Penkovsky informed the United States and the United Kingdom about Soviet military secrets, most importantly, the appearance and footprint of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile installations and the weakness of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile program. I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. In simple terms, the GRU was Soviet army intelligence. For two years I went to Lefortovo two, three times a week, Alla Bokhan told me. His ashes were allegedly dumped in a mass grave in Moscow. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. Bokhans son, Alex, also made it to the U.S., in 1995. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), a far more experienced Russian agent. Wynne was arrested in Budapest and extradited to the Soviet Union. Penkovsky was put on trial for treason in May 1963 and was found guilty and sentenced to death. Penkovsky was decorated four times during his 1939-1940 tour of duty. He sort of fought the Nazis off in Kiev, and was leading that and was decorated 13 times. Born deep in the heart of Russia, Penkovsky soon found himself fighting against Germany as an artillery officer during World War II. He was the real deal. In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. 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. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. However, while working together, something unexpected happens: The two men become friends. However, the two were captured by the KGB after the Russians discovered that they were being neutralized. For Oleg Penkovsky, however, his world-altering espionage work hastened his death. The first meeting between Penkovsky and two American and two British intelligence officers occurred during a visit by Penkovsky to London in April 1961. By that time, the armys main concern was crushing Nazi Germany, and during World War II, Penkovsky fought as an artillery officer. Boy and daughter now Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky were captured by the Soviets in 1962. After Ames was arrested and charged with espionage, his attorney, Plato Cacheris, negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors: Ames wife, Rosario, an accomplice in his spying, would be spared a long prison sentence if he cooperated fully with the authorities. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. 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. I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin". So the discrepancy between Ames timeline and the exposure of Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk remains unexplained. He is considered one of the most valuable double agents during the Cold War because the information he provided was critical to the United States throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis 1.The political race of the Soviet Union and the United States began after the end of the . He had lost a lot of weight. Bokhan put them on as Reiser drove to a safe house. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. This both kills the victim and disposes of the body in one fell swoop. At Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland he looked out the window and saw several black cars and people on the tarmac. Her eyes were empty. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. The same can be said about arriving at your workplaceand finding out that it has been overrun by a variety of pests. We have no more Information about his Father; we will try to collect information and update soon. JB: The first meeting with Oleg Penkovsky was about seven p.m. April twenty first 1961 and he was told what room to go to at the Mount Royal Hotel in London and thanks to my MI6 friends, they permitted me, since he first wanted to meet the Americans, to be the one to answer the door and meet him. The agents he betrayed that day, he has said, included Oleg Gordievsky, whose CIA code name was GTTICKLE; Sergei Bokhan, or GTBLIZZARD; and Leonid Poleshchuk, or GTWEIGH. 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. After a show trial, Penkovsky, who had been hoping to defect to the West with his family, was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad; Wynne, meanwhile, ended up serving 18 months in the . 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. He had a massive ego, incredibly thwarted by the system he grew up in with all sorts of hang-ups. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. Upon his return, Greville married his secretary and narrator, Herma Van Burren. Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. Were they executed? Afterward, we drove to a home in Virginia for a reception, where I met Joe, Andrei told me in a conversation over lunch at a restaurant tucked away on a side street in Washington. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. He was convicted of spying on 11 May 1963 and sentenced to eight years in prison; Penkovsky was sentenced to death and executed (although Wynne himself in his book "The man from Odessa' claimed that Penkovsky committed suicide in prison). PG-13 I remember Oleg Penkovsky (a scintillating Merab Nididze) very well. When I came to Moscow, she left, he says, taking the children with her on a vacation. Three other officers were also disciplined. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) are players in the lesser known true life spy story of "The Courier." Benedict Cumberbatch film opens in cinemas UPDATED. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Penkovsky's fate is also mentioned in the Nelson DeMille spy novel The Charm School (1988). 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. He graduated from the strenuous academy in 1948 and promptly joined the GRU. Leonids original case officer blamed himself for years for letting my father down. When he began spying for the Russians almost a decade earlier, Ames was chief of the CIAs Soviet counterintelligence branch, entrusted with secrets that would be of incalculable value to the KGB. Either one of ours or theirs., When the FBI Spent Decades Hunting for a Soviet Spy on Its Staff, Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, David Wise [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. 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 urged him to go to Moscow, but they also provided him with an escape plan in case he signaled that he was in danger. Northolt Airport, England. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. Penkovsky was run jointly by a team of CIA and MI6 officers with the initial meetings taking place at a London hotel, but contacting him in Moscow and passing information proved hard, dangerous work. Moscow, August 3, 1985: It was 2 a.m. when Andrei Poleshchuk got home. troops.