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Despite having no previous experience in intelligence work, Wynne was being recruited to serve as an MI6 agent. He had lost a lot of weight. 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. When I came to Moscow, she left, he says, taking the children with her on a vacation. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. Gordievsky was served sandwiches and Armenian brandy. The CIA delayed in contacting him. The name of Oleg Penkovsky is not nearly as well known. You, in your own mind, have developed this sense of self-importance, says West. Penkovsky was put on trial for treason in May 1963 and was found guilty and sentenced to death. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Omissions? Sentenced toeight years in a labor camp, Wynne spent 18 months in Moscow'sLubyanka Prison, where he was subjected to beatings and torture. He was thin, pale and obviously sick. 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. 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. Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. Bokhans son, Alex, also made it to the U.S., in 1995. We never drank too much, but we had to relax a little bit after one of our tiring meetings. Five days after Bokhan received the cable about his son, he took his wife, Alla, and their 10-year-old daughter, Maria, to the beach. He would not say why. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. 445 & 35. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. They know.. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. 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. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. He traveled frequently, to the United States, Germany, France, New Zealand, Australia, South America and the Middle East. I was angry because I was dropped from military school and sent to the Army, far off, near Vladivostok, he said. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine At first I couldnt even recognize him, Andrei said. The Untold Truth of Hugh Hefner's Son - David Hefner. Confess again! the general roared. The unlikely British spy was freed in 1964 in exchange forSoviet spy Konon Molody. Maybe a fifth. 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. You have the wrong number, he was told. We had neighbors that were very close. Intelligence agencies cannot tolerate unsolved mysteries and loose ends. Wynne agreed, and during his visit to Moscow the following month he wound up connecting with Oleg Penkovsky, a lieutenant colonel in the GRU (the Soviet Unions foreign-intelligence agency) who was eager to leak high-level military information to Western powers. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. 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. He has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. Penkovsky's reporting of thirty years ago demonstrates that political and Economic failures were already eroding the foundations of the Soviet empire. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. Corrections? [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. In Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky. The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets. That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. Penkovsky either was shot or killed himself in prisonthere are disputing accounts. [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. If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. 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. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. Russia was building missile bases in Cuba, armed with nuclear . The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. 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. [Wynne], bless him, for all his wonderful work, was a menace and a fabricator, says Nigel West, who has written numerous books on British and American intelligence organizations, including two books specifically about fabricators in the intelligence arena. He might be dead, or hes living in his dacha now. For two years I went to Lefortovo two, three times a week, Alla Bokhan told me. This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . 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. Kent. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. I talked to some old MI6 friends, and they say they are sure there is. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. 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. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. If it should turn out that the mole is no longer alive, the intelligence agencies would still run a damage assessment to try to reconstruct what and whom he might have betrayed. (Mr. Chisholm now works in London and lives at Ashford. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. Not only was this account widely denied shortly after publication by members of the CIA and Kennedys staff, but it would have been against the way espionage is runkeeping heads of state a safe distance from the details of intelligence work. In 1949 Penkovsky transferred from the regular army to the Soviet army intelligence directorate (GRU). The mole isnt just some guy who stole a few secrets. Wright was bitter towards British intelligence, reportedly believing that it should have adopted his proposed methods to identify British/Soviet double agents. 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. That happened several times.. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. But unlike other famous characters, his personality, the role he played and what . His work . Ameeting between theRussian prisoners, in which Wynne tellsPenkovsky of the import of his information, asdepicted in the film, is drama. Macintyre writes in the book. Cold fear started to run down my back, he told me. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. They worked hard, shadowing British diplomats, to build up a "discovery case" against Penkovsky so that they could arrest him without throwing suspicion on their own moles. Oleg Penkovsky saved the world from mushroom clouds and untold deaths in the fall of 1962. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. Oleg 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. He underwent a debriefing by MI6 and cooperated with it and other Western intelligence services. When I found a job, the KGB called and they fired me. The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter, what happened to oleg penkovsky daughter, what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child, what happened to oleg penkovsky family, what happened to oleg penkovsky . He asked it be given to Joe, with a message, Here is something from Leo. By the time Joe learned of the gift, Andrei said, his father had been arrested. Strange" to Sherlock Holmes. There were embraces, and everyone cried. Leonids original case officer blamed himself for years for letting my father down. But as he began researching Wynnes story, he learned that this ordinary man could also tell some extraordinary lies. 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. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. Wynne left The Ivy restaurant in Seven Dials that day probably wondering what he'd let himself in for. After the initial meeting in December 1960, Penkovsky provided Wynne with film of Soviet military documents and later promised more information if an arrangement with British or American intelligence could be made. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Privacy Statement In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. 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 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. 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. He was reputedly on friendly terms with Penkovsky,[21] which is very likely to have been a cause of his fall. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. After a meeting in Paris in September 1961, Penkovskys next trips were mysteriously cancelled at the last minute. 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. No products in the cart. Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. Between April 1961 and October 1962, Penkovsky inflicted enormous damage on the Soviet Union. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Greville Wynne, a British spy who told in his celebrated memoirs how he pried loose some of Moscow's best-kept secrets and who served 18 months in a Soviet prison for [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. In fact, his contribution to U.S. intelligence and policymaking is exaggerated, distorted, and in several instances falsified. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. 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. He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. 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 Penkovsky and Greville Wynne are directly responsible for its positive outcome. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. Oleg Gordievsky and Leila Alieva met in Copenhagen: she was a typist for the World Health Organization; he was an unhappily married KGB officer, and a spy for MI6. Andrei was allowed to visit him in prison only once, after he was sentenced to death. