Operation Gold

The Operation Gold (also known as Operation Stopwatch with the British referred to ) was a joint espionage action that was performed by the American CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service to tap the phone lines of the headquarters of the Red Army with the help of a tunnel in 1955 in Berlin, the was dug under the Soviet-occupied sector of the city.

Planning

Building on the experience gained in the successful operation wiretap Silver in Vienna, urged Allen Dulles ( the then Director of Central Intelligence ) agreed to repeat the action in divided Berlin. Although surgery gold had been planned jointly by the SIS and the CIA, she was subsequently funded by the CIA alone and staffed. Since many details of the project remains subject to confidentiality, the amount of reliable information is limited about it. This is partly because that Allen Dulles had ordered that should be " as little as possible," " reduced written form " on when he approved the project.

According to one report, it was Reinhard Gehlen, who later became the first President of the Federal Intelligence Service, who had Dulles first to point out the history of a major route with telecommunication cables, which was in less than 2 meters deep and in the three cables in the immediate vicinity of the American sector running from West Berlin. Information about the exact position of the cable could be procured by an informant in the East Berlin telecommunications office. The CIA had deemed reliable classified information that this cable telephone and telegraphic connections of the Soviet military, the security services and were handled by diplomats.

Representatives of the British and American intelligence gathered after learning of the information in London to plan the tunnel. One of those present at this early meeting was George Blake, who was working as a double agent within the British secret service. Blake had apparently the KGB immediately informed about the plans, what may be transported and the arrest of two of Gehlen's agent in an attempt to intercept a cable over a canal in Berlin, is due. The KGB, however, decided not to interfere with the conduct of the operation of gold because it saw the potential for the spread of disinformation and Blake did not want to jeopardize as a double agent.

Course of the operation

In December 1953, the operation William King Harvey was assumed, a former FBI agent who joined the CIA. He used the construction site of a radar station and a depot building of the Air Force as a cover for the western terminus of the tunnel. The secret construction of a 450 meter-long tunnel, which under crossed the heavily guarded border at a depth of approximately 6 meters to tap into a cable that was only 47 cm below a busy street, put a high engineering challenge was further complicated the construction of the tunnel by the unexpected intrusion of groundwater and the discovery of a Lehmlinse in the course of the planned tunnel. Work began in August 1954 and was completed on 25 February 1955. The tunnel ran between the district Altglienicke in Treptow on the East Berlin side and the Neukölln district of Rudow in the American sector. From there, the telephone connections by German and Americans were both intercepted and recorded, which were led by the headquarters of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany in Wunsdorf from, among others, with Moscow, the Soviet embassy in East Berlin and the East German authorities.

Apparently, the Western intelligence agencies at that time were not able to break the encryption of the Soviet Union. Instead, they took advantage of a weak electronic echo that produced the Soviet encryption device to read messages in plain text.

In Washington, a team of translators and analysts worked constantly working to evaluate the overwhelming amount of information so intercepted between ordinary soldiers included all of the discussions of senior officers to chat. The evaluation of telephone calls up to 317 employees were temporarily employed, with the telegraph traffic up to 350 during the short life of the tunnel about half a million conversations was arrested on 50,000 tapes. Overall, the recordings include 40,000 hours phone calls and 6 million hours telex traffic. The analysis of the information obtained by the operation of gold lasted until September 1958. It reports 1750 and 90,000 translations were made.

Uncovering

In the night from 21 to April 22, 1956 eleven months after the opening of the tunnel, the eastern end of the tunnel was excavated by Soviet and East German soldiers, after it had previously been in the days of heavy rainfall to malfunctions in individual telephone lines. This date was chosen by the Soviet side in order not to jeopardize their agents Blake The spy tunnel was presented immediately after its discovery as " breaking the norms of international law " and " criminal act " of the press. The photos from the tunnel under the inner German border, then walked through the world press. Although the tunnel section had already been mined directly below the limit by the Americans during the construction for a possible breakup, a discovery of the tunnel of this option was not used in the actual discovery of the tunnel against the originally planned procedure in the event.

It was not only affected Allen Dulles by the discovery of the tunnel, but also his brother John Foster Dulles ( at that time Secretary of State ) and his sister, Eleanor Lansing Dulles, which at the time as head of the Berlin ministries in the former Bureau of German Affairs of the State Department in charge.

Only in 1961, after Blake had been arrested and convicted as an agent, was aware of the Western intelligence services that the secrecy of the tunnel was long gone before he was building. Although Dulles has stressed publicly the success of Operation Gold, the CIA analysts are divided on the value of the information thus collected. One of the reviews concluded that the Soviet Union could only run the inconsequential communication via the tapped cable to maintain the illusion that they harbored no aggressive intentions against West Berlin. The operation cost gold are indicated with 6.7 million U.S. dollars.

The plant was closed in 1971 and now stand on the site of houses.

Swell

• David Stafford: Spies Beneath Berlin - the Extraordinary Story of Operation Stopwatch / Gold, the CIA 's Spy Tunnel Under the Russian Sector of Cold War Berlin. Overlook Press, 2002, ISBN 1-58567-361-7.
• British Garrison Berlin 1945-1994, " No where to go", William Durie ISBN 978-3-86408-068-5

Movies

• Operation Gold - The Spy Tunnel of Berlin, film by Jonathan Hacker and Sam Benstead
• Operation Gold - Battle of the intelligence agencies in Berlin, Film by Stephan Guntli and Sibylle Gerhards, Feature, WDR / ORB / ARTE, 1994, 60 min