CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE
AGENCY
Extracts from a CIA Report titled: The Berlin Tunnel*
*https//www.CIA/gov/library/center for the study of intelligence/books and monographs/On the Front Line of the Cold War/ Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, 1946-1961. Document V—the Berlin Tunnel
No single operation more typifies Berlin’s importance as a strategic intelligence base than the construction of the Berlin Tunnel. Probably one of the most ambitious operations undertaken by the CIA in the 1950s, it succeeded despite the fact that the KGB knew about the operation even before construction of the tunnel began!
The genesis of the tunnel operation lay in Berlin’s location in Europe and its prewar status as the capital of a militarily and economically dominant Germany. The largest city on the Continent, Berlin lay at the center of a vast network of transportation and communications lines that extended from Western France to deep into Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. This was still true in the 1950s; Soviet telephone and telegraph communications between Moscow, Warsaw, and Bucharest wererouted through Berlin….This became became a factor of crucial importance beginning in 1951 when the Soviets began to shift from wireless communications to encrypted landlines for almost all military traffic….encrypted messages as well as nonsecure voice communications.
Thus was born the idea of tunneling into the Soviet sector of Berlin to tap into Soviet military communications [known to insiders as Operation Gold]….By August 1953, detailed plans for the tunnel were completed, and a proposal was drawn up for approval by DCI Allen Dulles. After much discussion, this was obtained on 20 January 1954.
Having learned the location of the underground cables used by the Soviets from an agent inside the East Berlin post office, the Altglienicke district was selected as the best site for a cable tap…The tunnel itself was completed a year later, at the end of February 1955, and the taps were in place and operating shortly thereafter.
In all, about 40,000 hours of telephone conversations were recorded, along with 6,000,000 hours of teletype traffic. Most of the useful information dealt with Soviet orders of battle and force dispositions—information that was invaluable in the days before reconnaissance satellites….Unfortunately, the whole operation was blown even before the DCI approved the project. On 22 October 1953, US intelligence officers briefed a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) audience that included KGB mole, George Blake.
Although the KGB was aware of the potential importance of the tap, its first priority was to protect Blake. Early in 1956, the Soviets developed a plan whereby the tap would be “accidentally” discovered….On the night of 21-22 April 1956, a special signal corps team….penetrated the tunnel in the full glare of a well-organized publicity coup.
The above extract describes the first time that US Intelligence Agencies built a tunnel into Soviet-controlled East Berlin. This is a fictional account of the building of a second tunnel in 1960-1961 during the period of the closing of the Berlin Wall and the Berlin Crisis.
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The Berlin Tunnel—A Cold War Thriller
First Edition
Copyright © 2018 Roger Liles
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author.
This story is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LCCN: 2018039198
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-947392-27-4
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-947392-28-1
Published by Acorn Publishing LLC
West Columbia, South Carolina, 29172
Manufactured in the United States of America
“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.”
John F Kennedy’s Inaugural Address —January 20, 1961
Author’s Notes:
As the citation from President Kennedy’s inaugural address states, the world in the early 1960’s was a perilous place. The Russians possessed the hydrogen bomb. Both the U.S.A and U.S.S.R. had settled on a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)—if you strike us with nuclear weapons, we will retaliate in kind. Everyone realized that both Russia and America, perhaps even the whole world, would cease to exist if an all-out nuclear war occurred.
In reaction, Americans built fallout shelters in their backyards, confident that Armageddon was imminent. The communists dominated most of Europe and Asia. The space race was on—spectacular Russian feats contrasted with a string of failures on the part of the U.S.A.
By 1960, the Warsaw Pact countries enjoyed a five-to-one advantage in conventional forces in Europe. President Dwight Eisenhower frequently declared that, if the Russians attacked Western Europe, he’d employ tactical nuclear weapons to prevent them from overrunning our allies and American forces stationed in Europe.
Since 1958, the Russians repeatedly threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with the East Germans. Such a treaty would recognize East Germany’s right to incorporate all of Berlin into a sovereign country. The Russians, utilizing the United Nations and other international forums, inflamed world opinion in support of this planned action. Their saber rattling threatened a crisis, even war, if the West did not capitulate on this issue.
Since the two million West Berliners relied on the two-way flow of virtually everything, the constant communist threat of another Berlin Blockade was especially compelling.
In the mid-1950s, the American CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) dug a tunnel and tapped into a buried communication cable located in East Berlin. The frontispiece of this novel contains a one-page excerpt from a CIA report, which describes that monumental feat. More details about that Berlin Tunnel—PROJECT GOLD/STOPWATCH—are available on the internet.
As far as the author can determine, a second tunnel was never built in Berlin during the Cold War. I’m sure that, at many levels of the American government, it was contemplated. You can almost hear someone say, “All that valuable intelligence is readily available, if only…”
This is a fictionalized account of how a second tunnel might have been built by the Americans. It is based on real events and seeks to recall a time—1960/1961—and a place, a divided Berlin before, during, and after the dramatic events that surrounded the closing of the Wall and the Berlin Crisis.
The conditions and events that occurred on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and which divided Berlin, are faithfully recreated. The characters are the product of the author’s imagination. The leaders of this period are quoted, and one is included in the story as a character for dramatic purposes.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the estimated fifty million American citizen soldiers who, like Cincinnatus, selflessly served their country in the fight against Commu
nism between the conclusion of World War II and the end of the Cold War. As a result of their efforts, the communist grip on the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union ended in the last decade of the twentieth century.
