He was arrested on October 22nd. He was about to be married, and his debts were mounting. Oleg Penkovsky married (wife played by Maria Mironova, actress and here's a brunette), he has a daughter. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UK's greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. A new spy thriller draws on the fascinating lifeand whopping liesof one of the U.K.s most famous intelligence agents. "And Greville played a big part in that.". Macintyre writes in the book. No products in the cart. They worked hard, shadowing British diplomats, to build up a "discovery case" against Penkovsky so that they could arrest him without throwing suspicion on their own moles. 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. By 1993 their marriage was over. The first meeting between Penkovsky and two American and two British intelligence officers occurred during a visit by Penkovsky to London in April 1961. Boy and daughter now Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky were captured by the Soviets in 1962. We had neighbors that were very close. 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. The KGB surveilled Janet and witnessed her meeting with Penkovsky. 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. 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. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. In May 1963, after his trial, Izvestya reported that Varentsov, who had since achieved the rank of Chief Marshal of Artillery and Commander in Chief of Rocket Forces and candidate member of the Central Committee had been demoted to the rank of Major General. Wynne died of throat cancer in 1990 at a London hospital. [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. Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the . In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. [18] In a 2010 interview, Suvorov denied that the man in the film[clarification needed] was Penkovsky and said that he had been shot. 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 . Bokhan froze. Penkovsky (right) during his trial What happened next is unclear. After Ames, there was FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen, who was arrested in 2001. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. Cookie Policy Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. Relying once again on Varentsov's patronage, he spent nine months studying rocket artillery at Dzerzhinsky Military Academy. His character's execution was the opening scene for the movie. 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. Oleg Gordievsky and Leila Alieva met in Copenhagen: she was a typist for the World Health Organization; he was an unhappily married KGB officer, and a spy for MI6. The name of Oleg Penkovsky is not nearly as well known. Penkovsky-wynne spy trial, May 1963, a Sanyo portable transistor radio . [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'". This information allowed the West to identify the missile sites from the low-resolution pictures provided by US U-2 spy planes. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. [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. (Howard, Russian authorities reported in 2002, died of a fall in his KGB dacha near Moscow. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). Among the explanations are a desire for money or fame, a ruinous case of alcoholism, or perhaps even psychological scars left by his time in Soviet prison or the shame he felt for publicly turning against British intelligence during the trial. As soon as Gordievsky landed in Moscow, he picked up signs that he had gambled wrong. Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. 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. | READ MORE. In the back seat were a jacket, hat and sunglasses. He was thin, pale and obviously sick. He was transferred to MI6 and assisted with the 1959 defection of the Soviet intelligence officer, Major Kuznov. 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 had lost a lot of weight. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. 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. Menu. He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. 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. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . Alex Palmer 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. 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. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The film sees him arrested on a plane leaving. Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. 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. It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. Moscow seemed to have no clue hed been secretly working for MI6, the British secret intelligence service, for 11 years. On the appointed day he startedproverka, or dry-cleaningwalking an elaborate route to throw off anyone who might be watching him. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. To top it off, it would have been physically impossible at the time. answer the question what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter, which will help you get the most accurate answer. "He came from a very humble background, but was always trying to better himself," says Cumberbatch. These guys were in the foxhole togetherthey each had a secret that only the other man knew, says OConnor. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration. [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's reporting of thirty years ago demonstrates that political and Economic failures were already eroding the foundations of the Soviet empire. Penkovsky was the highest-ranking Soviet official to provide intelligence for the West up until that time, and is one of several individuals credited with altering the course of the Cold War. 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. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last World War". He was an intermediary for the important Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky, who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence. Oleg Gordievsky. "He started as a nave amateur. He was probably the West's most valuable double agent during the Cold War. Why did Wynne make up so much, when the truths of his 18 months as a spy are already filled with astounding details? This led to the publication of his dubious memoirs. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. 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. The films screenwriter, Tom OConnor, found Wynnes story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . That day was June 13, 1985, by Ames account. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. (Mr. Chisholm now works in London and lives at Ashford. The next thing he knew, he woke up half-dressed in one of the dachas bedrooms. But it was only a matter of time. Leonids original case officer blamed himself for years for letting my father down. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. So the discrepancy between Ames timeline and the exposure of Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk remains unexplained. 276 to 280, "A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a LIttle Fish. Soon there was a plan for an exfiltration, the CIAs term for spiriting an agent in danger out of a foreign country. Gordievsky's Wife was not with him live Former Colonel of the First Central Board of the KGB of the USSR, recruited in the mid-80s the CIA and worked for British intelligence, abroad called the largest Soviet "mole" after Penkovsky. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. 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. 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. [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. Penkovsky informed the United States and the United Kingdom about Soviet military secrets, most importantly, the appearance and footprint of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile installations and the weakness of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile program. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. 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. If there is a fourth mole, and he is still alive, the FBI would surely want to catch him and prosecute him. Bokhan put them on as Reiser drove to a safe house. Wynne, despite claiming ignorance of what materials he was smuggling to the West, was sentenced to eight years in prison. 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. 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. It's the early 1960s and Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a salesman who represents Western manufacturers in foreign countries. 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.
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