Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. pictures of the galvin family; springfield, ma city council candidates; what happened to penkovsky wife It was apparent that Soviet counterintelligence agents did not yet have enough evidence to arrest him. 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. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. After stops in Madrid and Frankfurt, a military jet flew him across the Atlantic. Janie and Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. In 1945, Penkovsky married the teenage daughter of Lieutenant-General Dmitri Gapanovich, thus acquiring another high-ranking patron. 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. Penkovsky was portrayed by Eduard Bezrodniy in the 2014 Polish thriller Jack Strong, about Ryszard Kukliski, another Cold War spy. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, a CIA and MI6 agent deep inside Soviet military intelligence, provided le Carr inspiration for The Russia House (1989). But if he returned home, he could be shot. They were convicted of espionage. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. That happened several times.. Omissions? Cookie Policy Alex Palmer He did so, but nothing happened. As soon as Gordievsky landed in Moscow, he picked up signs that he had gambled wrong. 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. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. "In a way, it's a love letter to Penkovsky,"Cumberbatch says. 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. Oleg Penkovsky was a Soviet military intelligence colonel during the late Fifties and early Sixties responsible for informing the UK about the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba, to help build . Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. Because his father opposed the Communist revolution, Penkovsky was routinely denied promotions. 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. Updates? He had lost a lot of weight. An industrial sales consultant who regularly traveled through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union representing British electrical and steel companies, Wynne was told it would be helpful if on his next trip, he could arrange for a meeting with a state committee in Moscow dedicated to developing opportunities with foreigners in science and technology, and report back on his conversations. Son And Daughter Now Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were both arrested by the Soviets in 1962. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. 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. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. 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 has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. [19] Greville Wynne, in his book The Man from Odessa, claimed that Penkovsky killed himself. I always thought there was another one, he told me. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . In May 1963, after his trial, Izvestya reported that Varentsov, who had since achieved the rank of Chief Marshal of Artillery and Commander in Chief of Rocket Forces and candidate member of the Central Committee had been demoted to the rank of Major General. 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. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. Toasty. 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. The KGB men searched the apartment all night. [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. Macintyre writes in the book. When I found a job, the KGB called and they fired me. 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. They expected I would do something stupid, he told me. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. By Benjy P. October 15, 2022. Why did Wynne make up so much, when the truths of his 18 months as a spy are already filled with astounding details? After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. 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. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . Oleg lives a quiet and unassuming life with his wife Vera (played by Maria Mironova) and their daughter Nina (played by Emma Penzina), who's about 5 or 6 years old. 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. | READ MORE. His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. At 4PM on the afternoon of July 19, 1985, Oleg Gordievsky dressed in a thin green sweater, faded green corduroy trousers and old brown shoes clothes he'd selected from the back of the wardrobe. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. But Ames always insisted to the FBI, the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee that he revealed no significant sources before his meeting at Chadwicks. harvp error: no target: CITEREFSchecterDeriabinPenkovskij1992 (. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. It dealt with capabilities and intentions. Your fathers been arrested, the man said. Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. President John Kennedy read it and understood. This explosive book records the secret life and adventures of the greatest spy of our time - Oleg Penkovskiy - and reads with the excitement of the greatest of suspense novels. 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. 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. Wynnes fabrications range from small to huge. The CIA delayed in contacting him. In August 1960, a Soviet colonel called Oleg Penkovsky tried to make contact with the West. Both he and the Soviet leader. [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. 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. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. They had a sumptuous lunchBokhan knew it might be his last meal with his familyand Maria bought a stuffed Greek doll called a patatuff. Penkovsky either was shot or killed himself in prisonthere are disputing accounts. In addition to Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk, more than a dozen other sources were exposed. His work . Some of it just didnt add up, he says. With Vladimir Chuprikov, Merab Ninidze, James Schofield, Fred Haig. Because I knew it was a death sentence.. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. Wynne left The Ivy restaurant in Seven Dials that day probably wondering what he'd let himself in for. Welcome to the United States, one of them said. Three other officers were also disciplined. Moscow, August 3, 1985: It was 2 a.m. when Andrei Poleshchuk got home. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. "He did make a life for himself, but Greville Wynne did pay a big price for his service. Russia was building missile bases in Cuba, armed with nuclear . Long after the massive losses in 1985, the lingering questions still gnaw at their counterintelligence experts. So the discrepancy between Ames timeline and the exposure of Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk remains unexplained. "And Greville played a big part in that.". From a Moscow railroad station, he made his way by train, bus and taxi to a point near the Finnish-Soviet border, where he hid in some grass by the roadside until two cars stopped. On September 21, 1985, Howard eluded FBI surveillance and escaped into the New Mexico desert with the help of his wife, Mary, and a pop-up dummy in his cars passenger seat (a technique he had learned in CIA training). Between April 1961 and October 1962, Penkovsky inflicted enormous damage on the Soviet Union. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. That the KGB ran a fourth mole is undeniable, Victor Cherkashin, a wily KGB counterintelligence officer, has written. It was pathological with him.. [7], Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin does not mention Penkovsky in his comprehensive memoir about his career in intelligence against the West. 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. Minutes passed. Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. 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. After Penkovsky and Wynne were captured by the KGB, which happened very similar to how their capture is depicted in the film, the GRU lieutenant colonel been convicted of treason and sentenced to death by firing squad. It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. 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. [8] The KGB defector Vladimir N. Sakharov suggests Penkovsky was genuine, saying: "I knew about the ongoing KGB reorganisation precipitated by Oleg Penkovsky's case and Yuri Nosenko's defection. 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. Never formally acknowledged by the British government, Wynnewrote about his experiences in two self-aggrandizingbooks, "The Man From Moscow" (1967) and "The Man From Odessa" (1981). In June he was expelled from the Central Committee for 'having relaxed his political vigilance.' He handed them a bulky envelope and pleaded with them to deliver it to the American embassy. In all, Penkovsky had provided Western intelligence with about 140 hours of interviews and 111 exposed rolls of film, contributing to some 10,000 pages of intelligence reports. In June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. The films screenwriter, Tom OConnor, found Wynnes story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. They drove through several checkpoints with no trouble, but they had to stop at Soviet customs when they reached the border. 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. That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. In a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service, Mikhail Fradkov, named Penkovsky as Russia's biggest intelligence failure. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. 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. He was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. On October 29 of that year, just hours after the Soviets stood down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Wynne went to Soviet-occupied Budapest with a traveling exhibition of British industrial goods, against the advice of his MI6 handlers. West maintains that its the result of something all too typical in the intelligence communitywhat he calls post-usefulness syndrome., Imagine that I recruit you and I tell you that whatever you report to me, within an hour, it will be on the presidents desk. 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. I was angry because I was dropped from military school and sent to the Army, far off, near Vladivostok, he said. Gordievsky never took a penny from MI6 until after he had defected to the U.K. His actions were motivated by a hatred of the tyranny of the Soviet system, and the degraded condition in which it. For the following 18 months, Penkovsky supplied a tremendous amount of information to the CIAMI6 team of handlers, including documents demonstrating that the Soviet nuclear arsenal was much smaller than Nikita Khrushchev claimed or the CIA had thought and that the Soviets were not yet capable of producing a large number of ICBMs. There were embraces, and everyone cried. You, in your own mind, have developed this sense of self-importance, says West. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [6] This information was invaluable to President John F. Kennedy in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. 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. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. Oleg Gordievsky. Everyone avoided me. 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. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. 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. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. After many years, I understood him. By 1993 their marriage was over. He was thin, pale and obviously sick. Sentenced toeight years in a labor camp, Wynne spent 18 months in Moscow'sLubyanka Prison, where he was subjected to beatings and torture. In Wright's view, the failure of British intelligence leaders to listen to him caused them to become paralysed when such agents defected to the Soviet Union; in his book, Spycatcher, he suggests that his hypothesis had to be true, and that the Soviets were aware of this paralysis and planted Penkovsky. Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. Penkovsky's fate is also mentioned in the Nelson DeMille spy novel The Charm School (1988). Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. Wright was bitter towards British intelligence, reportedly believing that it should have adopted his proposed methods to identify British/Soviet double agents. [13], Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962. 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. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. Penkovsky was portrayed by Christopher Rozycki in the 1985 BBC Television serial Wynne and Penkovsky. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. One of them finally answered: For espionage.. 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. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. 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 . In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. Posted on . The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. Sergei Bokhan was also separated from his family for six years. Wynne also enthusiastically embraced his role, enjoying the part of a daring secret agent where he could apply his salesman skills to a higher-stakes game.