A colonel in Soviet military intelligence, Oleg Penkovsky, was working for them as an agent-in-place, photographing thousands of top-secret documents with a miniature camera, and delivering the. One theory is that Penkovsky wrote his message in broad brush strokes. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. They had a sumptuous lunchBokhan knew it might be his last meal with his familyand Maria bought a stuffed Greek doll called a patatuff. Peter Wright, a former British MI5 officer known for his scathing condemnation of the leadership of British intelligence during most of the Cold War, believed that Penkovsky was a fake defection. You have the wrong number, he was told. Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. It was the signal to launch his escape. This gave American officials a clearer picture of what the Soviets were doing in the region, bringing in medium-range ballistic missiles. "In a way, it's a love letter to Penkovsky,"Cumberbatch says. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . Even the official accounts put out by American and Russian authorities regarding the Penkovsky affair include disinformation and spin that he, or any historian, has to navigate through. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. Oleg Gordievsky and Leila Alieva met in Copenhagen: she was a typist for the World Health Organization; he was an unhappily married KGB officer, and a spy for MI6. Cookie Settings, Liam Daniel, Courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky born 23 April 1919 died 16 May 1963, USSR codenamed HERO, was a colonel with Soviet military intelligence (GRU) during the late . He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. To top it off, it would have been physically impossible at the time. Terms of Use He has two daughters. Between April 1961 and August 1962 Penkovsky passed more than 5,000 photographs of classified military, political, and economic documents to British and U.S. intelligence forces. [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. Between April 1961 and October 1962, Penkovsky inflicted enormous damage on the Soviet Union. Alex Palmer After a West German agent overheard a remark at Stasi headquarters, paraphrased as "I wonder how things are going in Cuba" he passed it on to the CIA. It shortened her life, he said. On the front door of his apartment, someone had locked a third lock he never used because he had lost the key; he had to break in. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne are directly responsible for its positive outcome. And their actions were directly responsible for the hotline that now exists between the White House and the Kremlin to prevent nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. Moscow, August 3, 1985: It was 2 a.m. when Andrei Poleshchuk got home. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. But the chummy interactions between the agents and Penkovskys prolific, even reckless, acquisition of materials grew increasingly perilousand finally caught the KGBs attention. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . In 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. After some months, she was released. In Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. Wynne and Penkovsky were both arrested by the KGB in November 1962, when some of the information their endeavours produced was of assistance to the West during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Oleg Penkovsky was a Soviet military intelligence colonel during the late Fifties and early Sixties responsible for informing the UK about the Kremlin's emplacement of missiles in Cuba. In 1944, he was assigned to the headquarters of Colonel-General Sergei Varentsov, commander of artillery on the 1st Ukrainian front, who became his patron. They were alone in the world with this incredible burden except for the other man.. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. Long after the massive losses in 1985, the lingering questions still gnaw at their counterintelligence experts. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. After many years, I understood him. Penkovsky's fate is also mentioned in the Nelson DeMille spy novel The Charm School (1988). He might be dead, or hes living in his dacha now. For his treason, Penkovsky was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad days after the trial ended (though Wynne would later claim he died of suicide). The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. Within two weeks after his flight to the United States, he had a new name, a fake background, a Social Security number and a 9-millimeter Beretta. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". Bokhans son, Alex, also made it to the U.S., in 1995. He just was an ordinary man who got thrust into this just extraordinary, life-altering situation that was going to define his existence forever, says OConnor. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. Oleg Penkovskiy. After the initial meeting in December 1960, Penkovsky provided Wynne with film of Soviet military documents and later promised more information if an arrangement with British or American intelligence could be made. Penkovsky approached American students on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow in July 1960 and gave them a package in which he offered to spy for the United States. