His trial began a few months later, and he was promptly sentenced to death for treason. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. 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. I could sense he had been tortured. Leonid was executed on July 30. 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. The films screenwriter, Tom OConnor, found Wynnes story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. Poleshchuk was lured back to his fate. This gave American officials a clearer picture of what the Soviets were doing in the region, bringing in medium-range ballistic missiles. harvp error: no target: CITEREFSchecterDeriabinPenkovskij1992 (. There were embraces, and everyone cried. 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. He was recruited to MI5 just before World War II. Even though Wynne wasnt exactly a reliable narrator for what he did during his time as a secret agent, the materials he smuggled from behind the Iron Curtain were the real thing. Privacy Statement Penkovsky was put on trial for treason in May 1963 and was found guilty and sentenced to death. A Russian TV documentary shows a shadowy figure picking it up, but Andrei said it is an actor, not his father. Penkovsky either was shot or killed himself in prisonthere are disputing accounts. 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. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. 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. These guys were in the foxhole togetherthey each had a secret that only the other man knew, says OConnor. He has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. President John Kennedy read it and understood. MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through . After taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. 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). They made an odd contrastthe short, energetic, and thinly mustachioed Wynne alongside the military bearing of Penkovskybut there seemed to be genuine affection between the two, and this friendship is a central focus of The Courier. After some months, she was released. These things have to be run to ground.. Bokhan froze. 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. He played a role in both the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. Even the official accounts put out by American and Russian authorities regarding the Penkovsky affair include disinformation and spin that he, or any historian, has to navigate through. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. 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. Wright was bitter towards British intelligence, reportedly believing that it should have adopted his proposed methods to identify British/Soviet double agents. When it came to writing the screenplay, OConnor laments that the true story of Wynnes experiences may never be known. Three other officers were also disciplined. "Greville Wynne was anordinary mandoing an extraordinary thing," Cumberbatch says. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. 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. 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. 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. Thats when they showed me a piece of paper with the words, I met Joe, Andrei told me. But it was only a matter of time. Seeking ways to parlay the notoriety he received, he became what Duns calls a rent-a-spokesperson for all kinds of espionage stuff, making appearances in the media about anything related to spycraft, whether or not it was anything he had experience with. 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. The KGB men searched the apartment all night. Because his father opposed the Communist revolution, Penkovsky was routinely denied promotions. 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. He was flown to Moscow, imprisoned, and tried alongside Penkovsky, who it would later be learned had been arrested the week before Wynne entered Hungary. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. Alex Palmer The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets. The KGB surveilled Janet and witnessed her meeting with Penkovsky. 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. 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 was a middle-classBritish businessman whose frequenttravelto Eastern Europe attracted recruitmentby MI-6 to serve as a liaison to high-ranking Soviet official Penkovsky. His work . After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. Thus began their fruitful relationship, one that involved Wynne hosting Penkovsky in London, who was visiting under the pretense of cultivate new opportunities in the West. He had been drugged. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. At the time, they were largely accepted at face value and sold well. Dont call us, well call you in a couple years. When Greville got out of prison, he was not prepared, as people obviously are not in those circumstances, to be ignored.. There is no statute of limitations for espionage. 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. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. 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. A large man let him in and flashed a badge. 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. 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. They were convicted of espionage. Penkovsky papers, they do provide a fascinating glimpse into the strange and distorted world of Communism in the Soviet Union. Donec gravida mi a condimentum rutrum. Despite having no previous experience in intelligence work, Wynne was being recruited to serve as an MI6 agent. 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. As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. "And Greville played a big part in that.". Penkovsky was portrayed by Christopher Rozycki in the 1985 BBC Television serial Wynne and Penkovsky. "He started as a nave amateur. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". I was angry because I was dropped from military school and sent to the Army, far off, near Vladivostok, he said. Murder by Cremation. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. She did, in 1991, but the strain caused by six years of separation proved too much to repair. It's athank you from the West for what he sacrificed.". 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. That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. He works as a computer programmer. The daughter of a Russian mother . Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. I talked to some old MI6 friends, and they say they are sure there is. 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. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. 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. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. It was scary.. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. I could not believe what was happening. He was like a walking dead man. Penkovsky (right) during his trial What happened next is unclear. Wynnes fabrications range from small to huge. They know.. Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. Minutes passed. The information he provided on the Soviets . 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. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. Among the materials Penkovsky provided to Wynne were four photocopies of plans for construction sites of missile-launching installations in Cuba. Menu. 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.'. This both kills the victim and disposes of the body in one fell swoop. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, a CIA and MI6 agent deep inside Soviet military intelligence, provided le Carr inspiration for The Russia House (1989). 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. He always hoped Leila would join him in England. To top it off, it would have been physically impossible at the time. Benedict Cumberbatch is known for bringing outlandish, extraordinary characters, from Marvel's "Dr. His character's execution was the opening scene for the movie. His fear mounted. Sergei Bokhan was also separated from his family for six years. Why did Wynne make up so much, when the truths of his 18 months as a spy are already filled with astounding details? "In a way, it's a love letter to Penkovsky,"Cumberbatch says. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. 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 the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. He just was an ordinary man who got thrust into this just extraordinary, life-altering situation that was going to define his existence forever, says OConnor. