what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child

He asked for a fictitious Greek employee. 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. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? 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. "But you have a responsibility to honor the essence of what happened," says director Dominic Cooke. The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. 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 the initial meeting in December 1960, Penkovsky provided Wynne with film of Soviet military documents and later promised more information if an arrangement with British or American intelligence could be made. "Greville Wynne was anordinary mandoing an extraordinary thing," Cumberbatch says. He was like a walking dead man. With Vladimir Chuprikov, Merab Ninidze, James Schofield, Fred Haig. 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. 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. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. No products in the cart. Your Privacy Rights Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. Wynnes fabrications range from small to huge. Confess again! the general roared. 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. There were embraces, and everyone cried. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. On this trip, Penkovsky submitted to hours of interviews with British and American intelligence officials about the Soviet Unions military and political developments. 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 Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. Make way for his amateur,everyman spy Greville Wynne in "The Courier," now on premium VOD6. Cookie Policy Toasty. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cold fear started to run down my back, he told me. When I came to Moscow, she left, he says, taking the children with her on a vacation. John F. Lewis Jr., a former FBI counterintelligence agent who was chief of the national security division, believes there is a fourth mole. Dunlap was just another source they had to protect. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. 445 & 35. Despite having no previous experience in intelligence work, Wynne was being recruited to serve as an MI6 agent. A Russian TV documentary shows a shadowy figure picking it up, but Andrei said it is an actor, not his father. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. In his memoir Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (1987), written with journalist Paul Greengrass, Wright says: When I first wrote my Penkovsky analysis Maurice Oldfield (later Chief of MI6 in the 1970s), who played a key role in the Penkovsky case as Chief of Station in Washington, told me: 'You've got a long row to hoe with this one, Peter, there's a lot of K's [knighthoods] and Gongs [medals] riding high on the back of Penkovsky' he said, referring to the honours heaped on those involved in the Penkovsky operation. 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. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. In fact, his contribution to U.S. intelligence and policymaking is exaggerated, distorted, and in several instances falsified. 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. One of them finally answered: For espionage.. Greville Wynnefitthe bill simply assomebody who was taking business into Eastern Europe.". Moscow seemed to have no clue hed been secretly working for MI6, the British secret intelligence service, for 11 years. By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. Cookie Settings, Liam Daniel, Courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. And the intelligence culture is not going to let that go. Benedict Cumberbatch:Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian'. He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. 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. Leonid never made it to the rock, his son said. Wynne would later relate that as he walked down the steps of an exhibition pavilion, four men suddenly appeared as a car pulled up and Wynne was pushed inside. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. It led to him and a Soviet double agent, Oleg Penkovsky, becoming firm friends, involved in . Before Ames, there was Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who had been slated to go to Moscow but was fired instead for drug use and petty theft. For several years, they'd noticed Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a war hero and high-ranking official in the Soviet intelligence services, making overtures to Western diplomats and even tourists; the. Soon there was a plan for an exfiltration, the CIAs term for spiriting an agent in danger out of a foreign country. At the time, they were largely accepted at face value and sold well. 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. Boy and daughter now Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky were captured by the Soviets in 1962. 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. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." Morbi eu nulla vehicula, sagittis tortor id, fermentum nunc. It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. [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. The 23-year-old journalist had been working late for Novosti, the Soviet press agency. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. [13], Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962. Penkovsky's espionage about Soviet missiles . He succeeded in transferring to the West 111 Minox films with 5,500 top-secret military documents, totaling 7,650 pages, as well as revealing the identities of hundreds of Soviet agents in the West. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. Oleg Penkovsky was born in Russia in 1919. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. Wynne died of throat cancer in 1990 at a London hospital. He asked them to deliver it to an intelligence officer at the US Embassy. The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. 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. A new spy thriller draws on the fascinating lifeand whopping liesof one of the U.K.s most famous intelligence agents. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. It shortened her life, he said. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, (born April 23, 1919, Vladikavkaz, Russiadied May 1963?, U.S.S.R.), senior Soviet military intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for the United Kingdom and the United States. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. The agency cautioned that it would be too risky for him to bring that much cash through the airport and told him the money would be in Moscow, stashed inside a fake rock. The next thing he knew, he woke up half-dressed in one of the dachas bedrooms. Oleg Gordievsky. As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. 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. Joe said to his people, Keep the watch, I want to give it to his son. At a reception after the church ceremony, Joe gave Andrei the watch. 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. If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. 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. Oleg Penkovsky married (wife played by Maria Mironova, actress and here's a brunette), he has a daughter. Thats when they showed me a piece of paper with the words, I met Joe, Andrei told me. Penkovsky was put on trial for treason in May 1963 and was found guilty and sentenced to death. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Son And Daughter Now Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were both arrested by the Soviets in 1962. Alex Palmer You have the wrong number, he was told. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. 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. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. He met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan, wrote a memoir and co-wrote a book on the KGB. I talked to some old MI6 friends, and they say they are sure there is. Donec gravida mi a condimentum rutrum. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". Sentenced toeight years in a labor camp, Wynne spent 18 months in Moscow'sLubyanka Prison, where he was subjected to beatings and torture. Penkovsky had in the meantime become increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, particularly with the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. [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. By 1960 he had become a colonel in the GRU and deputy chief of the foreign section of the State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research (196062), in which post his task was to collect scientific and technical intelligence on the United States, Britain, and other Western countries. 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. It dealt with capabilities and intentions. troops.[15]. 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 . The Untold Truth of Hugh Hefner's Son - David Hefner. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. Finally, in 1991, with the KGB in disarray after its chief led the failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the authorities let Alla and her daughter leave. Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. Upon release from prison, Wynnes old life was in tattershed lost much of his business and the time spent in the Soviet prison seemed to have caused long-term damage. [14] That information might have reduced the pressure on Kennedy to launch an invasion of the island, which could have risked Soviet use of 9K52 Luna-M-class tactical nuclear weapons against U.S. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. He was arrested by the Soviets in October 1962, and then tried and executed the following year. The "cremated alive" hypothesis appears in several Clancy novels, though Clancy never identified Penkovsky as the executed spy. MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through . Had the Russians examined the car, they would have seen the hump on the floor where the driveshaft would normally be. 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. He has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. Janie and Ameeting between theRussian prisoners, in which Wynne tellsPenkovsky of the import of his information, asdepicted in the film, is drama. Cookie Policy Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. Corrections? A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. He was selected for the post of military attach in India, but the KGB had uncovered the story of his father's death, and he was suspended, investigated, and assigned in November 1960 to the State Committee for Science and Technology. 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. If it should turn out that the mole is no longer alive, the intelligence agencies would still run a damage assessment to try to reconstruct what and whom he might have betrayed. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. Wynne was a British businessman who, from 1960 and 1962, smuggled thousands of pieces of intel out of Russia before he was captured, imprisoned, and tortured for two years by the KGB. They urged him to go to Moscow, but they also provided him with an escape plan in case he signaled that he was in danger. 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. [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine It was scary.. 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 tried again, following the fallback plan, and this time a man carrying a dark-green bag from Harrods, the upscale London department store, walked by eating a candy bar. He was senior enough that you could sit down with the agents for hours and explain the entire context of how Soviet intelligence worked.. 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. They drove through several checkpoints with no trouble, but they had to stop at Soviet customs when they reached the border. 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. [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. During their visits, Penkovsky and Wynne would get out on the town, visiting restaurants, nightclubs and shops under the cover of talking business, with each man proudly showing the other around his home country. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. He would not say why. Wright noted that, unlike Igor Gouzenko and other earlier defectors, Penkovsky did not reveal the names of any Soviet agents in the West but only provided organisational detail, much of which was known already. "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. 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. 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 Greville Wynne, a British spy who told in his celebrated memoirs how he pried loose some of Moscow's best-kept secrets and who served 18 months in a Soviet prison for The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. Minutes passed. Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. Wise is the author or co-author of 14 books, including The Politics of Lying, Spy Who Got Away and Tiger Trap. But Ames always insisted to the FBI, the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee that he revealed no significant sources before his meeting at Chadwicks. He was an intermediary for the important Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky, who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence. 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 decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. They were convicted of espionage. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, (born April 23, 1919, Vladikavkaz, Russiadied May 1963?, U.S.S.R.), senior Soviet military intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for the United Kingdom and the United States. Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last World War". 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. 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. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. It's the early 1960s and Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a salesman who represents Western manufacturers in foreign countries. 3.80. We never drank too much, but we had to relax a little bit after one of our tiring meetings. The documents provided by Penkovsky showed that the Soviet Union was not prepared for war in the area, which emboldened Kennedy to risk the operation in Cuba. 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. 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. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. In June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. Penkovsky gave a huge amount of details about what missiles the Soviets had, how old they were, how there were queues for foodit was an extremely vivid portrait of the country and the people within intelligence, says Duns. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. 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 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. His character's execution was the opening scene for the movie. In April 1961, through Greville M. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. The resettled spy told Wiser he was convinced Ames had betrayed him, but he confirmed that he had been abruptly summoned back to Moscow on May 17, 1985almost four weeks before Ames said he named him to the KGB. [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. Five days after Bokhan received the cable about his son, he took his wife, Alla, and their 10-year-old daughter, Maria, to the beach. In June he was expelled from the Central Committee for 'having relaxed his political vigilance.' 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. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. This time it's a true story:Wynne served as an unassuming go-between for British intelligence MI-6 and Russian spyOleg Penkovsky atthe height of the Cold War. Dont call us, well call you in a couple years. When Greville got out of prison, he was not prepared, as people obviously are not in those circumstances, to be ignored.. 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. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. But it was only a matter of time. They had a sumptuous lunchBokhan knew it might be his last meal with his familyand Maria bought a stuffed Greek doll called a patatuff. 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 drove around Athens in his BMW for close to an hour to make certain he wasnt being followed, then walked into a 100-foot pedestrian tunnel under a highway. They had to go through a show trial, basically, so on the stand Wynne accused MI6 of using him as a dupehe may have just been saying whatever he could say because he worried they might execute him, says Jeremy Duns, an author of several spy novels set during the Cold War as well as the history book Codename: Hero: The True Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold Wars Most Dangerous Operation. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. I was 18 years old. He sees that episode differently now. An Extraordinary Bond: Dominic Cooke on The Courier. When it comes to espionage, its hard to know who to trust. 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. Among the materials Penkovsky provided to Wynne were four photocopies of plans for construction sites of missile-launching installations in Cuba. He played a role in both the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. This gave American officials a clearer picture of what the Soviets were doing in the region, bringing in medium-range ballistic missiles. Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. Bokhan froze. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. In the late 1960s, after he had been imprisoned for his spycraft and could no longer assist MI6 nor the CIA, the amateur spy authored a pair of books: The Man From Moscow: The Story of Wynne and Penkovsky and The Man From Odessa, that were riddled with falsehoods. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. 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. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. cole and rye leather swivel chair; north star cherry tree colorado After many years, I understood him. "(Chisholm)played a very important role in the story that we couldn't get into, because it's a whole other movie," Cooke says. Privacy Statement 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.

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