Operation Gold
Encyclopedia
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
and the British Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
in the 1950s to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
headquarters in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone. This was a much more complex variation of the earlier Operation Silver
Operation Silver (1949)
Operation Silver was a British intelligence operation which ran from 1949 to 1955 that covertly tapped into the landline communications of the Soviet Army headquarters in Vienna....
project in Vienna. Soviet authorities were informed about Operation Gold from the very beginning by their mole George Blake
George Blake
George Blake is a former British spy known for having been a double agent in the service of the Soviet Union. Discovered in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years in prison, he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966 and fled to the USSR...
and "discovered" the tunnel in 1956.
Overview
Although Operation Gold was planned by the SIS and the CIA, it was CIA money and manpower that carried it out. Details of the project are still classified, and whatever authoritative information can be found is scant. This is primarily because the then-Director of Central IntelligenceDirector of Central Intelligence
The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...
, Allen Dulles ordered "as little as possible" be "reduced to writing" when the project was authorized.
According to one account, Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen was a General in the German Army during World War II, who served as chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union , and eventually became head of the West...
, the head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst
Bundesnachrichtendienst
The Bundesnachrichtendienst [ˌbʊndəsˈnaːχʁɪçtnˌdiːnst] is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office. Its headquarters are in Pullach near Munich, and Berlin . The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries...
, first alerted Dulles to the location of a crucial telephone junction, less than two meters (six feet) underground, where three cables came together close to the border of the American sector of West Berlin
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...
.
British and U.S. intelligence officials met in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to plan the tunnel. One of those who attended those early meetings was George Blake
George Blake
George Blake is a former British spy known for having been a double agent in the service of the Soviet Union. Discovered in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years in prison, he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966 and fled to the USSR...
, a mole
Mole (espionage)
A mole is a spy who works for an enemy nation, but whose loyalty ostensibly lies with his own nation's government. In some usage, a mole differs from a defector in that a mole is a spy before gaining access to classified information, while a defector becomes a spy only after gaining access...
in the British intelligence apparatus. Blake apparently alerted the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
immediately, for two of Gehlen's agents were caught trying to get a potential tapping wire across a Berlin canal.
The KGB decided to let Operation Gold go on since in order to attack the tunnel, the Soviets would have to compromise Blake and they found it preferable to sacrifice some information rather than their valuable agent. The KGB did not inform anyone in Germany, including the East Germans or the Soviet users of the cable lines, about the taps.
In December 1953 the operation was placed under the direction of William King Harvey
William King Harvey
William King "Bill" Harvey was a Central Intelligence Agency officer, best known for his role in Operation Mongoose. He was known as "America's James Bond."...
, a former FBI official who transferred to the CIA. A warehouse with an unconventionally deep basement was specially constructed in the Rudow district of the American Sector of Berlin to serve as the staging area for the tunnel. The covert construction of a 450-metre (1,476-foot) tunnel 6 metres (~20 feet) under the world’s most heavily patrolled border to intersect a series of cable less than 47 cm (18") below a busy street was an exceptional engineering challenge. Digging the initial vertical shaft for the tunnel began on 2 September, 1954 and was completed on 25 February the following year. The tunnel ran underneath Treptow/Altglienicke
Treptow
Treptow is a former borough in the southeast of Berlin. It merged with Köpenick to form Treptow-Köpenick in 2001.-Geography:The district was composed by the localities of Alt-Treptow, Plänterwald, Baumschulenweg, Niederschöneweide, Johannisthal, Adlershof, Altglienicke and Bohnsdorf....
in the Soviet Sector from an electronic box for the tapping of the wires in Neukölln/Rudow
Neukölln
Neukölln is the eighth borough of Berlin, located in the southeastern part of the city and was part of the former American sector under the Four-Power occupation of the city...
in the American Sector. There the British and the Americans listened and recorded messages flowing to and from Soviet military headquarters in Zossen
Zossen
Zossen is a German town in the district of Teltow-Fläming in Brandenburg, south of Berlin, and next to the B96 highway. Zossen consists of several smaller municipalities, which were grouped together in 2003 to form the city.-Geography:...
, near Berlin; conversations between Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and the Soviet embassy in East Berlin
East Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...
; and conversations between East German and Soviet officials.
It appears the West was unable to break the Soviet encryption at this time. Instead they took advantage of a faint electronic echo produced by the Soviet communications equipment to read the traffic in plain text.
In Washington, DC, a team of CIA translators and analysts worked constantly on the vast amount of intercepts, ranging from high-level talk to barracks gossip. During the tunnel's brief lifespan of eleven months and eleven days, about half a million calls were recorded in 50,000 tapes. To evaluate this deluge the work of mining Operation Gold continued until September 1958.
The KGB, forced to keep the flow of information as normal as possible, would occasionally let authentic sounding communications get through; the CIA may still have obtained some valuable information.
Not only was Allen Dulles affected by the tunnel raid, but also his brother John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...
, the Secretary of State
Secretary of State
Secretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....
, and his sister Eleanor Lansing Dulles
Eleanor Lansing Dulles
Eleanor Lansing Dulles was an author, teacher and United States Government employee. She was a member of a diplomatic dynasty which spanned three generations. Her grandfather, John Watson Foster, served as United States Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison...
, the State Department's desk officer for Berlin.
Only in 1961, when Blake was arrested, tried and convicted, did Western officials realize that the tunnel had been compromised long before construction had begun. Although Allen Dulles has publicly celebrated the success of Operation Gold, CIA analysts have argued about the overall worth of the intelligence that they had gathered. By one assessment, the Soviets had allowed ordinary military communications to flow through the cables to project the illusion that the Soviets had no aggressive intent against West Berlin.
Operation Gold forms the background to the novels The Innocent
The Innocent (novel)
-Summary:The novel takes place in 1955-56 Berlin at the beginning of the Cold War and centres on the joint CIA/MI6 operation to build a tunnel from the American sector of Berlin into the Russian sector to tap the phone lines of the Soviet High Command. Leonard Marnham is a 25-year-old Englishman...
by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
and Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary
Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary (novel)
Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary is a 2008 novel by an American Author writing under the pen name of T.H.E. Hill. The action of the novel takes place in Berlin in the mid-1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War, before the construction of the Berlin Wall...
by T.H.E. Hill.
See also
- Operation SilverOperation Silver (1949)Operation Silver was a British intelligence operation which ran from 1949 to 1955 that covertly tapped into the landline communications of the Soviet Army headquarters in Vienna....
- CIACentral Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(U.S.A. counterpart to the UK SIS) - Secret Intelligence ServiceSecret Intelligence ServiceThe Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
(British counterpart to the CIA)