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jmkemp's review
4.0
This is a very well put together story of the Berlin spy tunnel, and some of the context that lead up to it being dug. It looks at the contemporary views and also re-evaluates the impact of the tunnel and whether or not it could be considered a success.
The tale is an interesting one, because the existence of the tunnel was betrayed to the Soviets before it was even dug. Blake took the minutes of meeting that decided to build it, and told his Soviet handler about it. Despite this the KGB didn't share the information as they wanted to protect Blake as a source, so they couldn't stop the tunnel until there was a reasonable excuse from another source. For two years the British and Americans taped all the traffic on the cables they'd tapped (it was a joint operation, but the US took the entire blame when it was discovered because Kruschev was on a state visit to the UK at the time).
The tale is an interesting one, because the existence of the tunnel was betrayed to the Soviets before it was even dug. Blake took the minutes of meeting that decided to build it, and told his Soviet handler about it. Despite this the KGB didn't share the information as they wanted to protect Blake as a source, so they couldn't stop the tunnel until there was a reasonable excuse from another source. For two years the British and Americans taped all the traffic on the cables they'd tapped (it was a joint operation, but the US took the entire blame when it was discovered because Kruschev was on a state visit to the UK at the time).
littleroma's review against another edition
3.0
Certainly a good book in that it describes some of the aspects of the spying then disinformation used by the spy agencies during the early Cold War. A little hard to follow in places, much better to read in one go, otherwise you run the risk of getting confused. A who's who of those in the higher intelligence circles, if you recognise the names that is
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