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Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. Housing in Moscow was nearly impossible to find, even for a KGB officer, but sometime that May, hed received a seemingly miraculous letter from his father. 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 divorced his first wife Sheila after his return before entering a second failed marriage. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. 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. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. Penkovsky joined the GRU as an officer, in 1953. It also gave US President John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed, valuable information about Soviet weakness that allowed him to face down Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and resolve the crisis without a nuclear war. 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. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. In his fourth-floor office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, he wrapped up five to seven pounds of secret documents and walked out of the building. This photograph was taken in the hotel room at the Mount Royal in London in April 1961, after one of our meetings, where Oleg Penkovsky on the left and yours truly on the right enjoying a small glass of wine. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne are directly responsible for its positive outcome. But, he adds, I would never, ever see her smile again. She died three years later, in 1988. And the intelligence culture is not going to let that go. 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. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. 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. In the Jack Ryan universe, he is described as the agent who recruited Colonel Mikhail Filitov as a CIA agent (code-name CARDINAL) and had urged Filitov to betray him to solidify his position as the West's top spy in the Soviet hierarchy. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. Cookie Settings, FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, John Hallisey / FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12, 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. Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. 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. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. His character's execution was the opening scene for the movie. [9] While the weight of opinion seems to be that Penkovsky was genuine, the debate underscores the difficulty faced by all intelligence agencies of determining information offered from the enemy. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. In addition to Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk, more than a dozen other sources were exposed. je voulais juste avoir de tes nouvelles what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . They expected I would do something stupid, he told me. [7], Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin does not mention Penkovsky in his comprehensive memoir about his career in intelligence against the West. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. "He did make a life for himself, but Greville Wynne did pay a big price for his service. Here's what to know about Wynne's real history. Your fathers been arrested, the man said. It shortened her life, he said. Morbi eu nulla vehicula, sagittis tortor id, fermentum nunc. They married in 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he worked for an independent newspaper in Moscow for a time. Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry R. Schlesinger, 'Fatal Encounter' BBC TV documentary 3 May 1991, KGB, MI6 and CIA officers involved with the Penkovsky reveal their stories, This page was last edited on 30 January 2023, at 08:39. 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. He was senior enough that you could sit down with the agents for hours and explain the entire context of how Soviet intelligence worked.. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. Wynne went along, slightly concerned about whether Penkovsky was on the level and concerned about putting himself into a dangerous situation, kicking off what would be one of the most productive clandestine operations in Cold War history. That Friday, Gordievsky received a cable ordering him to report to Moscow urgently to confirm his promotion and meet with the KGBs two highest officials. Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. At the time, they were largely accepted at face value and sold well. Theres a fair amount of source material from all different kinds of authors, so by reading everybodynot just Wynnes books, but other historians, and the official history put out by the American side and the Soviet side I was able to try and work out what made the most sense and what seemed liked disinformation, says OConnor. He dropped it, sensing that he was getting into dangerous territory. They had a sumptuous lunchBokhan knew it might be his last meal with his familyand Maria bought a stuffed Greek doll called a patatuff. He succeeded in transferring to the West 111 Minox films with 5,500 top-secret military documents, totaling 7,650 pages, as well as revealing the identities of hundreds of Soviet agents in the West. Then the car started up again, and the radio, which had been playing pop music, suddenly boomed out SibeliusFinlandia. The programme featured original covert KGB footage showing Penkovsky photographing classified information and meeting up with Janet Chisholm, a British MI6 agent stationed in Moscow. Oleg Gordievsky. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, a CIA and MI6 agent deep inside Soviet military intelligence, provided le Carr inspiration for The Russia House (1989). When it came to writing the screenplay, OConnor laments that the true story of Wynnes experiences may never be known. Soon after his arrest she collapsed psychologically. I had no job. He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. In October 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were on the brink of nuclear war after Soviet nuclear missiles were spotted in Cuba. It's athank you from the West for what he sacrificed.". He was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Released in the same week as The Sun's revelations about an alleged spy known as David Smith who worked in Britain's embassy in Berlin, The Courier tells how the married 41-year-old sales consultant was persuaded by MI6 to deliver secrets from Russian spy Oleg Penkovsky. Arrested? He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. Ameeting between theRussian prisoners, in which Wynne tellsPenkovsky of the import of his information, asdepicted in the film, is drama. He was free. The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. The operation was the most productive classic clandestine operation ever conducted by the CIA or MI6 against the Soviet target, as Schecter and Deriabin put it, and key to its success was the mustachioed courier with no prior intelligence experience. The timeline just didnt work to explain Gordievskys recall to Moscow, FBI Special Agent Leslie Wiser, who ran the Ames case, told me. 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. The following article hopes to help you make more suitable choices and . Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. The first meeting between Penkovsky and two American and two British intelligence officers occurred during a visit by Penkovsky to London in April 1961. 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. The documents provided by Penkovsky showed that the Soviet Union was not prepared for war in the area, which emboldened Kennedy to risk the operation in Cuba. He worked as a double agent for the British secret service during the Cold War, between 1974 and 1985. British intelligence officer and Soviet spy. "He came from a very humble background, but was always trying to better himself," says Cumberbatch. I always thought there was another one, he told me. But the CIA and FBI debriefers soon recognized a glaring anomaly in Ames account: It was clear that those three agents had fallen under suspicion in May 1985before Ames insists he handed over the documents. A new spy thriller draws on the fascinating lifeand whopping liesof one of the U.K.s most famous intelligence agents. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. It was scary.. Wynne, despite claiming ignorance of what materials he was smuggling to the West, was sentenced to eight years in prison. Reiser was waiting in a car at the other end. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . This information allowed the West to identify the missile sites from the low-resolution pictures provided by US U-2 spy planes. He is the author of The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. Wynne died of throat cancer in 1990 at a London hospital. 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.. At first I couldnt even recognize him, Andrei said. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. In fact, his contribution to U.S. intelligence and policymaking is exaggerated, distorted, and in several instances falsified. 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. harvp error: no target: CITEREFSchecterDeriabinPenkovskij1992 (. He was probably the Wests most valuable double agent during the Cold War. Investors Helping Baby Boomer Business Owners. Wynne left The Ivy restaurant in Seven Dials that day probably wondering what he'd let himself in for. Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. "In a way, it's a love letter to Penkovsky,"Cumberbatch says. In the late 1960s, after he had been imprisoned for his spycraft and could no longer assist MI6 nor the CIA, the amateur spy authored a pair of books: The Man From Moscow: The Story of Wynne and Penkovsky and The Man From Odessa, that were riddled with falsehoods. His father, Leonid Poleshchuk, was a senior KGB counterintelligence officer, most recently the deputy rezident for counterintelligence in Lagos, Nigeria. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine In April 1985, he has said, he told a Soviet contact in Washington the names of two or three double agents who had approached the CIA but who were actually working for the KGBdangles, in intelligence parlance. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. For a long time he resented the impact of his fathers CIA spying on his own life. Would she ever live in the West? His work . Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. He did so, but nothing happened. With Vladimir Chuprikov, Merab Ninidze, James Schofield, Fred Haig. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. Maybe a fifth. They drove through several checkpoints with no trouble, but they had to stop at Soviet customs when they reached the border. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. 41 ratings1 review. He always hoped Leila would join him in England. The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. Benedict Cumberbatch:Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian'. They have two children, and he works as an independent research analyst for business and government contractors in Northern Virginia. "Most experts agreethat what Penkovsky provided on the Soviet's capabilities was extremely useful during the Cuban Missile crisis," saysRobert English, director of Central European Studies at the University of Southern California. 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. Andrei was allowed to visit him in prison only once, after he was sentenced to death. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. He was to stand on a certain Moscow street corner on a designated day and time until he saw a British-looking man who was eating something. Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benjamin Cumberbatch) in The Courier. Your Privacy Rights He didnt have a choice. Today, Sergei and Alla live quietly in the Sun Belt under his new identity. Oleg Penkovsky Born: April 23, 1919 Birthplace: Vladikavkaz, Russia Death: May 16, 1963, Moscow, USSR (executed by Soviet Union) Jessie Buckley Born: December 28, 1989 Birthplace: Killarney, Ireland Sheila Wynne Keir Hills Andrew Wynne Angus Wright Born: November 11, 1964 Birthplace: Washington, D.C., USA Sir Arthur Temple 'Dickie' Franks The films screenwriter, Tom OConnor, found Wynnes story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. It said Bokhans son, Alex, 18, was having trouble in military school and suggested the deputy take his vacation now, three months early, and return to the Soviet Union to deal with him. This gave American officials a clearer picture of what the Soviets were doing in the region, bringing in medium-range ballistic missiles. 445 & 35. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. He tried again, following the fallback plan, and this time a man carrying a dark-green bag from Harrods, the upscale London department store, walked by eating a candy bar. 