Penkovsky is perhaps the best known of Soviet double agents. He had been drugged. But it was only a matter of time. The Cuban Missile Crisis began on Oct. 14, 1962, when a U-2 spy plane photographed missile installations in Cuba confirming the Soviets were gearing up with capabilities of their own. The courier was Greville Wynne [] Wynne had founded an export business of industrial engineering products years earlier, and the international travel involved provided excellent cover for espionage. By 1939 he had graduated from a Soviet military school and had been part of a group called Komosomol, meaning "young communists. He was selected for the post of military attach in India, but the KGB had uncovered the story of his father's death, and he was suspended, investigated, and assigned in November 1960 to the State Committee for Science and Technology. Maybe a fifth. 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. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. Bettmann/Getty ImagesPenkovskys debriefing sessions with MI6 and the CIA totaled up to 140 hours. A GRU colonel by 1960, he served as deputy chief of the foreign section of the State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research for the next two years. Leonid never made it to the rock, his son said. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. That's about all I knew until this film. Arrested? Between the information from Oleg Penkovsky and the U-2 pilots photos, America now knew the exact location of the Soviet launch sites, and most importantly, their weak long-range capabilities. IN their own highly bizarre fashion, these two books represent what seems to be the first public encounter, via the literary confrontation of its agents, between the Soviet KGB and the Ameri- can CIA: the British, as spies and the spied-upon, occupy a hazy middle ground. They have two children, and he works as an independent research analyst for business and government contractors in Northern Virginia. Son And Daughter Now Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were both arrested by the Soviets in 1962. Stuzhin & Cheredintzev/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesSome believe Penkovsky was burned alive as Soviet punishment for his treasonous espionage. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()). [7], Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin does not mention Penkovsky in his comprehensive memoir about his career in intelligence against the West. Upon his return, Greville married his secretary and narrator, Herma Van Burren. Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. Penkovsky, sadly, was tried and executed for conspiracy by the Soviets in 1962. Our professional rodent controlwill surely provide you with the results you are looking for. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. They worked hard, shadowing British diplomats, to build up a "discovery case" against Penkovsky so that they could arrest him without throwing suspicion on their own moles. John F. Lewis Jr., a former FBI counterintelligence agent who was chief of the national security division, believes there is a fourth mole. He provided the CIA and MI6 with extensive debriefing sessions totaling up to 140 hours, delivered invaluable documents, and over 5,000 Soviet photos. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. 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. Penkovsky, far from being the decadent playboy.portrayed by the Soviet prosecutor, was probably The most highly placed Western agent ever to fall into the hands of'the Soviet security . Wynne who was also arrested for espionage would claim that Penkovsky committed suicide in prison. 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. Bokhans son, Alex, also made it to the U.S., in 1995. They were driven to the infamous Lefortovo prison for interrogation. When Oleg Penkovsky offered Soviet military secrets to MI6, she became the go-between. But he reportedly committed suicide in a Soviet labor camp. Updates? He was immediately. These produced around 1,200 pages of transcripts which the CIA and MI6 delegated 30 translators and analysts to focus on. Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the London . 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 most popular as the messenger who could give highly confidential information about the Soviets. He had a massive ego, incredibly thwarted by the system he grew up in with all sorts of hang-ups. He was arrested for espionage in Budapest on Nov. 16, 1962. 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. 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). 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. Either one of ours or theirs., When the FBI Spent Decades Hunting for a Soviet Spy on Its Staff, Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, David Wise [6] This information was invaluable to President John F. Kennedy in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. The "cremated alive" hypothesis appears in several Clancy novels, though Clancy never identified Penkovsky as the executed spy. The mole isnt just some guy who stole a few secrets. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. JB: The first meeting with Oleg Penkovsky was about seven p.m. April twenty first 1961 and he was told what room to go to at the Mount Royal Hotel in London and thanks to my MI6 friends, they permitted me, since he first wanted to meet the Americans, to be the one to answer the door and meet him. Penkovsky's fate is also mentioned in the Nelson DeMille spy novel The Charm School (1988). Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. He was like a walking dead man. Greville Wynne is a legend in the history books and his family has also benefited from it. If you are interested in finding out more about our services, feel free to contact us right away! The British intelligence agency MI6 (then known as SIS) had already been hard at work to infiltrate the Soviet Unions State Committee for Science and Technology, however. [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. 3 3.Oleg Penkovsky - Your Resource for Espionage on the Web; 4 4.What Happened To Greville Wynne And Oleg - Showbizcorner; 5 5.The True Story Behind 'The Courier' | History| Smithsonian Magazine; 6 6.Spy Penkovsky biography. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? 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. He did so, but nothing happened. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. Were they executed? Penkovsky was actually a real proper hero before beginning of the film. Officially, he was shot to death. We have no more information about his spouse. He was probably the Wests most valuable double agent during the Cold War. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. They know.. More than a year before the crisis, they had recruited a civilian, British businessman Greville Wynne, to do so. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. How Penkovsky and Wynne did it, how they were caught, and what happened to them next is the focus of The Courier. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, . He started having trouble breathing. 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. [9] While the weight of opinion seems to be that Penkovsky was genuine, the debate underscores the difficulty faced by all intelligence agencies of determining information offered from the enemy. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. 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. How the traitor Oleg Penkovsky was 7 7.The Courier vs. the True Story of British Spy Greville Wynne 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. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. As soon as Gordievsky landed in Moscow, he picked up signs that he had gambled wrong. Documents released by National Archives show British officials saw efforts to free Oleg Gordievsky's family as a lost cause Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor Mon 29 Dec 2014 19.01 EST Last . 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Trong khi , mt ip vin ca GRU tn . Penkovsky was portrayed by Christopher Rozycki in the 1985 BBC Television serial Wynne and Penkovsky. 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. This information allowed the West to identify the missile sites from the low-resolution pictures provided by US U-2 spy planes. Expert extermination for a safe property. His fear mounted. 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. Wikimedia CommonsOleg Penkovskys father died in the Russian Revolution. During the 1960s, a corrosive mole hunt led by James J. Angleton, the CIAs counterintelligence chief, led to institutional paranoia, paralyzed operations aimed at the Soviet Union, and disrupted the lives of many innocent CIA officers who were fired or sidetracked in their careers. After Gordievsky escaped, a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to death in absentia. His father, Leonid Poleshchuk, was a senior KGB counterintelligence officer, most recently the deputy rezident for counterintelligence in Lagos, Nigeria. [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. MI6 was in disbelief as were the Americans they gave it to. The FBI declined to comment on whether the search Wiser began is continuing. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. It was broadcast on 15 January 2007.[22]. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. 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. In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. In simple terms, the GRU was Soviet army intelligence. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . [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. After his release, Wynne struggled with . He was a highly placed Soviet official in Moscow who fed secrets to the West before and during the Cuban Missile crisis. 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