The discovery of the tunnel was planned as a publicity stunt by the Soviets. It backfired when most press coverage praised the boldness and technical skills of building the tunnel. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-37695-0020 / Junge, Peter Heinz / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Operation Gold (also known as Operation Stopwatch by the British) was a secret joint operation of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, in the early years of the Cold War, between 1955 and 1956. It was the creation of CIA officer Bill Harvey. The aim was to tap into the underground communication cables of the Soviet military and intelligence in East Berlin and intercept their messages. The operation was based on the successful model of Operation Silver, which had been carried out by SIS in Vienna, Austria, from 1948 to 1952.

Operation Silver

Operation Silver was a British intelligence operation in Allied-occupied Austria that covertly tapped into the landline communications of the Soviet Army headquarters in Vienna. The operation was initiated by Peter Lunn, a SIS officer who had been a prisoner of war in Germany and had escaped from a Nazi camp. He had also been an Olympic skier and a journalist. He used his contacts and skills to recruit agents and informers in Vienna, and to locate and access the Soviet cables. He also obtained the technical equipment and expertise from British Post Office engineers.

The operation involved digging a tunnel from a house in the British sector of Vienna to a location under the Soviet sector, where the cables were buried. The tunnel was about 200 meters long, 2 meters deep, and 1 meter wide. It was equipped with microphones, recorders, and amplifiers. The operation lasted for about six years and collected valuable information on Soviet activities and plans in Austria and Eastern Europe. The operation was never discovered by the Soviets but was terminated in 1955 when Austria regained its sovereignty and neutrality.

Operation Gold

Operation Gold involved digging a 450-meter-long tunnel from a warehouse in the American sector of West Berlin, under the border, to a location near the Soviet headquarters in the East. The tunnel was 6 meters deep and 3 meters wide and was equipped with sophisticated listening devices that were installed by British technicians.

The operation lasted for about a year, and collected valuable information on Soviet activities and plans, such as troop movements, air defenses, and nuclear weapons. However, the operation was compromised from the start, as a KGB mole in SIS named George Blake had informed the Soviets about the plan in 1954. The Soviets decided to let the operation continue and fed false or misleading information to the Western allies, such as exaggerating their military strength or downplaying their intentions.

The operation was eventually exposed by the Soviets in April 1956, when they staged a raid on the tunnel and cut the cables. The operation was shut down, and the tunnel was abandoned. The impact of Operation Gold was significant and lasting, both for the intelligence community and for the international relations of the Cold War era.

Operation Gold provided a wealth of information to the Western allies about Soviet military capabilities, intentions, and strategies. According to some estimates, Operation Gold produced more than 50,000 reels of tape, 443,000 fully transcribed conversations, 40,000 hours of telephone conversations, and 1,750 intelligence reports. Some of the information was useful for planning NATO’s defense posture, assessing Soviet nuclear threats, and detecting Soviet deception operations.

Soviet Penetration

Operation Gold also revealed the extent of Soviet penetration into Western intelligence agencies. The discovery of Blake’s treachery in 1961 also damaged the trust and cooperation between SIS and the CIA, as well as other allied intelligence services. According to various sources, Blake was caught because of revelations by defector Michael Goleniewski, who was a senior Polish counterintelligence officer. and others who exposed his role as a KGB mole. Blake was working as a liaison officer between SIS and the CIA in Lebanon at that time, where he had been enrolled at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies (MECAS).

Blake was recalled to London by SIS under false pretenses and arrested when he arrived. At a subsequent trial he pleaded guilty to five counts of passing information to the Soviet Union. He admitted that he had betrayed hundreds of Western agents to the KGB during his espionage career. Many people he betrayed were executed by the Soviets. He was sentenced to 42 years in prison, which was at the time the longest non-life sentence ever handed out by a British court.

Blake managed to escape from prison in 1966 with the help of three men he had met in jail: Sean Bourke, an Irishman who had been convicted of sending a hoax bomb threat to an airline; Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, two anti-nuclear campaigners who had been jailed for their involvement in protests against British nuclear tests. The escape was masterminded by Bourke, who first approached Randle only for financial help with the escape plan. Randle agreed to help Bourke out of sympathy for Blake’s long sentence and his opposition to nuclear weapons. Pottle joined them later after being released from prison.

The three men devised a plan that involved smuggling a walkie-talkie into Blake’s cell so that they could communicate with him; cutting through some iron bars on his cell window using a hacksaw blade; throwing a rope ladder over the prison wall; and driving Blake away in a getaway car. They also arranged for Blake to stay at a safe house in London, and later helped him travel to East Berlin via Brussels and Prague. The escape was entirely an amateur affair, without any involvement or assistance from the KGB or any other foreign intelligence service.

The escape of Blake was a major embarrassment to the British government and a huge boost to the Soviet propaganda. It also triggered the largest manhunt in British history, but Blake was never recaptured. He settled in Moscow, where he was granted Soviet citizenship and a pension from the KGB. He also married a Soviet woman and had a son with her. He continued to work as an adviser and a lecturer for the KGB and its successor agencies and wrote several books and articles about his life and views. He remained loyal to communism and defended his actions as a spy. He died in Moscow on 26 December 2020, at the age of 98.

Operation Gold was one of the most daring espionage operations of the Cold War era and had a lasting impact on the relations between the West and the East. It revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of both sides’ intelligence capabilities. Operation Gold also had a cultural and historical impact, as it inspired many books, films, documentaries, and exhibitions depicting or dramatizing the operation.

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