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. He was arrested on October 22nd. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. 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. 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). A new spy thriller draws on the fascinating lifeand whopping liesof one of the U.K.s most famous intelligence agents. 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. That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. Soon there was a plan for an exfiltration, the CIAs term for spiriting an agent in danger out of a foreign country. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . 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. It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. Sooner or later they would arrest me.. While its standard for Hollywood films to take liberties with the facts, insert composite characters, devise imagined conversations, and smooth-out timelines to ensure a brisk pace, its less common for a based-on-a-true-story movie to have to be more truthful than the source material. He might be dead, or hes living in his dacha now. 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. (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. | READ MORE. John F. Lewis Jr., a former FBI counterintelligence agent who was chief of the national security division, believes there is a fourth mole. Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. But Wynne paid a heavy price for his heroism. They were driven to the infamous Lefortovo prison for interrogation. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. Your fathers been arrested, the man said. Omissions? After stops in Madrid and Frankfurt, a military jet flew him across the Atlantic. Benedict Cumberbatch:Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian'. "The Courier" has compressed the real-life story and changed some facts. This information allowed the West to identify the missile sites from the low-resolution pictures provided by US U-2 spy planes. 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. Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine 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. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. The resettled spy told Wiser he was convinced Ames had betrayed him, but he confirmed that he had been abruptly summoned back to Moscow on May 17, 1985almost four weeks before Ames said he named him to the KGB. 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. Cookie Policy 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. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. 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. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. Updates? Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last World War". The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. Confess again! the general roared. Hanssen, who was convicted of espionage, is serving a life sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado. He didnt have a choice. Today, Sergei and Alla live quietly in the Sun Belt under his new identity. He dropped it, sensing that he was getting into dangerous territory. 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. pictures of the galvin family; springfield, ma city council candidates; what happened to penkovsky wife He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. "He did make a life for himself, but Greville Wynne did pay a big price for his service. 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. In 1961, jet travel did not allow someone to fly from the U.K. to the U.S. and back again in 24 hours, says West. 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. For a long time he resented the impact of his fathers CIA spying on his own life. It also gave US President John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed, valuable information about Soviet weakness that allowed him to face down Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and resolve the crisis without a nuclear war. He was free. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne are directly responsible for its positive outcome. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . That happened several times.. 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. je voulais juste avoir de tes nouvelles what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child. They flew to New York and, with help from the CIA and the FBI, were reunited with Sergei at a motel near John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was probably the Wests most valuable double agent during the Cold War. If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. Penkovsky gave a huge amount of details about what missiles the Soviets had, how old they were, how there were queues for foodit was an extremely vivid portrait of the country and the people within intelligence, says Duns. 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. In the late 1960s, after he had been imprisoned for his spycraft and could no longer assist MI6 nor the CIA, the amateur spy authored a pair of books: The Man From Moscow: The Story of Wynne and Penkovsky and The Man From Odessa, that were riddled with falsehoods. Stay calm, he recalls telling himself. After Ames was arrested and charged with espionage, his attorney, Plato Cacheris, negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors: Ames wife, Rosario, an accomplice in his spying, would be spared a long prison sentence if he cooperated fully with the authorities. After dark they left for a small airport, where Bokhan boarded a CIA plane. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. 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. troops.[15]. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. The following article hopes to help you make more suitable choices and . OConnor makes clear that The Courier is not a documentary, even as he explains that he took pains to stick to the facts as much as they could be ascertaineddrawing on works such as Jerrold L. Shecter and Peter S. Deriabins The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War and other accounts that could be trusted more than Wynnes own inventions. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. 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. He did so, he said, to prove his bona fides as a potential KGB mole. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. Because I knew it was a death sentence.. 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. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites in Cuba to the West. He met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan, wrote a memoir and co-wrote a book on the KGB. Among the explanations are a desire for money or fame, a ruinous case of alcoholism, or perhaps even psychological scars left by his time in Soviet prison or the shame he felt for publicly turning against British intelligence during the trial. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The burden of that is hard to imagine.. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. In his autobiography, Wynne says that he was carefully developed by British intelligence over many years with the specific task of making contact with Penkovsky.[5]. He was transferred to MI6 and assisted with the 1959 defection of the Soviet intelligence officer, Major Kuznov. Investors Helping Baby Boomer Business Owners. He was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. He had planned to write a memoir but died of malariabefore he could begin. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. Posted on . 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 was arrested by the Soviets in October 1962, and then tried and executed the following year. [13], Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962. The KGB took her to a sanitarium, where she was drugged and interrogated further. Kent. 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 . He underwent a debriefing by MI6 and cooperated with it and other Western intelligence services. 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. 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. You have the wrong number, he was told. He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. He started having trouble breathing. 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 .
Uncle Passed Away Message To Boss,
Janet Jones A League Of Their Own,
Articles W
