He would not say why. He met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan, wrote a memoir and co-wrote a book on the KGB. 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. He asked for a fictitious Greek employee. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. It was the signal to launch his escape. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. 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. Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. The Cuban Missile Crisis. [6] This information was invaluable to President John F. Kennedy in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. 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 CIA delayed in contacting him. 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. 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. 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. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. 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.. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. 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. Col. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was considered the wunderkind of the Soviet intelligence services. This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. 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. Penkovsky had in the meantime become increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, particularly with the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. He was transferred to MI6 and assisted with the 1959 defection of the Soviet intelligence officer, Major Kuznov. In all, Penkovsky had provided Western intelligence with about 140 hours of interviews and 111 exposed rolls of film, contributing to some 10,000 pages of intelligence reports. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. After many years, I understood him. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. A KGB general told him he had confessed. Son And Daughter Now Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were both arrested by the Soviets in 1962. Dun s denouement is both startling and convincing a fitting climax to this irresistible real life thriller Francis Wheen, Mail on Sunday 'This excellent book contains lessons that are still valid in the 21st century' --Oleg Gordievsky, Literary Review 'This excellent book contains lessons that are still valid in the 21st . "Greville Wynne was anordinary mandoing an extraordinary thing," Cumberbatch says. 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. After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. 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. 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]. The following article hopes to help you make more suitable choices and . Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. Murder by Cremation. Macintyre writes in the book. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap. He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. And the intelligence culture is not going to let that go. 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. [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. Stay calm, he recalls telling himself. But unlike other famous characters, his personality, the role he played and what . 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. 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. Advertising Notice I talked to some old MI6 friends, and they say they are sure there is. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. MI6's agent, however, eventually fell under suspicion, and was ordered back. In June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. I was angry because I was dropped from military school and sent to the Army, far off, near Vladivostok, he said. I always thought there was another one, he told me. That the KGB ran a fourth mole is undeniable, Victor Cherkashin, a wily KGB counterintelligence officer, has written. 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. 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. His trial began a few months later, and he was promptly sentenced to death for treason. 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. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. what happened to penkovsky wifemostar bridge jump injuries. 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 Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. 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. 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. 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. 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. Gordievsky was told his London posting was over, but he would be allowed to remain in a non-sensitive KGB department in Moscow. 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. Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. 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. The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. A Russian TV documentary shows a shadowy figure picking it up, but Andrei said it is an actor, not his father. Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites in Cuba to the West. He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. 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. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". 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. In 1949 Penkovsky transferred from the regular army to the Soviet army intelligence directorate (GRU). He worked as a double agent for the British secret service during the Cold War, between 1974 and 1985. 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. 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). He played a role in both the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. 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 . 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. The unlikely British spy was freed in 1964 in exchange forSoviet spy Konon Molody. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. Benedict Cumberbatch is known for bringing outlandish, extraordinary characters, from Marvel's "Dr. 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. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. "And Greville played a big part in that.". Privacy Statement On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. He was reputedly on friendly terms with Penkovsky,[21] which is very likely to have been a cause of his fall. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. 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. He did so, but nothing happened. 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. He always hoped Leila would join him in England. 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 . [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Cookie Policy For two years I went to Lefortovo two, three times a week, Alla Bokhan told me. It's the early 1960s and Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a salesman who represents Western manufacturers in foreign countries. 3.80. The Soviets had arranged for the apparent good news to reach his wife through a friend and former co-worker in Moscow, who wrote to her in Lagos. Although Gordievsky has written that he climbed into the trunk of one of the cars, a former CIA officer says he actually crawled into a space in a specially modified Land Rover. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. In 1945, Penkovsky married the teenage daughter of Lieutenant-General Dmitri Gapanovich, thus acquiring another high-ranking patron. 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. 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. Minutes passed. 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. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. 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. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. 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. Terms of Use 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. 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 was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. 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. But the CIA and FBI debriefers soon recognized a glaring anomaly in Ames account: It was clear that those three agents had fallen under suspicion in May 1985before Ames insists he handed over the documents. President John Kennedy read it and understood. Confess again! the general roared. [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. David Hefner was born in 1955 in Palo Alto, CA, as the son of Hugh Hefner, founder of "Playboy" magazine. 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. 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. An Extraordinary Bond: Dominic Cooke on The Courier. [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. His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. What happened to wife of Oleg Penkovsky? Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. 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. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . Because I knew it was a death sentence.. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. 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 . 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 British intelligence officer and Soviet spy. Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. Penkovsky either was shot or killed himself in prisonthere are disputing accounts. The KGB surveilled Janet and witnessed her meeting with Penkovsky. Moscow seemed to have no clue hed been secretly working for MI6, the British secret intelligence service, for 11 years. On this trip, Penkovsky submitted to hours of interviews with British and American intelligence officials about the Soviet Unions military and political developments. That raised a possibility that remains, even today, a subject of deep concern among counterintelligence agents, a problem privately acknowledged but little discussed publicly: That the three agents may have been betrayed by a mole inside U.S. intelligence whose identity is still unknown. 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. There were embraces, and everyone cried. 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 . Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. 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 had been drugged. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. 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. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. [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 Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. [8] The KGB defector Vladimir N. Sakharov suggests Penkovsky was genuine, saying: "I knew about the ongoing KGB reorganisation precipitated by Oleg Penkovsky's case and Yuri Nosenko's defection. (Howard, Russian authorities reported in 2002, died of a fall in his KGB dacha near Moscow. He underwent a debriefing by MI6 and cooperated with it and other Western intelligence services. Soon there was a plan for an exfiltration, the CIAs term for spiriting an agent in danger out of a foreign country. It was in my fathers handwriting. Leonid Poleshchuk knew his first CIA case officer, who had recruited him in Nepal, as Joe. He has two daughters. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. We had neighbors that were very close. 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. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. 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. There is no statute of limitations for espionage. 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. Maybe a fifth. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. Both he and the Soviet leader. Here's what to know about Wynne's real history. 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. 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. 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. The 23-year-old journalist had been working late for Novosti, the Soviet press agency. It led to him and a Soviet double agent, Oleg Penkovsky, becoming firm friends, involved in . The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. (Mr. Chisholm now works in London and lives at Ashford. But it was only a matter of time. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. They drove through several checkpoints with no trouble, but they had to stop at Soviet customs when they reached the border. He succeeded in transferring to the West 111 Minox films with 5,500 top-secret military documents, totaling 7,650 pages, as well as revealing the identities of hundreds of Soviet agents in the West. During a trip to London in April 1961, the Soviet colonel held a series of . Why did Wynne make up so much, when the truths of his 18 months as a spy are already filled with astounding details? John F. Lewis Jr., a former FBI counterintelligence agent who was chief of the national security division, believes there is a fourth mole. No products in the cart. 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. Some of it just didnt add up, he says. For months, Andrei had been hoping his father would find him an apartment. It shortened her life, he said. Terms of Use "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. A somewhat baroque means of murder, the killer shuts their victim in a coffin (knocking them out first is optional) and feeds the coffin into a crematorium oven. Moscow, August 3, 1985: It was 2 a.m. when Andrei Poleshchuk got home. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. He was like a walking dead man. Soon after his arrest she collapsed psychologically. On October 29 of that year, just hours after the Soviets stood down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Wynne went to Soviet-occupied Budapest with a traveling exhibition of British industrial goods, against the advice of his MI6 handlers. Leonid never made it to the rock, his son said. But some highly experienced U.S. counterintelligence experts doubt it. Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last World War". Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . He didnt have a choice. Today, Sergei and Alla live quietly in the Sun Belt under his new identity. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration.