ABSTRACT
The dispatch of agents into East Germany via Berlin was an easy task before the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Only good documents and a railway ticket were needed. These operations were also eased by the readiness of many educated East Germans to work for the West and of many West Germans to recruit relatives and other contacts in the East. The CIA had a rich supply of German-speaking case officers to handle them. The Iron Curtain was a formidable obstacle, and the agents willing and able to cross it were limited not in number, but in proper education and useful contacts "inside." With the Communist takeover of China in the fall of 1949, the second circle extended to the Pacific, for Communist China was then, against all common sense, viewed as a Soviet "satellite." Mainland China became a denied area, curtained off by coastal controls except in the southwest and in Tibet.
