File: THE BERLIN TUNNEL Read 13 times -=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=- = = - The Berlin Tunnel - = From The KGB (Chapter VII) by Don Lawson = - Word Processed by BIOC Agent 003 - = = -=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=- At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into occupation zones by the four victorious Allies: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. They also divided Berlin, prewar capital of Germany, into four such zones. The city was temporarily governed by an Allied Command Council, or Kommandatura. From the beginning, Russia refused to cooperate with the other Allies and soon withdrew from the Kommandatura. It also began to demand that the other Allies get out of Berlin. This they refused to do, despite a#H@G'#�FR@�>0 �0��1 �0q �@0I��9��9�89�89��9�0q�����0A��� �*************************** In a car with automatic transmission, switch the #1 and #8 wires on the distributer cap. This will allegedly allow the car to operate in Neutral and Park, but the engine mysteriously dies in Drive. Castor Oil squirted into the tailpipe of a car, will cause a large amount of smoke. Just the thing to help nervous drivers. If you can get a bank account number for a person, truly wonderful things can happen. Depositing one penny every day can get the employees very pissed. It happens that given a few hundred wanted posters, one will look like you. OR anybody else you can imagine. Close anyway. Think of all the bounty hunters just waiting to claim their reward. Place an ad in a paper for Male Secretarys only. $11 an hour, must be physically attractive, gentle, and other related social traits. This is for anybody who has an office. Give the time to show up one half hour before the normal opening hour. For example, if the office opens at 9:00, put the time to be 8:30. All these faggots will show up and start bitching at each other and your loser. Run an ad in the local paper with the following message. "I need all used christmas trees. Please leave them on my lawn, and I'll pay $5 for each one." then leave the losers address. The paper will take your $ and print the ad without thinking. If you know the guy is going to throw a party, arrange for him to find out that somebody was going to crash his party, dressed up like cops. Then call the cops telling them of a real rowdy party going on. If your college uses computers to handle admissions, try this. Fill out course withdrawl forms in the losers name. Then enter them, they probably won't check. The guy will go the entire block unknowing, then when grades are posted. "Where are mine?" "Why didn't I get grades?" Call your colleges administration, tell them you are the undertaker of your losers hometown. He just died, please take him off your records, recordstelligence became all but impossible. Many efforts were made to break this intelligence stalemate, but none were successful. Finally, the United States and Great Britain came up with an ingenious idea: to dig a huge tunnel between West and East Berlin. This tunnel was not planned as a secret passageway for American and British agents to enter the Soviet sector. Instead, it was to lead to points beneath certain key Russian buildings in East Berlin -- KGB and GRU headquarters, among others. At these points, the tunnel would be crammed full of sophisticated electronic listening devices, which would pick up and record or transmit directly to Anglo-American intelligence offices in West Berlin all conversations and military telephone traffic in the Soviet zone. Building the Berlin Tunnel With the greatest possible secrecy, this Allied espionage tunnel under the city was excavated at a cost of more than $30 million. Its entrance was deep in West Berlin, and the tunnel led for two thousand yards deep into East Berlin. It was about fifteen feet underground, braced with steel supports, and was high enough so that a six-feet-tall man could stand upright in it. Above the entrance to the tunnel in the American sector was a radar station. Installing the radar station to camouflage the tunnel entrance was the idea of the CIA's chief-of-station in Berlin, Willian K. Harvey. Harvey also supervised the construction of the tunnel and said afterward his biggest problem was in figuring out ways of secretly hauling away the several thousand tons of dirt dug out from beneath Berlin. The dirt disposal problem was finally solved by ordering major street repairs in the surrounding area and using the road construction crews to load the dirt into their trucks and then haul it away. One arm of the tunnel was dug to within a few feet of the main telephone cable connecting the Soviet high command in East Berlin with Moscow. Other nearby cables connected the Soviet general staff, Russian embassy, and KGB and GRU headquarters with all of the Russian military units in East Germany. Each of these cables contained numerous telephone lines. In all, there were almost five hundred separate telephone lines readily accessible to American and British intelligence operators once the tunnel was completed. U.S. Army techinicians tapped into these Russian telephone lines and set up several hundred tape recorders to monitor and record all