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. Minutes passed. Arrested? Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. 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 had been drugged. 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. John F. Lewis Jr., a former FBI counterintelligence agent who was chief of the national security division, believes there is a fourth mole. But it was only a matter of time. Penkovsky felt stunted in his career with GRU and expected that by helping the West for a year or two, he and his family could be relocated and build a better life, and that he would personally be showered with recognition and honor. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. 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. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . But as he began researching Wynnes story, he learned that this ordinary man could also tell some extraordinary lies. 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. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . Penkovsky's reporting of thirty years ago demonstrates that political and Economic failures were already eroding the foundations of the Soviet empire. Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. 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 . [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. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. The mole isnt just some guy who stole a few secrets. The mere belief that theres another mole, whether correct or not, can cause chaos inside an intelligence agency. It also helped Americans to understand how limited the Soviets capabilities actually were in the area, so as tensions grew during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy knew how much rope he could give [Soviet Premier Nikita] Khrushchev, as Duns puts it. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. In fact, his contribution to U.S. intelligence and policymaking is exaggerated, distorted, and in several instances falsified. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. He was arrested on October 22nd. No question.". If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. 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. 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. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. Before his father left Lagos, Andrei said, he gave a gold watch to his CIA case officer at the time. 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. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. 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. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . He divorced his first wife Sheila after his return before entering a second failed marriage. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. While its standard for Hollywood films to take liberties with the facts, insert composite characters, devise imagined conversations, and smooth-out timelines to ensure a brisk pace, its less common for a based-on-a-true-story movie to have to be more truthful than the source material. [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. He was probably the Wests most valuable double agent during the Cold War. A few days after Oleg Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow, the KGB flew his wife, Leila, and their two daughters there, and he broke the unwelcome news that they would not be posted back to London. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. One of them finally answered: For espionage.. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. 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 . Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the . 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. 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. But some highly experienced U.S. counterintelligence experts doubt it. In 1945, Penkovsky married the teenage daughter of Lieutenant-General Dmitri Gapanovich, thus acquiring another high-ranking patron. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. The CIA delayed in contacting him. 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. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . 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. Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, a CIA and MI6 agent deep inside Soviet military intelligence, provided le Carr inspiration for The Russia House (1989). London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. Russia was building missile bases in Cuba, armed with nuclear . Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. Strange" to Sherlock Holmes. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. He dropped it, sensing that he was getting into dangerous territory. 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 taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. "The Courier" has compressed the real-life story and changed some facts. 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. 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 . Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. Andrei was allowed to visit him in prison only once, after he was sentenced to death. And their actions were directly responsible for the hotline that now exists between the White House and the Kremlin to prevent nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. Janie and [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. "He did make a life for himself, but Greville Wynne did pay a big price for his service. 3.80. 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 Gordievsky was told his London posting was over, but he would be allowed to remain in a non-sensitive KGB department in Moscow. 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. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Since Oleg Penkovsky offered his services to both the Americans and the British, the CIA and MI6 developed him jointly. With Vladimir Chuprikov, Merab Ninidze, James Schofield, Fred Haig. 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. He had lost a lot of weight. 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. I could not believe what was happening. Thats when they showed me a piece of paper with the words, I met Joe, Andrei told me. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. 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. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him.