The 1 a.m., eyes-only cable shot into the heat and tension that enveloped the Berlin Wall in August 1962.

Three West Berlin groups had finished tunneling from a lumberyard next to a railroad freight station in the U.S. sector, under the wall and into communist East Berlin. They hoped to bring out up to 90 people. About 6 feet of digging remained to break through the ground next to a large parking lot.

CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr and a German cameraman had taken three rolls of film inside the tunnel after agreeing to pay the groups 5,000 deutsch marks for the television rights.