The City of Wire…success and a practical problem. The success of the tunnel, however, was shadowed by a fact that the planners did not know. The MI6 officer George Blake had reported the plan to the KGB before the first shovel went in. Blake, a Soviet mole embedded in British intelligence, had been recruited…
The Man Who Hated Paper…iew, though Harvey could not have known it at the time. The tunnel’s planning had been reported to the KGB before the first shovel went in. George Blake, the MI6 officer assigned to the British side of the operation, had been recruited by the Soviets in 1951 and had passed them details of th…
A Service in Exile…on’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 o…
The Man Who Hated PaperThe memorandum that crossed J. Edgar Hoover’s desk in early 1952 bore the signature of William King Harvey, a former FBI man who had transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency three years earlier. The document itself has not survived in uncla…
A Service in Exile…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…
The Mole in the Garden…Blake’s arrival, continued preparations. Tunnel planning advanced through meetings, memoranda, technical assessments. The Americans, led by William King Harvey, pushed the project forward with energy that had become his hallmark. Harvey had transferred to the CIA from the FBI in 1947 and built repu…
The City of Wire…om 1949 to 1955, covertly tapped into the landline communications of the Soviet Army headquarters in Vienna. The operation’s staff included Peter Lunn and Peter Montagnon, officers who would later play roles in the Berlin operation. The Vienna tunnel proved the concept: dig from friendly t…
The Man Who Hated Paper…explored the possibility of accessing these cables. The British Secret Intelligence Service, which maintained its own Berlin station under Peter Lunn, had experience with cable taps from earlier operations. The idea of digging a tunnel to reach the Soviet cables had been proposed as early…
A Service in Exile…wers 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 w…
The Man Who Hated Paper…not: Hoover demanded Harvey’s removal, and he got it. Harvey was transferred out of Washington. The transfer, however, was not a dismissal. Allen Dulles, who would become CIA director in 1953, had taken note of Harvey’s work. Dulles understood that the emerging Cold War required officers wil…
The River of Voices…e of triumph that had accompanied its launch settled into a quieter confidence. Confidence extended to the highest levels of both services. Allen Dulles, the director of Central Intelligence, received regular briefings on the tunnel’s output. CIA leadership, which had approved the operation…
The Analyst’s Doubt…pursued. The institutional momentum favored acceptance. The tunnel had cost millions. The political investment in its success was enormous. Allen Dulles had approved the operation. William Harvey had championed it. Peter Lunn had supervised the British contribution. Careers had been built on…
The City of Wire…sensitive communications to cables buried underground or strung on poles. These cables carried conversations between Soviet headquarters in East Berlin, military installations in the surrounding countryside, and the higher command in Moscow. The physical wire replaced the broadcast signal.…
Moscow’s Calculated Silence…quired coordination across Soviet intelligence services and their East German counterparts. Karlshorst, the Soviet military headquarters in East Berlin, housed the KGB residency that would have received Blake’s reports through his handler. The Stasi, East Germany’s security service, maintai…
The Warehouse of Ears…d military communications from Soviet army headquarters in Zossen, near Berlin, along with traffic between Moscow and the Soviet embassy in East Berlin and exchanges between East German and Soviet officials. American planners had sought evidence of hostile military intent. The intercept ope…
The City of Wire…but a direct, almost inevitable, product of Berlin’s fractured postwar existence. Planning for the Berlin tunnel began in earnest in 1953. Operation Gold, as it was designated, was planned jointly by the SIS and the CIA. Initial planning meetings were held at No. 2 Carlton Gardens in London,…
The Man Who Hated Paper…ember 1953, according to the official CIA history of the Berlin Tunnel operation, Harvey was placed in charge of what would become known as Operation Gold. The operation’s objective was audacious: to dig a tunnel from the American sector of Berlin into the Soviet sector and tap the underground…
A Service in Exile…on 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 City of Wire…ss of the tunnel, however, was shadowed by a fact that the planners did not know. The MI6 officer George Blake had reported the plan to the KGB before the first shovel went in. Blake, a Soviet mole embedded in British intelligence, had been recruited during the Korean War and had be…
The Man Who Hated Paper…re was, of course, an irony in this view, though Harvey could not have known it at the time. The tunnel’s planning had been reported to the KGB before the first shovel went in. George Blake, the MI6 officer assigned to the British side of the operation, had been recruited by the Sov…
The Mole in the Garden…intelligence saw an opportunity. Blake was not merely a convert; he was a trained intelligence officer with access to British secrets. The KGB, through intermediaries, made contact. The circumstances of the approach remain unclear—whether Blake initiated contact or the Soviets iden…
The Man Who Hated Paper…ally tap them to hear what they carried. Harvey’s predecessor in Berlin had explored the possibility of accessing these cables. The British Secret Intelligence Service, which maintained its own Berlin station under Peter Lunn, had experience with cable taps from earlier operations. The idea of digging a tu…
A Service in Exile…, 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 s…
The Mole in the GardenOn a summer day in 1953, a posting order arrived at Secret Intelligence Service headquarters. Typed on Foreign Office stationery and routed through standard channels, this document listed George Blake’s name, his grade,…
The Man Who Hated Paper…um that crossed J. Edgar Hoover’s desk in early 1952 bore the signature of William King Harvey, a former FBI man who had transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency three years earlier. The document itself has not survived in unclassified form, but colleagues who saw it later described its tone as remar…
A Service in Exile…sh 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 th…
The Mole in the Garden…relevant. The service needed case officers who could handle a station expanding its operations and deepening cooperation with the American Central Intelligence Agency. The tunnel project was already under discussion. Initial planning meetings had been held at No. 2 Carlton Gardens in London, beginning in…
The City of Wire…ld reach them. The geography of Berlin—the location of the cables, the distance from the American sector at Rudow to the Soviet cables near Altglienicke—presented both an irresistible target and a unique engineering challenge. The engineering challenge was significant but not insurmountable.…
The Man Who Hated Paper…erable scale, requiring the excavation of a quarter-mile tunnel from the American sector at Rudow to a point beneath the Soviet sector near Altglienicke, where three cables carrying Soviet military communications ran in a conduit beneath a roadside. The tunnel had to be dug in secret, despit…
A Service in Exile…ed 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 s…
The City of Wire…dug from the western sectors could reach them. The geography of Berlin—the location of the cables, the distance from the American sector at Rudow to the Soviet cables near Altglienicke—presented both an irresistible target and a unique engineering challenge. The engineering challenge…
The Man Who Hated Paper…bles that carried Red Army communications. The CIA history notes that the first project was the construction of a warehouse in the Neukölln/Rudow district, with an unconventionally deep basement to serve as the staging area. Harvey had found his calling. His new posting was Berlin, th…
A Service in ExileTwo 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…