Long ago, I started the novel ‘Berlin Diary’, set it aside, and wrote four others. I have again taken it up. We’ll see how it turns out.
The story takes place in the Summer and Fall of 1973, its center point the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the US October DEFCON 3 alert.
On October 7, 1973, the combined Arab armies launched a surprise attack on Israel. The Egyptian Army crossed the Suez and drove into the Sinai desert; the Syrian Army attacked the Golan Heights and (in my opinion) came within hours of breaking through into the Jordan River valley.
(We will never know why the Syrian Army paused on the night of October 9, 1973. Perhaps the Syrian Army achieved its assigned plan of advance and stopped per the plan. The Syrian-Egyptian objectives may have been limited.)
On the night of October 24, 1973, in response to certain Soviet alerts, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger raised the US alert status to DEFCON 3. US nuclear bombers deployed to dispersal bases.
Yours truly was the Dog flight commander, 6912th Security Squadron, Berlin Marienfelde, and on duty that October 24 night. I was in the communications center reading message traffic when the printers began spewing miles of message ordering US forces to prepare for war
My response was to murmur, “H’oly Shitski.” It was Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August all over again. (Her fundamental point was that the WWI couldn’t be stopped once the Imperial German Army’s Schlieffen plan was set in motion. Action inspired reaction, and on and on, and millions died.)
The good news;
The Soviet response was to ignore the US war preparations. Why?
The bad news:
Here is one possibility.
In 1965, US Navy Chief Petty Officer John Walker, a communications specialist, began selling US cryptologic codes to the Soviet Union. From 1967 to 1985, the Walker-Whitworth Spy Ring sold the farm .
The Soviet security organs had access to EVERY message the US transmitted. One cannot overstate the complete Soviet access to US secrets—the US SIOP, cryptologic strategy, everything. The US had no secrets (and would have no secrets for years to come). The Soviet cryptologist knew the US cryptologic architecture in detail. For example, In Vietnam, we wondered how the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong knew of our B-52 strikes days before we line officers knew.
The good news—if there was good news—was that the Soviet leaders knew the US nuclear alert was a bluff, and blew off Henry Kissinger’s huffing and puffing. This a 23-year-old first lieutenant that October evening did not know. This lack of Soviet reaction to a US sneeze was unprecedented.
But, this I and the US Military officer corps did know. The Arab war plan was the Soviet war plan, and we observed the Soviet Army purchasing and preparing on a daily basis the weapons and formations with which they intended to use to over run NATO. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War formed my military career—in Berlin, at the National Security Agency, at HQ USAFE, and at HQ USAF–we built the capabilities to defeat the 1973 Soviet war plan.
As an aside, I still maintain contact with some 6912th Security Squadron linguists (Berlin, Germany, 1971-1974). As flight commander and from time to time Officer-in-Charge of OPSEC/COMSEC OIC, I gave fire-and-brimstone security indoctrinations. Cotton Mather, the New England fundamentalist preacher who burned witches, had nothing on me. “Lose one codeword scrap of paper, you will spend the rest of your life in Fort Leavenworth (or perdition, your choice)!”
50+ odd years later, grown men still quake at the threat.
I will next look into Signal-Gate, not so much the security lapse, but the Washington, D.C. double-cross. I am having trouble writing the double-cross scene in ‘Berlin Diary.’ How Jeffrey Goldberg double-crossed Mike Walz to get Peter Hegseth is the stuff of the Washington, D.C. I observed close-up.
Crack 6912th SS officer preparing to do battle with the enemy
