favorite to capture the gold. This Herbie was from the Midwest — St. Paul, Minnesota — yet he described himself as “a street kid.” Heck, I’m from Brooklyn. That’s where street kids are from. But he spoke passionately of creating an American style of hockey, a form of sport making use of capitalistic ideals — competition, exuberance, youth.

Forget the past. This was a new era. It could have been a metaphor for an American template. Indeed, it was. He wanted to restore respect to his country, which was being held hostage in Iran. He wanted us to be proud of ourselves, our teams, and he knew that President Jimmy Carter was threatening to boycott the Summer Games in Moscow over the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I like to think that the downfall of the once evil empire actually began with American hockey. Indeed, the Cold War helped create Soviet superiority in many aspects of sport. The Soviets believed that victory on the playing field, or the rink, would make them the envy of other countries. Somehow, that would be translated into believing the Soviet political system was the better one.

So they tossed out traditional ideas of how to become prolific at a sport. If a coach spotted an 8-year-old with leadership skills, why, he’d be perfect as a center — the decision-maker on a hockey line. They created dry-land training routines, actually using a soccer ball instead of a puck, so that the players learned how to kick with their skates. They were relentless, unemotional. They were the Soviet bear. But emotion, said Brooks, was what it would take to beat the fabled Soviets, who made no distinction between amateur and professional. They had defeated this young American team 10-3 in an exhibition game. Some years earlier, they had shocked Canada’s nervous system by routing its National Hockey League all-stars in the opening game of their fabled series. It led one of the N.H.L.’s best, Frank Mahovlich, to marvel, “Give them a football, and in a year they’ll win the Super Bowl.”

I was touring with the young U.S. hockey team. Brooks was a college coach, a decent enough player as a kid, but not good enough to make the cut on the last U.S. team to win a gold medal, back in 1960. After that, the Soviets had taken the big prize in every Olympics. Now I see that Brooks’s ideas were also a microcosm of capitalist society, and the way it eventually defeated the Soviet Union off the ice.

There were two great hockey-playing centers in the United States —New England, particularly the Boston area, and the colder regions of the Midwest — especially Minnesota and Wisconsin. Brooks played the players from the two regions against each other. He named a scrappy guy named Mike Eruzione from Boston University as his captain. He put players from Minnesota on the ice, then scrapped them for New Englanders, then reversed the order. Brooks had only a few months to put a team together. He made himself the brunt of the team’s anger and annoyance. He felt that would help them coalesce as well. I had to convince Arthur Gelb, the New York Times’s managing editor, to send me to Lake Placid. The paper didn’t think it was worth the money to send a reporter to cover ice sports.

When, magically, the United States scored early upset victories, when the crowd in the tiny, 7,000-seat Lake Placid Arena — which looked like a cock-fighting amphitheater — began chanting “USA! USA!” routinely, the Americans were poised to face the might Soviets. Actually, the U.S. did not defeat the Soviets for the gold medal. The last round wasn’t starting until Sunday, and this was a Friday afternoon game. In fact, the ABC television network thought so little of the public’s interest, that it didn’t even show the game live. It was taped for a later showing.

Meanwhile, I was up in my aerie in the badly ventilated, cigarette-smoke-filled arena. I had a newfangled computer, but it was too big for the press box. Instead, one of our reporters was to file my typewritten copy from the basement. When a game was over, rather than buck the crowds all the way down to the bowels of the ancient place, I had to figure out another way to get in my story. I had my old Olivetti portable. I typed the story. Page one was finished. I then rolled the paper into a ball. On a balcony one floor below, Dave Anderson, our Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, was waiting. I tossed him the paper. He caught it and rushed down the stairs. Then he came up again. I typed Page 2, and sailed it down to him.

It was 4-3 for the U.S. with 10 minutes left. The minutes ticked away, then the seconds. Al Michaels, the play-by-play announcer, shouted into the microphone, “Do you believe in miracles?” Moments later, he screamed, “Yes!” Goalie Jim Craig draped himself in the American flag as he scanned the stands. “Where’s my father?” he repeated. The next Sunday morning the team defeated the Finns and won the gold medal. Some time later Brooks and Michaels were reunited. Brooks said to the announcer about that “miracle” call, “A bit over the top, wasn’t it, Al?” Then Brooks smiled.

Hard to imagine today that a player would wrap himself in his country’s flag, would see a victory as something symbolic, one system better than another. Perhaps, in a way, we’ve made some progress. 

Iranian security forces clashed with opposition supporters on Thursday when huge crowds flocked to central Tehran to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

State television showed live footage of hundreds of thousands of people, some carrying Iranian flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, walking to Azadi (freedom) Square in central Tehran. An Iranian opposition website, Iran's Green Voice, said security forces fired shots and teargas at supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi staging a rally in central Tehran.

The opposition website Jaras said security forces attacked opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi and moderate former president Mohammad Khatami when they attended the rally. The reports could not be verified independently because journalists working for foreign media were escorted to Azadi Square and are not at liberty to cover opposition rallies. Neither side has shown much appetite for compromise in the eight months since the disputed June presidential vote, which the opposition says was rigged to secure Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.

The Islamic state is facing its worst domestic crisis in three decades as opposition supporters have rallied round the reformists who lost to Ahmadinejad in the election. Iran faces growing Western calls for targeted sanctions against it after Ahmadinejad ordered production of higher-grade uranium, stirring fears that Tehran aims to make nuclear bombs, not just fuel for civilian use as it says is the case. Ahmadinejad told the flag-waving crowd in central Tehran that Iran had produced its first consignment of 20 percent enriched uranium, and could enrich uranium to much higher levels at its Natanz nuclear plant.

Production of higher-grade uranium will be trebled in the near future, he added. Iran announced it had started making higher-grade atomic fuel two days ago. The West accuses Iran of covertly trying to build nuclear bombs. Iran, the world's fifth-largest crude exporter, says its nuclear facilities are part of a peaceful energy program and has said it would retaliate for any attack on them. Israel sees Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence and has not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the dispute over uranium enrichment.

Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that if Israel embarked on military action in the region, it should be resisted and "put an end to," state television reported on Thursday. The Islamic Republic does not recognize Israel, which it refers to as the Zionist regime.