sections:
Operation Stopwatch/Gold, claimed CIA Director Allen Dulles, was ‘one of the most valuable and daring projects ever undertaken’ by the CIA and British intelligence. In 1955, in a remarkable joint operation based on a prototype operation in Vienna, they secretly constructed a tunnel 800 metres under the Soviet sector of Cold War Berlin, and for almost a year tuned into Red Army intelligence. But a Soviet mole within British intelligence, George Blake, betrayed the operation from the start, and the KGB knew about the tunnel even before it was built. Yet, despite this, no-one warned Red Army intelligence, and vital information continued to be sent along the cables being tapped by the British and Americans, delivering to the West ‘an intelligence bonanza.’ This is the first book to tell the whole story, giving the British as well as American side of events, and based on several first-hand insider accounts
book reviews
- M.R.D.Foot, The Spectator
‘In a short, compelling book, quite as exciting as a good detective story, Stafford has cleared away a great many past misconceptions. [It is] impeccably convincing.' - Oleg Gordievsky, Literary Review
‘A remarkable book…which reminds us of something we should never forget- how a few outstanding Britons and Americans helped to preserve the peace, security and freedom of the West in the harshest days of the Cold War.’ - Anthony Glees, Times Literary Review
‘Soundly researched and entertaining’ - Washington Post Book World
‘Stafford’s engaging account is full of detail... an illuminating reinterpretation of a little- known piece of Cold War lore’
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