Some just count tanks.
(rumbling boom)
Others steal blueprints for nuclear bombs.
The Cold War is the battleground for thousands
of spies and spotters.
Both sides collected intelligence
in order to avert what was considered to be a looming war.
(speaking foreign language)
The secret services have few scruples when
it comes to procuring intelligence.
They pay for acts of treason which may spell death
for those exposed.
Do I have an awareness of blood-guilt?
No, no I didn't.
They were spooks with a license to spy.
The men of the Allied Military Liaison Missions
in Germany were at the forefront of the intelligence war
between East and West.
Yet even today, hardly anything is known about their fates.
No other Western intelligence service
got as close to Soviet Military Equipment.
But where there are secrets,
there's danger too.
We knew that Soviet sentries were trigger-happy.
They tended to shoot first and ask questions later,
if at all.
A Kalashnikov stuck in my neck, okay,
so you don't move, okay?
The risks were pretty enormous.
In fact, how on Earth I'm still alive,
in fact, how on Earth any of us are still alive,
I have no idea.
They were friends.
And I understand what it takes to lose a friend.
A close friend, on this matter.
(ominous music)
It's a tour that brings back memories
to three Cold War veterans.
White gloves would have been reserved for parades.
Since they're targets were out in the field.
Their job was military intelligence.
Their brief, covert observation.
Lawrence G. Kelley, a former US Marine,
Jean-Paul Staub, of the French Army,
and Nigel Dunkley of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.
They're browsing through dossiers that were once top-secret.
We actually served as a kind of carpet sweeper,
vacuuming up everything that might be relevant,
because we never knew until the end what was most important.
The threats posed by Soviet military power
is precisely documented in the old files.
It's familiar stuff to Staub and Dunkley.
Both men were tank experts.
As only close up photographs would do,
they had to sneak up to their targets.
A risky business.
Shots from a film showing the British
military mission in action.
A tank crew has spotted the snoopers.
A soldier is approaching fast to apprehend them.
It's only by a hair's breadth
that the Brits succeed in getting away.
Sometimes they take even greater risks.
Like when they were inspecting the inside of a tank.
They climbed onto the tank, opened the hatch,
and were stunned to see that the crew was asleep inside.
So they very gingerly closed the hatch, dismounted the tank,
and made their getaway.
The officers of the military missions
are out to get at the military secrets hidden deep inside
the GDR, the Soviet-controlled eastern part of Germany.
Their weapons, cameras with special lenses.
The missions had been established due to an agreement
between the Allied Powers of World War Two,
the United States, Great Britain,
France and the Soviet Union.
That was back in 1944.
Procedures were implemented the following year,
after Hitler and Germany had been defeated.
(dramatic music)
(speaking foreign language)
The intention had not been to create
an intelligence apparatus, but to use the missions
as relays between the supreme commands in occupied Germany.
The reason for the mission to be established,
for the missions to be established, is absolutely obvious,
because we had four headquarters,
four commands in Germany, and they had to communicate,
they had to liaise.
There are countless issues to take care of,
across the occupation zones.
Provisioning the populous, coping with millions
of refugees, tracking down war criminals,
and the repatriation of POWs.
(dramatic music)
(speaking foreign language)
So the missions had a semi-diplomatic,
semi-military brief, with a view to getting
the Allied administration of the four zones
working as well as possible.
Yet with the advent of The Cold War,
the victors soon turned into adversaries.
The missions begin using their status
to collect military intelligence.
The Western Allies make forays into the former Soviet Zone,
now the GDR, the German Democratic Republic,
while their Russian counterparts roam the newly-founded
Federal Republic.
(muttering)
It's an explosive game; part diplomacy, part espionage.
There are some restricted areas which are off-limits.
As for the rest, it's: thou shalt not be caught.
Since their official duty is still to liaise
between the occupation powers, the members of the missions
enjoy special privileges.
They had the same status as diplomatic couriers.
Otherwise, they had complete diplomatic immunity.
You cannot search them, you cannot detain them.
