CIA’s Raising of Soviet Sub Told : Diplomacy: Agency chief Robert Gates tells Russian president about 1974 U.S. intelligence coup.

Robert M. Gates, on the first visit by a CIA director to Moscow, told Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Friday about one of the U.S. intelligence coups of the Cold War--the raising of a Soviet submarine by the spy ship Glomar Explorer, Russian sources said.

In yet another sign of the desire to bury old superpower rivalries, Gates reportedly explained to Yeltsin how, in the summer of 1974, the bodies of six Soviet sailors were recovered from the PL-722, a Golf-2 class submarine that had sunk in the Pacific in March, 1968, with its crew of 86.

The Glomar Explorer, a mining research ship owned by Los Angeles-based Global Marine Inc., was modified specifically to raise the diesel-powered sub from a depth of three miles. Pretending to test a prototype system for mining the deep seabed and under cover of a contract with the Hughes Tool Co., the Glomar sought to recover for the CIA details of Soviet submarine construction and operations.

As the sub neared the surface, however, it broke up. Only about a third of the vessel, including the bow section, was salvaged. It was that part that contained the bodies.

Three of the dead men had identity papers; the identities of the others could not be determined, according to a statement from Yeltsin’s office about the meeting with Gates.

The Glomar Explorer’s surgeon determined that the seamen died as a result of an explosion. The bodies were reburied at sea with honors in the presence of 75 members of the U.S. ship’s crew, in a videotaped ceremony that began with the Soviet and American national anthems, the statement said.

The burial place is 90 miles southwest of Hawaii, Gates reportedly told Yeltsin. The tape of the ceremony and the Soviet navy flag that covered the bodies of the seamen has now been handed over by U.S. officials to Russia, Yeltsin’s press office said.

Gates’ talk with Yeltsin came two days after the Russian leader, seeking to elucidate yet another tragic incident of the Cold War, gave U.S. representatives copies of formerly top-secret Soviet documents about the destruction of a South Korean passenger plane in 1983.

Sixty-two Americans were killed, including U.S. Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), in the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.

In later remarks carried by Russian news agencies, Yeltsin said he found Gates “intelligent, erudite and highly professional.” He said Russian and American intelligence could do much good in the future by cooperating in combatting international crime and drug trafficking, exchanging information and helping control weapons of mass destruction and preventing nuclear proliferation.

“When this was lacking, the sides viewed each other with suspicion,” Yeltsin said.

But, he cautioned, Russia must keep some things secret.

“We cannot give away all information, for example about our intelligence net,” Yeltsin said. “Both sides have their secrets.”

The first trip by a CIA director to Moscow is being treated as extremely hush-hush by the U.S. Embassy here, which is refusing to disclose Gates’ schedule. The exact purpose of the visit remained unclear.

Gates’ two stops before arriving in the Russian capital were also cloaked in secrecy. On Sunday, he met Polish President Lech Walesa and other officials in Warsaw. On Wednesday, he held talks with Hungarian leaders in Budapest.

Last winter, in a much-ballyhooed but ultimately inaccurate prediction, Gates said Russia was about to experience its most violent unrest since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

On Thursday, after arriving in Moscow, Gates met with Yevgeny M. Primakov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, and startled some Americans at the U.S. Embassy by driving into the compound in a black, Soviet-built limousine.

The Izvestia newspaper said that Gates would have three days of meetings with Russian intelligence chiefs and that the Russians expect him to object to continuing efforts by their country to gather information in the United States.