"The stuff of which thriller films are made"; our man in Vienna; smoky Joe's; black friday; the human factor; 2 Carlton Gardens; Agent "Diomid"; Operation Stopwatch/Gold; "Kilts up, Bill" ; digging gold; turning on the tap; Chester Terrace; "A bonanza"; "Fingers Crossed"; "It's gone, John"; caught red-handed; "A gangster act"; tunnel visions.
David Stafford, a former diplomat, is an expert on the Second World War and intelligence history. He is Project Director of The Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh. He regularly reviews for the press and contributes to TV and radio features on history.
excellent account ... fantastic, funny and riveting - The Good Book Guide
excellent account ... fantastic, funny and riveting - The Good Book Guide
Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, books dealing with Cold War spying have come out fast and furious. Stafford (project director, Ctr. for Second World War Studies, Univ. of Edinburgh) has done his part by authoring such impressive recent works as Churchill and Secret Service and Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets. This time Stafford shares with us the fascinating story of the secret tunnel beneath the Russian sector of Berlin that existed for more than a year in the mid-1950s and enabled the British and Americans to tap into all area Russian telephone conversations. But this amazing intelligence achievement was complicated by another development: the KGB knew about the tunnel through the traitorous activities of its undercover agent, George Blake, but could not reveal that they knew for fear that they might compromise the invaluable Blake. Moreover, existing Soviet interagency competition resulted in the KGB's sacrificing Soviet military secrets to the West in order to protect their other ongoing espionage activities. Debate goes on about the tunnel operation's final significance. What a great story! And Stafford tells it exceedingly well in sprightly prose. This book belongs in all collections that cover Cold War espionage.-Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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