No products in the cart. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. Oleg Penkovsky saved the world from mushroom clouds and untold deaths in the fall of 1962. In the midst of the Cold War, a top-ranking Soviet officer named Oleg Penkovsky feared that the risk of nuclear war was too great, and decided to share some of the most closely held secrets of the Soviet arsenal with the West. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (Russian: ; 23 April 1919 16 May 1963), codenamed HERO,[1] was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. But Wynne paid a heavy price for his heroism. Menu. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. 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. He works as a computer programmer. 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. He has two daughters. Donec gravida mi a condimentum rutrum. The deputy mayor of Bakhmut has spoken of the situation in the city saying there is fighting in the streets. 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. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . It was scary.. Leonid never made it to the rock, his son said. [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers. 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. "(Chisholm)played a very important role in the story that we couldn't get into, because it's a whole other movie," Cooke says. Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry R. Schlesinger, 'Fatal Encounter' BBC TV documentary 3 May 1991, KGB, MI6 and CIA officers involved with the Penkovsky reveal their stories, This page was last edited on 30 January 2023, at 08:39. Between April 1961 and October 1962, Penkovsky inflicted enormous damage on the Soviet Union. Gordievsky was told his London posting was over, but he would be allowed to remain in a non-sensitive KGB department in Moscow. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. In Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. Penkovsky's espionage about Soviet missiles . "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. I had no job. troops.[15]. "He did make a life for himself, but Greville Wynne did pay a big price for his service. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. No question.". In the Jack Ryan universe, he is described as the agent who recruited Colonel Mikhail Filitov as a CIA agent (code-name CARDINAL) and had urged Filitov to betray him to solidify his position as the West's top spy in the Soviet hierarchy. But the chummy interactions between the agents and Penkovskys prolific, even reckless, acquisition of materials grew increasingly perilousand finally caught the KGBs attention. An Extraordinary Bond: Dominic Cooke on The Courier. Because I knew it was a death sentence.. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. That happened several times.. [10], The Soviet leadership began the deployment of nuclear missiles, in the belief that Washington would not detect the Cuban missile sites until it was too late to do anything about them. They flew to New York and, with help from the CIA and the FBI, were reunited with Sergei at a motel near John F. Kennedy International Airport. It's the early 1960s and Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a salesman who represents Western manufacturers in foreign countries. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. Dunlap was just another source they had to protect. "His clothes were sort of shrink-wrapped around this skeleton," says Cumberbatch, who spent three months losing weight and physically preparing to portray Wynne's final months of ordeal. 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. This photograph was taken in the hotel room at the Mount Royal in London in April 1961, after one of our meetings, where Oleg Penkovsky on the left and yours truly on the right enjoying a small glass of wine. [7], Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin does not mention Penkovsky in his comprehensive memoir about his career in intelligence against the West. 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. 276 to 280, "A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a LIttle Fish. He always hoped Leila would join him in England. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. [2] On Varentsov's recommendation, he studied at the Frunze Military Academy in 1945-48, then worked as a staff officer. He just couldnt tell the truth. I could not believe what was happening. 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. It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. There were embraces, and everyone cried. 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 June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. 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. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. 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. In 1949 Penkovsky transferred from the regular army to the Soviet army intelligence directorate (GRU). He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . These things have to be run to ground.. By Benjy P. October 15, 2022. He divorced his first wife Sheila after his return before entering a second failed marriage. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. Your Privacy Rights You have the wrong number, he was told. In April 1961, through Greville M. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. Penkovsky was put on trial for treason in May 1963 and was found guilty and sentenced to death. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. The KGB took her to a sanitarium, where she was drugged and interrogated further. He was free. In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap. The film sees him arrested on a plane leaving. 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. When it comes to espionage, its hard to know who to trust. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. 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. 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. His character's execution was the opening scene for the movie. During a trip to London in April 1961, the Soviet colonel held a series of . Both he and the Soviet leader. There is no statute of limitations for espionage. He was about to be married, and his debts were mounting. He dropped it, sensing that he was getting into dangerous territory. It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. Then the car started up again, and the radio, which had been playing pop music, suddenly boomed out SibeliusFinlandia. | After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. The unlikely British spy was freed in 1964 in exchange forSoviet spy Konon Molody. Gordievsky never took a penny from MI6 until after he had defected to the U.K. His actions were motivated by a hatred of the tyranny of the Soviet system, and the degraded condition in which it. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. Oleg Penkovsky, then a colonel in Russia's military intelligence service known as the GRU, had already passed along intelligence about the shoot-down of American satellite planes in Soviet territory and information on his own GRU graduating class. In the West he is hailed as "the spy who saved the world". He did so, but nothing happened. Benedict Cumberbatch:Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian'. Make way for his amateur,everyman spy Greville Wynne in "The Courier," now on premium VOD6. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. 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. That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. In Wright's view, the failure of British intelligence leaders to listen to him caused them to become paralysed when such agents defected to the Soviet Union; in his book, Spycatcher, he suggests that his hypothesis had to be true, and that the Soviets were aware of this paralysis and planted Penkovsky. 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. The "cremated alive" hypothesis appears in several Clancy novels, though Clancy never identified Penkovsky as the executed spy. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, and asked Wynne for his help. Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. 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. I could sense he had been tortured. Leonid was executed on July 30. Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. But over time, intelligence experts and those involved in the case, though reluctant to share sensitive information, cast doubt on much of what Wynne laid out in his books. But over the course of their two-year friendship, Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne clandestinely smuggled 5000 top-secret documents from Russia to England and the United States. He met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan, wrote a memoir and co-wrote a book on the KGB. Three other officers were also disciplined. 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 detained at Lubyanka prison. Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. This gave American officials a clearer picture of what the Soviets were doing in the region, bringing in medium-range ballistic missiles. 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. 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. Russia was building missile bases in Cuba, armed with nuclear . 3.80. 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.'. It's athank you from the West for what he sacrificed.". In 1997, Andrei and Svetlana emigrated to the United States. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. sports injuries prezi. Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites in Cuba to the West. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. 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. Penkovsky was portrayed by Eduard Bezrodniy in the 2014 Polish thriller Jack Strong, about Ryszard Kukliski, another Cold War spy. They were alone in the world with this incredible burden except for the other man.. At first I couldnt even recognize him, Andrei said. That the KGB ran a fourth mole is undeniable, Victor Cherkashin, a wily KGB counterintelligence officer, has written. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) lore and popular culture tout Col. Oleg Penkovsky as "the spy who saved the world" during the Berlin and Cuban missile crises. He was like a walking dead man. It was in my fathers handwriting. Leonid Poleshchuk knew his first CIA case officer, who had recruited him in Nepal, as Joe. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". After some months, she was released. Greville Wynnefitthe bill simply assomebody who was taking business into Eastern Europe.". He handed them a bulky envelope and pleaded with them to deliver it to the American embassy. Col. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was considered the wunderkind of the Soviet intelligence services. Moscow, August 3, 1985: It was 2 a.m. when Andrei Poleshchuk got home. The two then visited the White House where President John F. Kennedy personally thanked them for their servicethen the two returned to the U.K. just 18 hours later. Cold fear started to run down my back, he told me. After taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. 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. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. "And Greville played a big part in that.". Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. In October 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were on the brink of nuclear war after Soviet nuclear missiles were spotted in Cuba. He asked them to deliver it to an intelligence officer at the US Embassy. He had lost a lot of weight. You, in your own mind, have developed this sense of self-importance, says West. Wynne, despite claiming ignorance of what materials he was smuggling to the West, was sentenced to eight years in prison. Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed. The Cuban Missile Crisis was high-stakes brinkmanship played out between US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, bringing Washington and Moscow to the precipice of nuclear war in October 1962. 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 . 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. 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. This both kills the victim and disposes of the body in one fell swoop. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The CIA delayed in contacting him. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. 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 Never formally acknowledged by the British government, Wynnewrote about his experiences in two self-aggrandizingbooks, "The Man From Moscow" (1967) and "The Man From Odessa" (1981). She did, in 1991, but the strain caused by six years of separation proved too much to repair. Gordievsky was served sandwiches and Armenian brandy. A KGB general told him he had confessed. His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. Penkovsky supplied the West with information on Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba and has been dubbed the spy of the century. 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. In addition to Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk, more than a dozen other sources were exposed. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. The KGB surveilled Janet and witnessed her meeting with Penkovsky. I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin". Penkovsky's fate is also mentioned in the Nelson DeMille spy novel The Charm School (1988). He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. It doesnt matter, he said, and quoted a Russian proverb: S milym rai i v shalashe. If you love somebody, you will have heaven even in a tent. The President of the Court declared Greville Wynne, aged 44, would serve three years in prison and five in a labour camp. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. 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. 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. I always thought there was another one, he told me. This led to the publication of his dubious memoirs. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. That Friday, Gordievsky received a cable ordering him to report to Moscow urgently to confirm his promotion and meet with the KGBs two highest officials. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. These events serve as the inspiration for The Courier, the new film starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Wynne and Georgian actor Merab Ninidze as Penkovsky, out in theaters on March 19. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. In 1962, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky defied his country to save the world from nuclear war then paid for his heroism with his life. Housing in Moscow was nearly impossible to find, even for a KGB officer, but sometime that May, hed received a seemingly miraculous letter from his father. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. He was the real deal. 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. [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. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. The mere belief that theres another mole, whether correct or not, can cause chaos inside an intelligence agency. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." Janet continued to travel around the world until well into her 70s. [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. 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. Penkovsky papers, they do provide a fascinating glimpse into the strange and distorted world of Communism in the Soviet Union. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? Here's what to know about Wynne's real history. By 1993 their marriage was over. Sooner or later they would arrest me.. The KGB men searched the apartment all night. Welcome to the United States, one of them said. But unlike other famous characters, his personality, the role he played and what . After months of negotiations, the British government was eventually able to arrange a trade of Wynne for the Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale, whod been arrested the year before and was serving a 25-year sentence in England. He would not say why. answer the question what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter, which will help you get the most accurate answer. He worked as a double agent for the British secret service during the Cold War, between 1974 and 1985. 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. 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.
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what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child