So through many things, and they had free travel
possibilities throughout the country.
So, Americans, Britons and Frenchmen,
each accredited by the supreme command of the Soviet Army,
are entitled to regular forays into East Germany.
The Western missions are based in Potsdam, near Berlin.
63 of their members are officially listed
for the so-called tours, under diplomatic status.
The Soviets set up their respective camps
in the former American, British and French zones
of occupation in Western Germany.
Both sides soon make use of their diplomats'
in-field dress to systematically spy on the other side.
Their observations are a welcome addition
to the output of classical espionage.
(jet rumbling)
(rumbling boom)
The most sensitive area during the early years
of The Cold War is nuclear research.
At this stage, only the USA has the capability
of delivering an A bomb.
Yet spies such as Klaus Fuchs,
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
or Rudolf Abel, are risking their lives
enabling the USSR to become a nuclear power.
(dramatic music)
August, 1945.
Americans celebrate the victory over Japan,
and the end of World War Two.
Three weeks later, a Soviet cipher clerk in Canada
switches sides; when they debrief him,
Western counterintelligence experts are alarmed.
(ominous music)
For the rest of his life, Igor Gouzenko will only appear
in public heavily masked; the defector has good reason
to fear the revenge of the KGB.
Since he has alerted Washington to the presence
of countless Soviet moles in American institutions.
(speaking foreign language)
Gouzenko was a key figure in a process
which could be described as the discovery
of the Soviet Union as an aggressive,
expansionist dictatorship.
(speaking foreign language)
His interrogation helped expose the network
within the Canadian, but most of all,
within the US administration, whose branches,
and I mean nearly all of them,
were infiltrated by Communists.
The Gouzenko file triggers an all-out,
counterspy offensive against suspected Communists,
throughout the United States.
The secrets of the nuclear program are at stake,
especially since American engineers are testing
ever more powerful bombs, over the Pacific Ocean.
(dramatic music)
(rumbling explosion)
Possession of the A bomb is crucial
for the balance of power during The Cold War.
As long as the United States is the sole nuclear power,
its position is nearly unchallengeable.
From the American perspective, it's a state of affairs
best kept that way as long as possible.
(dramatic music)
In 1950, the FBI exposes a spy ring,
centered around Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
The couple had passed secret information
about the American nuclear program on to the Soviet Union.
(ominous music)
(speaking foreign language)
The Rosenbergs themselves were comparatively
small fry.
Their prominence is mostly due to their spectacular trial,
and its circumstances.
The prosecution succeeded in presenting a star witness
from inside the spy ring: Rosenberg's brother in-law.
To save his own skin, he testified,
and this of course, meant that others would take the rap.
David Greenglass, Julius Rosenberg's
brother in-law, had provided the secret documents.
Yet there are other, more important nuclear spies,
working for Moscow.
(rumbling explosion)
In 1949, the Soviets successfully test a nuclear device.
Without their American informers,
they might have needed several years more
of their own research.
Their most important source of information is Klaus Fuchs,
an exiled German physicist working
for the Manhattan Project, America's nuclear program,
and a member of the German Communist Party since 1933.
In 1949, by then in Britain, he comes under suspicion.
He hands himself in and is sentenced to 14 years in prison.
The explanation for this comparatively
light sentence, far below the death penalty,
is quite simple: Fuchs had committed treason, yes.
But the beneficiary of his betrayal had been an
Allied power, since from 1941 until the end of the war,
the USSR had been fighting on the side of Britain.
An extenuating cause that is denied
to the Rosenbergs; they are executed for having spied
for the new arch-enemy of the United States.
(speaking foreign language)
The verdict on Mrs. Rosenberg
was a judicial crime; she should never have been sentenced
to death, since her involvement
had been a relatively minor one.
But the court was determined to set an example.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
have paid their debt to society with their lives.
Their execution is portrayed as a fitting
punishment for having betrayed the United States.
(dramatic music)
1985: US military spotters on tour in East Germany,
keeping a low profile while trying to catch a glimpse
of the Soviet's brand new main battle tank.
