He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers. Oleg Penkovsky was arrested in October 1962. But over time, intelligence experts and those involved in the case, though reluctant to share sensitive information, cast doubt on much of what Wynne laid out in his books. 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. 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 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. In addition to Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk, more than a dozen other sources were exposed. 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 1962, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky defied his country to save the world from nuclear war then paid for his heroism with his life. Bokhan put them on as Reiser drove to a safe house. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. 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. This led to the publication of his dubious memoirs. This photograph was taken in the hotel room at the Mount Royal in London in April 1961, after one of our meetings, where Oleg Penkovsky on the left and yours truly on the right enjoying a small glass of wine. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration. Penkovsky papers, they do provide a fascinating glimpse into the strange and distorted world of Communism in the Soviet Union. 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. Penkovskys information, and Wynnes help in delivering it to British and American intelligence officers, would produce mountains of material, play a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and land both men in prison. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. 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. [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. In June he was expelled from the Central Committee for 'having relaxed his political vigilance.' The 23-year-old journalist had been working late for Novosti, the Soviet press agency. "But you have a responsibility to honor the essence of what happened," says director Dominic Cooke. Advertising Notice Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. Long after the massive losses in 1985, the lingering questions still gnaw at their counterintelligence experts. Penkovsky is perhaps the best known of Soviet double agents. 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. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. I was 18 years old. He sees that episode differently now. 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. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . As a top ranking Russian officer, he sinks into the depts and rises to the heights of international intrigue. Intelligence agencies cannot tolerate unsolved mysteries and loose ends. 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. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. 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. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. It also helped Americans to understand how limited the Soviets capabilities actually were in the area, so as tensions grew during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy knew how much rope he could give [Soviet Premier Nikita] Khrushchev, as Duns puts it. [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. The Soviet public was first told of Penkovsky's arrest more than seven weeks later, when Pravda named Wynne and Jacobs[clarification needed] as his contacts, without naming anyone else. Top KGB officers had known for more than a year that Penkovsky was a British agent, but they protected their source, a highly placed mole in MI6. In 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. But the chummy interactions between the agents and Penkovskys prolific, even reckless, acquisition of materials grew increasingly perilousand finally caught the KGBs attention. It's the early 1960s and Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a salesman who represents Western manufacturers in foreign countries. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. 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. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. He knew instantly that the cable was a ruse. You are wondering about the question what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter but currently there is no answer, so let kienthuctudonghoa.com summarize and list the top articles with the question. Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the . MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through . No products in the cart. By Benjy P. October 15, 2022. Sentenced toeight years in a labor camp, Wynne spent 18 months in Moscow'sLubyanka Prison, where he was subjected to beatings and torture. 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. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? 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. MI6's agent, however, eventually fell under suspicion, and was ordered back. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". 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. This both kills the victim and disposes of the body in one fell swoop. 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. 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. On this trip, Penkovsky submitted to hours of interviews with British and American intelligence officials about the Soviet Unions military and political developments. Cookie Policy "The Courier" has compressed the real-life story and changed some facts. 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 . This time it's a true story:Wynne served as an unassuming go-between for British intelligence MI-6 and Russian spyOleg Penkovsky atthe height of the Cold War. It was scary.. 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. Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. Penkovsky felt stunted in his career with GRU and expected that by helping the West for a year or two, he and his family could be relocated and build a better life, and that he would personally be showered with recognition and honor. The "cremated alive" hypothesis appears in several Clancy novels, though Clancy never identified Penkovsky as the executed spy. The KGB men searched the apartment all night. "He did make a life for himself, but Greville Wynne did pay a big price for his service. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. Her eyes were empty. 276 to 280, "A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a LIttle Fish. After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. Cookie Settings, FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, John Hallisey / FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12, 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. 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 Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. She did, in 1991, but the strain caused by six years of separation proved too much to repair. He is the author of The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York. He was reputedly on friendly terms with Penkovsky,[21] which is very likely to have been a cause of his fall. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Theres a fair amount of source material from all different kinds of authors, so by reading everybodynot just Wynnes books, but other historians, and the official history put out by the American side and the Soviet side I was able to try and work out what made the most sense and what seemed liked disinformation, says OConnor. In a Moscow park, Penkovsky also passed packets of sweets (with camera film hidden inside) to the wife of a British MI6 officer while she was pushing her children in a pram. Hanssen, who was convicted of espionage, is serving a life sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado. He was like a walking dead man. In 1945, Penkovsky married the teenage daughter of Lieutenant-General Dmitri Gapanovich, thus acquiring another high-ranking patron. Oleg Penkovsky married (wife played by Maria Mironova, actress and here's a brunette), he has a daughter. As they walked on the beach that Saturday, he said his career was in trouble. