On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. It was apparent that Soviet counterintelligence agents did not yet have enough evidence to arrest him. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. "He came from a very humble background, but was always trying to better himself," says Cumberbatch. He traveled frequently, to the United States, Germany, France, New Zealand, Australia, South America and the Middle East. The Cuban Missile Crisis. He was detained at Lubyanka prison. "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. It was the signal to launch his escape. He did so, he said, to prove his bona fides as a potential KGB mole. There is no statute of limitations for espionage. 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 was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. Since Oleg Penkovsky offered his services to both the Americans and the British, the CIA and MI6 developed him jointly. MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through . Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. He met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan, wrote a memoir and co-wrote a book on the KGB. Wynne died of throat cancer in 1990 at a London hospital. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Toasty. 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. After many years, I understood him. 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. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. He has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. Oleg Penkovskiy. 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. It was broadcast on 15 January 2007.[22]. 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 was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. In 1949 Penkovsky transferred from the regular army to the Soviet army intelligence directorate (GRU). 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. They were alone in the world with this incredible burden except for the other man.. 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. "And Greville played a big part in that.". Some of the documents provided were originals, which Wright thought could not have been easily taken from their sources. I was 18 years old. He sees that episode differently now. cole and rye leather swivel chair; north star cherry tree colorado I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin". After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. In the West he is hailed as "the spy who saved the world". He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. Some of it just didnt add up, he says. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. He was reputedly on friendly terms with Penkovsky,[21] which is very likely to have been a cause of his fall. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. 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. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. 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. Oleg Penkovsky Born: April 23, 1919 Birthplace: Vladikavkaz, Russia Death: May 16, 1963, Moscow, USSR (executed by Soviet Union) Jessie Buckley Born: December 28, 1989 Birthplace: Killarney, Ireland Sheila Wynne Keir Hills Andrew Wynne Angus Wright Born: November 11, 1964 Birthplace: Washington, D.C., USA Sir Arthur Temple 'Dickie' Franks I could not believe what was happening. 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. 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 KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. Boy and daughter now Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky were captured by the Soviets in 1962. 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 He was thin, pale and obviously sick. He was an intermediary for the important Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky, who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence. At the time, they were largely accepted at face value and sold well. In 1944, he was assigned to the headquarters of Colonel-General Sergei Varentsov, commander of artillery on the 1st Ukrainian front, who became his patron. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. Gordievsky was told his London posting was over, but he would be allowed to remain in a non-sensitive KGB department in Moscow. That happened several times.. Penkovsky's reporting of thirty years ago demonstrates that political and Economic failures were already eroding the foundations of the Soviet empire. In 1945, Penkovsky married the teenage daughter of Lieutenant-General Dmitri Gapanovich, thus acquiring another high-ranking patron. This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . 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. Penkovsky had in the meantime become increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, particularly with the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. By all appearances Oleg and Vera have a happy marriage and are loving parents to Nina. After a meeting in Paris in September 1961, Penkovskys next trips were mysteriously cancelled at the last minute. He was flown to Moscow, imprisoned, and tried alongside Penkovsky, who it would later be learned had been arrested the week before Wynne entered Hungary. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. 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 started having trouble breathing. Alex Palmer is a travel and culture writer who lives in Brooklyn. Ameeting between theRussian prisoners, in which Wynne tellsPenkovsky of the import of his information, asdepicted in the film, is drama. Confess again! the general roared. When it comes to espionage, its hard to know who to trust. Benedict Cumberbatch is known for bringing outlandish, extraordinary characters, from Marvel's "Dr. A KGB general told him he had confessed. In April 1961, through Greville M. Wynne, a British businessman, he offered his services to British intelligence. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . 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. 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. Penkovsky either was shot or killed himself in prisonthere are disputing accounts. According to an official Soviet announcement, he was executed on May 16, 1963, though other reports have him committing suicide while in a Soviet camp. 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. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. It led to him and a Soviet double agent, Oleg Penkovsky, becoming firm friends, involved in . If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. Sentenced toeight years in a labor camp, Wynne spent 18 months in Moscow'sLubyanka Prison, where he was subjected to beatings and torture. answer the question what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter, which will help you get the most accurate answer. These guys were in the foxhole togetherthey each had a secret that only the other man knew, says OConnor. Cookie Settings, FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, John Hallisey / FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12, 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. 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. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. The operation was the most productive classic clandestine operation ever conducted by the CIA or MI6 against the Soviet target, as Schecter and Deriabin put it, and key to its success was the mustachioed courier with no prior intelligence experience. No products in the cart. 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. 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. The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. Wynne, despite claiming ignorance of what materials he was smuggling to the West, was sentenced to eight years in prison. During a trip to London in April 1961, the Soviet colonel held a series of . The year 1985 was a catastrophe for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. Before his father left Lagos, Andrei said, he gave a gold watch to his CIA case officer at the time. Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . Because his father opposed the Communist revolution, Penkovsky was routinely denied promotions. Poleshchuk was lured back to his fate. 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. Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. Posted on . The information he provided on the Soviets . When I came to Moscow, she left, he says, taking the children with her on a vacation. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. 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 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's espionage about Soviet missiles . He had planned to write a memoir but died of malariabefore he could begin. He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. He was probably the Wests most valuable double agent during the Cold War. What happened to wife of Oleg Penkovsky? You, in your own mind, have developed this sense of self-importance, says West. 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. Impossible. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. In Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky. 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. Col. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was considered the wunderkind of the Soviet intelligence services. [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. [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. President John Kennedy read it and understood. In addition to Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk, more than a dozen other sources were exposed. After some months, she was released. 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. Both he and the Soviet leader. A member of the Communist Party, he took part in the invasion of Finland and by the end of the Second World War had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. [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. 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). 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. It's the early 1960s and Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a salesman who represents Western manufacturers in foreign countries. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . 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. He underwent a debriefing by MI6 and cooperated with it and other Western intelligence services. Advertising Notice It shortened her life, he said. Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel of the USSR Central Intelligence Agency, a distinguished officer in the Second World War, who has a close relationship with many high-ranking military personnel, is also USA and Great Britain was a spy working for the intelligence agency. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne are directly responsible for its positive outcome. His work . Greville Wynnefitthe bill simply assomebody who was taking business into Eastern Europe.". He didnt have a choice. Today, Sergei and Alla live quietly in the Sun Belt under his new identity. Sergei Bokhan was also separated from his family for six years. [Wynne], bless him, for all his wonderful work, was a menace and a fabricator, says Nigel West, who has written numerous books on British and American intelligence organizations, including two books specifically about fabricators in the intelligence arena. [12], Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap, a National Security Agency (NSA) employee and Soviet spy working for the KGB. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration. 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. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. Maybe a fifth. But some highly experienced U.S. counterintelligence experts doubt it. Investors Helping Baby Boomer Business Owners. Leonids original case officer blamed himself for years for letting my father down. In June he was expelled from the Central Committee for 'having relaxed his political vigilance.' 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. For his treason, Penkovsky was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad days after the trial ended (though Wynne would later claim he died of suicide). Sooner or later they would arrest me.. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine "In a way, it's a love letter to Penkovsky,"Cumberbatch says. (Mr. Chisholm now works in London and lives at Ashford. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. 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 . Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. In Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. 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. Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. 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. 445 & 35. 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.