On the 23rd May, 2019, I met Ghiselle, an elderly lady who beckoned me over whilst knitting in her front garden. Her house lay in a garden colony in Wutzkyallee, a failed Bauhaus satellite city on the fringes of Berlin, an idea conceived by Walter Gropius.
Ghiselle told me of her late husband, Hermann, an ex spy who worked in the tunnels that sat beneath us. It was through these tunnels that the West gained key information about their soviet counter-parts. Its name was
Operation Gold.
The exact moment when the idea emerged of digging a tunnel to intercept Soviet and East German communications is somewhat obscure.
As early as 1948 U.S. Intelligence officers became interested in the benefits to be derived from tapping Soviet and Satellite landlines on a scale not previously considered necessary.
The loss of certain sources during this period created gaps in our intelligence coverage which were particularly unfotunate during this period of Cold War escalation. It became evident that the tapping of certain selected landlines might produce the information needed to fill a number of the gaps in our overall picture.
In mid-1952 exploratory discussions were held in Washington to plan the mounting of an attack on soviet landlines in East Germany.
And so it was decideed - joint US-UK planning for the project continued throughout 1953.
By 17th Augist 1954 things were beginning to take shape. The tunnel was 1,476 feet long (roughly the length of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool)
The tunnel was discovered 21st April 1956, after 11 months and 11 days of operation.
In April 1956, MI-6 discovered that George Blake, case officer in their service, had been recruited by the Soviets when a prisoner in North Korea. Blake was privy to all aspects of the tunnel as the time the final decision was made on its location. The question then arises why the Soviets permitted the tunnel to be dug and operate for nearly one year.
Many theories have been advanced, but it is most probably that we will never know the exact rationale behind the Soviet moves.
Equipped with a map drawn out by Ghiselle I set out on a journey of historical reconstruction. I walked the streets in search of clues, evidence and signs of the past.
How did we get here?
History has a way of passing by.
Documentary photography is sinned by it’s own endeavour to capture truth, to represent reality and history as linear and uni-directional. In search for Hermann and his role in Operatioon Gold, I end up finding signs and evidence or the Americanisation of the West, of hedonism in a post-war Berlin, of friendship and love, joy and depression.
OPERATION GOLD stitches together the past and present, shedding light on the absurdity of governmental intelligence and the veiled nature of the Cold War.