Current students understandably decline to describe their adventures in the tunnels for fear of disciplinary action, but one graduate recently described his tunnel adventures. "When I was a freshman, we used to go [into the tunnels] through our entry in Wigglesworth," says Saied Kashani '86, a first-year law student.

"I had heard Harvard had tunnels," Kashani says. "I was curious. I thought with the weather being cold, they would be useful." When Kashani found a key to the basement door of Wiggleworth E entry, he discovered that he and his friends could check out the tunnels for themselves.

"They had electric alarms, but you could defeat them with a screwdriver," he says. "They never discovered us."

Kashani made several voyages of exploration into the subterranean passages, both with and without the aid of electricity. "They're all lit, if you can find the light switches. If you can't find the light switches, it's pretty scary," he says. "In all that time, I never took a flashlight down there," he continues. "That would increase your chances of getting caught."

He once walked along in the dark through the tunnel that runs from Weld Hall to Sever Hall. "If you ever walk through a dark tunnel, you can't walk straight," he says. "It's a very strange feeling. You start reeling towards the wall. You lose your sense of orientation, of equilibrium." He finally made it, though, and the next time he went through the passage he made sure he found the light switch.

While most students face disciplinary charges for entering the tunnels, Aaron L. Silverstone '87, WHRB's station manager, and Tomasz M. Dindorf '87, its chief engineer, are authorized to make trips into the tunnels to work on the station's lines.

The station owns one of the precious keys which open every door in the tunnels.

"We have keys," Silverstone says, "[but] we notify them whenever we go in because they know instantly when we go in."

Having a key doesn't always help. Last August, Silverstone and Dindorf got temporarily lost in the tunnels. "Our job was done," Dindorf says. "We were exploring just for fun."

They ended up in the Lowell House kitchen and found that all the doors were locked. "For a while we thought we were doomed," Silverstone says. "We had to get out through the place where the trays go through."

"We sort of slid out like dirty plates," says Dindorf. "[Then] we just slipped through a gate which wasn't too tightly closed." Nobody outside noticed, he adds.

For some, the fascination with tunnels can last more than the four years they spend at school here. Years after Tonis and the suspected spy engaged in their cat-and-mouse game, Tonis was appointed Chief of Harvard Police. When he came to Cambridge, he decided to return to the scene of the chase and explore the tunnels. "I was interested. When I came to Harvard, I explored them...from the Law School to the Business School to satisfy my curiosity," he said.