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. He works as a computer programmer. By Benjy P. October 15, 2022. Only a few days earlier he had called his brother-in-law in Kiev, where Alex was studying, and been assured his son was doing well. Soon there was a plan for an exfiltration, the CIAs term for spiriting an agent in danger out of a foreign country. His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. 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. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. (1) BBC Broadcast (11th May, 1963) A British businessman accused of spying for the West has been sentenced to eight years' detention by a Moscow tribunal. Director Cooke says Donovan is a composite character representing several real-life people, includingJanet Chisholmthewife of a Moscow-based British visa officer whoalso served as a conduit for information passed to the West by Penkovsky. It dealt with capabilities and intentions. You, in your own mind, have developed this sense of self-importance, says West. 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. This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . You have the wrong number, he was told. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. 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). Wynne was a middle-classBritish businessman whose frequenttravelto Eastern Europe attracted recruitmentby MI-6 to serve as a liaison to high-ranking Soviet official Penkovsky. A KGB general told him he had confessed. MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through . But the chummy interactions between the agents and Penkovskys prolific, even reckless, acquisition of materials grew increasingly perilousand finally caught the KGBs attention. Alex Palmer is a travel and culture writer who lives in Brooklyn. The burden of that is hard to imagine.. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. [2] On Varentsov's recommendation, he studied at the Frunze Military Academy in 1945-48, then worked as a staff officer. Top KGB officers had known for more than a year that Penkovsky was a British agent, but they protected their source, a highly placed mole in MI6. Penkovsky was the highest-ranking Soviet official to provide intelligence for the West up until that time, and is one of several individuals credited with altering the course of the Cold War. Oleg Penkovsky saved the world from mushroom clouds and untold deaths in the fall of 1962. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. Gordievsky was served sandwiches and Armenian brandy. They know.. Cookie Policy There were embraces, and everyone cried. Privacy Statement As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. (Mr. Chisholm now works in London and lives at Ashford. His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . 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. On this trip, Penkovsky submitted to hours of interviews with British and American intelligence officials about the Soviet Unions military and political developments. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. In his memoir Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (1987), written with journalist Paul Greengrass, Wright says: When I first wrote my Penkovsky analysis Maurice Oldfield (later Chief of MI6 in the 1970s), who played a key role in the Penkovsky case as Chief of Station in Washington, told me: 'You've got a long row to hoe with this one, Peter, there's a lot of K's [knighthoods] and Gongs [medals] riding high on the back of Penkovsky' he said, referring to the honours heaped on those involved in the Penkovsky operation. But his leaked information on Soviet missile capabilities and played a key role in President Kennedy'sstrong, successful stance duringthe Cuban Missile Crisis. Moscow, August 3, 1985: It was 2 a.m. when Andrei Poleshchuk got home. 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. In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. In 1962, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky defied his country to save the world from nuclear war then paid for his heroism with his life. Sooner or later they would arrest me.. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. He stayed in safe houses in Virginia at first, then lived half a year in California to learn English, moved back East and consulted for the CIA and some U.S. companies. [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. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. They were convicted of espionage. When it comes to espionage, its hard to know who to trust. Make way for his amateur,everyman spy Greville Wynne in "The Courier," now on premium VOD6. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. Both he and the Soviet leader. cole and rye leather swivel chair; north star cherry tree colorado The agency cautioned that it would be too risky for him to bring that much cash through the airport and told him the money would be in Moscow, stashed inside a fake rock. He drove around Athens in his BMW for close to an hour to make certain he wasnt being followed, then walked into a 100-foot pedestrian tunnel under a highway. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. These events serve as the inspiration for The Courier, the new film starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Wynne and Georgian actor Merab Ninidze as Penkovsky, out in theaters on March 19. Meticulously documenting the wealth of information that Penkovsky provided, Schecter and Deriabin conclusively refute one of the enduring myths of the Cold War - that Oleg Penkovsky was a KGB plant. Moscow seemed to have no clue hed been secretly working for MI6, the British secret intelligence service, for 11 years. 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. He might be dead, or hes living in his dacha now. Wynnes fabrications range from small to huge. 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. The mole isnt just some guy who stole a few secrets. He was thin, pale and obviously sick. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Stay calm, he recalls telling himself. Penkovsky was portrayed by Eduard Bezrodniy in the 2014 Polish thriller Jack Strong, about Ryszard Kukliski, another Cold War spy. There is no statute of limitations for espionage. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. 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.