Stalking a tank had its risks.
Watching videos from the '80s,
military mission veterans Dunkley, Kelley and Staub
recall what it was like to sneak up on their prey.
A Soviet-built T80, a prime catch.
T80 was hot.
T80 was the brand new tank, and it was the pride
and joy of the Soviets at the time.
And it was a pretty bad shock for NATO to discover
it was good; it was an outstanding tank.
The fire control system in the T80 was very important,
as well; tank modernization in GSFG was well underway,
and this was a critical aspect of it.
Major Arthur D. Nicholson and his driver,
Jesse Schatz, are approaching a tank firing range
near Ludwigslust, in northeast Germany.
We knew that Soviet sentries were trigger-happy.
They tended to shoot first and ask questions later.
If at all.
Yet Nicholson has set his mind
on the tanks' hangars.
Which are next to a restricted area.
The two men scan the surroundings for soviet sentries.
(dramatic music)
Sometimes the area, the training area, I mean,
was sensitive, and sometimes it wasn't.
But we all knew that a sentry was normally posted there.
Lawrence G. Kelley flew attack jets
with the Marines before he was posted to the American
military mission in Germany.
By 1985, Kelley is second in command.
Nick Nicholson has become a good friend of his.
(dramatic music)
Kelley knows only too well
what happened that Sunday afternoon.
Four months earlier, a tour of the French military mission
had come under fire near those very hangars.
(dramatic music)
Nicholson isn't in the least deterred by the accident.
Quite the contrary.
Possibly, that could have indicated
that something important really was there,
and I'm certain that Nicholson considered that point.
Hardly recognizable under its tarpaulin,
a T80.
To a military spotter, a first shot is like a trophy.
The Soviets had begun to deploy their most modern tank
in the southern parts of East Germany.
By 1985, there are rumors of its presence in the north.
But there is no proof, yet.
NATO's headquarters want just that: visual evidence.
Nicholson probably hopes to find it right here,
near Ludwigslust.
Nicholson and Schatz do not detect any sentries around,
but there is one, a bit further off in the bushes.
Nicholson advances to reconnoiter
the area behind the hangars.
Nicholson was proud, well-educated, motivated,
and ambitious, and in my opinion, he had an above-average
affinity for risky actions.
Whatever he may have seen there,
he decides to retreat.
The sentry had, indeed, seen the tour,
and relatively early, and he reported
that fact to the guard officer,
over a system like the field telephone.
(speaking foreign language), he said.
A mission tour is in the area.
And the guard officer asked: well, where is it now?
And he sentry replied: it's gone.
To which the guard officer answered:
well, when it comes back, you know what to do.
Nicholson and Schatz do, indeed return,
but the sentry doesn't know how to proceed
in accordance with standing orders,
and even if he does, he doesn't adhere to the rules.
He watches on as Nicholson gets out of the car again.
Then things get out of hand.
Come back!
(gun firing)
Shots ring out, Nicholson is hit by a bullet,
the sentry holds Shatz at gunpoint,
keeping him from administering first aid.
When a physician arrives an hour later,
Nicholson is already dead.
Schatz detected the sentry, at essentially
the same instant, with the first shot.
And he ducked.
The shot whizzed narrowly over his head.
Either the second or the third shot hit Nicholson,
center of mass, below the heart,
and somewhat inside the ribcage.
Sergei Savchenko remembers the events well.
In March, 1985, he is stationed in Fohnsdorf,
the seat of the Soviet Supreme Command in East Germany.
He's an interpreter with the section dealing
with the Western military missions.
When I came, I think it was something like
between six and seven PM, to the headquarters,
I didn't have any idea what was going on, and, ah,
I could see that everybody was excited.
While his superiors hastened to Ludwigslust,
he handles any incoming news.
This way, Savchenko soon gets firsthand knowledge
of what has happened.