[15]. Wynne had founded an export business of industrial engineering products years earlier, and the international travel involved provided excellent cover for espionage. The Courier is currently lived by his son, Andrew, as he died in 1990 at the age of 70. These things have to be run to ground.. I just saw The Courier The true story about two men who helped prevent nuclear war between the US and Russia in 1962. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. 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. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap. Oleg Penkovsky. Penkovsky, sadly, was tried and executed for conspiracy by the Soviets in 1962. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. Continuing the family, Greville Wynne had a son named Andrew Wynne. While President Kennedy and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev dared each other to launch nuclear weapons on TV, one largely-forgotten Soviet spy changed the course of history from the shadows. The Cuban Missile Crisis began on Oct. 14, 1962, when a U-2 spy plane photographed missile installations in Cuba confirming the Soviets were gearing up with capabilities of their own. [11] Former GRU captain Viktor Suvorov, who defected to the UK in 1978, later wrote in his book on Soviet intelligence, "historians will remember with gratitude the name of the GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. Officially, he was shot to death. 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. Your business came highly recommended, and I am glad that I found you! The mere belief that theres another mole, whether correct or not, can cause chaos inside an intelligence agency. Benedict Cumberbatch is quite brilliant. Rookie Cops Episode 9 Release Date and Time, Countdown, When Is It Coming Out? He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. Keke Wyatt Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Net Worth, Fast Facts. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. In spying for Moscow on and off over 22 years, Hanssen revealed dozens of secrets, including the eavesdropping tunnel the FBI had dug under the Soviet Embassy in Washington and the identities of two FBI sources within the embassy, who were also executed. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. The domestic impact of foreign clandestine operations: the CIA and academic institutions, the media and religious institutions, Appendix B", The Capture and Execution of Colonel Penkovsky, 1963, "Nonfiction Book Review: The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War by Jerrold L. Schecter, Author, Peter S. Deriabin, With Scribner Book Company ISBN 978-0-684-19068-6", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oleg_Penkovsky&oldid=1136437646. 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. He works as a computer programmer. 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. At the same time, the enormous risks for the spy himself became evident in the fate of Penkovsky . Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. He underwent a debriefing by MI6 and cooperated with it and other Western intelligence services. Wright was bitter towards British intelligence, reportedly believing that it should have adopted his proposed methods to identify British/Soviet double agents. It was scary.. Privacy Statement Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. Over the course of his espionage, he delivered rolls of film, classified documents, and over 5,000 photos. The Spy Who Saved the World: Explores how information provided by Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky aided the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this role, he amassed and assessed technical and scientific intel on the West while growing increasingly disillusioned with his own country. Henceforth, the ranks of your armed forces are increased by one man.. He asked for a fictitious Greek employee. He had champagne and flowers waiting, a big basket of fruit, chocolates and a balloon. Additionally, the files revealed that Soviet guidance systems werent yet functional, nor were their fueling systems operational. Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. Now, his relationship is perfect. Trong khi , mt ip vin ca GRU tn . We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. 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. He knew instantly that the cable was a ruse. In 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. He was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. 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. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. 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. Be that as it may, the British intelligence official returned in 1964 after spending two years in Soviet prison. Would she ever live in the West? GRU agent Vladimir Rezun, however, claimed in his memoir that he saw footage of Penkovsky being strapped to a stretcher inside of a crematorium and burned alive. By 1939 he had graduated from a Soviet military school and had been part of a group called Komosomol, meaning "young communists. The Case of Oleg Penkovsky. Oleg Penkovskys father died in the Russian Revolution. The courier was Greville Wynne [] In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara. He was arrested for espionage in Budapest on Nov. 16, 1962. He did so, but nothing happened. He was arrested for espionage in Budapest on Nov. 16, 1962. Oleg Penkovsky was executed by firing squad one week after the trial. Penkovsky supplied the West with information on Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba and has been dubbed the spy of the century. This knowledge gave Kennedy the upper hand he needed to successfully negotiate away from the brink of nuclear war. Wynne was a British businessman who, from 1960 and 1962, smuggled thousands of pieces of intel out of Russia before he was captured, imprisoned, and tortured for two years by the KGB. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. 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 had planned to write a memoir but died of malaria before he could begin. 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. As important as Popov was to the United States and the West, it was Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, another Soviet GRU officer, who has earned the sobriquet, the "spy who saved the world.'. All our insect andgopher control solutions we deliver are delivered with the help of top gradeequipment and products. 