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Deep down on the dark seabeds of the globe’s many oceans, the USS Jimmy Carter is on the prowl, sniffing at and sometimes attaching to undersea cables carrying the military communications of America’s adversaries.  And it’s not alone, says Christopher Drew, the author, with Sherry Sontag, of Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. Originally published in 1998, the book remains a classic of both naval and intelligence literature.

 Given the throat-thickening military tension between the U.S. and Russia, China and North Korea, among others, it seemed an apt time to check in with Drew and plumb what’s going on away from the battlefields of Ukraine.  

Neither the espionage-equipped Jimmy Carter nor any other American warship is lurking in the Black Sea, said Drew, now retired from The New York Times, where he spent over two decades as an award-winning  reporter and special projects editor.  Even if the Black Sea weren’t basically a backyard pool…