It contained seven rolls of microfilm revealing secret information about the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Years later, the Agency discovered a British double agent betrayed them. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. Graduating class of the Dzerzhinzkiy Artillery Engineering Academy in the USSR in 1960; Oleg Penkovskiy is the third from right in the front row. Lt. Col. Oleg Penkovsky, born the same year as Wynne in 1919, was the man on the inside, the GRU spy who smuggled out military documents, photos, and human intelligence - including gossip he'd pick up at parties - which he passed to Wynne during business meetings. Tens of thousands of KGB officers worked in the city, and a dedicated division conducted surveillance on the small community of foreigners. The official representative of the CIA Paul Redmond has not confirmed the information that they were returned to the family of the executed engineer. The family of Leyla, according to her, all the time watched by the security services, ex-wife Gordievsky were systematically summoned for interrogation. Despite his candid confessions and total willingness to cooperate with the investigation, he was shot for treason on May 16, 1963. By October 22, the missile crisis was over, partly as a result of Penkovskys intelligence: Sidney Graybeal, head of the CIAs Guided Missile Division, later said that when he answered questions from Kennedy and EXCOMM he relied mainly on the manuals Penkovsky had photographed, as they revealed how the missiles operated in the field, including precise details of how they were moved, erected, and fuelled, as well as how long such preparations took. Advocates of the position that Penkovsky's intelligence did 'save the world', like Andrew and Gordievsky or Schecter and Deriabin, argue that Penkovsky provided important insights into both Krushchev's policy and the state of the Soviet armed forces and has therefore been the most important Western penetration agent of the Cold War. DeSantis won't say he's running. Required fields are marked *. It can only signal weakness to the Russians and encourage them to escalate their counter-threats.. Fifty years ago - nearly to the day - a British businessman stood in a stiflingly hot Moscow court room. He is the author of Dead Drop: The True Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold Wars Most Dangerous Operation (Simon & Schuster). Penkovsky ostensibly wanted to trade Soviet military secrets for a new life in the West with his wife and daughter. The arrangement continued for 18 years, with Walker recruiting two more Navy men his son and his brother. His bosses, though, had been right: Ames was sloppy. Among the men he gave up was Gordievsky. He had a visceral hatred of Khrushchev and his regime, and told his handlers in great detail about the problems with the Soviet Union. Oleg Penkovsky was executed by firing squad one week after the trial. At night, Penkovsky would sneak out of his hotel to an MI6 officers home or Wynnes five-bedroom mansion in Upper Cheyne Row, Chelsea where he lived with wife Sheila and son Andrew to be debriefed by British and U.S. intelligence. His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. In 1945, Usually, Penkovsky communicated with his handlers via notes he passed to Janet Chisholm with his other material, but they needed another method in case he couldnt meet her. He worked as a double agent for the British secret service during the Cold War, between 1974 and 1985. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . 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. (German Federal Archive), The CIA erected a nondescript building in West Berlin and started tunneling. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. In 2006, the defector Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned after meeting two Russians in London. Ask them questions to journalists is not allowed. When Golos dropped dead in their New York apartment, Bentley took over the operation. After four months, they created an underground passage 1,800 feet long. Wynne also took his Soviet friend to the best nightclubs in London and Paris just to show him the advantages of the West, of course where the Russian reportedly picked up a habit of drinking wine from the shoes of his mistresses. Her husband was a spy who headed the MI6 station in Moscow but worked under the guise of a visa officer. So, he started a side business, with the Russians. Quizzed by reporters back in the UK, Wynne could still manage a joke about his shaven head being the Lubyankas interpretation of a haircut. He didnt tell his ambassador, he didnt tell London, he didnt tell anybody, because he was morally certain that Penkovsky was captured so this was meaningless. 23:56 GMT 01 Jul 2021. He had identified a safe spot to leave messagesa dead drop in spy jargonbehind a radiator in the foyer of a block of apartments in Pushkinskaya Street, but tradecraft dictated that this could only ever be checked once. Penkovsky was quickly arrested and later executed, while the Chisholms were deported. Where does the phrase splitting hairs come from? On learning of the CIAs discovery, John F. Kennedy immediately set up a group of advisors to deal with the situation, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM). Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. With over twenty years of experience in the field of journalism, He is the ideal man to write for our site. Penkovsky was ultimately undone by a mole within the British government. At an embassy reception, a young CIA officer named Hugh Montgomery had to climb precariously on top of a sink which then came away from the wall in order to retrieve a message Penkovsky had left in the toilet cistern. 4. Spies, by Marc Favreau (Hachette Book Group). According to another traitor, a former major General of the KGB Oleg Kalugin, the wife of the richest Soviet spy Adolf Tolkachev (in cooperation with the CIA in the 70-ies 80-ies of the engineer Tolkachev received more than 700 thousand roubles and $ 2 million to sand foreign deposits), worked with him (Kalugin) the KGB, and after exposing her husband condemned for treason. They decided to get rid of her. Sir Gerry Warner, a former deputy chief of MI6, recalled the incident in a 2012 interview with the BBC: He did nothingwhich was exactly the right thing to do. 