A Service in Exile

Two years before the tunnel in Rudow would become a physical fact, the memorandum from the Treasury arrived at No. 2 Carlton Gardens in the spring of 1953, its figures arranged in columns that reduced the Secret Intelligence Service to a series of economies. The clerk who logged it noted the date and the originating department. The paper requested a review of overseas stations, with particular attention to those in occupied territories where the Foreign Office believed the American presence had made certain British expenditures redundant. Berlin appeared on the list. The station there had operated since the end of the war, and its budget had been reduced twice since 1949. The Treasury now asked whether a third reduction was practicable.

The document entered a service already counting its losses. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had defected to Moscow in 1951, and the consequences still rippled through the liaison offices in Washington. The Americans had begun to restrict what they shared. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had its own sources, and Director J. Edgar Hoover made no secret of his distrust of British security. The Secret Intelligence Service—MI6 to its American counterparts—faced a dual pressure: the Treasury demanded savings, and the Central Intelligence Agency demanded assurances that no more Soviet agents lurked in the British establishment. Both demands arrived as paper. Both required answers the service could not easily provide.

The Berlin station occupied a peculiar position in this reckoning. It had been run since 1949 by Peter Lunn, a career officer whose father, Sir Reginald Lunn, had served in the diplomatic corps. The younger Lunn had joined the service during the war and had been posted to Switzerland before taking command of the Berlin office. His staff numbered fewer than two dozen. Their offices sat in the British sector, a short distance from the ruins of the Reichstag and the wire that now divided the city. The station’s primary task was the collection of intelligence from the Soviet zone, and its secondary task was the maintenance of contact with agents and networks established during the war and the immediate postwar years.

The Treasury memo noted that the American CIA station in Berlin had grown substantially since 1949. The clerk who summarized the document underlined a phrase: “duplication of effort.” The implication was clear. If the Americans were spending more, the British could spend less.

Lunn had seen this logic before. He had served in Vienna as part of Operation Silver, a British intelligence operation that ran from 1949 to 1955 and covertly tapped into the landline communications of the Soviet Army headquarters in the occupied Austrian capital. The operation’s staff included Peter Lunn, Peter Montagnon, Major John Edward Wyke of the SIS, and telecommunication specialists from the BPO Research Station at Dollis Hill in London. Silver had run successfully for years, its existence unknown to the Soviets. The operation had produced a steady flow of transcripts, and the techniques developed there had proven that British technical expertise could achieve results that larger organizations had not attempted.

The Vienna precedent mattered because it demonstrated what the service could do with limited resources. Silver had not required a large staff or an enormous budget. It had required knowledge of how Soviet communications systems worked, how to access underground cables without leaving traces, and how to record conversations without drawing attention to the interception. The Americans had not developed these skills. The CIA had been founded in 1947, and its Berlin station was led by men whose experience came from the Office of Strategic Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They knew how to recruit agents and how to run operations. They did not know how to dig tunnels into Soviet territory and tap military cables.

The distinction was not lost on William King Harvey. The CIA officer had arrived in Berlin in 1952, transferred from the counterintelligence staff in Washington. Harvey had seen the Treasury figures in a different context. The British were weakened, yes, but their weakness made them useful. A service with limited resources could not afford to ignore opportunities. A service that had already lost Burgess and Maclean could not afford another failure. The Berlin station needed a success, and Harvey needed partners who knew things his own people did not.

The initial planning meetings for what would become Operation Gold—known to the British as Operation Stopwatch—were held at No. 2 Carlton Gardens, the London headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service. The West German intelligence service was excluded from these discussions. The minutes recorded the reason: the Bonn government’s security apparatus had been so thoroughly penetrated by Soviet agents that sharing details of the proposed operation would be tantamount to announcing it in Moscow. The resulting agreement specified that the operation would be joint, with costs shared and intelligence divided. The Americans would provide the bulk of the funding and the personnel for construction. The British would provide technical expertise derived from Silver and the use of certain assets in the Soviet zone.

The arrangement reflected the reality of power between the two services. The CIA had money, equipment, and people. MI6 had experience, contacts, and the memory of operations that had worked. Harvey recognized the imbalance and exploited it. He pushed for a tunnel that would run from the American sector at Rudow under the border to a point near Altglienicke, where three Soviet army telephone cables ran in a common conduit. The distance was roughly a quarter-mile. The technical challenges were substantial: the tunnel would have to be dug through soil that might contain unexploded ordnance, beneath streets that Soviet patrols might watch, and into territory where discovery would mean a diplomatic crisis.