diplomatic, military, and intelligence conversations among all of the Russian installations in East Germany and between East Berlin and Moscow. For almost a year, American and British intellignece had a field day reaping a harvest of secret information from their telephone taps in the Berlin tunnel. Among other things, they learned the Russian order of battle, or the location of every Red military unit in East Germany. Even more valuable was learning the identities of numberous KGB and GRU agents. Double Agent George Blake Then the listening post was discovered. Or rather, it was revealed to the Russians -- not by any of their intelligence agents in East Berlin, but by a double agent, a member of the British Military Intelligence, Department 6 (MI-6), who was actually a Soviet spy. The double agent's name was George Blake. George Blake was probably the last man in the British intelligence service anyone would have suspected of treason. This, of course, was what made him so valuable to the KGB. Happily married, the father of two young boys, Blake had worked for the MI-6 for many years. Although Blake was a British citizen, he was not British by birth. He was born in Holland and christened George Behar. Young Behar was in his teens when the Germans invaded Holland in 1940 early in World War II. His family escaped to England, but George remained behind to fight against the Germans as a member of the Dutch secret underground army. As a resistance fighter, George had contact with British intellignce agents operating in Europe. One of these agents urged George to go to London, where he could give much valuable information about the Germans to British intelligence and also help train other prospective agents. Reluctantly, George agreed to do so. In London, George himself underwent further training and was eventually assigned to British Naval Intelligence. An extremely bright yound man, George studied foreing languages in his spare time. After the war, he remained in naval intelligence and he and the other members of his family who were in England changed their name to Blake. During the immediate postwar period, George Blake was married to an English girl, and took his wife with him when he was assigned to Hamburg, Germany, in the office of naval intelligence. By 1948 George's superior officers thought so much of his abilities that they recommended he be sent to Cambridge University in England to study Russian. Actually, he had never had more than the equivalent of a high school education. Before he received a degree at Cambridge, however, he was assigned to the British Foreign Service as an intelligence agent. His first assignment was to the British embassy in Seoul, South Korea. He was on duty there in 1950 when Communist North Korea attacked South Korea. Before the members of the British legation could leave, Seoul was overrun by North Korean troops and George Blake was one of those taken prisoner. Fortunately, his wife and two infant sons had remained behind in England when George had been assigned the Korean post. A certain amount of mystery still surrounds George Blake's time as a prisoner of the North Koreans. Numberous fellow prisoners later reported that he was a hero, standing up bravely before his captors, refusing to obey their orders, aiding fellow prisoners when they were ill or suffering from beatings by the enemy, even helping to plan and take part in several unsuccessful escape efforts. Blake Becomes A Red Agent But George Blake himself later confessed it was in North Korea that he defected from British intelligence and bacame a double agent for Communist Russia. The instrument used to convert Blake to the Communist cause was probably a remarkable Soviet agent named Gregory Kuzmitch. Kuzmitch spoke English fluently and had an outstanding record for "turning" both British and American agents into Russian agents. He was sent to prisoner-of-war camps along the Yalu River in North Korea to try and continue his successful conversion efforts there. At this time there was a great deal of talk and speculation in the world press about the "brainwashing" of captives held by the Communists in North Korean prisoner-of-war camps. A number of thses prisoners were Americans. The United States had provided the majority of combat troops when the United Nations had agreed to armed resistance against the North Korean attack. These American troops successfully stemmed the North Koreans and finally drove them out of South Korea. But American casualties were heavy, including thousands who were taken prisoner. Nobody seemed to know exactly what "brainwashing" consited of, but its effects were to rid prisoners of their beliefs in and loyalties to their native countries and turn them into Communists. After the war, returning POWs reported that they had been starved, tortured, and then given lectures on communism. Some soldiers apparently accepted the Communist teachings to avoid further torture and mistreatment. But they only remained "brainwashed" until the war ended. Actually, only a handful of Americans and British ever truly gave up their beliefs in a democratic and free way of life to join the Communist cause, but apparently one of those who did was George Blake. Kuzmitch