When they came to Ludwigslust,
to the place itself, of course, everybody was shocked,
because to see the body lying almost next to the vehicle,
and to see Jesse Schatz inside,
and the group of Soviet officers around.
Photographs that have long been top-secret.
It soon becomes obvious that procedures
have been gravely mishandled.
And not only by the sentry.
If you put a sentry with a weapon, with ammunition,
anywhere, according to the Russian regulations,
it has to be a post, and this post has to be clearly marked
on the ground, on the terrain.
There has to be a fence, or a barbed wire.
There were no signs, there was no fence,
there was no nothing, and the sentry was nowhere to be seen.
Jesse Schatz is kept in the car for six hours,
That is how long it takes Lawrence Kelley and his boss,
Colonel Lejoix, to reach the sight,
only to be confronted by Soviet officers,
with allegations that the Americans, alone,
are responsible for what has happened.
The argumentation became incandescent,
with extraordinarily sharp accusations,
and the tension mounted continuously.
The Soviets initially demanded to detain
and interrogate Schatz, to seize and search the vehicle,
and to perform an autopsy on Nicholson's body.
The Americans reject the Soviet demands.
They merely agree to a joint autopsy.
Nicholson's body was transported back to a Soviet morgue
in Potsdam, in a Soviet ambulance, and I escorted him.
Colonel Lejoix had given me the mission
of ensuring that Nicholson's body
was accorded the proper respect.
It's a somber drive to Potsdam.
Kelley is cowering inside the Soviet ambulance,
next to his friend's body.
On the way, I looked at Nicholson again and again,
and mentally asked him each time:
Nick, how could this possibly have happened?
The death of Major Nicholson turns into a major incident.
His coffin is transported back to the United States,
observing full military honors.
Nicholson is survived by his wife and their only child.
The government pays its respects to him as a fallen hero.
Major Arthur Nicholson was an outstanding officer,
murdered in the line of duty.
We grieve with his wife and small daughter.
We can only hope that the Soviet Union understands
that this sort of brutal international behavior
jeopardizes directly the improvement in relations
which they profess to seek.
Our deep sympathy goes to all his friends and relatives,
may he rest in peace.
Three years will pass until the Soviet
authorities half-heartedly acknowledge their responsibility
for the shooting of an American officer in peace-time.
I said to myself: why cannot we admit,
that the soldier was not the best soldier
in the Soviet Army, and in fact,
he was not the best soldier in the Soviet Army.
If we admit that, then we can say to the Americans:
we are sorry it happened, but it happened because
we had a bad soldier, and because we had a
really badly-organized post.
That's it.
It will not affect the relations between our countries.
Because in any army, you can find a bad soldier.
Due to their briefs, Savchenko and Kelley meet
regularly; as interpreters for their respective top brass,
they even begin to appreciate each other.
Yet for Lawrence Kelley, the tragic death
of Nick Nicholson still casts a long shadow.
It's traumatic, and I understand the reason why
Larry Kelley speaks about all that in such passion.
They were friends, and I understand
what it takes to lose a friend,
a close friend, on this matter.
Major Arthur Nicholson paid with his life
for trying to photograph a Soviet tank.
(dramatic music)
The Allied Museum in Berlin, Lawrence Kelley,
Jean-Paul Staub, and Nigel Dunkley,
stand in front of a display case, remembering Jesse Schatz.
The tragedy near Ludwigslust affected him badly.
Up until then, he was known as an easy-going guy,
full of clever ideas.
(dramatic music)
Like hawking so-called Berlin watches to tourists.
Larry Kelley still recalls the details.
Schatz was a naturally-born wheeler-dealer.
He peddled trinkets of various kinds in the mission,
and at flea markets all over Berlin.
Souvenirs mostly, sometimes watches.
Problem was that his business, as he performed it,
was only marginally legal, if at all.
And the command ultimately told him to cease and desist.
Former Staff Sergeant Schatz
died in 1996, at the age of 42.
A candy bomber, a reminder of the Berlin airlift,
11 dramatic months which marked the beginning
of The Cold War, back in 1948.