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. In a letter to me from the federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, where he is serving a life sentence, Ames wrote: Im quite sure of my recollection that I gave the KGB no names of any other than the two or three double agents/dangles I provided in April 85, until June 13th.. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. He played a role in both the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. | READ MORE. Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. Penkovsky supplied the West with information on Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba and has been dubbed the spy of the century. [18] In a 2010 interview, Suvorov denied that the man in the film[clarification needed] was Penkovsky and said that he had been shot. I always thought there was another one, he told me. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. What neither the CIA nor Poleshchuk knew was that the apartment was a KGB operation. Three other officers were also disciplined. Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. 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. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. Advertising Notice While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. 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 . David Hefner was born in 1955 in Palo Alto, CA, as the son of Hugh Hefner, founder of "Playboy" magazine. Although Gordievsky has written that he climbed into the trunk of one of the cars, a former CIA officer says he actually crawled into a space in a specially modified Land Rover. 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. A Russian TV documentary shows a shadowy figure picking it up, but Andrei said it is an actor, not his father. 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. "His clothes were sort of shrink-wrapped around this skeleton," says Cumberbatch, who spent three months losing weight and physically preparing to portray Wynne's final months of ordeal. Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benjamin Cumberbatch) in The Courier. Cookie Policy They had to go through a show trial, basically, so on the stand Wynne accused MI6 of using him as a dupehe may have just been saying whatever he could say because he worried they might execute him, says Jeremy Duns, an author of several spy novels set during the Cold War as well as the history book Codename: Hero: The True Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold Wars Most Dangerous Operation. He has two daughters. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. 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. He worked as a double agent for the British secret service during the Cold War, between 1974 and 1985. | READ MORE. 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 . His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. "But you have a responsibility to honor the essence of what happened," says director Dominic Cooke. His character's execution was the opening scene for the movie. Penkovsky's father might have fled to the West rather than have died of typhus as Penkovsky had previously reported, the KGB prohibited Penkovsky from assuming his post in New Delhi but permitted him to remain in the GRU after his mother submitted a statement detailing her family's ignorance of her husband's fate.28 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. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. Cookie Settings, Liam Daniel, Courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. 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. 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. They were driven to the infamous Lefortovo prison for interrogation. These things have to be run to ground.. To top it off, it would have been physically impossible at the time. 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. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. As a top ranking Russian officer, he sinks into the depts and rises to the heights of international intrigue. Gordievsky's Wife was not with him live Former Colonel of the First Central Board of the KGB of the USSR, recruited in the mid-80s the CIA and worked for British intelligence, abroad called the largest Soviet "mole" after Penkovsky. In the back seat were a jacket, hat and sunglasses. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. Oleg Penkovsky married (wife played by Maria Mironova, actress and here's a brunette), he has a daughter. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. He did so, but nothing happened. During the 1960s, a corrosive mole hunt led by James J. Angleton, the CIAs counterintelligence chief, led to institutional paranoia, paralyzed operations aimed at the Soviet Union, and disrupted the lives of many innocent CIA officers who were fired or sidetracked in their careers. 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. Her eyes were empty. The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. The information he provided on the Soviets . 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 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. Minutes passed. 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. The films screenwriter, Tom OConnor, found Wynnes story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. Before Ames, there was Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who had been slated to go to Moscow but was fired instead for drug use and petty theft. He was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. When it comes to espionage, its hard to know who to trust. In April 1961, through Greville M. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. [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'". He was detained at Lubyanka prison. I had no job. Advertising Notice It led to him and a Soviet double agent, Oleg Penkovsky, becoming firm friends, involved in . [6] This information was invaluable to President John F. Kennedy in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. The film sees him arrested on a plane leaving. In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara, Turkey, but was recalled after he had reported his superior officer, and later other GRU personnel for a breach of regulations, which made him unpopular in the department. Menu. They were convicted of espionage. 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. The burden of that is hard to imagine.. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. In 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. Gordievsky was told his London posting was over, but he would be allowed to remain in a non-sensitive KGB department in Moscow. For months, Andrei had been hoping his father would find him an apartment. 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). When it came to writing the screenplay, OConnor laments that the true story of Wynnes experiences may never be known. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. There were certain anomalies that took place that we just couldnt put our finger on., And Bearden says, I remain convinced there is a fourth man. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Then the car started up again, and the radio, which had been playing pop music, suddenly boomed out SibeliusFinlandia. 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. Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. At least the timeline based on what Ames said when he was debriefed.If it wasnt Ames, then it was someone else, so we began to search for the source of the compromise, Wiser said. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) lore and popular culture tout Col. Oleg Penkovsky as "the spy who saved the world" during the Berlin and Cuban missile crises. Penkovsky never knew his father, who was killed fighting as an officer in the White Army in the Russian Civil War when he was a baby. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. 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. 3.80. That the KGB ran a fourth mole is undeniable, Victor Cherkashin, a wily KGB counterintelligence officer, has written. Penkovsky's story is a tragic and revealing one, and it is regrettable that with it all he did not tell us more of what he could tell best, the story of his own life and of the lives of his close associates.-GEORGE A . On this trip, Penkovsky submitted to hours of interviews with British and American intelligence officials about the Soviet Unions military and political developments. And the intelligence culture is not going to let that go. His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. In Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. The two then visited the White House where President John F. Kennedy personally thanked them for their servicethen the two returned to the U.K. just 18 hours later. This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. By 1960 he had become a colonel in the GRU and deputy chief of the foreign section of the State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research (196062), in which post his task was to collect scientific and technical intelligence on the United States, Britain, and other Western countries. His trial began a few months later, and he was promptly sentenced to death for treason. [7], Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin does not mention Penkovsky in his comprehensive memoir about his career in intelligence against the West. what happened to penkovsky wifemostar bridge jump injuries. Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed.