Zitat:In 2005, the book Red Star Rogue claimed that K-129 ventured much further south, some 300 nautical miles (560 km) north west of Oahu on 7 March 1968 positioning to launch one of her three ballistic missiles in a rogue attack on Pearl Harbor. The manner of the launch was purportedly designed to mimic an attack by a Chinese submarine, with the intention of igniting a war between the U.S. and China.

Red Star Rogue posits that the sinking of K-129 was caused by the explosion of one of the ballistic missiles while it was being readied for launch. While such an event could have been due to a failure in the liquid-fuel system, Craven's The Silent War (p.218) postulates that the explosion was due to a fail-safe mechanism intended to prevent an unauthorized launch.

The theory presented in Red Star Rogue has been criticized as speculative conspiracy theory by the head of the contemporary history branch of the U.S. Naval Historical Center. Evidence against the logic of such a false flag operation include the fact that United States intelligence knew China had not developed a missile for its Golf class submarines in 1968[2]. Furthermore, China did not have a thermonuclear weapon small enough to be launched from a submarine [3]. What is not known is if the Soviets knew of the United States intelligence community's conclusions and of China's lack of a small thermonuclear weapon.