"A riveting and vivid account. ... A remarkable story. ... It reads like a Hollywood screenplay." —Foreign Affairs
The astonishing true story of the Berlin Tunnel, one of the West’s greatest espionage operations of the Cold War—and the dangerous Soviet mole who betrayed it.Its code name was “Operation Gold,” a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries. Success would provide the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service access to a vast treasure of intelligence. Exposure might spark a dangerous confrontation with the Soviets. Yet as the Allies were burrowing into the German soil, a traitor, code-named Agent Diamond by his Soviet handlers, was burrowing into the operation itself. . .
Betrayal in Berlin is Steve Vogel’s heart pounding account of the operation. He vividly recreates post-war Berlin, a scarred, shadowy snake pit with thousands of spies and innumerable cover stories. It is also the most vivid account of George Blake, perhaps the most damaging mole of the Cold War. Drawing upon years of archival research, secret documents, and rare interviews with Blake himself, Vogel has crafted a true-life spy story as thrilling as the novels of John le Carré and Len Deighton.
Betrayal in Berlin includes 24 photos and two maps.
Steve Vogel is the author of Through the Perlious Fight and The Pentagon: A History, both published by Random House. He is a reporter for the national staff of the Washington Post who covers the federal government and frequently writes about the military and veterans. Based overseas from 1989 through 1994 and reporting for the Post and Army Times, he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first Gulf War, and subsequently reported on military operations in Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. Vogel also covered the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and its subsequent reconstruction. He lives in the Washington metro area.
Table of Contents
Maps xi
Prelude 1
Part I The Sins Inside
Chapter 1 Black Friday 15
Chapter 2 To Betray, You First Have to Belong 24
Chapter 3 Bill Harvey, of All People 48
Chapter 4 Ground Zero 64
Chapter 5 A Hero's Return 78
Chapter 6 The Big Prize Was Going to Be Berlin 96
Chapter 7 Agent Diomid 113
Chapter 8 This Was Explosive Material 126
Part II The Warehouse
Chapter 9 A Special Assignment 135
Chapter 10 It Was Getting So Complicated 148
Chapter 11 The Dig 163
Part III Ace in the Hole
Chapter 12 The Baby Was Born 185
Chapter 13 Striking Gold 199
Chapter 14 The Penetration of the CIA into Our Midst 213
Chapter 15 The One-Man Tunnel 227
Chapter 16 The Hottest intelligence Operation on the Face of the Planet 239
Chapter 17 Berlin was on the Top of the World 255
Chapter 18 There's a Fast One Coming 269
Part IV A Nest of Spies
Chapter 19 A Sensational Story About American Espionage 293
