However, Penkovsky would grow up to join the Red Army in 1937. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. Stuzhin & Cheredintzev/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. We have no information about his girlfriend/boyfriend. Arrested? Thats when they showed me a piece of paper with the words, I met Joe, Andrei told me. Between the information from Oleg Penkovsky and the U-2 pilots photos, America now knew the exact location of the Soviet launch sites, and most importantly, their weak long-range capabilities. Colonel Penkovsky, who was tried with him, was sentenced to death for treason. John Turner. All our insect andgopher control solutions we deliver are delivered with the help of top gradeequipment and products. Cold fear started to run down my back, he told me. Penkovsky is perhaps the best known of Soviet double agents. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (Russian: ; 23 April 1919 16 May 1963), codenamed HERO,[1] was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky redirected the virus war. 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. Enter Oleg Penkovsky. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. On April 23, 1919, Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky was born in Vladikavkaz, Russia. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Wright noted that, unlike Igor Gouzenko and other earlier defectors, Penkovsky did not reveal the names of any Soviet agents in the West but only provided organisational detail, much of which was known already. April 22, 1964. Over the course of his espionage, he delivered rolls of film, classified documents, and over 5,000 photos. These produced around 1,200 pages of transcripts which the CIA and MI6 delegated 30 translators and analysts to focus on. Gordievsky was served sandwiches and Armenian brandy. Finding roaches in your home every time you wake up is never a good thing. 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. The FBI declined to comment on whether the search Wiser began is continuing. I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin". He graduated from the strenuous academy in 1948 and promptly joined the GRU. Reiser was waiting in a car at the other end. As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. Together with a turned KGB specialist, Oleg Penkovsky, he obtained important information about the Soviet attacks that somehow prevented the atomic conflict during the virus war. He was reputedly on friendly terms with Penkovsky,[21] which is very likely to have been a cause of his fall. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. It was broadcast on 15 January 2007.[22]. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy from 1949 to 1953, he officially became an intelligence officer and worked in Moscow. This both kills the victim and disposes of the body in one fell swoop. The Courier: Directed by Dominic Cooke. If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. A Russian undercover agent and a cooperating MI6 had the opportunity to gain close access to a vast amount of information that prevented an atomic conflict at the time. Positive Elements. Then the car started up again, and the radio, which had been playing pop music, suddenly boomed out SibeliusFinlandia. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. He drove across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. and entered Chadwicks, a popular Georgetown restaurant, where he handed the documents to a Soviet Embassy official named Sergei Chuvakhin. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. Espionage charges in a Soviet court were not to be taken lightly and Penkovsky was sentenced to death. 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. AFP/Getty ImagesPenkovsky at his public trial in Moscow. But we are sure that it is not available and his spouses name is not available. The Spy Who Saved the World: Explores how information provided by Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky aided the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()). He asked them to deliver it to an intelligence officer at the US Embassy. Guaranteed Reliability and Proven Results! The first meeting between Penkovsky and two American and two British intelligence officers occurred during a visit by Penkovsky to London in April 1961. Soon after his arrest she collapsed psychologically. 445 & 35. What happened to their family? We have no more information about his spouse. Be that as it may, the British intelligence official returned in 1964 after spending two years in Soviet prison. Joe said to his people, Keep the watch, I want to give it to his son. At a reception after the church ceremony, Joe gave Andrei the watch. 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. 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. After taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. Welcome to the United States, one of them said. That happened several times.. [14] That information might have reduced the pressure on Kennedy to launch an invasion of the island, which could have risked Soviet use of 9K52 Luna-M-class tactical nuclear weapons against U.S. MI6 and the CIA ran Pen. Compared to the KGB, which focused squarely on crushing internal dissent, the GRU had more of a geopolitical impact. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. 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. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bokhans son, Alex, also made it to the U.S., in 1995. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. He later died of a throat disease in London. Penkovsky stashed the documents in packs of cigarettes and candy boxes which he hid in agreed-upon public places, in what are known as dead letter drops. This method allowed him to transfer items to his Western handlers without attracting attention. Her eyes were empty. Six days before Kennedys successful diplomatic resolution of the crisis, Penkovsky was 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. That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. Meet Hasekura Tsunenaga, The 17th-Century Samurai Who Traveled The World And Became A Roman Aristocrat, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. [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'". By 1993 their marriage was over. His spying career was the subject of episode 1 of the 2007 BBC Television docudrama Nuclear Secrets, titled "The Spy from Moscow" in which he was portrayed by Mark Bonnar. He did so, but nothing happened. 