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. The high-level KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky pleaded in vain with British intelligence to extract his family from the Soviet Union, top secret files reveal. He died in prison in 2014. But he dared to think outside the box. Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Janet_Chisholm&oldid=1119755453, Articles needing additional references from May 2021, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 3 November 2022, at 07:01. He was to call her if he learned that he was about to travel to the West and had no time to tell Janet. Sometimes described as the most valuable Soviet double agent the West ever had, Penkovsky would provide the names and photographs of about 300 Soviet bloc agents and details of missile sites. Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment, five in a labour camp, while Penkovsky was executed by a firing squad (although a Moscow rumour said hed been cremated alive). What can be in no doubt is that Wynne, an engineer and wealthy businessman, worked for British intelligence, although when he started and how much he did for them is still hotly debated. They concluded he was ripe for recruitment even after he was transferred back to Moscow. JB: Where Penkovsky was extremely valuable was his assessment, based on information that he'd gotten from the political and military leaders of the Soviet Union, that Khrushchev was indeed a very dangerous opponent and it was based on his information that made the United States rise on top. [1] There she met her future husband, Ruari Chisholm, and began working for British Intelligence. Dozens killed after two trains collide in Greece, Survivors describe 'nightmarish seconds' as trains crashed, Rescuers search wreckage of deadly Greece train crash. Your email address will not be published. The KGB devoted huge resources to counter-espionage and a British agent would have been spotted approaching Penkovsky in the Russian capital but Wynne a civilian with officially sanctioned business in the city would arouse less suspicion. Those old enough can never forget a nerve-racking period of more than a week when nuclear Armageddon seemed possible every single day. Putin is said to still nurse a grudge against Gordievsky. Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. 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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. It should be explained to him that we had already risked a lot by the delay., Recalling the dilemma, Gordievsky told the Guardian: I discussed [with my British handlers] the expulsion of the Russian apparatus from London. [1] She was educated Queen Anne's School, Caversham, in Berkshire, where she learnt Russian. What happened to wife of Oleg Penkovsky? While The Couriers Dickie Franks was based on a real person, according to USA Today, CIA agent. Powers was eventually released in a prisoner swap detailed in Steven Spielbergs Bridge of Spies.. One was the three rings to Felicity Stuarts apartment. Everyone has read John le Carre and knows how these things work. Now Wynne claimed that Penkovsky hadnt been his first encounter with a Soviet defector. 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. (World Telegram Photo, C.M. One of its members was Penkovsky, in his new cover job arranging exchange visits with the West on scientific matters. It stated that Penkovsky had two ways of contacting the Americans, and that one, in case of unexpected danger, involved blowing three times into the telephones mouthpiece. There are different versions concerning the fate of foreign money, proclaimed Adolf Tolkachev. In his own words, it took Penkovsky three years to comprehend everything and become a soldier in the fight for Truth, for the ideals of a genuine free World and Democracy for Humankind.. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. In public, they ran a travel business, which will sound familiar to fans of The Americans. Privately, they ran a spy network, providing fake passports to the Kremlins secret agents. At a White House meeting on the evening of October 16, 1962, General Marshall Carter, deputy director of the CIA, took the president and his advisers through the available intelligence, using photographs displayed on easels. Janet Chisholm (6 May 1929 23 July 2004), born Janet Anne Deane, was a British MI6 agent during the Cold War. Since Oleg Penkovsky offered his services to both the Americans and the British, the CIA and MI6 developed him jointly. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. Before they could, though, she got rid of them. Wife Shevchenko Longina soon after the escape of her husband hanged himself. He was recruited to MI5 just before World War II. Click here to find out more. Janet Anne Chisholm, born May 7 1929; died July 23 2004, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Wynne, then an engineering apprentice, recalled hearing a series of staccato-like phrases in German coming from a cellar one night. 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. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . 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.'. Wynne arranged for Penkovsky, a smooth, sharply dressed bon viveur and ladies man, to come to London in 1961 with a scientific delegation. He was immediately. Penkovsky had been trying to offer his services to the west for some years, blatantly buttonholing diplomats and businessmen at receptions and approaching tourists in the street. Another was more important. He revealed the identities of hundreds of Soviet agents in the West, and some of his intel about the Kremlins plans landed directly on the desk of President John F. Kennedy. Each time, the spying continued. The four goons seized Wynne and hurled him into a car, kicking him viciously in the kidneys and bludgeoning him on the head with something metal. Greville Maynard Wynne (19 March 1919 - 28 February 1990) was a British spy famous for his involvement with, and imprisonment as a result of, the espionage activities of Oleg Penkovsky. Francis Gary Powers in his flight suit, standing next to the U-2. 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