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Sunken Soviet Submarines and Central Intelligence: Laws of Property and the Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2017

Alfred P. Rubin
Alfred P. Rubin*
Affiliation:
Fletcher School of Law 6- Diplomacy
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Extract

In a series of newspaper columns and stories beginning March 19, 1975 the American public was told apparently correctly about the partial success of the Central Intelligence Agency in raising a Soviet submarine, its equipment, and dead crew from the Pacific Ocean floor. The location of the pertinent activities was reported to be well beyond any state's claim to territorial waters, continental shelves, contiguous zones, or other asserted inhibiting zones. The CIA vessel, The Glomar Explorer, was disguised as a commercially operated oceanographic research vessel. No international legal implications seem to have been perceived by the newspapers in the American intelligence activities.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , October 1975 , pp. 855 - 858
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1975

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References

1 N. Y. Times, March 19, 1975, at 1, col. 8.

2 Cf. Boston Globe, March 20, 1975, at 7, col. 1.

3 The classical case coming nearest the point appears to be The Constitution, 4 P.D. 39 (1879). See also Lord Stowell’s, opinion in The Prins Frederik, 2 Dods. 482, 484–5, 165 E.R. 1543 at 1554 (1820)Google Scholar. The U.S. position seems clear: “In the absence of transfer or abandonment of US interests . . . salvage of such cargoes or hulks requires US consent.” 9 Whiteman, Digest of International Law 221 (1968).

4 Cf. Lindo v. Rodney [1782] 2 Doug. K.B. 613 note. Lord Mansfield’s, erudite opinion is reprinted in Scott, Cases on International Law 1044 (1922)Google Scholar.

5 Cf. The Parlement Beige [1880] 5 P.D. 197.

6 Cf. Colombos, , The International Law of the Sea (6th ed. 1967) 348 Google Scholar, citing The Belgenland, 114 U.S. 355 (1885).

7 Colombos, supra note 6, at 346–47. See also Gardner v. Ninety-Nine Gold Coins, 111 F. 552 (1st Cir. 1889), in which $1,050 found on the body of a dead passenger of a vessel derelect was decreed to be shared between the finders and the administrators of the decedent’s estate.

8 Black’s Law Dictionary (rev’d 4th ed. 1968) 1506, citing 3 Kent Comm. 245. The quoted language is in the 1873 edition of Kent, Commentaries on American Law at the place cited. In the first edition (1828) “salvage” is defined at 196 simply as “the compensation allowed to persons by whose assistance a ship or its cargo has been saved in whole or in part from impending danger, or recovered from actual loss; . . .”

9 Colombos, supra note 6, at 310. Cf. Hollingsworth v. Seventy Doubloons & Three Small Pieces of Gold, F.Cas. No. 6,620 (D.C.E.D. Pa. 1820); Fisher v. The Sybile, F.Cas. No. 4,824 (C.C.D.S.C. 1816), aff’d 17 U.S. 98 (1819); Cossman v. West [1887] 13 A.C. 160, 181.

10 Cf. Woolsey, , An Introduction to the Study of International Law 73 (5th ed. 1878)Google Scholar.

11 Certainly “ships of war” and “Government ships appropriated exclusively to a public service” are excluded from the terms of the United States Salvage Act (44 U.S.C. §§727–31). But U.S. Government vessels may perform salvage services under other provisions of law, and the relevancy of that Act to an international claim is only indirect. See 9 Whiteman, supra note 3, at 219–21.

12 See oases cited note 3 supra.

13 Acts done by spies that violate the laws of the territory they are in may be criminally punishable, but the state sending them is not likely to suffer opprobrium. See Baxter, , So-Called ‘Unprivileged Belligerency’: Spies, Guerrillas and Saboteurs, 28 B.Y.I.L. 1951 323 (1952 at 330–33.Google Scholar

14 See Rubin, , Some Legal Implications of the Pueblo Incident, 18 I.C.L.Q. 961 (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar published simultaneously in 49 Oregon L. Rev. 1 (1969).

15 Jessup, , Should International Law Recognize an Intermediate Status between Peace and War?, 48 AJIL 98 (1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See 2 McNaih, , International Law Opinions 403–15 (1956)Google Scholar.