Cod moon secrets
Then it was time for the extraction of both the looted cargo and the two agents. Approximately 70 kilograms (150 lb) of equipment was taken. For one week, the agents moved through the base, taking notes and looting valuables. Then they used that aircraft to parachute two CIA agents into the Soviet base. Teaming up with the US military, the CIA obtained a specially modified aircraft and the services of a commercial airline navigator. They were confident that no aircraft could safely land and that the base would soon be swallowed by the ever-shifting ice. The Soviets had not destroyed their equipment before they evacuated. The CIA saw an opportunity to collect intelligence on Soviet research and equipment when a Soviet scientific base in the Arctic was abandoned because its runway had become unusable due to the constantly shifting ice. US bombers then destroyed the equipment.Ĩ Parachuting Agents Into The Arctic To Investigate An Abandoned Soviet Base The base fell in a dramatic mountaintop gun battle as the Americans were evacuated by helicopter. When those attempts failed, they marched across the border in force and surrounded the mountain. First, they tried using aircraft to bomb the site. The North Vietnamese eventually realized what was happening and started attacking the mountain base. An automated radio transmitter installed at the base sent navigational information to US aircraft. Located 25 kilometers (15 mi) from the Laos-Vietnam border, the base was manned by CIA personnel and used to direct US heavy bombers in the ongoing attempt to flatten North Vietnam. So the US Air Force, with the cooperation of the CIA, built a top secret radar base on a 1,700-meter (5,600 ft) mountain in Laos, a country bordering Vietnam.
Targets deep in North Vietnam could not be bombed when it was dark or cloudy. The entire thing had actually been a cleverly orchestrated KGB operation to reveal the tunnel to the world. One year after the tap was placed, repair crews arrived at the location of the tap and started digging, ostensibly because heavy rains had damaged the cable.Īmerican lookouts in West Germany ordered an emergency evacuation as the East Germans busted into the tunnel. But they kept it secret, even from the Soviet Army, to protect their source. Thanks to an American mole, the KGB knew about the tunnel before construction started. This was a major achievement because the tunnel was buried less than 1 meter (3 ft) below ground near a major highway, which complicated the tapping. With the entrance hidden in a military warehouse, the tunnel was completed and the taps were in place one year later. Construction on the tunnel started that same year. The plan was formulated over the course of several years and finally approved in 1954. To fix the problem, the CIA decided to dig a tunnel under the border to East Berlin to physically tap into a cable that carried messages from Moscow to East Berlin. Landline messages could not be intercepted unless they were physically tapped, unlike the radio communications previously used by the Soviets. In 1951, the CIA was losing out on valuable intelligence because the Soviets were switching to landlines to send messages to the East Germans.
10 Digging A Tunnel To Spy On The East Germans But there were also ridiculously bold, insane schemes that worked beautifully. American intelligence operations during the Cold War were filled with embarrassing failures and botched projects.