After dark they left for a small airport, where Bokhan boarded a CIA plane. Sooner or later they would arrest me.. 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. In Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. But as he began researching Wynnes story, he learned that this ordinary man could also tell some extraordinary lies. Penkovsky (right) during his trial What happened next is unclear. Oleg Penkovskiy. 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. For his treason, Penkovsky was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad days after the trial ended (though Wynne would later claim he died of suicide). To top it off, it would have been physically impossible at the time. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. He was free. 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. [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. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, a CIA and MI6 agent deep inside Soviet military intelligence, provided le Carr inspiration for The Russia House (1989). I dont want to live in a tent, she said. [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. 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. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. 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]. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. The next thing he knew, he woke up half-dressed in one of the dachas bedrooms. 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. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. je voulais juste avoir de tes nouvelles what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child. One theory is that Penkovsky wrote his message in broad brush strokes. 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.. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. 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 . That happened several times.. [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. 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. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. 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. 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. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. 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. He started having trouble breathing. Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. "He started as a nave amateur. 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. 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 . David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. 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. Privacy Statement "Most experts agreethat what Penkovsky provided on the Soviet's capabilities was extremely useful during the Cuban Missile crisis," saysRobert English, director of Central European Studies at the University of Southern California. 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. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. Penkovsky was ultimately undone by a mole within the British government. The first meeting between Penkovsky and two American and two British intelligence officers occurred during a visit by Penkovsky to London in April 1961. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. In the back seat were a jacket, hat and sunglasses. The name of Oleg Penkovsky is not nearly as well known. 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. Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. We never drank too much, but we had to relax a little bit after one of our tiring meetings. Impossible. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. Your fathers been arrested, the man said. But it was only a matter of time. He was transferred to MI6 and assisted with the 1959 defection of the Soviet intelligence officer, Major Kuznov. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara. Donec gravida mi a condimentum rutrum. [7], Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin does not mention Penkovsky in his comprehensive memoir about his career in intelligence against the West. 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. Her eyes were empty. The timeline just didnt work to explain Gordievskys recall to Moscow, FBI Special Agent Leslie Wiser, who ran the Ames case, told me. Why did Wynne make up so much, when the truths of his 18 months as a spy are already filled with astounding details? Cookie Policy Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. The Cuban Missile Crisis. 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. 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. 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. 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. So the discrepancy between Ames timeline and the exposure of Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk remains unexplained. Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benjamin Cumberbatch) in The Courier. (Mr. Chisholm now works in London and lives at Ashford. An industrial sales consultant who regularly traveled through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union representing British electrical and steel companies, Wynne was told it would be helpful if on his next trip, he could arrange for a meeting with a state committee in Moscow dedicated to developing opportunities with foreigners in science and technology, and report back on his conversations. 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. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. As a top ranking Russian officer, he sinks into the depts and rises to the heights of international intrigue. 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. 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. 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. At the time, they were largely accepted at face value and sold well. 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 Updates? Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. I talked to some old MI6 friends, and they say they are sure there is. 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. 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. 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 works as a computer programmer. He handed them a bulky envelope and pleaded with them to deliver it to the American embassy. 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. [18] In a 2010 interview, Suvorov denied that the man in the film[clarification needed] was Penkovsky and said that he had been shot. He did so, but nothing happened. 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. 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. 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. The emaciated Wynne's returntohis middle-class Londonhomewherehis wife and child waited made for a jarring scene in newsreels at the time. Son And Daughter Now Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were both arrested by the Soviets in 1962. 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. By Benjy P. October 15, 2022. His escape plan was bound under the flyleaf of a novel; he had to slit the cover open to read the instructions. As they walked on the beach that Saturday, he said his career was in trouble. Oleg Penkovsky married (wife played by Maria Mironova, actress and here's a brunette), he has a daughter. His work . U.S. counterintelligence agents have established that neither Howard nor Hanssen had access to the identities of all the American intelligence sources who were betrayed in 1985. The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. The KGB surveilled Janet and witnessed her meeting with Penkovsky. British intelligence officer and Soviet spy. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. He was probably the Wests most valuable double agent during the Cold War. The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. No, he was told, theyre here for you.. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. Because his father opposed the Communist revolution, Penkovsky was routinely denied promotions. Penkovsky's espionage about Soviet missiles . "He came from a very humble background, but was always trying to better himself," says Cumberbatch. They have two children, and he works as an independent research analyst for business and government contractors in Northern Virginia. He had lost a lot of weight. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. Wynne was a British businessman who, from 1960 and 1962, smuggled thousands of pieces of intel out of Russia before he was captured, imprisoned, and tortured for two years by the KGB. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. 276 to 280, "A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a LIttle Fish. 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. In addition to Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk, more than a dozen other sources were exposed. In 1962, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky defied his country to save the world from nuclear war then paid for his heroism with his life. In 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. 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. [2] On Varentsov's recommendation, he studied at the Frunze Military Academy in 1945-48, then worked as a staff officer. Though nobody knows how the leak was traced back to Penkovsky, he was arrested by the Soviets on October 22, 1962. But unlike other famous characters, his personality, the role he played and what . Penkovsky's reporting of thirty years ago demonstrates that political and Economic failures were already eroding the foundations of the Soviet empire. I will never forget the day when I got home and she was singing songs, melodies, no words, and looking insane. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. 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. 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. 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. The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). In the West he is hailed as "the spy who saved the world". Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. 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. what happened to penkovsky wifemostar bridge jump injuries. 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. The Cuban Missile Crisis was high-stakes brinkmanship played out between US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, bringing Washington and Moscow to the precipice of nuclear war in October 1962. Wynne also enthusiastically embraced his role, enjoying the part of a daring secret agent where he could apply his salesman skills to a higher-stakes game. 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. 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. When I found a job, the KGB called and they fired me. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. 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. Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . 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. 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. I was angry because I was dropped from military school and sent to the Army, far off, near Vladivostok, he said. On this trip, Penkovsky submitted to hours of interviews with British and American intelligence officials about the Soviet Unions military and political developments. "But you have a responsibility to honor the essence of what happened," says director Dominic Cooke. That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. 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. Investors Helping Baby Boomer Business Owners. 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. I could not believe what was happening. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. It was in my fathers handwriting. Leonid Poleshchuk knew his first CIA case officer, who had recruited him in Nepal, as Joe. "The Courier" has compressed the real-life story and changed some facts. Before his father left Lagos, Andrei said, he gave a gold watch to his CIA case officer at the time. 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. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry R. Schlesinger, 'Fatal Encounter' BBC TV documentary 3 May 1991, KGB, MI6 and CIA officers involved with the Penkovsky reveal their stories, This page was last edited on 30 January 2023, at 08:39. He was like a walking dead man. 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. Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. 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. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap. 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. 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. Ameeting between theRussian prisoners, in which Wynne tellsPenkovsky of the import of his information, asdepicted in the film, is drama. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. He divorced his first wife Sheila after his return before entering a second failed marriage. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. 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.

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