Some of you know me. I head up the Intelligence Program here. Before we begin our session and everybody gets set down, id like the make sure there will be q and a at the end. If everyone would be so kind as to shut off your cell phones. Frank fletcher has a very large and heavy mic and if he hears the phone, he will run to you and hit you on the edhad. Be careful. Were dealing with dangerous people. The best thing someone who introduces can do is get out of the way quickly. So im going to try to do that. Well kmnt to Daniel Morgan graduate school of National Security. We have a latest in the series of speakers in the National Security area and thank you to cspan people here as well. Im an old spy i started in cia in the soviet european division. And today i get to find out at long last. James skasal is here today, our speaker. Special forces berlin clandestine cold war operations of the u. S. Army elite from 1956 to 1990. Jim is someone who came out of nebraska, midwest and did a few stints in some very special places as special forces. And then onward to work ngo where he served as an operation career. A concrete archeologist, id like to hear what that is. Last book being the horn of the beast the River Campaign of world war i in south africa. If you would be so kienld as to welcome our friend and author here. [ applause ] well, first off id like to say invitation and hopefully this will be an joyable and a learning experience for some of you. Im winging it to some extent. Given this presentation about five times in the last month and the audience is varied. At one point im preaching to the choir and last week i was preaching to more or less giving a sermon to the college of cardinals. Nothing like briefing Senior Army Officers who live this and know exactly what youre talking about and just waiting to pounce on you. I should, at the very beginning i acknowledge all the serviceman that talks with me, that i serve would. About 8 hp people served in this unit in the 30 some years that it existed and very few have been able to talk to me about it. You managed to pick up my notes. Thank you. But a lot of people said this book could not be written. Its missions were top secret up until a number of years ago. I had to go through a complete review process. It took about 14 months to get through that process. Everything was classified before and now its not. But anyway. This is the history, the story of not only the unit but of the people who served there. Like i said 800 guys, very diverse membership, first europeans. Quite a diverse unit. But to really get to the heart of the matter, we have to go back to just after world war ii. As you all know we fought world war ii with our allies, france, britain of course the commonwealth countries a number of others with the soviet union. We started to realize it soviet union was perhaps not the partner we wanted to continue going to the ball with so to speak. Stalins rhetoric will not the czechoslovakia. And the berlin air lift in 1949 1950. Were all signs that our relationships with the russians was going badly. A gentleman by it name of George Kennen who wrote a very long telegram out of moscow outlined his had worries and fears and that really outlined american policy for the next 30 years. Tilted the United States towards containment of the soviet union and became even more offensive in the 1950s when korea was when south korea was ifvaded by north korea. Of course it domino theory was beginning to be explained for one of the reasons of the containment theory. The it government also started looking at rollback as a possible policy and rollback was nothing more than pushing the soviet union back to strip it of its Eastern Europe and european countries. Roam in aia, yugal slav yug slavia, and the Czech Republic were all within it soviet sphere. And the british mi6 or secret Intelligence Service began to run programs to actually turn those countries against the soviet union. As we all know most of them did not work out so well, primarily because of a gentleman like jim dullby. But about that same time it u. S. Army was rethinking its conventional mindset. The office of Strategic Service been eliminated after world war ii. It peace, the army was concentrating on conventional warfare and about 1950s people started to think we needed more of an unconventional approach to things. So a number of military officers got together and created what became to be known as special forces. The first group was created. Its mission was to conduct Unconventional Warfare. That is direct action, guerilla warfare behind enemy lines. This wasinate a new thought but it was a rethink of some old ways of doing warfare. 1953 special forces group is moved forward to germany. And stationed down here south of munich. That group was given the mission of conducting Unconventional Warfare in all the countries i talked about except one, east germany. About 1955 the berlin commander who had had with his allies a total of about 12,000 troops in the small city wrong button. Of course the divided city of berlin 110 miles behind the iron curtain decided he have had an offensive mission. 12,000 u. S. Troops or u. S. Led troops surrounded by east russian and german troops. Fair odds. He requested abtuach teams from his commander in west germany and the and gave him six special forces team who would be there permanently. Stationed in the american sector and their mission would be to compare for your warfare in east germany. 