Those Cold War warriors, and the individuals who served in the “Hot Wars” in Korea and Vietnam, deserve the recognition often withheld when they returned home after their service.
Finally, this book is dedicated to those American servicemen and women ‘who gave the last full measure’ in death or disability during this period.
Prologue
Robert
April 14, 2010
My quest intensified after an internet search revealed that after fifty years, the code word LUMAR had been declassified. In the months that followed, I spent time each day on Google as I searched for additional information.
My eleven-year-old grandson Jonathan recently helped me set up a Google Alert to automatically inform me when someone posted something new. My search terms included Berlin Tunnel, U.S. Air Force, and, of course, Project LUMAR.
Following my regular routine, after lunch I checked my email account. Startled, I discovered my first alert. When I opened the URL and the subject document, a familiar page jumped out at me from my computer screen. Shocked, I pushed back my chair and sat frozen in place. I finally caught my breath, and shouted, “Well, I’ll be damned!”
Anna rushed from her nearby potting studio, gasping, “Are you okay, liebchen?”
“Come here! Come around so you can see what I’ve found!”
“I thought you were having another heart attack or something.”
“No! No!” I pointed. “Look! Look here! The construction plan I wrote in Berlin almost fifty years ago. It’s on the internet!”
She moved behind me, smoothed an errant tuft of my thinning gray hair into place. She put both hands on my shoulders, bending forward for a better view.
I felt her stiffen. She moved her hands to my throat, pretending to choke me. “So is this what you’ve hidden from me all these years!”
Knowing I’d opened an old wound, I turned to face her. “There was a reason I couldn’t tell you. An important reason.”
“What might that be?”
“I signed a non-disclosure agreement with the American government.” I raised my hands in mock surrender. “I could have gone to prison for thirty years for the unauthorized disclosure of information about Project LUMAR, the program I managed.”
Her face softened. She put her arms around me. “Robbie, if you’d told me about that agreement, I wouldn’t have pressed you so hard for information or been so hurt that you wouldn’t trust me.”
“I was even ordered not to tell anyone about the non-disclosure agreement,” I explained. I felt both relieved and exhilarated that, at last, I could share this secret with Anna, my wife and best friend of almost fifty years.
I’d suppressed thoughts about the Top Secret construction program in Berlin, but the old visceral reaction persisted. Perhaps this once highly classified information could still be used by our former enemies, although they no longer existed. East Germany and their Secret Police, the Stasi, as well as the Soviet Union and its KGB, had passed into the history books many years earlier.
Anna kissed the top of my head. “From the start of our relationship, I knew you were hiding something important, but I trusted you and believed you would tell me one day. I helped you with the charade, didn’t I?”
“Yes, despite everything that happened to you—to both of us, you helped to preserve my cover. I wouldn’t have succeeded without your support every step of the way, Anna.” I stood to give her a heartfelt hug and kiss.
“So now that this information is on the internet, you can tell me everything. I’ve always wanted to know the complete story.”
Anna deserved to know why she’d been the target of Stasi harassment and torture. I positioned her chair next to mine. “Let’s read this report together. Then you’ll finally learn what my construction crew and I were doing in Berlin.” Holding her hand to reassure her, I continued. “See the original classifications on the top and bottom of my plan? TOP SECRET RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION/US EYES ONLY and the caveat PROJECT LUMAR.”
“All of those lines have been crossed out,” she observed. “What does that mean?”
“First, twenty years ago, the document was reclassified to SECRET. You can see that word was also lined through and dated. Last year, a large rubber stamp was used to declare the document I generated officially UNCLASSIFIED.”
“Early in our relationship, I realized that those communist bastards in the Stasi were making every effort to uncover your secret. My distinct impression was that you, Scott, Mark, and Kurt were dedicated to whatever you were doing. Because I trusted you, I hid my disappointment at being kept in the dark and did my best to help every step of the way.”
“Yes, you did! There was an excellent reason I couldn’t tell you or anyone what I was doing. If one of the thousands of communist spies who entered West Berlin every day, or their myriad operatives at every level of German society, heard just one word, the whole game would have been over. The communists would have enjoyed another major victory.”
“What one word, for heaven’s sake?” she asked, clearly intrigued.
“TUNNEL. Upon hearing that one word, the Russians and East Germans would have immediately begun a concerted search on both sides of the border between East and West Berlin. They would have discovered where we were digging and then used every means, including force, to sabotage my project.”
“I knew there was a tunnel!” Anna insisted. “During family reunions, our nieces and nephews still talk about your amazing tunnel. But you always avoid those conversations. You’ve even refused to confirm such a structure existed. Finally, you’ll be able to share the part you played in the building of that tunnel.”
“Yes…Yes, I can!” So many memorable events, I realized. The closing of the Berlin Wall, the Berlin Crisis, and the Tunnel. Memories of those fifteen months came rushing back, as if they’d happened only yesterday. Now, I could share it all with Anna. “Where should I start? The day I arrived in Berlin. Let’s see it was October….October 11, 1960….As the aircraft began its descent….”
Table of Contents
Author’s Notes:
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Part Two
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
&
nbsp; Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Part Three
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
The Berlin Tunnel Page 1