Intelligence about the intentions and capabilities
of the other side now becomes of paramount importance.
Thousands of agents and spies risk their lives
to bring it home to their masters.
The airlift ensures the freedom
of more than two million people.
The Soviet stratagem to strangle West Berlin has failed.
Yet as tension between the opposing power blocs mounts,
so too does the hunger for secret information.
(dramatic music)
(speaking foreign language)
Both sides collected intelligence in order
to avert what was considered to be a looming war.
And to achieve more safety for their own side.
That's why, apart from so-called open sources,
you'd want additional, secret information.
And that was the province of the intelligence services
and the military missions.
Thus, Berlin becomes the hub for military
reconnaissance men, secret agents,
and informers of all kinds.
April, 1953, seven British subjects return home
from the Korean War; for almost three years,
they had been held captive by the Communist regime,
in the north.
Among the returnees, here in the center,
is George Blake, an operative of MI6,
Britain's foreign intelligence service.
There may be no sign of it yet,
but he has come back to work as a mole for the KGB,
Russia's secret service.
Three years later, in East Berlin, a 450-meter tunnel
is triumphantly exposed by the Communist media.
Americans and British had combined to tap telephone cables
on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
(speaking foreign language)
The Berlin tunnel was an operation
whose sheer size was, and still is, without precedent.
Planning included, it ran for more than two
and a half years, and it tied up enormous resources
in terms of money, and personnel-wise,
both British and American.
(speaking foreign language)
Moscow accuses the West of a warlike act.
The CIA and their counterparts at MI6
had driven the tunnel from west to east with utmost care,
yet Blake blows the operation
long before the tunnel is finished.
(ominous music)
For the time being, however,
his masters let their opposite numbers
carry on with their eavesdropping.
The output seems well worth the effort.
50,000 magnetic coils of telephone calls,
mostly between military stations.
Even today, after many files
have been declassified, the CIA still maintains
that they were able to retrieve a treasure-trove
of information out of these more than
500,000 recorded phone calls.
Yet why does the KGB let this continue
for so long?
Even if they managed to plant some amount of disinformation
on the eavesdroppers, there are still several hundred
thousand genuine phone calls for their enemies to analyze.
(dramatic music)
(speaking foreign language)
Soviet intelligence had decided to sacrifice
their own military secrets to protect their source,
George Blake.
This is the most plausible explanation.
For the KGB, it's a move that pays off.
Blake exposes countless MI6 operations,
even betraying agents in Eastern Europe.
Agents he himself has recruited.
In 1961, the mole's cover is blown.
Blake is sentenced to 42 years in prison.
In 1966, he pulls off a spectacular escape.
(speaking foreign language)
His escape is basically an extension
of his experiences in the war.
He had been a prisoner of war in North Korea.
He had had to survive under the most adverse conditions.
It was torture, all these things.
You don't know if you'll ever get out alive,
but he had survived, and this had made him feel
that he could cope with anything.
He never ceased to believe in himself.
To him, it was just another kind of war,
and he wanted to win that war, for his own sake.
And that meant escaping from jail.
Blake scales the prison wall,
and escapes to Moscow.
What had made him a traitor in the first place?
(speaking foreign language)
I wonder if Blake
ever was on the British side.
He was a Brit, of course, but in his autobiography,
he states right at the beginning,
that he was convinced that the world
in peace is only possible under Communism.
And that he wanted to contribute to changing
the world order in this direction.
Blake uses his occasional appearances
in front of a camera to justify his actions.
That his acts cost former colleagues their lives,
this is not something he's wanting to hear.
North of Magdeburg, a museum of Soviet trucks
and other military hardware.
Nigel Dunkley, Jean-Paul Staub, and Lawrence G. Kelley,
close up with their former objectives.
Among them, the redoubtable air to ground missiles
of the SA6 series.
(speaking foreign language)
It was the first time that I'd seen
the SA6 this close.
It was an extremely powerful weapons system.
And definitely one of the best of its era.
