Talk:Operation Gold

Untitled
Gosh darn it, I wrote spoil because I meant spoil. Spoil is the stuff we pull out of mines and pits when were are looking for ore. Still, I am pleased the article has gone so long with minimal changes. Paul, in Saudi 03:48, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

what happens to the waste spoil?
Does anyone wonder what happens to the waste spoil (i.e. soil and rubble) from operations such as this one? An earlier version of this article stated that the spoil had been stored in warehouses built for the purpose. This may well be true in this particular case but what else might happen to such spoil (especially from smaller jobs carried out in difficult to access locations)? Oddly enough, there is reason to believe that some of it is sometimes transferred to national archives storage in the guise of sealed and classified document boxes. (Yes, they would be very heavy document boxes). The advantage of this method is that no one (outside of the originators of the operation) need ever know what is in the boxes. They can even be passed as diplomatic baggage.


 * This comment by User:81.5.134.81 moved from the article to here. Shenme 05:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Current status
Does anyone know if the tunnel is still there? Worldruler20 (talk) 15:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Observations
I dont' know if I have time to fix this right now, but there are some serious issues here. For example, the description of the tunnel describes it as having been dug from the Russian zone to the American zone, with the tap chamber in the American Zone. Wrong! It went the other way.

Also, the question of spoil from the dig is actually very simple. Some was put in the over-size cellar, and most went into sandbags that were stored along the length of the tunnel. There is an excellent book about the whole adventure available from the Allied Museum in Berlin. I have it, and I'll try to get back here soon and do some serious work on this entry. A lot of the "unknowns" in the article are available through that book, and a salvaged section of the tunnel is on display at the museum.

In answer to the second question, it is currently believed that none of the tunnel remains. The last known section was salvaged by the museum during the construction of the A113 autobahn. Wood Artist (talk) 23:54, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * "most [of the spoil] went into sandbags that were stored along the length of the tunnel." That doesn't make any sense; it would take as least as much space, and probably more (since it wouldn't have been as compacted as it was in situ).Mcswell (talk) 00:06, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Neutrality
I think this article is a little too biased towards the Americans - for example, is it really necessary to begin the body of the article (the "Overview" section) by announcing "Although Operation Gold was planned by the SIS and the CIA, it was CIA money and manpower that carried it out"? Simply moving the word "although" would already make it more neutral: "Operation Gold was planned by the SIS and the CIA, although it was CIA money and manpower that carried it out". The second half of the sentence could even be replaced by "and primarily executed by the CIA." (The word "primarily" is optional, but makes it flow better. From what I understand, some of the translators listening to the phone taps were based in London, so the British might have played some sort of role).

Problems regarding neutrality appear elsewhere too. Paragraph 5 of the "Overview" section boasts that "The covert construction of a 450-metre (1,476-foot) tunnel 6 metres (~20 feet) under the world’s most heavily patrolled border to intersect a series of cable less than 47 cm (18") below a busy street was an exceptional engineering challenge." Is this kind of flowery writing truly necessary, and can it be considered neutral? Would the same language have been used if the French had built such a tunnel? How about the Soviets?

I won't be so bold as to make these changes myself without consulting everybody else, but I think these are very important considerations which have large impact on the neutral character of Wikipedia, as well as, most importantly of all, its professional image. What are your views?

Thanks 78.134.60.102 (talk) 18:48, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

NSA account
Here is the NSA historical account released April 18th 2012, although heavily redacted it contains a large amount of information: http://cryptome.org/2012/04/nsa-operation-regal.pdf Someone interested in further expanding the article could use the extensive references cited as a starting point for FOIA requests to the CIA and NSA which would likely yield additional information. --71.191.197.79 (talk) 05:15, 4 May 2012 (UTC)