The British had faced similar challenges in Vienna. Lunn and his colleagues had learned how to conceal entry points, how to manage spoil from excavation, and how to maintain a cover story that could withstand casual inspection. The Silver operation had run for years because its planners had thought through every detail, from the placement of the tap to the rotation of the personnel who monitored the recordings. Harvey needed that knowledge, and Lunn was willing to provide it.

The partnership was not without tension. The CIA officers sometimes treated their British counterparts as junior partners, a perception reinforced by the disparity in resources. The Berlin station operated on a budget that would not have covered a single month of the American operation’s expenses. The British staff worked in offices that had not been fully repaired since the war. The Americans occupied new buildings with modern equipment. The contrast was visible, and it rankled.

But the British had something the Americans lacked: a network of agents in the Soviet zone that had been built over years. Some of these agents had been recruited during the war, when the service had run operations against Nazi Germany. Others had been developed after the war, when the Soviet occupation had created new opportunities and new risks. These assets provided information about Soviet troop movements, communications procedures, and the routines of the soldiers who guarded the border. The tunnel would require that kind of intelligence if it was to succeed.

The collaboration also required trust, and trust was in short supply after Burgess and Maclean. The Americans had reason to wonder whether any British officer might be working for Moscow. The British had reason to wonder whether the Americans would cut them out of the operation once the hard work was done. Both sides had to make calculations about the other’s reliability, and both sides had to accept that those calculations could be wrong.

Harvey’s reputation offered a kind of assurance. He had served in the FBI before joining the CIA, and he had made his name in counterintelligence. He had pursued Soviet networks with a relentlessness that impressed even those who found his manner abrasive. He did not suffer fools, and he did not tolerate leaks. The British officers who worked with him found him difficult but effective. Lunn, who had dealt with difficult men throughout his career, developed a working relationship with Harvey that balanced American resources against British expertise.

The planning documents from late 1953 show the shape of the operation taking form. The tunnel would begin in a warehouse in Rudow, in the American sector. The entrance would be concealed as a routine commercial facility, its activities hidden from observation. The tunnel itself would be dug through clay and sand, with a diameter sufficient for workers to move in both directions. The tap would be placed at the point where the Soviet cables emerged from the ground, and the cables would be accessed through a chamber constructed around the conduit. Recording equipment would capture the conversations that passed through the lines, and the recordings would be transcribed and translated by teams working in shifts.

The British contribution was specified in the minutes. Lunn’s team would provide technical advice on the construction of the tap chamber, based on the designs used in Vienna. They would also provide information about Soviet communications procedures, including the frequencies and protocols used by military units in the area. In return, the British would receive half of the intelligence produced by the operation, and their officers would have access to the tunnel and the recording facility.

The agreement was signed, and the operation moved from planning to preparation. But the documents do not record the calculations that each side made about the other. The Americans knew that the British needed a success to restore their standing after the Burgess-Maclean disaster. The British knew that the Americans needed expertise they did not have. Each side believed it was getting the better of the bargain, and each side believed that the other would honor its commitments because the alternative was failure.

The date was December 1953 when the operation was placed under Harvey’s direction. Captain Williamson of the United States Army Corps of Engineers was assigned to supervise construction. The British liaison was established through Lunn’s office, and the flow of information between the two services began to increase. The planning documents were marked with classification levels that restricted access to a handful of officers on each side. The operation’s existence was a secret, and the secret was held tight.

But secrets have a way of moving beyond the circles in which they are confined.

George Blake had returned to Britain in 1953 after three years in North Korean captivity. He had been captured in Seoul in 1950, when Communist forces overran the city. His fellow prisoners remembered him as a man who had cooperated with his captors, who had made statements that some considered propaganda. But the service accepted his explanation that he had done what was necessary to survive, and he was welcomed back as an officer who had endured hardship.

In October 1954, Blake married Gillian Allan, an MI6 secretary, in St Mark’s Church on North Audley Street in London. The marriage seemed to confirm his return to normal life, and the service saw no reason to doubt his loyalty. In 1955, he was sent to Berlin as a case officer, where his tasks included working with the tunnel operation. He had been recruited by the Soviets in Korea, though no one in the service knew it yet. The planning documents that crossed his desk contained details about the operation that would have been invaluable to Moscow.

The tunnel did not yet exist. The planning was still underway, and the construction would not begin until the following year. But the operation had already been compromised, and the compromise would shape everything that followed.