On the grounds of the former Soviet barracks,
the three Cold War veterans
look on with professional nostalgia,
as the curator unpacks the once closely-guarded components.
Electronic modules, which set the frequencies
at which the missile received its target data.
(dramatic music)
Well, we would have been very happy to bring
that back to Berlin. (laughing)
Devices like these were of prime interest
to NATO experts; to procure them was easier said than done.
Analysts in various headquarters always had wish-lists,
and justifiable wish-lists.
But they couldn't possibly know the risks that we would
have had to run to make their wishes come true.
Fulfilling some of them would
have been tantamount to suicide.
That's why the decision as to whether
the potential results were worth the risk
was left to the men on the ground.
But the experts' eye detects some intriguing details
about the missile's origin.
I had my doubts, because the color of the equipment,
the lighter green, was not usual for Soviet forces.
Soviet equipment produced in the Soviet Union
and used in Soviet forces was normally darker.
And indeed, apart from some labeling
in Cyrillic, there is faded lettering in Polish.
To Lawrence Kelley, it's clear evidence that the missile
originally belonged to a unit of the Polish Army.
His hunch was right.
The Warsaw Pact Army's air to ground arsenal ranked high
with NATO reconnaissance.
Over Vietnam, as well as in the Middle East,
Soviet-built missiles had proven to be a deadly weapon.
(dramatic music)
Electronic countermeasures may enhance the pilot's chance
of survival; their development, however,
depends on exact data on the setup of a missile.
At the close of the 1950s, the Americans' U-2
is regarded as the ultimate spy jet.
Out of reach for any missile, they fly over testing areas,
nuclear factories, and military bases.
Their pilots regularly venture into Soviet airspace
with a sense of impunity, photographing from a height
of 20 kilometers.
Until May the first, 1960.
To France's Gary Powers it's just another mission.
Yet this time, the Russians have a surprise in store.
When the U-2 crosses the Urals, they launch their latest
anti-aircraft missile.
(rumbling explosion)
Powers is lucky to be able to eject
and to survive the descent, hanging on his parachute.
To the Americans, it's a most embarrassing incident,
forcing them to cancel all further spy flights,
over Soviet territory.
On August 19th, 1960, Powers is tried for espionage
by a military court.
The Soviet authorities make full use
of the opportunity to brand the United States as warmongers.
Powers is sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Three years later, another trial in Moscow.
This time in the dock, Oleg Penkovsky.
A high-ranking officer of the GRU,
the Soviet military intelligence service.
He had switched sides, and betrayed information
about Moscow's nuclear potential,
which had been cause for deep-seated fears in the West
for more than a decade.
(speaking foreign language)
Penkovsky had access to highly
sensitive material, but most notably, about the development
of missiles and their intended deployment.
To the Americans, this was, of course,
of the utmost importance.
The cause of Penkovsky's treason?
He had felt slighted by his superiors.
Penkovsky, by then a colonel,
was expecting his promotion to general.
He had had a fine career.
But suddenly found himself at a dead end
after a security check had revealed that his father
had been a general in the Czar's Army.
From then on, his promotions came to an abrupt end.
His career was more or less over, and that's what
made him break his allegiance to his country.
In 1960, Penkovsky contacts the other side,
and delivers detailed insights
into Moscow's military arsenal.
Types of missiles, their range and numbers,
plus information about the air defense system
which blew the U-2 out of the sky.
Penkovsky also warns of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's
aggressive nuclear policy.
Two years later, U-2 planes spot Soviet
nuclear missiles in Cuba.
American analysts identify them as SS4 and SS5,
which can carry their warheads as far as Chicago.
Thanks to the information supplied by Penkovsky,
the photo interpreters know exactly what to look for,
since each type of missile requires a distinct setup.
(speaking foreign language)
And this was the pattern that Penkovsky
had passed on to the Americans.
Once their experts had found it on the aerial photographs,
they knew that this was a launch pad
for a specific type of medium-range missile.
(dramatic music)
US President John F. Kennedy imposes
a naval blockade around Cuba.
