DATE: Friday, July 18, 1997                 TAG: 9707180601
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A10  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   48 lines

NAVY BRASS FAULT TV FILM SHOWING U.S. SHIP HELPED SINK SOVIET SUB

In October 1986, a Soviet submarine loaded with nuclear-tipped missiles suddenly surfaced in the Atlantic east of Bermuda.

Obviously in distress after an apparent explosion and fire, the sub vented smoke and was closely watched by the U.S. military. After valiant rescue efforts, the crew scuttled the sub sending an unknown number of seamen to their graves.

That much is known, and undisputed. But now a new made-for-television movie that producers say was ``inspired by the chilling true story'' provides an account of the sub's demise that has U.S. Navy officials seeing red. The HBO film, ``Hostile Waters,'' alleges that an American sub - given the fictional name ``Aurora'' - unwittingly helped send the Soviet ship to its grave.

In the celluloid account, starring Max von Sydow as the Soviet captain and Martin Sheen as the Aurora's skipper, the Aurora collided with the Soviet vessel when the Russians executed an evasive maneuver to shake their American shadow. The bump allegedly triggered a series of events that led to an explosion and fire.

``The U.S. Navy categorically denies that any U.S. submarine collided with the submarine or that the U.S. Navy had anything to do'' with whatever happened, said Rear Adm. Kendell Pease, the Navy's senior spokesman.

The movie will premiere July 26 on the cable TV network. It is a dramatization of a book by the same name to be published later this month.

The book's authors include Peter Huchthausen, a former U.S. naval attache in Moscow who an HBO press release says went to Moscow to interview Igor Britanov, captain of the Soviet sub.

Pease, who said he reviewed Navy records to satisfy himself that no U.S. ship was involved, worried this week that the movie will inspire a legion of conspiracy theorists who will accept its claims as true and dismiss all evidence the Navy can provide to the contrary.

That is exactly what happened in the case of claims by former newsman Pierre Salinger that a Navy-fired missile downed TWA Flight 800 off Long Island last year, he acknowledged.

``You put a movie on TV and no matter what I say, we're going to have to deal with it,'' Pease complained. Another Navy official said that the Augusta, a U.S. attack sub, was several hundred miles from the Soviet sub when the disaster occurred. No U.S. warship was anywhere closer, the official and Pease insisted.

HBO officials could not be reached for comment but a press release says the movie is based on ``eyewitness accounts'' and quotes producer Tony Garrett as saying he was ``attracted to the project (by) the truth of the story.''

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