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Spies Beneath Berlin
David Stafford

Spies Beneath Berlin

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 Details:

  • Author: David Stafford
  • Published Year: 2002
  • Rights Sold
    • UK: John Murray
    • US: Overlook
    • Germany: Sabine Groenewold
    • Czech Republic: Albatros
David Stafford

David Stafford

David Stafford is an historian and former diplomat who has written extensively on espionage, intelligence, Churchill, and the Second World War. The former Project Director at the Centre for The Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh, he is now an Honorary Fellow of the University and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where he and his wife now live. He has frequently acted as a TV and radio consultant, has written radio documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC, and his latest book, Ten Days to D-Day, formed ...
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Book Reviews

  • "Read this book which is at once history, adventure and human nature at its most ingenious…"
    Huntsville- Decator Daily
  • "A former diplomat, David Stafford is one of Britain’s foremost intelligence writers, a reputation this book will enhance."
    Washington Times
  • "…a fascinating story…Stafford’s engaging account is full of detail…Spies Beneath Berlin is an illuminating reinterpretation of a little-known piece of Cold War lore."
    Washington Post
  • "Not only is Stafford well informed, he possesses the talent for stage-setting and atmospherics that parlays researched fact into fascinating drama."
    Booklist
  • "What a Great Story! And Stafford tells it exceedingly well in sprightly prose. This book belongs in all collections that cover Cold War espionage."
    Library Journal
  • "..documenting covert operations and intrigue as complex and dramatic as espionage fiction…Stafford writes with clarity, and his cool, methodical style adds to the suspense, which peaks in the closing chapters with the April 1956 discovery of the tunnel by the stunned Russians."
    Publishers Weekly
  • "Good stuff for Le Carre fans."
    Kirkus
  • "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."
    M.R.D.Foot, The Spectator
  • "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."
    Oleg Gordievsky, Literary Review
  • "Soundly researched and entertaining’"
    Anthony Glees, Times Literary Review
  • "Stafford’s engaging account is full of detail... an illuminating reinterpretation of a little- known piece of Cold War lore’"
    Washington Post Book World
  • "A highly readable and exciting account of an intriguing Cold War episode. Buy it! "
    15 Minutes Magazine