Should these offensive military preparations continue,
thus increasing the threat to the hemisphere,
further action will be justified.
The world is on the brink of a nuclear war.
Skillful diplomacy and a good deal of sheer luck,
avert a nuclear apocalypse.
Penkovsky is arrested a few days prior
to the Cuban Missile Crisis, tried,
and sentenced to death as a traitor.
The impacts of his treason are far-reaching.
Both sides begin to build and deploy intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
Back then, there is no chance of intercepting them.
He who shoots first, dies second.
Yet there are new, highly-efficient tools for reconnaissance
and espionage: satellites orbit the Earth
and capture stunning, high-resolution images.
In August, 1960, the Americans launch their Corona Program.
Its satellites can monitor the Soviet Union
without any interference from below.
The capsules containing the exposed shots,
still have to be ejected by the satellites
and picked up in mid-air.
Both sides expend billions on their respective programs,
but the satellites prove to be superb guardians
against any surprise attack.
The qualities of their photographs improves rapidly.
(dramatic music)
As a consequence, both sides try hard to conceal
their secrets by camouflage.
And to catch a glimpse, you need agents on the ground,
just like the officers of the military missions
in both parts of Germany.
Each vehicle transporting sensitive equipment
was issued with cloaking devices.
Tarpaulins were a must, and a challenge
for snoopers who would pride themselves on being able
to sniff out what was underneath.
Tarpaulogy was an art form.
In order to become a master of Tarpaulogy,
you had to learn by heart every single type of camouflage
used to cloak the other side's weaponry.
We had to know what was underneath the tarpaulin,
and so we did.
Now the Soviets had various ways and means
of camouflaging and disguising their equipment.
It was all part of their what they called:
(speaking foreign language)
But they didn't fool us.
In the end, we could identify virtually everything.
Oh yes, we most certainly did.
Even if they had to resort to cutting holes
in the tarpaulin.
(dramatic music)
Spy planes come in many guises.
In the airspace around Berlin, the Western missions
use small aircraft to peek down into Soviet Army barracks,
or to shadow their opponents' field exercises.
The air corridors to West Berlin, too,
are systematically used for covert reconnaissance,
focusing on military infrastructure on the ground.
There are three corridors, each 32 kilometers wide.
A fifth of Eastern Germany can thus be photographed.
Practically without any risk.
(dramatic music)
Yet there are incidents.
The RB-66 is a highly specialized reconnaissance plane.
In 1964, one of them shows up in the middle corridor,
heading for West Berlin.
US Air Force footage gives a rare impression
from inside the labs for high-end espionage hardware,
as it was installed in an RB-66 jet.
There are cameras, antennae, sophisticated radar,
jamming devices, signal recorders.
Yet the corridors aren't meant to be spy lanes.
Any suspected bending of the rules may lead
to a dangerous encounter.
(guns firing)
In March, 1964, Wolfgang Preisler is working
as a chauffer with the US mission
when he gets the order to take a tour officer
to the crash site of an RB-66, near Gardelagen,
in the middle of a restricted area.
A tricky proposal.
The likelihood of being able to stay undetected
was very slim, so we knew that,
but we did get within probably 100 yards,
or 100 meters of the crash site,
because we were able to see the embers.
Preisler and his tour officer
are pondering how to best approach the crash site proper,
since some distance off, the area is crawling with soldiers.
Then they notice something quite unexpected.
The trees around them seem decorated as if for Christmas.
A bunch of silver confetti hanging off the trees,
and which was a little odd, and only shortly,
five minutes after, we picked off some of these pieces
and looked at them and wondered, you know,
where they had come from.
The RB-66 had probably released the tinfoil
as chafe in an attempt to blind the Russian radar,
alas without success.
There was only minutes thereafter that the Russian
soldiers came and blocked our car,
from the front, from the back.
And they detained us for about 12 hours.
The three-man crew of the shot-down jet
are released a few days later.
They had survived, thanks to their parachutes.
One of them, however, is severely injured.