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. The MI6 specialist experienced post-arrest sadness and torment. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. 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. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. 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. It was in my fathers handwriting. Leonid Poleshchuk knew his first CIA case officer, who had recruited him in Nepal, as Joe. After dark they left for a small airport, where Bokhan boarded a CIA plane. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Advertising Notice After many years, I understood him. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. April 22, 1964. How Penkovsky and Wynne did it, how they were caught, and what happened to them next is the focus of The Courier. [16] The noted Soviet sculptor Ernst Neizvestny said that he had been told by the director of the Donskoye Cemetery crematorium "how Penkovsky [had been] executed by 'fire'". After being wounded in battle in 1944, Penkovsky left the army and joined the renowned Frunze Military Academy. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. I could sense he had been tortured. Leonid was executed on July 30. Janet continued to travel around the world until well into her 70s. But before the two years were up, a KGB agent caught him passing secrets. Corrections? In 1988, he took a Moscow river cruise and met a blond, blue-eyed and very beautiful woman named Svetlana, who worked for an automotive magazine. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The Courier (9/10) by Tony Medley 105 minutes. 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 Wynne-Penkovsky case came at the height of the Cold War when relations between the superpowers were particularly strained. As MacIntyre reminds us, the rumor has always been that MI6-CIA agent Oleg Penkovsky, betrayed by British-spy-turned-Soviet-agent George Blake, had been cremated alive in 1963 by the KGB after . He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. It doesnt matter, he said, and quoted a Russian proverb: S milym rai i v shalashe. If you love somebody, you will have heaven even in a tent. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. It is a collec- tion of. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers. Her husband was a spy who headed the MI6 station in Moscow but worked under the guise of a visa officer. Without the senior Soviet military intelligence officer or his active role as a double agent during that time the Cold War could have gotten very hot. In addition to Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk, more than a dozen other sources were exposed. [6] This information was invaluable to President John F. Kennedy in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. One theory links his arrest to the spouse of a contact. The British intelligence agency MI6 (then known as SIS) had already been hard at work to infiltrate the Soviet Unions State Committee for Science and Technology, however. It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. He was free. This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. Wynne was arrested and jailed as a spy The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. She did, in 1991, but the strain caused by six years of separation proved too much to repair. Inside were three British intelligence agentsthe candy-bar man and two women, one of whom was Gordievskys MI6 case officer in London. No, he was told, theyre here for you.. One of them finally answered: For espionage.. Before his father left Lagos, Andrei said, he gave a gold watch to his CIA case officer at the time. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. pic.twitter.com/EbShcFsWv2, Kenneth MacRae (@kmacraeplockton) February 19, 2022. You have the wrong number, he was told. What happened to wife of Oleg Penkovsky? I was angry because I was dropped from military school and sent to the Army, far off, near Vladivostok, he said. He did so, he said, to prove his bona fides as a potential KGB mole. How Soviet Spy Oleg Penkovsky Single-Handedly Prevented Nuclear War During The Cuban Missile Crisis. Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesBritish spy Greville Wynne was Penkovskys contact and intermediate to MI6. The stories of Oleg Gordievsky, Sergei Bokhan and Leonid Poleshchukreported here in extensive new detail and based on interviews with Gordievsky, Bokhan and Andrei Poleshchuk, as well as former FBI and CIA officialssuggest the damage a mole can do. This was seized upon by critics, including then Tory MP and espionage expert Rupert Allason, who rubbished much of Wynne's record. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. What makes Hunting Pest Services stand out from any other pest services provider is not only the quality of the results we deliver but also our versatility. Had the Russians examined the car, they would have seen the hump on the floor where the driveshaft would normally be. Outwardly, Janet was an ordinary mother of four children. Of course Cherkashin, who worked in the Soviet Embassy in Washington and handled Ames, may have been unable to resist a chance to taunt the FBI and the CIA. May 11, 1963. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. The future double agents father died that same year fighting against the communists in the Russian Revolution. I will never forget the day when I got home and she was singing songs, melodies, no words, and looking insane. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. 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. 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. Toasty. This for the spy masters is an exercise in . Documents released by National Archives show British officials saw efforts to free Oleg Gordievsky's family as a lost cause Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor Mon 29 Dec 2014 19.01 EST Last . 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. Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. I was 18 years old. He sees that episode differently now. If you are interested in finding out more about our services, feel free to contact us right away! Murder by Cremation. IN their own highly bizarre fashion, these two books represent what seems to be the first public encounter, via the literary confrontation of its agents, between the Soviet KGB and the Ameri- can CIA: the British, as spies and the spied-upon, occupy a hazy middle ground. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me.
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