Spies Beneath Berlin - Hardcover

Stafford, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719563232 ISBN 13: 9780719563232

Publisher: John Murray, 2002

Synopsis

Operation Stopwatch/Gold, said CIA chief Alan Dulles, was one of the most valuable and daring projects ever undertaken. In 1955 it ran a tunnel 800 metres under the Russian sector of Cold War Berlin, and for more than a year tuned into Red Army intelligence. This was an almost impossible trick: apart from the technical wizardry needed, any noise or vibration could have given the game away.

That the operation succeeded is even more surprising than it looks. Trust, even between allies, was dangerous. Despite the Burgess and Maclean affair, the Americans had decided that co-operation was safe once more, and Stopwatch/Gold was a joint CIA/MI6 project using British expertise from a prototype in Vienna. This was a mistake: there was another mole in the British secret services, and the KGB knew about the tunnel even before it was built.

This book tells the story. David Stafford draws on eyewitness interviews and the full range of sources. Ironically, it was the Russians who supplied the minutes of the meeting that OK'd the tunnel. They had been taken by George Blake (who was of course the mole).

About this title

About the Author:

David Stafford is an historian and former diplomat who has written extensively on espionage, intelligence, Churchill, and the Second World War. The former Project Director at the Centre for The Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh, he is now an Honorary Fellow of the University and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where he and his wife now live. He has frequently acted as a TV and radio consultant, has written radio documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC, and his latest book, Ten Days to D-Day, formed the basis for a Channel Four two-part Docudrama. He is currently acting as Historical Consultant on a TV documentary being made by ORTV in London on the legendary CIA-SIS Berlin Cold War spy tunnel based on his book, Spies Beneath Berlin. He is a regular book reviewer, appearing in The Times (London), BBC History Magazine, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, the Times Herald Tribune (Paris), and Saturday Night and the Globe and Mail (Toronto). David Stafford was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has degrees from Cambridge University and the University of London (London School of Economics and Political Science), and when he is not writing books is an avid reader of fiction and a devotee of the operas of Mozart. In April 2005 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to write the official history of SOE in Italy ( Part Two, 1943-1945) which was published by the Bodley Head in March 2011.

From Library Journal:

Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, books dealing with Cold War spying have come out fast and furious. Stafford (project director, Ctr. for Second World War Studies, Univ. of Edinburgh) has done his part by authoring such impressive recent works as Churchill and Secret Service and Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets. This time Stafford shares with us the fascinating story of the secret tunnel beneath the Russian sector of Berlin that existed for more than a year in the mid-1950s and enabled the British and Americans to tap into all area Russian telephone conversations. But this amazing intelligence achievement was complicated by another development: the KGB knew about the tunnel through the traitorous activities of its undercover agent, George Blake, but could not reveal that they knew for fear that they might compromise the invaluable Blake. Moreover, existing Soviet interagency competition resulted in the KGB's sacrificing Soviet military secrets to the West in order to protect their other ongoing espionage activities. Debate goes on about the tunnel operation's final significance. What a great story! And Stafford tells it exceedingly well in sprightly prose. This book belongs in all collections that cover Cold War espionage.
Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Murray
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0719563232
• ISBN 13: 9780719563232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224