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. I was 18 years old. He sees that episode differently now. Make way for his amateur,everyman spy Greville Wynne in "The Courier," now on premium VOD6. A member of the Communist Party, he took part in the invasion of Finland and by the end of the Second World War had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. After taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. Penkovsky either was shot or killed himself in prisonthere are disputing accounts. In June he was expelled from the Central Committee for 'having relaxed his political vigilance.' After months of negotiations, the British government was eventually able to arrange a trade of Wynne for the Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale, whod been arrested the year before and was serving a 25-year sentence in England. It's athank you from the West for what he sacrificed.". Penkovsky's story is a tragic and revealing one, and it is regrettable that with it all he did not tell us more of what he could tell best, the story of his own life and of the lives of his close associates.-GEORGE A . It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. They have two children, and he works as an independent research analyst for business and government contractors in Northern Virginia. Sergei Bokhan was also separated from his family for six years. During their visits, Penkovsky and Wynne would get out on the town, visiting restaurants, nightclubs and shops under the cover of talking business, with each man proudly showing the other around his home country. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. Strange" to Sherlock Holmes. Dun s denouement is both startling and convincing a fitting climax to this irresistible real life thriller Francis Wheen, Mail on Sunday 'This excellent book contains lessons that are still valid in the 21st century' --Oleg Gordievsky, Literary Review 'This excellent book contains lessons that are still valid in the 21st . That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. "He started as a nave amateur. Then the car started up again, and the radio, which had been playing pop music, suddenly boomed out SibeliusFinlandia. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, (born April 23, 1919, Vladikavkaz, Russiadied May 1963?, U.S.S.R.), senior Soviet military intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for the United Kingdom and the United States. Thats when they showed me a piece of paper with the words, I met Joe, Andrei told me. Penkovsky was in fact arrested by the Soviets on Oct. 22, 1962, at the height of that crisis, after they realized that highly classified information was leaking to the West. The daughter of a Russian mother . He had lost a lot of weight. Cookie Policy Cookie Policy Penkovsky was referred to in four of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan espionage novels: The Hunt for Red October (1984), The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), The Bear and the Dragon (2000) and Red Rabbit (2002). [17] A similar description was later included in Ernest Volkman's popular history book about spies, Tom Clancy's novel Red Rabbit and in Viktor Suvorov's book Aquarium. He was arrested on October 22nd. Had the Russians examined the car, they would have seen the hump on the floor where the driveshaft would normally be. Updates? Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . Oleg Penkovsky, then a colonel in Russia's military intelligence service known as the GRU, had already passed along intelligence about the shoot-down of American satellite planes in Soviet territory and information on his own GRU graduating class. Posted on . But this Land Rovers driveshaft had been rerouted through one of the vehicles doors, the former CIA officer says, so that Gordievsky could fold himself into the hump, in effect hiding in plain sight. U.S. counterintelligence agents have established that neither Howard nor Hanssen had access to the identities of all the American intelligence sources who were betrayed in 1985. He was senior enough that you could sit down with the agents for hours and explain the entire context of how Soviet intelligence worked.. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. That raised a possibility that remains, even today, a subject of deep concern among counterintelligence agents, a problem privately acknowledged but little discussed publicly: That the three agents may have been betrayed by a mole inside U.S. intelligence whose identity is still unknown. I was angry because I was dropped from military school and sent to the Army, far off, near Vladivostok, he said. | READ MORE. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. He traveled frequently, to the United States, Germany, France, New Zealand, Australia, South America and the Middle East. He asked them to deliver it to an intelligence officer at the US Embassy. There were certain anomalies that took place that we just couldnt put our finger on., And Bearden says, I remain convinced there is a fourth man. They were convicted of espionage. But over time, intelligence experts and those involved in the case, though reluctant to share sensitive information, cast doubt on much of what Wynne laid out in his books. By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. pictures of the galvin family; springfield, ma city council candidates; what happened to penkovsky wife Greville Wynnefitthe bill simply assomebody who was taking business into Eastern Europe.". He did so, but nothing happened. Oleg Penkovsky saved the world from mushroom clouds and untold deaths in the fall of 1962. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." Some of it just didnt add up, he says. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara. According to an official Soviet announcement, he was executed on May 16, 1963, though other reports have him committing suicide while in a Soviet camp. The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benjamin Cumberbatch) in The Courier. In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. In August 1960, a Soviet colonel called Oleg Penkovsky tried to make contact with the West. They drove through several checkpoints with no trouble, but they had to stop at Soviet customs when they reached the border. For several years, they'd noticed Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a war hero and high-ranking official in the Soviet intelligence services, making overtures to Western diplomats and even tourists; the. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. In the midst of the Cold War, a top-ranking Soviet officer named Oleg Penkovsky feared that the risk of nuclear war was too great, and decided to share some of the most closely held secrets of the Soviet arsenal with the West. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . It said his parents had unexpectedly heard of an apartment they could buy for him; his father decided to take his vacation early and come home to close the deal. In one of his biggest whoppers, Wynne explains that he and Penkovsky took a trip together in a private military jet from the U.K. to Washington, D.C. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. troops.[15]. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. In extended CIA and FBI debriefings, he talked about his nine years of spying for Moscowincluding the day when he turned over, in his words, the identities of virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me.. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. The KGB surveilled Janet and witnessed her meeting with Penkovsky. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed. [10], The Soviet leadership began the deployment of nuclear missiles, in the belief that Washington would not detect the Cuban missile sites until it was too late to do anything about them. This time it's a true story:Wynne served as an unassuming go-between for British intelligence MI-6 and Russian spyOleg Penkovsky atthe height of the Cold War. During a trip to London in April 1961, the Soviet colonel held a series of . Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. In fact, his contribution to U.S. intelligence and policymaking is exaggerated, distorted, and in several instances falsified. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. In a letter to me from the federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, where he is serving a life sentence, Ames wrote: Im quite sure of my recollection that I gave the KGB no names of any other than the two or three double agents/dangles I provided in April 85, until June 13th.. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. (Howard, Russian authorities reported in 2002, died of a fall in his KGB dacha near Moscow. Russia was building missile bases in Cuba, armed with nuclear . The coded exchange triggered a meeting that night with his CIA case officer, Dick Reiser, who cabled headquarters in Langley that BLIZZARD was in trouble. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). Penkovsky never knew his father, who was killed fighting as an officer in the White Army in the Russian Civil War when he was a baby. Penkovskys dynamism and enthusiasm, his wide-ranging and passionate denunciations of the Soviet system and its leaders illustrated with anecdotes, fascinated and captivated the American and British teams, write Schecter and Deriabin. When it came to writing the screenplay, OConnor laments that the true story of Wynnes experiences may never be known. The emaciated Wynne's returntohis middle-class Londonhomewherehis wife and child waited made for a jarring scene in newsreels at the time. [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. In June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. He worked as a double agent for the British secret service during the Cold War, between 1974 and 1985. Among the materials Penkovsky provided to Wynne were four photocopies of plans for construction sites of missile-launching installations in Cuba. Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. The information he provided on the Soviets relatively weak capability in long-range missiles proved invaluable to the United States before and during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. MI6's agent, however, eventually fell under suspicion, and was ordered back. From the day they talked, Wiser told me, we believed it was important for us to consider the strong possibility that Gordievsky was compromised by someone within the U.S. intelligence community., Wiser acknowledges that Ames may have lied or been mistaken about the dateAmes has conceded that he drank heavily before his meetings with the KGB. When I found a job, the KGB called and they fired me. 3.80. The Cuban Missile Crisis was high-stakes brinkmanship played out between US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, bringing Washington and Moscow to the precipice of nuclear war in October 1962. Benedict Cumberbatch is known for bringing outlandish, extraordinary characters, from Marvel's "Dr. MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through . Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. While its standard for Hollywood films to take liberties with the facts, insert composite characters, devise imagined conversations, and smooth-out timelines to ensure a brisk pace, its less common for a based-on-a-true-story movie to have to be more truthful than the source material. He played a role in both the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. He was detained at Lubyanka prison. Penkovsky joined the GRU as an officer, in 1953. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. The mere belief that theres another mole, whether correct or not, can cause chaos inside an intelligence agency. Maybe a fifth. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. They were driven to the infamous Lefortovo prison for interrogation. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . Terms of Use Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. Kennedy was deprived of information from a potentially important intelligence agent, such as reporting that Khrushchev was already looking for ways to defuse the situation, which might have lessened the tension during the ensuing 13-day stand-off. They know.. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine During the 1960s, a corrosive mole hunt led by James J. Angleton, the CIAs counterintelligence chief, led to institutional paranoia, paralyzed operations aimed at the Soviet Union, and disrupted the lives of many innocent CIA officers who were fired or sidetracked in their careers. Wynne would later relate that as he walked down the steps of an exhibition pavilion, four men suddenly appeared as a car pulled up and Wynne was pushed inside. The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. Poleshchuk was lured back to his fate. cole and rye leather swivel chair; north star cherry tree colorado I will never forget the day when I got home and she was singing songs, melodies, no words, and looking insane. President John Kennedy read it and understood. If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. Son And Daughter Now Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were both arrested by the Soviets in 1962. After months of interrogation at Lefortovo, Andrei Poleshchuk told his captors he wouldnt answer any more questions unless they told him who his father worked for. At the time, they were largely accepted at face value and sold well. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. The following article hopes to help you make more suitable choices and . In 1961, jet travel did not allow someone to fly from the U.K. to the U.S. and back again in 24 hours, says West. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. And yet to an intelligence agency, ignoring the possibility of a mole isnt really an option, either. His escape plan was bound under the flyleaf of a novel; he had to slit the cover open to read the instructions. He was selected for the post of military attach in India, but the KGB had uncovered the story of his father's death, and he was suspended, investigated, and assigned in November 1960 to the State Committee for Science and Technology. Even though Wynne wasnt exactly a reliable narrator for what he did during his time as a secret agent, the materials he smuggled from behind the Iron Curtain were the real thing. In Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky. But over the course of their two-year friendship, Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne clandestinely smuggled 5000 top-secret documents from Russia to England and the United States. He started having trouble breathing. They worked hard, shadowing British diplomats, to build up a "discovery case" against Penkovsky so that they could arrest him without throwing suspicion on their own moles. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. what happened to penkovsky wifemostar bridge jump injuries. He didnt have a choice. Today, Sergei and Alla live quietly in the Sun Belt under his new identity. Alexander Zagvozdin, chief KGB interrogator for the investigation, stated that Penkovsky had been "questioned perhaps a hundred times" and that he had been shot and cremated. This was prior to President Kennedy's address to the US revealing that U-2 spy plane photographs had confirmed intelligence reports that the Soviets were installing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, in what was known as Operation Anadyr. A few days after Oleg Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow, the KGB flew his wife, Leila, and their two daughters there, and he broke the unwelcome news that they would not be posted back to London. Your Privacy Rights In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. He has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. [6] This information was invaluable to President John F. Kennedy in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. It was pathological with him.. [Wynne], bless him, for all his wonderful work, was a menace and a fabricator, says Nigel West, who has written numerous books on British and American intelligence organizations, including two books specifically about fabricators in the intelligence arena. Penkovsky was portrayed by Christopher Rozycki in the 1985 BBC Television serial Wynne and Penkovsky. Athens, May 21, 1985: After the Tuesday-morning staff meeting at the Soviet Embassy, Col. Sergei Ivanovich Bokhan stayed behind to talk to his boss, the local rezident of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. There were embraces, and everyone cried. Benedict Cumberbatch:Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian'. Finally, in 1991, with the KGB in disarray after its chief led the failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the authorities let Alla and her daughter leave. The "cremated alive" hypothesis appears in several Clancy novels, though Clancy never identified Penkovsky as the executed spy. Wynne died of throat cancer in 1990 at a London hospital. He had champagne and flowers waiting, a big basket of fruit, chocolates and a balloon. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap.
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