The Americans deny any allegation that this had been
a reconnaissance flight.
According to them, the jet had strayed,
due to a compass error, unnoticed by the crew.
The Soviets are anything but convinced.
Sergei Savchenko, at the site of his former duty station.
In his role as an interpreter with the staff
of the Soviet Supreme Command in East Germany,
he had become quite familiar with the routines
of the Western military missions.
Basically, we kept track of the activities
of the mission members, of their pranks,
their exploits, their deeds.
Misbehavior.
My room was number 13; the boss's room was number 12.
In the corner, we had Mr. Lodomersky,
Colonel Lodomersky's office, and he was nicknamed
Colonel (speaking foreign language).
Because his service was responsible
for the Glienicke Bridge passage.
The checkpoint at Glienicke Bridge
is the gate through which the Western missions enter
East Germany to proceed to their
assigned areas of operation.
Every car is registered by the authorities.
Whenever a mission tour passes the bridge,
units of the East German state security
are waiting for them.
It's the start of a never-ending game of cat and mouse,
between the snoopers and their shadowers.
(dramatic music)
On February 10th, 1962, the bridge between East
and West makes international headlines.
A few minutes before nine AM, two men are led towards
the middle of the crossing.
On one side, there is Gary Powers
of the notorious U-2 incident.
At the other end is Rudolph Abel, and illegal KGB resident
in the United States, whose cover was blown in 1957.
Ironically, neither side was sure that the exchange
really was a good deal.
(speaking foreign language)
The Americans were gravely concerned
whether Powers might, at some point,
have disclosed vital information to his Soviet captors.
Their interrogation methods, to which he surely
would have been exposed, were notorious.
Doubts were also fueled because he'd let himself
be captured alive, instead of taking the suicide pill
he'd been provided with.
That was held against him, as well as the fact
that he didn't trigger the automatic self-destruct
of his U-2.
And so he kind of fell into disgrace.
The suspicion that Powers might have talked, however,
is not confirmed by later research.
(dramatic music)
At the time of his arrest, Rudolph Abel is regarded
as the most important KGB operative in the field
of nuclear espionage.
He avoids the death penalty, but only just.
His sentence, 40 years in prison,
may well have shown that he was more useful
to his captors alive, in the event of a future spy exchange.
(speaking foreign language)
His brief had been to sort of resurrect
a network of nuclear spies from the wartime period,
and to work as an illegal resident in the USA.
Behind enemy lines, so to speak.
That's what the KGB had trained him for,
and why they subsequently sent him to America.
Yet, it's a gross misunderstanding to see Abel
as this master spy.
During the nine years he resided in the USA,
he did not personally recruit one single new agent.
The Americans had been expecting much more from him
in terms of information than he could deliver.
He just didn't know very much.
So the famous exchange on Glienicke Bridge
merely repatriated two men who, each in their own way,
had disappointed their masters.
But the CIA, as well as the KGB, had no choice.
Those who let their agents down won't find any new recruits.
The Bridge of Spies, a symbol of The Cold War.
Time and again, Nigel Dunkley, Lawrance G. Kelley,
and Jean-Paul Staub, set out from here into East Germany.
They belonged to a hardly-known
elite of intelligence gatherers.
(dramatic music)
Who roamed enemy territory.
They don't think of themselves as spies.
Their tours, they say, had been perfectly legal.
Accredited by the Soviets.
Some covert observation yes, of course.
But in a struggle for information,
it's the results that count.
And as they see it, they managed to deliver.
We observed the Soviets up close and personal,
as the saying goes, and knew the realities
of their armed forces better than anyone else.
Our knowledge was practical, not theoretical.
And we provided our authorities with an unbiased,
first-hand, boots on the ground assessment
of Soviet military capabilities,
which was very important at the height of The Cold War.
Whether uniformed snooper
with a diplomatic passport, or top agent undercover,
the bridge at Glienicke has seen them all.
Intelligence-gatherers on dangerous missions,
across secret fronts.
(dramatic music)