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. After stops in Madrid and Frankfurt, a military jet flew him across the Atlantic. 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. 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. [17] A similar description was later included in Ernest Volkman's popular history book about spies, Tom Clancy's novel Red Rabbit and in Viktor Suvorov's book Aquarium. Ameeting between theRussian prisoners, in which Wynne tellsPenkovsky of the import of his information, asdepicted in the film, is drama. After many years, I understood him. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. [2] On Varentsov's recommendation, he studied at the Frunze Military Academy in 1945-48, then worked as a staff officer. Penkovsky joined the GRU as an officer, in 1953. 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. Advertising Notice His trial began a few months later, and he was promptly sentenced to death for treason. The President of the Court declared Greville Wynne, aged 44, would serve three years in prison and five in a labour camp. The CIA delayed in contacting him. At first I couldnt even recognize him, Andrei said. [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. Some of it just didnt add up, he says. The information he provided on the Soviets . In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. 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 recruited to MI5 just before World War II. Your Privacy Rights In the midst of the Cold War, a top-ranking Soviet officer named Oleg Penkovsky feared that the risk of nuclear war was too great, and decided to share some of the most closely held secrets of the Soviet arsenal with the West. The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets. [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. 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. It was apparent that Soviet counterintelligence agents did not yet have enough evidence to arrest him. 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. (Howard, Russian authorities reported in 2002, died of a fall in his KGB dacha near Moscow. But Wynne paid a heavy price for his heroism. 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. These guys were in the foxhole togetherthey each had a secret that only the other man knew, says OConnor. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. There is no statute of limitations for espionage. Soon there was a plan for an exfiltration, the CIAs term for spiriting an agent in danger out of a foreign country. Had the Russians examined the car, they would have seen the hump on the floor where the driveshaft would normally be. Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. 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. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. Alexander Zagvozdin, chief KGB interrogator for the investigation, stated that Penkovsky had been "questioned perhaps a hundred times" and that he had been shot and cremated. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. 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. The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. They expected I would do something stupid, he told me. troops.[15]. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. 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. 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. Reiser was waiting in a car at the other end. 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. Penkovsky supplied the West with information on Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba and has been dubbed the spy of the century. In August 1960, a Soviet colonel called Oleg Penkovsky tried to make contact with the West. 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. 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. Sergei Bokhan was also separated from his family for six years. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. Only a few days earlier he had called his brother-in-law in Kiev, where Alex was studying, and been assured his son was doing well. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. It was the signal to launch his escape. 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. Athens, May 21, 1985: After the Tuesday-morning staff meeting at the Soviet Embassy, Col. Sergei Ivanovich Bokhan stayed behind to talk to his boss, the local rezident of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . Oleg Gordievsky. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. When I came to Moscow, she left, he says, taking the children with her on a vacation. Considerado como el doble agente ms valioso que tuvo Occidente durante la Guerra Fra, Penkovsky ofreci informacin que le dio al gobierno de Kennedy una ventaja clave durante la Crisis de . 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. "He came from a very humble background, but was always trying to better himself," says Cumberbatch. 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. Toasty. The FBI declined to comment on whether the search Wiser began is continuing. It led to him and a Soviet double agent, Oleg Penkovsky, becoming firm friends, involved in . 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. Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. The mole isnt just some guy who stole a few secrets. 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. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The emaciated Wynne's returntohis middle-class Londonhomewherehis wife and child waited made for a jarring scene in newsreels at the time. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. It shortened her life, he said. He was the real deal. Bokhans son, Alex, also made it to the U.S., in 1995. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . 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. "And Greville played a big part in that.". In his memoir Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (1987), written with journalist Paul Greengrass, Wright says: When I first wrote my Penkovsky analysis Maurice Oldfield (later Chief of MI6 in the 1970s), who played a key role in the Penkovsky case as Chief of Station in Washington, told me: 'You've got a long row to hoe with this one, Peter, there's a lot of K's [knighthoods] and Gongs [medals] riding high on the back of Penkovsky' he said, referring to the honours heaped on those involved in the Penkovsky operation. In April 1961, through Greville M. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. 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. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. 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. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. He has two daughters. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. answer the question what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter, which will help you get the most accurate answer. He works as a computer programmer. Since Oleg Penkovsky offered his services to both the Americans and the British, the CIA and MI6 developed him jointly. (1) BBC Broadcast (11th May, 1963) A British businessman accused of spying for the West has been sentenced to eight years' detention by a Moscow tribunal. A new spy thriller draws on the fascinating lifeand whopping liesof one of the U.K.s most famous intelligence agents. Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. 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). I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin". "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." One theory is that Penkovsky wrote his message in broad brush strokes. 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. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Between April 1961 and October 1962, Penkovsky inflicted enormous damage on the Soviet Union. 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 . Dunlap was just another source they had to protect. Penkovsky was referred to in four of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan espionage novels: The Hunt for Red October (1984), The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), The Bear and the Dragon (2000) and Red Rabbit (2002).