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. She did, in 1991, but the strain caused by six years of separation proved too much to repair. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. Its thought that once Blake implicated Penkovsky, the KGB began watching him from apartments across the river from his home and confirmed he was meeting with Western intelligence. He was a highly placed Soviet official in Moscow who fed secrets to the West before and during the Cuban Missile crisis. Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were two people who had a significant role in containing the cold war. 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. He was arrested for espionage in Budapest on Nov. 16, 1962. He had champagne and flowers waiting, a big basket of fruit, chocolates and a balloon. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. Oleg Penkovsky had his sights set on moving to the West and building a better life with his family and, therefore, he was keen to expose some of the Soviet's most valuable military secrets. Everyone avoided me. Penkovsky had been trying to offer his services to the west for some years, blatantly buttonholing diplomats and businessmen at receptions and approaching tourists in the street. Some of it just didnt add up, he says. 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. " He also went to war serving as a unit commander of an artillery unit. In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. Some believe Penkovsky was burned alive as Soviet punishment for his treasonous espionage. You have the wrong number, he was told. 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. 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. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? [6] This information was invaluable to President John F. Kennedy in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. Oleg Penkovsky was born in a small town on the 23rd of April in 1919. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. 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. The KGB men searched the apartment all night. He didnt have a choice. Today, Sergei and Alla live quietly in the Sun Belt under his new identity. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. This knowledge gave Kennedy the upper hand he needed to successfully negotiate away from the brink of nuclear war. He was arrested by the Soviets in October 1962, and then tried and executed the following year. British spy Greville Wynne was Penkovskys contact and intermediate to MI6. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. The Courier is currently lived by his son, Andrew, as he died in 1990 at the age of 70. 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). Greville Wynne is a legend in the history books and his family has also benefited from it. No, he was told, theyre here for you.. Trong khi , mt ip vin ca GRU tn . As soon as Gordievsky landed in Moscow, he picked up signs that he had gambled wrong. GRU . 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. He was like a walking dead man. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. 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. In 1962, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky defied his country to save the world from nuclear war then paid for his heroism with his life. The publication of post-Cold War memoirs by former agents and the release of declassified documents by the United States and Russia have provided a fairly complete account of the CIA's activities, including both its successes and its failures. Were they executed? His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. Penkovsky delivered crucial information, including about the Soviet Union's new Cuban missiles. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. Henceforth, the ranks of your armed forces are increased by one man.. Gordievsky was told his London posting was over, but he would be allowed to remain in a non-sensitive KGB department in Moscow. He was about to be married, and his debts were mounting. 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. Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel of the USSR Central Intelligence Agency, a distinguished officer in the Second World War, who has a close relationship with many high-ranking military personnel, is also USA and Great Britain was a spy working for the intelligence agency. Many Animals, Including the Platypus, Lost Their Stomachs. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. 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. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. Everything to know about their son and. 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. However, the two were captured by the KGB after the Russians discovered that they were being neutralized. Now, his relationship is perfect. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. He sort of fought the Nazis off in Kiev, and was leading that and was decorated 13 times. He had planned to write a memoir but died of malaria before he could begin. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . Corrections? He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. Hanssen, who was convicted of espionage, is serving a life sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado. Privacy Statement 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. We are a Claremont, CA situated business that delivers the leading pest control service in the area. 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. 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