The coded exchange triggered a meeting that night with his CIA case officer, Dick Reiser, who cabled headquarters in Langley that BLIZZARD was in trouble. In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. The mole isnt just some guy who stole a few secrets. 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 always hoped Leila would join him in England. Penkovsky had in the meantime become increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, particularly with the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. They had a sumptuous lunchBokhan knew it might be his last meal with his familyand Maria bought a stuffed Greek doll called a patatuff. Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the London . That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. The recruitment of a well-placed spy, in this case a high-ranking Soviet military intelligence officer, lessened the tensions of the Cold War by providing information on the intentions, strength, and technological advancement of the Soviet Union. 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. Stay calm, he recalls telling himself. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. But he reportedly committed suicide in a Soviet labor camp. They are in relation from previous few years of a strong relationship. A KGB general told him he had confessed. By 1939 he had graduated from a Soviet military school and had been part of a group called Komosomol, meaning "young communists. They were driven to the infamous Lefortovo prison for interrogation. After reading about how Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky staved off nuclear war, learn about Vasili Arkhipov, another unsung hero of the Cuban Missile Crisis. So the discrepancy between Ames timeline and the exposure of Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk remains unexplained. That the KGB ran a fourth mole is undeniable, Victor Cherkashin, a wily KGB counterintelligence officer, has written. Leonids original case officer blamed himself for years for letting my father down. Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky redirected the virus war. 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. Omissions? [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'". Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites in Cuba to the West. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. 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. He was the real deal. May 11, 1963. Keke Wyatt Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Net Worth, Fast Facts. And he really was a hero by anyone's standards, and incredibly thwarted. 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. We have no more information about his spouse. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. 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 . He had never told his wife that he was working for the CIAit would have put her in mortal dangerbut now he had to say something. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. The future double agents father died that same year fighting against the communists in the Russian Revolution. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. between this and #ThePowerOfDog lately, he might as well be the best actor in the world right now. Additionally, the files revealed that Soviet guidance systems werent yet functional, nor were their fueling systems operational. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. 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. 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. 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. You can be sure that our Claremont, CA business will provide you with the quality and long-lasting results you are looking for! He was thin, pale and obviously sick. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. He had planned to write a memoir but died of malaria before he could begin. What neither the CIA nor Poleshchuk knew was that the apartment was a KGB operation. It was broadcast on 15 January 2007.[22]. 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. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. Greville Wynne is a legend in the history books and his family has also benefited from it. He was born to his first wife, Sheila. Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. Oleg Penkovsky saved the world from mushroom clouds and untold deaths in the fall of 1962. The Courier tells the story with legitimate subtleties and an excellent cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. GRU . His boyhood nickname, back on a collective farm in Ukraine, was Mole. Now a stocky, powerfully built man of 43, he had been working for the GRU for 16 yearsand feeding Soviet secrets to the CIA for 10. As soon as Gordievsky landed in Moscow, he picked up signs that he had gambled wrong. This jump from the army to the GRU set the course for the rest of Penkovskys life. He sort of fought the Nazis off in Kiev, and was leading that and was decorated 13 times. 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. It said Bokhans son, Alex, 18, was having trouble in military school and suggested the deputy take his vacation now, three months early, and return to the Soviet Union to deal with him. You have the wrong number, he was told. How the traitor Oleg Penkovsky was 7 7.The Courier vs. the True Story of British Spy Greville Wynne He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. At the same time, the enormous risks for the spy himself became evident in the fate of Penkovsky . 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. 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 1944, he was assigned to the headquarters of Colonel-General Sergei Varentsov, commander of artillery on the 1st Ukrainian front, who became his patron. GRU emblem. The Wynne-Penkovsky case came at the height of the Cold War when relations between the superpowers were particularly strained. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. 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. troops.[15]. 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.'. 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. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. His arrest was followed by a public trial in May 1963. Your Privacy Rights He started having trouble breathing. This is quite shocking, since their countries are nearly at war. He dropped it, sensing that he was getting into dangerous territory. By 1993 their marriage was over. The 23-year-old journalist had been working late for Novosti, the Soviet press agency. [2] On Varentsov's recommendation, he studied at the Frunze Military Academy in 1945-48, then worked as a staff officer. Positive Elements. He was arrested for espionage in Budapest on Nov. 16, 1962. "Maybe we're only two people but this is how things change." The Courier is an intriguing spy drama. His work helped American intelligence confirm that Soviet nuclear capabilities were vastly inferior to Americas arsenal information that would prove vital in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. April 22, 1964. Chief KGB interrogator Alexander Zagvozdin said Penkosvky was questioned perhaps a hundred times and then shot. It is also a tragedy: The KGB caught Penkovsky . [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. Before his father left Lagos, Andrei said, he gave a gold watch to his CIA case officer at the time. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. Leonid never made it to the rock, his son said. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. Impossible. 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 underwent a debriefing by MI6 and cooperated with it and other Western intelligence services. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()). 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. 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. Penkovsky, far from being the decadent playboy.portrayed by the Soviet prosecutor, was probably The most highly placed Western agent ever to fall into the hands of'the Soviet security . In the Jack Ryan universe, he is described as the agent who recruited Colonel Mikhail Filitov as a CIA agent (code-name CARDINAL) and had urged Filitov to betray him to solidify his position as the West's top spy in the Soviet hierarchy. Alexander Zagvozdin, ngi ng u b phn thm vn ca KGB, cho bit Penkovsky "c l b tra hi hng trm ln" trc khi b bn. 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. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, . 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. Intelligence agencies cannot tolerate unsolved mysteries and loose ends. After stops in Madrid and Frankfurt, a military jet flew him across the Atlantic. 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. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. 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