Overview
This book is the definitive insiders' account of the espionage warfare in Berlin from 1945 to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. In an unprecedented collaboration, CIA and KGB intelligence veterans reveal previously untold stories of the Berlin tunnel, critical moments of the Berlin crisis, clandestine initiatives, betrayals, and defections to provide the first comprehensive and accurate history of the Cold War battles waged in Berlin."Rarely if ever before has such a complete and authoritative insiders' account of the game of espionage ever been put into a single volume."-Richard Bernstein, New York Times"Battleground Berlin is a captivating book, rich in factual material. It can be recommended not only to specialists in intelligence and foreign policy, but to anyone who is interested in the details of the history of the Cold War."-Oleg Gordievsky, Times Literary Supplement"A fascinating and important new account . . . which retells in detail, much of it new, the ways in which Soviet and American intelligence services fought their secret, bloodless war."-Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books"A classic of modern intelligence literature drawn from archives and personal recollections. . . . Moles, double-agents, Soviet antisemitic disinformation campaigns, dead drops, recruitments-the stuff that makes good spy novels, with the welcome blessing of being factual. If you read only one intelligence book this season, make it this one."-Joseph Goulden, Washington TimesEditorials
Thomas Powers
A fascinating and important new account...which retells in detail, much of it new, the ways in which Soviet and American intelligent services fought their secret, bloodless war.— NY Review of Books
Kirkus Reviews
A troika of erstwhile adversaries team up to deliver an absorbing and authoritative inside view of how American and Soviet- bloc intelligence agencies plied their offbeat trade in divided Berlin during the first 15 years of the Cold War.Drawing on newly available archival material and their own experiences, Murphy (a sometime chief of the CIA's Berlin station), Kondrashev (who headed the KGB's German Section), and Bailey (a former director of Radio Liberty) offer an essentially chronological account of who was spying on whom in Berlin and to what avail, from V-E Day through the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Before getting down to business, however, they provide brief rundowns on the major services, including the fledgling CIA, the thoroughly professional KGB, and East Germany's Stasi. Having set the scene, the authors recount the facts behind convulsive events that produced headlines throughout the world. Cases in point range from the 1953 uprisings in the German Democratic Republic, the tunnel the CIA dug to eavesdrop on supposedly secure phone conversations originating in the Eastern Sector, the cover- organization games played by both sides, counterintelligence as well as disinformation efforts and propaganda campaigns (e.g., Nikita Khrushchev's threat to sign a separate peace agreement with the GDR), and, of course, the Wall. Covered as well are the stories of high-profile defectors (Pyotr Popov, Otto John, et al.), interservice rivalries (notably, between the KGB and the Stasi). Both Moscow and Washington, the authors point out, ignored some crucial, first-rate intelligence gathered by their operatives in the field. Eye-opening detail on cloak-and-dagger operations in a conquered capital city that once threatened to alter the balance of world power and breach the world's hard-won peace.