Spies Beneath Berlin

Don't get me wrong, Stafford's book is a fine account of the Berlin Tunnel, but there are a few problems. I would therefore suggest that folks interested in the subject matter first read Martin's "Wilderness of Mirrors," followed by Murphy/Kondrashev's "Battleground Berlin," before reading this. Although this book does some add some fine detail hitherto unavailable in the aforementioned titles, it is insufficient, in my mind, so as to set this volume so apart from the others (as far as Berlin Tunnel material is related) as to warrant any especial consideration. Apart from some great new photos, that is. It's obvious to me that Stafford, an Englishman, feels somewhat slighted regarding the lack of public attention paid his country or countrymen in this historical clandestine operation, and he more than makes up for it in his retelling here. According to the author, British SIS chief Sinclair "authorized the Berlin Tunnel," SIS station chief Peter Lunn, "masterminded" the tunnel operation, the tunnel was Lunn's "brainchild," and Lunn was the "true originator" of the operation. It's only ever Operation "Stopwatch/Gold," never Operation Gold (the American code name). Lunn was so good he even scouted the precise Rudow site on his own, independently, before the Americans chose it, or so Stafford would have one believe. Apparently, British Intelligence is even today still holding fast "to its blanket rule that there should be no discussion or acknowledgment of" their involvement in the Berlin Tunnel. Please... Stafford briefly addresses a potential Operation Bronze (also mentioned by Martin), yet another tunneling/cable-tapping project, this time in Berlin's British sector. Left solely to their own devices, the British never never made it happen, alas. The British were certainly heavily and crucially involved in the Berlin Tunnel. But after reading this book I'm surprised they let the Americans in on the operation at all, goodness gracious! I'm sure Stafford is a good man, and desires to set the record straight, but the painfully obvious, slightly slanted fashion in which it's done here doesn't afford the British their rightful due. It comes across as just a bit of sour grapes.

As one who, as a young soldier trained in the Army Language School at the Presidio of Monterey, actually monitored the Soviet telephone lines at the Berlin site between early October 1955 and March 1956, I can vouch for the accuracy of David Stafford's book. Since I was only a lowly US Army corporal, albeit assigned to alert my superiors of any information that could not wait to be processed in either London or Washington, I knew nothing of the background of the project or of Blake's having compromised it. I was the only enlisted man monitoring the telephone lines, because of the shortage of qualified agents. All the other guys were either Naval officers, CIA or SIS agents. I do remember that, not long after I arrived at the site, the first snow fall revealed a long melted strip taking off from the warehouse-tunnel building and pointing into the East Zone. There was lots of excitement. London was called and engineers flew in that day to install equipment to take the heat out of the tunnel. Fortunately, that day was also foggy, so that we relaxed after the snow continued to fall and cover the arrow-like bare spot marking the tunnel. Little did we know that the tunnel was no secret to the Soviets from the beginning. It was one of my sons, who, many years later made me aware that the project had been compromized from the beginning. Upon learning that, I began to wonder if any of us on that front line listening post might have been reverse programmed by the Soviet Secret Police and their subsequently discovered psy-war technologies. Incidentally, I got to know those secret police guys pretty well. They tried to be cagey by never finishing a conversation on a particular line. No matter. Since we were monitoring all the lines and recording them, we got everything. It was not hard to patch all those fractured KGB conversation fragments together into a sensible communication. They spoke differently than the Red Army guys, whether they were NCO or top military brass, such as Marshal Gretchko or General Markov. Nor did they ever identify themselves as did the Army guys. We knew who they were anyway. It was no doubt the most exciting and intense experience of my young life. Eugene Kovalenko, Ph.D. Los Alamos, NM

Review by Christopher J. D'Ambola of Spies Beneath Berlin by David Stafford (New York: The Overlook Press, 2002). Over the years, American pop-culture has become saturated with the ethos of espionage through James Bond movies, Tom Clancy novels, and even interactive video games based off of the prior two. However, the aura surrounding espionage has become so fantastical over the years that it has separated itself from reality. Espionage to the masses can only be found in the fiction section. In Spies Beneath Berlin, David Stafford manages to wield a similarly fantastical story about espionage in the cold war with the ability to stock it on the non-fiction shelves. You would expect a non-fiction historical novel to begin some sort of history to the subject or dry anecdote of the instance at hand. However, Stafford brilliantly initiates the text with a chillingly suspenseful clip that the public would demand of any spy story. The perfectly constructed structure of the book flows off from the dumbfounded discovery of intelligence tunnels under Berlin, to a detailed history of mid 20th century espionage (including the Vienna Tunnel and the Venona Project), and then back into the construction of the plans from step one. Stafford was committed to conveying three main ideals surrounding the chronicle. The first is the absolute disarray of the United States CIA and British SIS scrambling for intelligence. The atmosphere of Western Europe for years after the war was tense to the last bead of sweat. The clamor for good, solid intelligence that had not been fabricated and was able to be broken was vital to preventing World War III. The second aspect was the reality of the intensity surrounding the project. Stafford details the scrambling recruitment of agents and double agents across the globe by all sides. Stafford achieves his success when you outwardly cry for the US not to trust double agent George Blake like you would shout on the edge of your seat for the defenseless girl not to walk up the stairs alone in a horror flick. He brings a raw realism to the frontlines with descriptions such as CIA special ops agent Bill Harvey as "an overweight, hard-drinking ex-lawyer from a small town in Indiana" (Stafford 51). He wants there to be no confusion that these are real men conducting these high security deals. There was an obvious effort to track down even the smallest of players, such as a female employee of a highly trafficked mailroom whose identity to this day remains within the utmost secrecy. The third and most emphasized point Stafford makes is the ambiguity of the success of the project, titled Operation Stopwatch/Gold (a combination of code names from the CIA and SIS respectively). Stafford manages to take the reader through both sides of the story at the same time with little or no confusion. The outwardly complex story manages to flow coherently under Stafford's pen as the story culminates to the actual commencement of