Stay calm, he recalls telling himself. Among the materials Penkovsky provided to Wynne were four photocopies of plans for construction sites of missile-launching installations in Cuba. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. His father, Leonid Poleshchuk, was a senior KGB counterintelligence officer, most recently the deputy rezident for counterintelligence in Lagos, Nigeria. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. 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. Penkovsky (right) during his trial What happened next is unclear. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. Advertising Notice Penkovsky joined the GRU as an officer, in 1953. At the time, they were largely accepted at face value and sold well. Welcome to the United States, one of them said. One theory is that Penkovsky wrote his message in broad brush strokes. 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. 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 . His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne are directly responsible for its positive outcome. 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. 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.. 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. 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. Janie and They expected I would do something stupid, he told me. Cold fear started to run down my back, he told me. It was scary.. The President of the Court declared Greville Wynne, aged 44, would serve three years in prison and five in a labour camp. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. 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. For two years I went to Lefortovo two, three times a week, Alla Bokhan told me. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The name of Oleg Penkovsky is not nearly as well known. He had graduated from school and found a good job, and he wanted to live on his own. (Mr. Chisholm now works in London and lives at Ashford. 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.. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites in Cuba to the West. That happened several times.. 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. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. Only a few days earlier he had called his brother-in-law in Kiev, where Alex was studying, and been assured his son was doing well. After a meeting in Paris in September 1961, Penkovskys next trips were mysteriously cancelled at the last minute. No products in the cart. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. 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. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. Wynne was a middle-classBritish businessman whose frequenttravelto Eastern Europe attracted recruitmentby MI-6 to serve as a liaison to high-ranking Soviet official Penkovsky. The mere belief that theres another mole, whether correct or not, can cause chaos inside an intelligence agency. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. 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. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . After many years, I understood him. The daughter of a Russian mother . Penkovsky was put on trial for treason in May 1963 and was found guilty and sentenced to death. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. He had lost a lot of weight. He has two daughters. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Andrei was allowed to visit him in prison only once, after he was sentenced to death. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. After months of interrogation at Lefortovo, Andrei Poleshchuk told his captors he wouldnt answer any more questions unless they told him who his father worked for. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. pictures of the galvin family; springfield, ma city council candidates; what happened to penkovsky wife They know.. Bokhan froze. In 1962, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky defied his country to save the world from nuclear war then paid for his heroism with his life. He was thin, pale and obviously sick. 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. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. He was free. 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. On the front door of his apartment, someone had locked a third lock he never used because he had lost the key; he had to break in. He worked as a double agent for the British secret service during the Cold War, between 1974 and 1985. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. Cookie Policy Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. A large man let him in and flashed a badge. Make way for his amateur,everyman spy Greville Wynne in "The Courier," now on premium VOD6. One of them finally answered: For espionage.. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. But if he returned home, he could be shot. After stops in Madrid and Frankfurt, a military jet flew him across the Atlantic. Macintyre writes in the book. David Hefner was born in 1955 in Palo Alto, CA, as the son of Hugh Hefner, founder of "Playboy" magazine. He played a role in both the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. They made an odd contrastthe short, energetic, and thinly mustachioed Wynne alongside the military bearing of Penkovskybut there seemed to be genuine affection between the two, and this friendship is a central focus of The Courier. In 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." Director Cooke says Donovan is a composite character representing several real-life people, includingJanet Chisholmthewife of a Moscow-based British visa officer whoalso served as a conduit for information passed to the West by Penkovsky. He had planned to write a memoir but died of malariabefore he could begin. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. Janet continued to travel around the world until well into her 70s. He was arrested on October 22nd. Hanssen, who was convicted of espionage, is serving a life sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado. [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. Inside were three British intelligence agentsthe candy-bar man and two women, one of whom was Gordievskys MI6 case officer in London. It dealt with capabilities and intentions. 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. In fact, his contribution to U.S. intelligence and policymaking is exaggerated, distorted, and in several instances falsified. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. [17] A similar description was later included in Ernest Volkman's popular history book about spies, Tom Clancy's novel Red Rabbit and in Viktor Suvorov's book Aquarium. Sentenced toeight years in a labor camp, Wynne spent 18 months in Moscow'sLubyanka Prison, where he was subjected to beatings and torture. 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. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Bokhans son, Alex, also made it to the U.S., in 1995. Corrections? Gordievsky's Wife was not with him live Former Colonel of the First Central Board of the KGB of the USSR, recruited in the mid-80s the CIA and worked for British intelligence, abroad called the largest Soviet "mole" after Penkovsky. Alex Palmer President John Kennedy read it and understood. Investors Helping Baby Boomer Business Owners. The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. The Courier: Directed by Dominic Cooke. Penkovsky was in fact arrested by the Soviets on Oct. 22, 1962, at the height of that crisis, after they realized that highly classified information was leaking to the West. Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed. They were convicted of espionage. Wynne and Penkovsky were both arrested by the KGB in November 1962, when some of the information their endeavours produced was of assistance to the West during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 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. At first I couldnt even recognize him, Andrei said. An Extraordinary Bond: Dominic Cooke on The Courier. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. "He started as a nave amateur. Penkovsky's espionage about Soviet missiles . sports injuries prezi. 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. 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. 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. troops.[15]. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. It was in my fathers handwriting. Leonid Poleshchuk knew his first CIA case officer, who had recruited him in Nepal, as Joe. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the . He was arrested by the Soviets in October 1962, and then tried and executed the following year. "And Greville played a big part in that.". 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. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. As they walked on the beach that Saturday, he said his career was in trouble. [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. His fear mounted. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. John F. Lewis Jr., a former FBI counterintelligence agent who was chief of the national security division, believes there is a fourth mole. He met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan, wrote a memoir and co-wrote a book on the KGB. 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. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. 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. 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. 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. 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. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. 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 . He drove across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. and entered Chadwicks, a popular Georgetown restaurant, where he handed the documents to a Soviet Embassy official named Sergei Chuvakhin. Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. 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. 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 . He works as a computer programmer. When it came to writing the screenplay, OConnor laments that the true story of Wynnes experiences may never be known. In 1945, Penkovsky married the teenage daughter of Lieutenant-General Dmitri Gapanovich, thus acquiring another high-ranking patron. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration. 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. "In a way, it's a love letter to Penkovsky,"Cumberbatch says. The FBI declined to comment on whether the search Wiser began is continuing. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. 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. Alex Palmer is a travel and culture writer who lives in Brooklyn. In spying for Moscow on and off over 22 years, Hanssen revealed dozens of secrets, including the eavesdropping tunnel the FBI had dug under the Soviet Embassy in Washington and the identities of two FBI sources within the embassy, who were also executed. Thus began their fruitful relationship, one that involved Wynne hosting Penkovsky in London, who was visiting under the pretense of cultivate new opportunities in the West. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . As a top ranking Russian officer, he sinks into the depts and rises to the heights of international intrigue. After dark they left for a small airport, where Bokhan boarded a CIA plane. Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benjamin Cumberbatch) in The Courier. Oleg Penkovskiy. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". (1) BBC Broadcast (11th May, 1963) A British businessman accused of spying for the West has been sentenced to eight years' detention by a Moscow tribunal. Here's what to know about Wynne's real history. Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last World War". But unlike other famous characters, his personality, the role he played and what . The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. 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 Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. 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. 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. Peter Wright, a former British MI5 officer known for his scathing condemnation of the leadership of British intelligence during most of the Cold War, believed that Penkovsky was a fake defection. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. 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. This led to the publication of his dubious memoirs. Toasty. He was transferred to MI6 and assisted with the 1959 defection of the Soviet intelligence officer, Major Kuznov. Poleshchuk was lured back to his fate. | Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. 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.

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