The British service in Berlin operated under constraints that its American counterparts did not face. The Treasury’s demand for economies meant that the station could not expand to match the CIA’s presence. The Foreign Office’s concern about American dominance meant that the service had to maintain its independence even as it relied on American funding. The legacy of Burgess and Maclean meant that every British officer was suspect, and every operation was subject to questions about security.

Yet the service had survived worse. It had operated during the war under conditions that would have been unimaginable in peacetime, running agents into occupied Europe and maintaining networks that produced intelligence of incalculable value. It had adapted to the peace with a reduced budget and a reduced staff, but it had not abandoned its expertise. The officers who had run operations against the Nazis now ran operations against the Soviets, and the skills they had developed were still relevant.

Lunn embodied this continuity. He had joined the service during the war, and he had served in Switzerland before coming to Berlin. He had run Operation Silver in Vienna, and he had seen what British technical expertise could achieve. He knew that the Americans had resources the British would never match, but he also knew that resources alone did not guarantee success. The tunnel would require planning, precision, and patience—the qualities that the service had cultivated over decades.

The partnership between Harvey and Lunn was not a friendship. The two men came from different worlds, with different backgrounds and different temperaments. Harvey was an American who had made his career in law enforcement before moving to intelligence. Lunn was a British officer whose family had served the Crown for generations. Harvey was loud, aggressive, and impatient. Lunn was quiet, methodical, and persistent. They might never have worked together if circumstances had not forced them into each other’s orbits.

But circumstances had forced them, and the tunnel required both of them. Harvey provided the drive that pushed the operation forward, overcoming obstacles that might have stopped a less determined man. Lunn provided the expertise that ensured the operation would work, drawing on experience that the Americans simply did not have. The combination was not comfortable, but it was effective.

The documents from this period show the operation taking shape. The planning meetings produced agreements on costs, responsibilities, and the division of intelligence. The technical specifications were refined, with British officers contributing details about cable construction and Soviet communications procedures. The security arrangements were established, with access limited to those who needed to know. The operation was becoming real.

But the documents do not show the underlying tensions. The British service was operating from a position of weakness, and its officers knew it. The Americans could have built the tunnel without British help, though it would have been harder and riskier. The British could not have built the tunnel at all. The partnership was necessary, but it was not equal, and the inequality was a source of friction that never fully disappeared.

Some officers thought of the Berlin station as a service in exile. It sat far from London, far from the centers of power, in a city that had been divided and occupied. Its officers worked in the shadow of the Soviets, knowing that their every move might be watched. They had been reduced in numbers and in budget, and they had been humiliated by the defections that had shaken the service’s reputation. But they had not been defeated.

The tunnel would be their chance to prove it.

The construction would begin in September 1954 and would be completed in eight months. The Americans wanted to hear any warlike intentions being discussed by Soviet military commanders, and they were willing to spend whatever was necessary to get that intelligence. The British wanted to demonstrate that they could still contribute, that their expertise still mattered, that the service still had value. Both sides had reasons to proceed, and both sides had reasons to hope.

The planning documents were filed away, marked with classifications that would keep them secret for decades. The officers who had created them went back to their duties, preparing for the work that lay ahead. The tunnel was still a plan on paper, a series of specifications and agreements and calculations. But the plan was becoming an operation, and the operation would become a reality.

The partnership had been formed. The resources had been allocated. The expertise had been committed. The tunnel would be dug, and the cables would be tapped, and the recordings would be made. What those recordings would contain—and who would control what they contained—was a question that no document could answer.

The ledger entries from the spring of 1954 show the first transfers of funds. The amounts were recorded in dollars and in pounds, the two currencies running parallel in the columns. The Americans were paying for construction, for equipment, for personnel. The British were contributing technical services, intelligence, and the use of assets in the Soviet zone. The totals were not equal, but they were committed.

The partnership that made the tunnel possible had taken shape in the space between American wealth and British knowledge. Harvey had found in Lunn a counterpart who could provide what the CIA lacked, and Lunn had found in Harvey a partner who could provide what MI6 could no longer afford. The operation would bear both their marks, though history would remember it primarily as an American achievement.

But the documents tell a different story. They show a collaboration that was negotiated, contested, and ultimately affirmed. They show two services that needed each other, for different reasons, and that found a way to work together despite the tensions between them. They show a tunnel that was not just a hole in the ground but a joint enterprise, built on foundations that were both concrete and bureaucratic.

The foundation had been laid. The construction would follow. And the mole who would undermine it all was already in place, watching from inside the service that had trusted him.