Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War

580 Pages·1999·30.687 MB·English

by  David E. Murphy, George Bailey, Sergei A. Kondrashev

Battleground Berlin
Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & LONDON
DAVID E. MURPHY, SERGEI A. KONDRASHEV,
AND GEORGE BAILEY
Battleground
BERLIN
CIA VS. KGB IN THE COLD WAR
Published with assistance from the Historical Research Foundation.
Copyright © 1997 by David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by James J. Johnson and set in Stempel Garamond types by à la page, New Haven,
Connecticut. Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Murphy, David E., 1921-
Battleground Berlin : CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War / David E.
Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN: 978-0-300-07871-8
1. United States—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 2. Soviet
Union—Foreign relations—United States. 3. Berlin (Germany)—
Strategic aspects. 4. Espionage, American—Germany—Berlin.
5. Espionage, Soviet—Germany—Berlin. 6. Soviet Union. Komitet
gosudarstvennoî bezopasnosti. 7. United States. Central
Intelligence Agency. 8. Berlin (Germany)—Politics and
government—1945-1990. 9. Cold War. I. Kondrashev, Sergei A.
II. Bailey, George, 1919- . III. Title.
E183.8.S65M86 1997
327.73047-k21 97-16829
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Battleground Berlin's Western authors—David Murphy, former chief
of CIA'S Berlin Operations Base and later chief of the Soviet bloc divi-
sion, and George Bailey, an American writer on Russo-German affairs
living in Munich—visited Moscow in April 1993 to discuss the book
project with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). After en-
joying a Russian Orthodox Easter, the two were picked up on Monday
by Gen. Yuri Kobaladze, head of SVR'S public affairs bureau. Kobaladze
warmly greeted Murphy, who had long been an adversary of SVR'S So-
viet predecessors. "Well, Mr. Murphy," he boomed, "how did you like
spending the weekend in Moscow without surveillance?"
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Key Players xv
List of Abbreviations xix
Behind the Lines in the Cold War Jonathan Brent xxiii
Part I. The Sides Line Up
1. CIA'S Berlin Base: A Question of Knowledge 3
2. KGB Karlshorst: How It All Began 24
3. The Berlin Blockade Challenges Western Ingenuity
and Perseverance 51
4. The Korean War: Pretext or Premise for Rearming
West Germany? 79
5. Cold Warriors in Berlin: A New Era in CIA Operations 103
Part II. The Crisis Years
6. East German State Security and Intelligence Services
Are Born 129
7. Stalin Offers Peace, but the Cold War Continues 142
8. Soviet Intelligence Falters After Stalin's Death:
New Revelations About Beria's Role 151
viii • Contents
9. The Events of June 1953 163
10. The Mysterious Case of Otto John 183
Part III. BOB Tries Harder
11. The Berlin Tunnel: Fact and Fiction 205
12. Redcap Operations 238
13. BOB Concentrates on Karlshorst 255
14. The Illegals Game: KGB vs. GRU 267
Part IV. Tests of Strength
15. KGB and MfS: Partners or Competitors? 285
16. Khrushchev's Ultimatum 305
17. BOB Counters the Soviet Propaganda Campaign 317
18. Bluffs, Threats, and Counterpressures 327
Part V. Concrete Diplomacy: The Berlin Wall
19. Facing the Inevitable 343
20. Countdown to the Wall 363
21. The Berlin Wall: Winners and Losers 378
Epilogue 396
Appendixes. More Detail from CIA and KGB Archives
Appendix 1. The Merger of KPD and SPD: Origins of SED 399
Appendix 2. Double Agents, Double Trouble 408
Appendix 3. The Mysterious Case of Leonid Malinin,
a.k.a. Georgiev 411
Appendix 4. MGB at Work in East Germany 415
Appendix 5. Was It Worth It? What the Berlin Tunnel Produced 423
Appendix 6. BOB'S Attempts to Protect Karlshorst
Sources Backfire 429
Appendix 7. KGB Illegals in Karlshorst: The Third Department 440
Appendix 8. Soviet Active Measures: A Brief Overview 447
Appendix 9. Operation Gold (SIS document obtained by
George Blake) 449
Notes 455
Index 513
Illustrations follow pages 134 and 262.
Preface
This is the story of two intelligence services caught up in the struggle
for Berlin and Germany during the Cold War. One, the Soviet KGB, was
a highly proficient internal security and foreign intelligence service
forged in the Russian Revolution, the purges of the Stalin era, and the
war with Nazi Germany. But its many successes were seldom appreci-
ated by a leadership blinded by its own misconceptions and ideology.
CIA was a newcomer. It evolved from the wartime Office of Strate-
gic Services (oss) as America's first peacetime, civilian intelligence ser-
vice, and it combined operations and independent analysis for the first
time in a single agency. In its optimism mixed with naïveté and a fierce
determination to get things done, it reflected in many ways the Amer-
ican character—it did a great deal of its growing up in Berlin between
war's end and the rise of the Wall.
The authors encountered several conceptual and technical difficul-
ties while researching and writing this book. The collaboration of three
writers can be a recipe for disaster even when they share the same back-
grounds and beliefs. The team assembled for this effort did not. It con-
sisted of David E. Murphy, chief of CIA'S Berlin Base during crucial
parts of the Cold War period, retired Lt. Gen. Sergei Aleksandrovich
Kondrashev, one of the KGB'S leading German experts, and George Bai-
ley, former director of Radio Liberty, who is now living in Munich and
ix
x • Preface
writing on Russo-German affairs. Bailey often was caught between
these former intelligence officers from opposing sides of the Cold War.
Not only were Murphy and Kondrashev the products of dissimilar ca-
reers and personal lives, but they also brought to this project divergent
experiences, attitudes, and convictions acquired over several decades.
Each could understand the other's basic positions, but often not the nu-
ances and habits of usage of that position. Even terminology intervened.
What Bailey and Murphy called East Berlin or the Soviet sector was
"Democratic Berlin" to Kondrashev. Equally important, each had dif-
ferent and often contradictory expectations for the book's content, em-
phasis, and conclusions. Further, each author's ability to justify his
findings varied according to archival practices in each service, access to
archives, and the availability and willingness of service veterans to be
interviewed.
Nonetheless, this very unusual collaboration makes a unique con-
tribution to Cold War intelligence literature. During and after the Cold
War, readers of nonfiction on intelligence were deluged with books on
the subject. Many of these were produced by defectors—former KGB
officers living in the West—either alone or in collaboration with West-
ern authors. (An example of this genre is KGB: The Inside Story, the
magnum opus by Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky.) From
the side of Soviet and Russian intelligence, the memoirs of Kim Philby
and George Blake were written when both men were in the Soviet
Union. These works were followed by carefully edited books that were
published by former senior KGB officers with the approval of the Rus-
sian Intelligence Service (SVR).
The collaboration with Kondrashev, who is on good terms with his
former service and resides in Moscow, fits none of these patterns. In
fact, it is the first time in post-Cold War history that former CIA and
KGB officers have produced a joint account of their experiences. The
collaboration reflects the different societies within which CIA and the
KGB operated, differences that naturally affected the project's develop-
ment. But the most difficult task was to find consensus on what the
book should be about.
At first, Bailey and Murphy saw Battleground Berlin as the story of
the CIA and KGB elements in Berlin from war's end to the erection of the
Wall. By combining archival material and personal reminiscences from
both services, they would have traced the origins and growth of the CIA
and KGB Berlin units within the bureaucracies of both countries and de-