Back
when we had patriotism in this country and before we collapsed into
political acrimony and paranoid hatred of our own government, we all
worked together to focus our paranoia outward and against the spectre
of Marxism. Marxism and its cousin-in-law Communism, if left
unchecked, promised to inconvenience our rich and self-entitled elite
which could only lead inevitably to the empowerment of the
disenfranchised whose lives were hopelessly crushed by poverty and
racism.
To
fight this Socialist evil all true Americans, North and South, black
and white, came together and did their part to fight the Cold War and
maintain our way of life.
I
am proud to report that even my adopted home city, Richmond, Virginia
did its part to fight the cold war.
One
of the triumphs of the Cold War was the CIA's Berlin Tunnel in which
they dug a tunnel from the US Zone to the Soviet Zone in Berlin and
were able to tap some telephone cables that carried military
communications from Berlin to Moscow. The tunnel was in operation
for 11 months and was a giant success in its time, but its real value
came afterwards when, to everyone's surprise, the Russians made the
discovery of the tunnel public in order to show the perfidy and lack
of good faith of the West.
The tunnel
One
of the great moments in “unexpected consequences” this revelation
increased the status of the USA in the eyes of Europeans who did not
believe that we had the sophistication to pull such espionage off.
In fact, we really didnt, and relied to a significant degree on the
British, but that is another story.
Many
years afterwards, since the tunnel was hardly a secret, the CIA
published a report on the tunnel, its genesis, execution and
aftermath.
For
a summary, see here.
For
a discussion of actually building the tunnel, see here.
And
what should I find but in that latter report the news that Richmond
Virginia, where I grew up, had a role to play in this effort:
I
can only hope that the people who dug this trial tunnel ate at Waffle
House or at the Commonwealth Club, perhaps even at the Country Club
of Virginia.
I have confidence that even today, Virginians would rally to their call and work to support the CIA
in their efforts.
______________________________________
For another discussion of the tunnel and its discovery, see
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