Cracks in the Wall

IN NOVEMBER 1989, I WORKED in a bunker filled with special phone lines that started ringing with message traffic about cracks in the Berlin Wall. By the 9th of November 1989, the border separating West Germany from East Germany was peeled back. In my work position, the wire traffic between the Department of State and American Embassy officials was more like a low-threat war exercise. If I had blogged about the events I would have lost my job. Twenty years ago to the day, the colonels and generals above me were more interested in articulating policy regarding ground transportation to Berlin and offering command guidance about the severe strain on accommodation that a widespread influx of Americans would create in Berlin. As soon as CNN started reporting the breach in the Wall, I asked for time off from the 23rd to the 27th of November. With the request honoured, I pushed off for Berlin with my family, including Kitty at left. We had a lovely time walking along the killing zone, eating French Onion soup at Checkpoint Charlie and returning home with chunks of the wall. A year later, I would discover that our departure from the West and travel to the East was monitored by US intelligence agents who were preparing a dossier for action. My journey to East Berlin would form part of a story that seems incredulous now but in the paranoid minds of counterintelligence, the way I traveled and the contacts I would form a body of evidence that would cause my world to come tumbling down.

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Berlin in my Flickr photostream.

Dan York -- "Die Mauer ist weg."

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