realized he has a potentially valuable double agent of his hands in George Blake, if he could turn him from the British. Kuzmitch did not resort to torture or other crude methods. This very fact may have influenced Blake. The fact that he was a POW for three years may also have affected his judgment. Kuzmitch saw to it that Blake was taken off regular POW work details, provided him with extra rations, and then through mental persuasion began to convert him to communism. Kuzmitch was wise in the ways of Western society and spoke to Blake long and frequently about the unfairness of the class system in Great Britain, the downtrodden poor throughout the capitalistic Western world, and the injustice of United Nations forces being in Korea. In the end, George Blake agreed to become a double agent, but he insited he would not accept any payment from Russia for his spy work. Ironically, Kuzmitch defected to the United States at the end of the Korean War and was a valuable source to the CIA about the Soviet intelligence system. Kuzmitch always insisted he had little or nothing to do with Blake's becoming a double agent. In fact, he never mentioned Blake's name until years later. A Hero's Welcome Blake returned to England as something of a hero when the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953. He was give several months' leave for rest and recuperation and then went to work for British MI-6. He held down a desk job evaluation British agents' reports from the field. Many of these reports, as well as other secret papers, he photographed and turned over to a KGB agent in London. In 1955, Blake was himself assigned to duty in the field. His post: Berlin. Here he successfully continued his spy work for several years, turning over all manner of intelligence information to Soviet KGB agents in East Berlin. To make sure his British superiors remained satisfied with Blake's work, the Russians provided him with various harmless but apparently valuable Soviet documents that he could give to the British. The most valuable and most damaging information Balke provide the KGB were the names of dozens of intelligence agents working for American and British intelligence. The betryal of these agents in most cases led to their deaths. Some fifty of them were even put on display at a public "show trial" in Moscow before being sentenced. When the Berlin tunnel was first built, Blake did not know about it. In fact, it was successfully operated for many months before Blake suspected its existence. Information gained from the tunnel's telephone taps was simply turned over to American and British intelligence headquarters with no indication as to its source. This was done, of course, to keep the existence of the tunnel a secret by keeping all information about it on an absolute "need to know" basis. But Blake was an excellent agent, and soon after intelligence information gained from the tunnel telephone taps began to appear on his MI-6 desk, he became curious about its source. He became doubly curious when his Russian contacts began to query him about serious intelligence leaks that were ocurring in Soviet command headquarters. Discreetly, Blake questioned his British superiors about the source of the excellent Russian intelligence he was receiving. He needed to judge its accuracy, he said, so he could plan his own spy activities. It took Blake almost a year, but finally he was included among the short list of MI-6 member who "needed to know" about the tunnel. When Blake was finally let in on the secret, he did not immediately turn this information over to his KGB contact in East Berlin. Instead, he told him he wanted a special "eyes only" report sent to the head of the KGB "disinformation" desk at Karlshorst, East Germany. Through his Soviet contacts, Blake knew that a Disinformation Department had recently been established in Moscow under General Ivan Ivanovich Agayants. Agayants in turn had sent fifteen Soviet disinformation specialists to Germany. It was the job of these specialists to feed false intelligence information to the West, but this information had to appear to be absolutely authentic. Disinformation Fed to Allies Blak%'s s rewd d$e proved to be as successful for the Russians as the nine months of undiscovered telephone taps had been for the United States and Great Britain. Instead of simply exposing the tunnel for all the world to see, the Soviet KGB specialists at Karlshorst began feeding vast quantities of false information, or "disinformation," into a wide variety of telephone conversations. This the Russians also did on their own "need to know" basis, so they were able to keep secret their own awareness of the tunnel and use it for their own purposes for many months. When CIA and MI-6 agents finally realized that the tunnel was no longer a secret, they abruptly abandoned it, leaving behind all the equipment. Once they decided to move out, they had to move fast so none of their personnel would be captured. Immediately, the Russians went public with their discovery, exposing its presence to journalists from around the world. This exposure proved to be a major propoganda success for the Soviet Union, since it proved that East Berlin residents were