1956, the first six teams go up there and this unit would stay in one form or another for about 44 years until after the berlin wall fell. Their missions were Unconventional Warfare, sabotage. One thing you see on this chart is this green trace. This is the Major Railway thorough fair that goes through east germany. Basically rails from the south, hungary, from poland all conver converge. This was a strategic charter. And so these six teams became a strategic cog for all of nato. As general rogers put it in the 1980s, he said basically your mission is one thing, to buy me time and these guys were basically stationed at this small barracks in the american sector if war would come, they would disappear into the city, wait for the opportunity time to cross over the wall and sabotage key targets along this railway. Later on this target was thrown in and this target was thrown in. Those were the command bunkers for the soviet forces. Again its pretty fair odds. This one, for example, the soviet one was guarded by three soviet regimens. So about 12,000 troops. 12 guys against 12,000. Not a bad thing. So for 30 years these guys stayed in the city and planned for the mission but i should go back and say give you information about the guy whose were there. There had was no special test to say you qualified for berlin. If you were special forces you had the qualifications with one caveat. You had to speak an Eastern European language or german well eff to pass as a local or to confuse the east germans and russians for long enough you could do your mission and you had to be able to accept the fact you were going to wear civilian clothes, which was important because wearing civilian clothes meant if you were captured by the east germans or the russians you would be within probably five to 10 minutes shot as a spy. So with those two caveats the first 40 people were sent in 1956. Those 40 volunteers no one had any problems and for the next 34 years a lot of guys served there and never gave it a Second Thought of what lousy odds they had in front of them. As i said a lot of them were americans, probably at the beginning 60 were first or second generation. Either hungarian or russian in some cases. Russian was the predominate language and 30 were lodge act recruits. And that was public law 57, which was passed very early in the skiktsz rr to get Eastern Europeans to join the American Military just for this type of an operation. A lot of them served up into berlin. A lot of the people were immigrants from Eastern Europe and came into the american army. So quite an Interesting Group of people. They were train ood be clandestine soldiers. Not only did they need to know the military skills, but the trade skills to operate as a clandestine force. Because when the war started they knew that the russian, the kgb and the east german mfs were going to be looking for them. Not only would they shut down the west berlin government but they would geafter the command centers, the police force and they would also go after any elite units they thought might be in the city. Naturally the unit, special forces berlin was known as detachment a at the time was one of the targets. So immediately on receiving information that war was imminent or if it would actually happen, the unit would not go back to its Head Quarters but disperse into the city and operate as an underground with it help of germans who had had been sought out using safe houses, using nontechnical communications to talk with each other, as well aztecniccal Communications Like vhf radios and disappear until such time as they could cross over the wall to do their main target. Two teams would remain in the city to give it russians and east german as hard time. Destroy critical targets like power plants to give east german as hard time. While the other guys would cross over the walls to hit these targets. The red squaresroom rail yards and if you could sabotage one of those rail yards to actually slow traffic for 24 to 72 hours, that would dwgive the american troops that mission where they could meet and hopefully defeat a russian attack. Nato a big problem in the 1950s 1960s with 72 total divisions sitting west in west germany. The russians on the other hand and the east germans and their allies had a minimum of 96 divisions just on this side and another 100 or so a bit further east. So this rail line is going to be critical. But to slow these troops down, this was a hail mary pass. They figured that east germany would be a pretty well denied area. The east german and Russian Air Defense systems were pretty good then. Not impen trbl but close. So we knew we couldnt fly airplanes in and have them survive. So these six team wurz going to be critical to the Unconventional Warfare plan. Now the guys that came into the unit. As i said were kind of unconventional. First off they have to be a bit odd to begin with. I can say that because i am one. But as i said they trained unconventionally from very early on they did are the Standard Special Forces kind of training. This is actually where they were stationed. This is the old Head Quarters of the prussian senior cadette school during the time of bill helm, the emperor. This is a very nice olympic pool and these buildings were constructed by the American Engineers after world war ii. This was also the Head Quarters for the first ss division during world war ii. So obviously we took it as a prize after the war and for about 30 years the unit was located in this outfit. This barracks. Front door of course. Very innocuous. One of the issues that weve come up later was the unit a bare modicum of cover. It was detachment a berlin. Its mission was to sonority berlin brigade but beyond that, the story peatered off. If someone would ask you specific questions, then everybody was pretty well on their own for making up their story. So that was a problem area that came out later. The wall at the time was not a wall. The city itself, the outside of the city was surrounded by small fence and towers. Not difficult thing to cross. The inhad teterior of the city walled off. Thats the brandonberg gate of course. You could walk across, drive across. So getting in to east berlin and east germany was not a problem. Sp of the first