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Berlin: The Intelligence
War, 1945-1961, 10-12 September 1999
Berlin: The Intelligence War, 1945-1961,
10-12 September 1999
September 10-12, 1999The Teufelsberg and Allierten Museum Berlin, Germany
Symposium co-sponsor: Georgetown Institute for the Study of Diplomacy
From 10-12 September 1999 the Center for the Study of Intelligence and the Allierten [Allied] Museum of Berlin, Germany, co-hosted a conference on intelligence activities in the once-divided Cold War city from the end of World War II to the construction of Berlin Wall in August 1961. The first public conference ever hosted by CIA abroad, the event took place at the former US signals intercept facility on the Teufelsberg [Devil’s Mountain], just outside Berlin. The conference was the result of a two-year cooperative effort by CSI and the Museum. Financial and logistical support was generously provided by the Investorengruppe Teufelsberg, which owns the site and plans to convert it into a conference center.
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Berlin: The Intelligence War, 1945-1961, The Teufelsberg and Allierten Museum Berlin, Germany 10-12 September 1999 |
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Welcome
The March Crisis and the Berlin Airlift
Allied Military Intelligence in Berlin
The Other Side of the Wall: KGB and Stasi
Spying without Spies
Berlin in the Wilderness of Mirrors: Agents, Double Agents, and Defectors
Eisenhower, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Wall
Battleground Berlin: Veterans Remember
From Dusk to Dawn: Berlin and the History of the Cold War
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Under the warm sun of a Berlin Indian Summer, some 150 Cold War intelligence veterans, historians, journalists, and other interested persons gathered in the shadow of the domed towers of the "T-berg" to relive some of the most critical years of the Cold War. Many were there just to see the Teufelsberg, a Cold War landmark in Berlin that has long been the object of wonder, curiosity, and controversy. The broad windows of the former dining hall, where the conference sessions were held, offered a panoramic view of Berlin and its surroundings. The mystery surrounding the installation was evident in the still-present security arrangements, the barbed-wire fences, and the silent, empty rooms that bore the marks of 30 years of intelligence activity.
On the dais, the subject was intelligence. Featuring a mix of personal recollections and scholarly presentations, the conference took a broad view of Cold War intelligence operations in Berlin that ran the gamut from agent operations to the Berlin tunnel to US Air Force reconnaissance missions. On the first panel Harvard diplomatic historian Ernest R. May joined Russian military historian Viktor Gobarev and German Cold War historian Wolfgang Krieger in a multifaceted overview of the Berlin blockade and the crises of 1948. On another panel chaired by Cambridge University intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, CSI historian Ben Fischer recounted CIA’s penetration of East German foreign intelligence in the early 1950s. (See "Markus Wolf and the CIA Mole" below.) The first day of the conference concluded with a tour of the Teufelsberg and a reception hosted by the Investorengruppe.
The second day of the conference began with a panel on technical intelligence collection chaired by CIA Chief Historian Gerald K. Haines. This session was followed by one of the conference highlights: a roundtable discussion hosted by CSI Deputy Director Richard E. Schroeder, which featured veteran British historian Nigel West, author Jerrold Schecter (The Spy Who Saved the World), Ambassador Hugh Montgomery, a veteran intelligence officer now serving as special Assistant to the DCI. The afternoon sessions began with a panel on the Berlin Crisis of 1958-61 in which Ambassador Raymond L. Garthoff led a discussion that included historians from the US and Russia along with Dr. Egon Bahr, who was an aide to West Berlin Lord Mayor Willy Brandt when the Berlin Wall went up in August 1961. Ambassador Garthoff presented new information on the "back-channel" contacts between US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the crisis.
Conference attendees next boarded buses that took them to the Alliierten Museum for a roundtable discussion on Cold War espionage in Berlin by former intelligence officers from both sides of the Iron Curtain. CIA was represented by Peter Sichel, who operated in Berlin during the 1940s and 1950s, and Soviet intelligence specialist Burton Gerber. The Soviet side was represented by former KGB officers Gen. Oleg Kalugin and Col. Oleg Gordievsky, who defected to the West in 1985 after serving as a British agent inside Soviet intelligence for 11 years. The roundtable was chaired by the Director of the Alliierten Museum, Dr. Helmut Trotnow. During and after the roundtable, attendees enjoyed an opportunity to tour the Museum itself, which features a comprehensive collection of exhibits on the Allied occupation of Berlin and the East-West struggle over the divided city.
On the morning of the third day, conference participants embarked on a tour of Berlin that included the former Normannenstraße headquarters of the dreaded East German intelligence and security service, the Stasi. Few could resist the opportunity to sit at the desk of the former Minister for State Security Erich Mielke, which is still adorned with Lenin’s death mask. The tour also included visits to the original Berlin City Hall, the so- called Red Rathaus located in the city center, and the Schöneberg Rathaus, where President Kennedy delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in June 1963. The tour included a visit to Berlin-Karlshorst as well as the former officers’ casino in which the German high command surrendered to Soviet forces on 9 May 1945; the casino became the headquarters of the Soviet Group of Forces, Germany and still houses a fascinating museum dedicated to the Red Army’s siege of Berlin. An adjoining compound served as the KGB rezidentura, the Soviet intelligence service’s largest foreign post during the Cold War. Those who stayed to the very end were treated to a trip to the Glienicke Bridge, site of numerous Cold War spy swaps, in the company of Oleg Kalugin and Francis Gary Powers, Jr., whose father in 1962 crossed paths with Soviet "illegal" William Henry Fisher (alias Rudolf Abel) on the same span in the first US-Soviet prisoner exchange.
Ambassador Vernon Walters, who was US Chief of Mission in West Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, closed the conference. He praised the organizers of the conference and thanked the sponsors who had made it possible.
In conjunction with the conference, CSI released a collection of declassified intelligence records entitled On the Front Lines of the Cold War: Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin 1945 to 1961. The volume includes National Intelligence Estimates, CIA current reporting, and field operational cables as well as "raw" intelligence messages. Two of the latter messages came from a CIA mole inside Markus Wolf’s foreign intelligence service.
Donald P. Steury
Senior Historian