Spies Beneath Berlin - Softcover

Stafford, David

3.73

179 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585675490 ISBN 13: 9781585675494

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2004

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An account of the covert cold-war activities surrounding Operation Stopwatch/Gold traces the year-long high-risk surveillance of German Red Army intelligence from a secret tunnel and the activities of a British secret services mole who significantly impacted both sides. Reprint.

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About the Author:

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 the basis for a Channel Four two-part Docudrama. He is currently acting as Historical Consultant on a TV documentary being made by ORTV in London on the legendary CIA-SIS Berlin Cold War spy tunnel based on his book, Spies Beneath Berlin. He is a regular book reviewer, appearing in The Times (London), BBC History Magazine, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, the Times Herald Tribune (Paris), and Saturday Night and the Globe and Mail (Toronto). David Stafford was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has degrees from Cambridge University and the University of London (London School of Economics and Political Science), and when he is not writing books is an avid reader of fiction and a devotee of the operas of Mozart. In April 2005 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to write the official history of SOE in Italy ( Part Two, 1943-1945) which was published by the Bodley Head in March 2011.

From Library Journal:

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 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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