guys that came looked like any other soldier. You look at their name tagz and theres quite a few Eastern European names. We trained unconventional type warfare tactics in east germany. Obviously berlin was the city the size of approximately new york surrounded by a fence. Not easy to run military exercises in the city. So we would go out to the west. This of course is practicing a truck ambush in germany. Youll notice these guys dont seem to be wearing uniforms, thats because theyre not. That weapon right there is a world war ii german submachine gun. Airborne operations just like the guys, the unit did airborne operations. Not because they thought they might actually have to use them but to keep up their qualifications was easier than having to retrain them later and you can never tell with a mission might come up somewhere else that would require it. Lieutenant colonel roman peernic was a polish immigrant of the United States, served with general gavin in world war ii. In berlin 1946 47, came back as a unit commander. Anybody in todays army would recognize this guy as what we call a leg, a nonairborne qualified soldier. At looeast until you look right there. Those are Service Stripes for overseas combat zone. Speck 5 medic with three senior military decorations for valor in north korea. Just an indication of some of the people that served in this unit. Falling out of an airplane. As i said, parachuting. People often asked me why would anybody want to jump out of an airplane. I said if youve ever flown in an air force aircraft. Sorry. Small unit operations required using small airplanes. This is practicing for message drops in small units. That was based out of berlin. Quite useful for setting down on short air strips or in farmers fields anyplace, anytime. 1956. This is what the teams looked like. This is actually an exercise in west germany. Theyre still carrying american weapons because they have not been able to get enough communist block or eastern german weapons. This is an interesting story. It was about the time that government started thinking about using Small Nuclear weapons as a way to slow down the russians. So the engineers had a version they could blow up a bridge. But somebody came up with an even better idea. Why dont you give special forces guys one of these things and see what they can do with them. Because the unit had members that were all top secret cleared, this was the First Special forces team that was trained to use the atomic demolition mission. Back then it was not quite so small. Four pieces, 400 pounds with a low kiloton yield which would be enough that if you left it in the basement of the building, it would probably clear out five square blocks. But you can imagine what these things would have done to that railway around berlin. Later on the unit acquired german weapons. Nobody knows what this is. Its a walter mpk. This is what walter p38 used by both sides. More interesting weapons. Thats called the well rod mark 1 hand fire dg vice, developed by the british. Very silent weapon. Completely unmarked. Single shot but it had a magazine that operated like a piece of plumbing equipment. Small radios. That piece on the left side about the size of this book. This is called an rx 6, it was called an agent radio. An hf radio that had a Transmission Distance of about 6,000 miles. So from germany you can easily communicate with your Head Quarters in england or wherever. Later on we switch to british equipment. But thats neither here nor there. 1961. The wall goes up. Makes the mission a bit more difficult. That wall splits the city. And goes all the way around. 110 miles. Of total wall. Donald trump could get some ideas from this. Of course you have to remember it took them 30 years to perfect it before they decided it did work and they knocked it down. The teams had had to come up with if had genius ways to cross the wall, to find out how to get there to their target sites. This is a target model of their wall crossing point. We had intelligence available from the air force from east german who would be interrogated. Very close up looks by our people at it wall and we could determine ways to kracros that l without being caught. One of the things you did not want to do is cross the wall and find out youre in an east German Military base. We had had to do recognizance on both sides. The wall had had one fallacy. It was designed to keep their people in, it was not designed to keep people out. So there were ways in. But as i said 30 years they can start to perfect things. Decent motorcycles, dogs, not so much as an attack device but as an Early Warning device because they were very atuned to who or what was in the area. East germans of course are as interested in what were doing as they are. So thats very close to check point charley. But you see the layers of defense. Wall fence, obstacles and then another wall right here. Very difficult for the east germans. Thats up in the french sector. So this is the wall between west berlin and east germany, not east berlin. So obviously you had to find a location that was a bit closer, bit easier to get across and as i said all methods were used to find out information. Having personal knowledge of that photo, that tower was empty. Did not want to risk getting shot in the back. A also you didnt think about just going over the wall or through the wall, you had to think about going under. So the city of berlin has more sewer systems, more canal systems than amsterdam, for example. So we also worked with scuba ge gear, demolitions using scuba gear in the water. Just had to know what your enemy was. Thats one of the east german patrol boats. But as i said if youre under water with a nonbubble making device like a rebreather, scuba gear. Then you can get under these things and through these things. Not only could we get into east berlin throu