the victims of Western espionage. Photographs of the interior of the tunnel with all its electric gear in place were printed in newspapers throughout the world. George Blake's role in disclosing the existence of the tunnel to the KGB was not immediately discovered by the British. In fact, his successful career as a Russian mole in the MI-6 went on for some time. His work in Berlin was so highly regarded by the British that he was allowed to return home for a long vacation. Then he worked for some time in MI-6 headquarters, until he was sent to the Middle East as one of a small group of foreign office students chosen to study at an Arabic university in Lebanon. The foreign office thought that adding Arabic to his knowledge of languages would help Blake become a valuable aide in the troubled Middle East. Blake's Cover Is Blown But while Blake was in the Middle East, his past began to catch up with him. In West Berlin, a man named Horst Eitner was arrested as a spy by Allied intelligence. In prison in West Berlin, Eitner named several British intelligence agents who were working as double agents for the KGB. One of those he named was George Blake. Despite the fact that nobody in the MI-6 in Berlin could believe Eitner's accusation against Blake, the report was turned over to British counterintelligence. Counterintelligence investigators, many of whom knew Blake, did not press their search into his past, since they were convinced Eitner was simply accusing everybody in sight to save his own skin. But then a Communist member of the Polish secret police, a man named Anthony Alster, defected to British intelligence officers in West Germany. In his debriefing by MI-6 agents, he named Blake as one of the most successful double agents the Russiand had working for them. Alster even turned over to the British severl reports filled with secret British information which had been supplied by Blake. The rest happened quickly. George Blake was recalled from the Middle East an confronted with the accusations against him. Blake soon made a full confession of all his activities as a double agent. Shortly afterwards, he was brought to trial for having committed offenses against the British Official Secrets Act. He was quickly found guilty and sentenced to forty-two years in prison. But the saga of George Blake was not yet over. He began to serve his sentence at Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London. He proved to be a model prisoner. In prison he made friends with another inmate, Sean Bourke, Bourke was serving a short term as a member of the Irish Republican Army, a revolutionary organization opposed to British rule in Ireland. Bourke had been found guilty of mailing a bomb to a British police station. Blake and Bourke soon began to make plans to escape. From the first weeks that Blake was imprisoned, there were constant rumors that the Soviets were going to try and free him. Consequently, and extremely close watch was kept on him. (Apparently, however, his mail was not censored.) This close watch prevented Blake and Bourke from actually putting any escape plans into action. But Bourke was relased in 1966, and before he left prison he told Blake he and his IRA friends would help Blake to freedom. Bourke was not successful in enlisting his friends, so he planned the escape himself. Bourke rented a room in a house near the prison and hired a car. He wrote and told Blake to ba near the wall in the prison yard at a certain hour on October 22, 1966. Bourke knew this was the time when prisoners were allowed into the yard for exercise. At that precise time, Bourke worte, he would throw a rope ladder over the wall and Blake was to climb it. Then he would have to jump from the top of the wall to freedom. The Escape The escape went exactly as planned. Bourke drove up in his car at the agreed-upon time, threw the ladder over the wall, and Blake climbed it. In jumping from the wall, Blake was briefly knocked unconscious, but Bourke dragged him into the car and drove to his nearby rooming house. Once they were there, he was able to help the now fully conscious Blake to his room and then Bourke left to dispose of the car in a distant part of the city. Bourke and Blake lay holed up in their secret room for several days. Then they were contacted by Soviet agents, with whom Blake had kept in touch while he was in prison. These agents smuggled both Bourke and Blake out of London and onto a Soviet freighter. Bourke had agreed to go with Blake to Russia because he knew the British police would learn of his role in helping Blake escape and return him to prison. But Bourke only remained in Moscow for two years, returning to Ireland in 1968. The British government was unsuccessful in getting Bourke extradited from Ireland and back to England. In Moscow, Blake was greeted as a hero. Awarded one of the Soviet Union's highest honors, the Order of Lenin, his exploits for Russia were also widely publicized in the Russian press. Why Blake defected to the KGB has never been fully understood by Western intelligence experts. But he was not the first British agent to do so -- nor, unfortunately, would he be the last. <> [Courtesy of Sherwood Forest ][ -- (914) 359-1517] -----End of File