My name is and im a past president of the National Press club. We have a terrific program ahead and we invite you to listen, watch or to follow along on twitter. Using the press club live. For our cspan and public radio audiences, please be aware that in the audience are members of the general public. So any applause or reaction here is not necessarily from the working press. We want to show our neutrality and other strategic to and our objectivity. Of dc media strategies. And press club staff liaison, Lindsay Underwood for their roles in making this event happen. And a special thanks, and i do mean special. Headliners team member who is also our photographer tonight and was the organizer of tonights event. Thank you all. Berlin in the 1950s was the spy capital of the world. As a nato power and the soviet union, jockeyed for advantage and postworld war ii europe. Without satellites and sophisticated snooping technology we have now. Spies had to get creative. The stories are epic. Here tonight to tell us about one of them, one of those epic stories is steve vogel. A former reporter for the Washington Post whose book, betrayal in berlin the true story of the cold wars most audacious espionage operation. Delves into operation gold, a bold plan to tunnel 1500 feet into east berlin to tap into critical telephone wires. And we also learned, about the notorious role of a particular spy known as agent diamond. Mr. Vogel, a former National Reporter for the Washington Post was born in berlin. His father is cia case officer in the 1950s was stationed. Later, he returned to the city to cover the fall of the berlin wall for most of his career, he covered the military including the first gulf war and military operations in somalia. Afghanistan and iraq. His reporting on the war in afghanistan was part of the collection of Washington Post stories selected as a finalist for the pulitzer prize. He is the author of two other books, the pentagon, a history published in 2007. And through the perilous fight. Six weeks that saved a nation. About the chesapeake in 1814. We are so pleased to have with us to offer of this very authoritative and detailed book. Im so pleased to welcome, steve vogel. [applause] thanks everybody. Thanks for coming. Pleased to be here. As someone who came here seemingly 1 million times as a reporter. Its strange to be on the other side of the microphone. And you for having me. As mentioned, i too have connections to berlin that explain my interest and why i decided to write this book. I was born in berlin. My dad was stationed as a cia case officer. I was there in time for the berlin wall, built a year after i was born. My father used to say that was no coincidence. I didnt take that personally. Indeed i did go back eventually as a reporter in 1989. I did arrive in germany a couple months before the wall came down. Cant claim to have any special knowledge that guided me there. I had gone with a buddy of mine who wanted to go to oktoberfest. I always wanted to freelance from germany so i decided to try my hand at freelancing from germany for a few months. When the wall came down, i ended up staying for five year. A lot is going on in those days for sure. I did feel a connection to cold war berlin. The story i got into when i started to research this. It was something i never had a chance to talk to my dad about it as he remained undercover and i thought he worked for the state department. Until later in life. And then he died at a young ag. But i would hear some of the stories later in recent years from his closest friends who worked for the agency as the tales of heyday of espionage in berlin. The golden days. Which was before the war was built. The story in particular caught my attention. A little context from mid to early 1950s is important to understand what was behind this story. We sometimes think the satellite surveillance we have today as having been around forever. That didnt exist in the 1950s. At the time this tunnel project was put together, we didnt have the overhead surveillance you think of today. The u. S. At this period was a fairly unique position of vulnerability. This was after world war ii and we had a few years there. The king of the hill the soviets had exploded their own bomb in 1949. Whats quicker than expected. In 1953, they exploded a hydrogen bomb. So they were advancing in their capability quite rapidly. In europe, the iron curtain had come down at this point. The soviet forces that were remaining in germany, in poland and czechoslovakia have been there since the end of world war ii. They had not been withdrawn. The soviets had some 400,000 troops which were considered to be on a war footing. A much larger force, conventionally speaking, then the west had. Including the nato alliance. American forces in germany were about 100,000 at that point. So the soviets were capable of watching a ground force attack using conventional forces and they could have wiped out the americans in western europe forces and as we used Nuclear Weapons. That didnt seem like the greatest position to be in. So eisenhower, like his predecessor, truman, lived in fear of a nuclear pearl harbor. A surprise attack. Where they might decide to use their Nuclear Weapons because they knew the americans would probably resort to using theirs, to stop them. They might try to launch a surprise attack to gain that first strike advantage. Back then, we had president s who actually cared about having good intelligence. And eisenhower in particular was pretty grumpy about the lack of good information the cia was producing regarding soviet capabilities. The tunnel was basically the answer to find out what the soviets were up to. Its the one place where you have aside from vienna where you had the u. S. , soviet and british and french in this one city, still occupying various sectors, and so you have the forces, diplomats, military headquarters, more or less cheek by jowl and it was a unique opportunity to learn about what the other side was up to. And berlin in this days before the berlin was construct was an open city. So you had 10,000 plus people crossing the borders every day, going to