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Operation Gold & the U-2: When the CIA's Best Secrets Were Already Blown
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Berlin Tunnel and the U-2 programme were two of the CIA's most daring Cold War intelligence gambits — and both were compromised before they ever delivered a clean secret. This episode uncovers how George Blake and Francis Gary Powers brought two audacious operations crashing down.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Picture this. It's nineteen fifty-six.
The Berlin Tunnel, known inside the CIA as Operation Gold, began with a remarkably straightforward idea. Soviet military communications in East Berlin ran through underground cables.
While engineers were digging under Berlin, a different project was taking shape in the California desert. The U-2 was developed by Lockheed's Skunk Works division under Kelly Johnson, operating under contract with the CIA.
Soviet surface-to-air missile technology improved steadily through the late nineteen fifties. By nineteen sixty, the SA-2 Guideline missile system had reached an altitude envelope that put U-2 flights inside the risk zone.
Step back from the operational details and the pattern becomes clear. Both the Berlin Tunnel and the U-2 programme represented the CIA operating at genuine strategic purpose.
The U-2 programme ended manned overflights of the Soviet Union after the Powers incident. Eisenhower suspended them and they were never resumed in that form.
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