Investors Helping Baby Boomer Business Owners. 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 . Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . His spying career was the subject of episode 1 of the 2007 BBC Television docudrama Nuclear Secrets, titled "The Spy from Moscow" in which he was portrayed by Mark Bonnar. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. The domestic impact of foreign clandestine operations: the CIA and academic institutions, the media and religious institutions, Appendix B", The Capture and Execution of Colonel Penkovsky, 1963, "Nonfiction Book Review: The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War by Jerrold L. Schecter, Author, Peter S. Deriabin, With Scribner Book Company ISBN 978-0-684-19068-6", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oleg_Penkovsky&oldid=1136437646, Soviet people executed for spying for the United States, Russian people executed by the Soviet Union, Executed people from North OssetiaAlania, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from May 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Russian-language text, Articles having same image on Wikidata and Wikipedia, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from October 2022, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from January 2023, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. But his leaked information on Soviet missile capabilities and played a key role in President Kennedy'sstrong, successful stance duringthe Cuban Missile Crisis. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. In October 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were on the brink of nuclear war after Soviet nuclear missiles were spotted in Cuba. After dark they left for a small airport, where Bokhan boarded a CIA plane. Your Privacy Rights He had champagne and flowers waiting, a big basket of fruit, chocolates and a balloon. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. President John Kennedy read it and understood. Would she ever live in the West? sports injuries prezi. 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. 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. 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. 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. Faced with these unexplained losses, the CIA in October 1986 set up a small, highly secret mole-hunting unit to uncover the cause of this disaster. No question.". "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. Sentenced toeight years in a labor camp, Wynne spent 18 months in Moscow'sLubyanka Prison, where he was subjected to beatings and torture. 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. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed. Had the Russians examined the car, they would have seen the hump on the floor where the driveshaft would normally be. He was transferred to MI6 and assisted with the 1959 defection of the Soviet intelligence officer, Major Kuznov. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. 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. 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. That the KGB ran a fourth mole is undeniable, Victor Cherkashin, a wily KGB counterintelligence officer, has written. Because his father opposed the Communist revolution, Penkovsky was routinely denied promotions. Penkovsky's reporting of thirty years ago demonstrates that political and Economic failures were already eroding the foundations of the Soviet empire. I could sense he had been tortured. Leonid was executed on July 30. It dealt with capabilities and intentions. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine 41 ratings1 review. A member of the Communist Party, he took part in the invasion of Finland and by the end of the Second World War had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. Penkovsky papers, they do provide a fascinating glimpse into the strange and distorted world of Communism in the Soviet Union. Released in the same week as The Sun's revelations about an alleged spy known as David Smith who worked in Britain's embassy in Berlin, The Courier tells how the married 41-year-old sales consultant was persuaded by MI6 to deliver secrets from Russian spy Oleg Penkovsky. 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. troops.[15]. After many years, I understood him. When I came to Moscow, she left, he says, taking the children with her on a vacation. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap. The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. When it came to writing the screenplay, OConnor laments that the true story of Wynnes experiences may never be known. He traveled frequently, to the United States, Germany, France, New Zealand, Australia, South America and the Middle East. [18] In a 2010 interview, Suvorov denied that the man in the film[clarification needed] was Penkovsky and said that he had been shot. But as he began researching Wynnes story, he learned that this ordinary man could also tell some extraordinary lies. In extended CIA and FBI debriefings, he talked about his nine years of spying for Moscowincluding the day when he turned over, in his words, the identities of virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me.. The film sees him arrested on a plane leaving. 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. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. Inside were three British intelligence agentsthe candy-bar man and two women, one of whom was Gordievskys MI6 case officer in London. Menu. Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. This was prior to President Kennedy's address to the US revealing that U-2 spy plane photographs had confirmed intelligence reports that the Soviets were installing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, in what was known as Operation Anadyr. You have the wrong number, he was told. After taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. For a long time he resented the impact of his fathers CIA spying on his own life. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. In June he was expelled from the Central Committee for 'having relaxed his political vigilance.' He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. Penkovskys dynamism and enthusiasm, his wide-ranging and passionate denunciations of the Soviet system and its leaders illustrated with anecdotes, fascinated and captivated the American and British teams, write Schecter and Deriabin. 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. Wynne went along, slightly concerned about whether Penkovsky was on the level and concerned about putting himself into a dangerous situation, kicking off what would be one of the most productive clandestine operations in Cold War history. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine It's the early 1960s and Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a salesman who represents Western manufacturers in foreign countries. They have two children, and he works as an independent research analyst for business and government contractors in Northern Virginia. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. This led to the publication of his dubious memoirs. Advertising Notice 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. Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. His character's execution was the opening scene for the movie. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. harvp error: no target: CITEREFSchecterDeriabinPenkovskij1992 (. Terms of Use 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 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. Macintyre writes in the book. 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. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. 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. 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. In 1949 Penkovsky transferred from the regular army to the Soviet army intelligence directorate (GRU). 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. This explosive book records the secret life and adventures of the greatest spy of our time - Oleg Penkovskiy - and reads with the excitement of the greatest of suspense novels. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. 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. In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. [10], The Soviet leadership began the deployment of nuclear missiles, in the belief that Washington would not detect the Cuban missile sites until it was too late to do anything about them. Upon release from prison, Wynnes old life was in tattershed lost much of his business and the time spent in the Soviet prison seemed to have caused long-term damage. He was about to be married, and his debts were mounting. Son And Daughter Now Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were both arrested by the Soviets in 1962. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. 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]. Privacy Statement 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. 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 was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. 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. "He started as a nave amateur. But the chummy interactions between the agents and Penkovskys prolific, even reckless, acquisition of materials grew increasingly perilousand finally caught the KGBs attention. 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. Murder by Cremation. His work . That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. [13], Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962. The Courier: Directed by Dominic Cooke. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. His father, Leonid Poleshchuk, was a senior KGB counterintelligence officer, most recently the deputy rezident for counterintelligence in Lagos, Nigeria. 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. 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. In June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. Boy and daughter now Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky were captured by the Soviets in 1962. 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. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. John F. Lewis Jr., a former FBI counterintelligence agent who was chief of the national security division, believes there is a fourth mole. [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. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration. Welcome to the United States, one of them said. No products in the cart. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. The next thing he knew, he woke up half-dressed in one of the dachas bedrooms. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . 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. 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. A KGB general told him he had confessed. 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. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. He has two daughters. Strange" to Sherlock Holmes. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. 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. The FBI declined to comment on whether the search Wiser began is continuing. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. They were alone in the world with this incredible burden except for the other man.. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. 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. The following article hopes to help you make more suitable choices and . 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. 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. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Within two weeks after his flight to the United States, he had a new name, a fake background, a Social Security number and a 9-millimeter Beretta. The Cuban Missile Crisis. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. 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. He tried again, following the fallback plan, and this time a man carrying a dark-green bag from Harrods, the upscale London department store, walked by eating a candy bar. Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites in Cuba to the West. 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.