jobs, visiting relatives, going to shop, a lot of them were also going to spy because you could somebody from the east could come into west berlin carrying documents or just some sort of information and meet with a western officer to hand over this information in a safe house or other locations, and you had by some estimates as many as 10,000 people either intelligence officers, agents, goons, various charlatans who were making up the intelligence as they went, who were more or less involved in this type of activity, and so one of the cia officers who was there at the time, kind of compared berlin in those days to being like dodge city and casablanca in one and you had the kgw and stats si operating pretty roughly of kid indianings in west berlin and on ducting dissidents, people they saw as a threat. Not americans but a lot of west berliners, and people who had escaped the east and ended up in west berlin, were being abducted and taken back and some not heard from again. So you have this situation. You have this problem and you have berlin, and then we add a couple of interesting characters to the story. Bill harvey being the first one that comes to mind. He was the pretty legendary chief of the berlin base now much of the 1950s. He was actually the boss for my dad and really anybody else with the agency who was there those years. And a pretty controversial figure. Not beloved, i would say, but enormously effective, particularly in the field of counterintelligence. He was a former fbi gman. Completely opposite from the image of the cia in those days, these eastern establishment, prep school type background. Bill harvey was a guy from indiana, he was a pretty large fellow. Had this thyroid problem, buys bulging out. He loved packing weapons over every inch of his body, six or seven were not unusual and that didnt count what was in his briefcase, and he would sit at his desk, fiddling with weapons whenever number came, which made people kind of nervous. He had been fired not fired but he hat left the fbi in a disagreement with j. Ed gar hoover that stemmed from harveys heavy drinking. He was a legendary in that field as well, just knocking down martinis by the fistful. But the cia was only too glad to take him on when he left the fbi because harvey developed a reputation as bag real counterintelligence whiz. The sort of guy the gears in miss mind were whirling and he could pull out facts from a case that nobody had locked at in five or eight years and could remember the Details Details ant them together new facts. He had done that for the fbi as one of the nazi spy prisoning hunters for the spy ring hunters hunters and one of the first real expert on soviet espionage. So he brought the knowledge to the new cia, and he was quite welcome. It was harvey as much as more than anybody really who i. D. S kim fillby as a likely soave spy and he put together the case against fillby and gave that to the thencia director, beatle smith, and fillby was being withdrawn back to london, and his career as a spy was effectively over at that time that point him wouldnt be arrested. Harvey teams up with another legendary figure from that period, guy name frank rollette, a get to brakier who had been one of the coat breaker who had been a key force between braking the fib dip dip me matic codes and he was opposite bill harvey. He never swore, strongest thing he drank was cocacola. But he and harvey came to a meeting of the minds and they more or less wanted to Work Together to figure out a way to tap into soviet landlines, some way to figure out what was going on. Thered been a disaster for american intelligence around that time, late 40s,en episode known as black friday friday. We had been intercepting soviet communications since 1943 and broken their codes and getting a lot of valuable information about soviet military capabilities. But suddenly in 1948, that information detroit up. They stopped using dried up. They stopped using radio as communication for their more Important Communications and also changed a lot of their codes, and we went from having this great stream of information to almost nothing overnight. This black friday at the time was really considered the worth intelligence loss in American History up to that point. Decided a tunnel would be the way to do this. Excuse me a second. So, theyre thinking tunnel, best way to get in where do they get this idea . They actually pretty much stole it or shared it with the british. The british had done a much smaller but Successful Operation in vienna, the other placey how had the soviet military forces together with the americans and the british and the french. In in vienna the british managed to build a series of small tunnels to tap into soviet communications from the military headquarters that were going hoe western sectyears of vienna, and the americans had thought, hey, that would be a good idea and they went to vienna and realized the british had beaten them to the punch by two years. And in berlin learning each side was working on this together, the americans and british decided to team up and do this together. This would be a much beggar operation, just the scale of the communications that were in berlin. The think but berlin it was the communication hub for all communications tying germany, that part of europe, to Eastern Europe and on to moscow, so basically it was like a the hub. Haul the spokes coming in from book could rest or warsaw and they went to berlin and then on to moscow. And berlin would be the place where they could hit a mother lowe of information. So bill harvey teams up with peter lund, the new station chief, the master mind of the vienna operation. Had been sent to berlin in 1953 to work on this for the british, and again, very opposite fellows. Round was a very small, slight, quiet spoken guy, and bill harvey was the bull in the china shop, and with weapons stuffed in his pants and peter lund found that a best divestsful but they hit it off and knew they would need each other because this was going to cost a lot of money , the scale of this operation, digging a tunnel that was going to need to be a quarter mile long, was an