Faced with these unexplained losses, the CIA in October 1986 set up a small, highly secret mole-hunting unit to uncover the cause of this disaster. After stops in Madrid and Frankfurt, a military jet flew him across the Atlantic. That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. 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. troops.[15]. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. A 2020 film, The Courier, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, follows his story. between this and #ThePowerOfDog lately, he might as well be the best actor in the world right now. His ashes were allegedly dumped in a mass grave in Moscow. The Soviet authorities rejected appeals by Greville Wynne's lawyer but 17 months into his sentence, they agreed to exchange Wynne for Soviet spy . We cant say their name. So the discrepancy between Ames timeline and the exposure of Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk remains unexplained. Penkovsky had in the meantime become increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, particularly with the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. After 14 days of strained negotiations, on October 28 Khruschev agreed to withdraw Soviet weapons from Cuba and the world breathed a sigh of relief. 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. He was to stand on a certain Moscow street corner on a designated day and time until he saw a British-looking man who was eating something. His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. During one of Wynnes trips to London in April 1961, Penkovsky handed him a hefty package of documents and film he passed along to MI6. Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. That year, Oleg Penkovsky passed a message to the CIA via a pair of American tourists that read, in part, I ask you to consider me as your soldier. It was apparent that Soviet counterintelligence agents did not yet have enough evidence to arrest him. Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. While President Kennedy and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev dared each other to launch nuclear weapons on TV, one largely-forgotten Soviet spy changed the course of history from the shadows. 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. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. Its thought that once Blake implicated Penkovsky, the KGB began watching him from apartments across the river from his home and confirmed he was meeting with Western intelligence. As Penkovskys position necessitated travel to Britain, the Russians initially didnt suspect him of espionage. The same can be said about arriving at your workplaceand finding out that it has been overrun by a variety of pests. He started having trouble breathing. Stuzhin & Cheredintzev/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. The results you delivered are amazing! Wynne who was also arrested for espionage would claim that Penkovsky committed suicide in prison. 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. In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. His Girlfriend/boyfriends name is Not Available. What happened to wife of Oleg Penkovsky? We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. secret papers written by Oleg Penkovsky, the Soviet official sentenced to death after the Greville Wynne trial. May 11, 1963. Our professional rodent controlwill surely provide you with the results you are looking for. Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. He was free. 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 daughter of a Russian mother . Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . 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. You can be sure that our Claremont, CA business will provide you with the quality and long-lasting results you are looking for! 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. [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. KGB interrogator Alexander Zagvozdin said Penkovsky was "questioned" roughly 100 times and then shot. It was broadcast on 15 January 2007.[22]. 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's role as a salesman who works his . Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. The KGB took her to a sanitarium, where she was drugged and interrogated further. Gordievsky was served sandwiches and Armenian brandy. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. Do you urgently need a company that can help you out? 2023 Smithsonian Magazine When I found a job, the KGB called and they fired me. After being wounded in battle in 1944, Penkovsky left the army and joined the renowned Frunze Military Academy. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. 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 CIA delayed in contacting him. The film sees him arrested on a plane leaving. He might be dead, or hes living in his dacha now. Continue. Institutions, golf courses, sports fields these are just some examples of the locations we can rid of pests. 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. Expert extermination for a safe property. 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. The next thing he knew, he woke up half-dressed in one of the dachas bedrooms. They are in relation from previous few years of a strong relationship. Years later, Penkovsky himself would try to halt the Soviet spread of communism. 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. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), a far more experienced Russian agent. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. It looked outward for any external threats, and employed people capable of subterfuge and turning potential pawns into assets. [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. Penkovsky approached American students on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow in July 1960 and gave them a package in which he offered to spy for the United States. 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. Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the London . He didnt have a choice. Today, Sergei and Alla live quietly in the Sun Belt under his new identity. [16] The noted Soviet sculptor Ernst Neizvestny said that he had been told by the director of the Donskoye Cemetery crematorium "how Penkovsky [had been] executed by 'fire'". While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. Penkovsky was decorated four times during his 1939-1940 tour of duty. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . Boy and daughter now Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky were captured by the Soviets in 1962. By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. Your Privacy Rights INTERVIEW WITH JOE BULIK - 31.1.98. Cookie Settings, FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, John Hallisey / FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12. 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. Together with a turned KGB specialist, Oleg Penkovsky, he obtained important information about the Soviet attacks that somehow prevented the atomic conflict during the virus war. "Deca que Penkovsky tena dos vas para contactar a los estadounidenses y que una de ellas, 'en caso de un peligro inesperado', implicaba soplar tres veces en el micrfono del telfono. He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. 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. 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 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. Compared to the KGB, which focused squarely on crushing internal dissent, the GRU had more of a geopolitical impact. Then, learn about Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet military man who saved the world from nuclear war in 1983. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. We have no more information about his spouse. Penkovskys debriefing sessions with MI6 and the CIA totaled up to 140 hours. In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara, Turkey, but was recalled after he had reported his superior officer, and later other GRU personnel for a breach of regulations, which made him unpopular in the department. Arrested? In 1962, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky defied his country to save the world from nuclear war then paid for his heroism with his life. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. Penkovsky at his public trial in Moscow. The Courier tells the story with legitimate subtleties and an excellent cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne. The Courier: Directed by Dominic Cooke. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at length to try to determine the full extent of treachery. 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