Spies Beneath Berlin

About this book

"Operation Stopwatch/Gold, said CIA chief Allen 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. And when snow fell panic measures were suddenly needed to prevent it thawing in a tell-tale line leading to the target building." "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 MI6/CIA 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 is the first to tell the whole story. David Stafford draws on eye-witness 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)."--BOOK JACKET.