american type operation, but the british were the ones who had the expertise, the tapping was very fine art, and the british had used some of their postal specialists to do that in vienna, and they were going to need them in berlin as well. Peter lund, despite his appearance was actually a guy with a iron backbone. He had been the captain of the British Ski Team in the 1936 olympics, was absolutely fearless going down slopes and he and harvey made quite a team. So theres one disadvantage to bringing in the british, and that involved george blake. Fascinating character. Id say one of the most interesting spies of the 20th 20th century. Still alive, incidentally. Blake had already at this point led a storybook life. He had his father was of turkish descent and sought for from time to time world war, 1 stationed in holland at the end of world war i and met a dutch woman who he married. They named their first child george, after king george, and young george grew up in the netherlands, his father died when he was perhaps id say about 11 years old, and george gets sent to egypt to live with some of his fathers wealthy relatives for a while. They could afford to send to school. This was a fabulously wealthy family. They lived on an island in the nile. They had just a houseful of servants. The whole thing was such an incredible experience, but blake was exposed to the great poverty, the difference between the haves and the havenots while he was there in egypt, and he ends up being back in netherlands with his mother when world war ii breaks out, and he works as a courier for the dutch resistance for a year. Maybe 14 years old, looks much younger and would just pedal around holland, delivering messages to at the dutch resistance, carrying then blake realizes that after about a year that he is in danger of being arrested. Theres a because he carries a british passport the germans were rounding up anybody who wasnt a dutch citizen and he could be exposed. He makes an escape through france and the pyrenees, into spain, makes his way toening england and joins the royal navy and speaks many languages langus recruited into the Intelligence Service who see some potential here. He is sent to korea in 1949 after he served in germany for a come of years, interrogating germon p. O. W. S, submarine commanders and set up an Agent Network in germany. Send to korea, taken prisoner when the war break out along with other british diplomats he is chief of the british station there and was sent to make contacts contacts in north korea or in the soviet territory in vladivostok which was 500 miles away and was taken prisoner and survives this really horrible death march with 700 prisoners, many of them american g. I. S who were treated here rein dousely, hundreds of them die either during the death marsh march through the horrible within of 1950 when the not that far from where blake was. The chinese intervene, blake tries to escape in that confusion, and doesnt succeed, and ended up held captive for three years, and sometime during that time, he decided he is fighting on the wrong side. By his account he becomes disillusioned with the west, sees massive becoming of korea, sees the damage the being worse than anything he saw in germany. It could be that the soviets persuaded him. They had a kgb officers in vade volunteers who knew who the prisoners were, blake make this turn, recruited by the kgb and whoever started it, theres no doubt that blake is a willing convert and when he is released in 1953 with a british diplomats he is hailed as a hero when theyre plane lands in england and within a week he is back at sis, and they give him a cursory interview and say, welcome back to the fold, george, and hes given a very prize assignment with this new outfit in the secret Intelligence Service northern as section y and section y is going to be responsible for handling the tunnel intelligence. So, blake at this point in december of 1953, becomes one of a literally handful of intelligence ofs on either their american or british side who know about the plans for this tunnel. You have a lot of groundwork for the tunnel project. The cia had been instructed in berlin to penetrate the east German Telecommunications ministry to find out about the Cable Network and find out the place to lay a tap. I was lucky enough to interview one of the main cia officers involved in that project, hugh montgomery, retired in 2014 after a 50plus year career with the agency. He was an osi veteran who had parachuted into normandie, and been involved with a number of dangerous oss missions after that, including trying to find some of the nazi Nuclear Scientists and he ended up being one of the first people to locate buchenwald concentration camp. Anyway, harvey sees potential in montgomery and makes him more or less his number two guy on the tunnel. And montgomery i asked him how he penetrated the east german Postal Ministry so thoroughly. They had 20 agents inside. He said it wasnt really the money. That always helped. But it was really the disdain that so many of tee the est east gerrymanderrans felt for the east german government, and walter who was the leader of the east german regime and general hatred for the soviets. So all the circuit diagrams for the phone network in berlin, including one guy, they recruited was an attorney who had a lot of the Important Information about the leadership, but maybe even more important was how who hogue described as also old lady in tennis shoes who had all the index cards which showed which cables were carrying which traffic. They knew which cables to target based on the information and were able to identify three cables in particular. These were trunk cables, really big cabled. Were talking but each carrying hundreds of circuits. When we say tapping the line, this isnt like tapping one officers line or a couple peoples lines. Were talking about thousands and thousands of phone lines being used by soviet officers from the highest command in the red army forces in germany, to the lowliest, clerk whose had a lot of informing but logistics s and troop movements. These lines also carried some actually quite a bi