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. 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 After Penkovsky and Wynne were captured by the KGB, which happened very similar to how their capture is depicted in the film, the GRU lieutenant colonel been convicted of treason and sentenced to death by firing squad. He just was an ordinary man who got thrust into this just extraordinary, life-altering situation that was going to define his existence forever, says OConnor. Bokhan froze. As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. Russia was building missile bases in Cuba, armed with nuclear . He has two daughters. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. 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. sports injuries prezi. Cold fear started to run down my back, he told me. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. Oleg Penkovsky, el polmico espa sovitico que ayud a evitar (y casi Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. He was an intermediary for the important Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky, who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence. Terms of Use Though nobody knows how the leak was traced back to Penkovsky, he was arrested by the Soviets on October 22, 1962. Everyone avoided me. What neither the CIA nor Poleshchuk knew was that the apartment was a KGB operation. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. I could not believe what was happening. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. But if he returned home, he could be shot. [18] In a 2010 interview, Suvorov denied that the man in the film[clarification needed] was Penkovsky and said that he had been shot. 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. Milton Bearden, who held several senior posts is his 30-year career at the CIA, is convinced there was a traitor, as yet undetected. The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. The following article hopes to help you make more suitable choices and . Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. I dont want to live in a tent, she said. When it came to writing the screenplay, OConnor laments that the true story of Wynnes experiences may never be known. His father, Leonid Poleshchuk, was a senior KGB counterintelligence officer, most recently the deputy rezident for counterintelligence in Lagos, Nigeria. You, in your own mind, have developed this sense of self-importance, says West. 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. 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. 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 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. They had a sumptuous lunchBokhan knew it might be his last meal with his familyand Maria bought a stuffed Greek doll called a patatuff. As it happened: street fighting in Bakhmut as battle rages for control He has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. 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. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. Posted on . Privacy Statement David Hefner was born in 1955 in Palo Alto, CA, as the son of Hugh Hefner, founder of "Playboy" magazine. The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). But this Land Rovers driveshaft had been rerouted through one of the vehicles doors, the former CIA officer says, so that Gordievsky could fold himself into the hump, in effect hiding in plain sight. Review: 'The Courier' (2021), starring Benedict - CULTURE MIX 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. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. "Greville Wynne was anordinary mandoing an extraordinary thing," Cumberbatch says. Oleg Penkovsky was arrested in October 1962. 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. Andrei was allowed to visit him in prison only once, after he was sentenced to death. He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers. Despite having no previous experience in intelligence work, Wynne was being recruited to serve as an MI6 agent. "The Courier" has compressed the real-life story and changed some facts. 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. MI6 sees him and his international dealings as a perfect cover for. Why did Wynne make up so much, when the truths of his 18 months as a spy are already filled with astounding details? Travelling salesman prevented WW3 in incredible true story behind new [19] Greville Wynne, in his book The Man from Odessa, claimed that Penkovsky killed himself. In 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. 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. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. Would she ever live in the West? That raised a possibility that remains, even today, a subject of deep concern among counterintelligence agents, a problem privately acknowledged but little discussed publicly: That the three agents may have been betrayed by a mole inside U.S. intelligence whose identity is still unknown. Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. Penkovsky was ultimately undone by a mole within the British government. But the chummy interactions between the agents and Penkovskys prolific, even reckless, acquisition of materials grew increasingly perilousand finally caught the KGBs attention. 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. Because I knew it was a death sentence.. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. The mere belief that theres another mole, whether correct or not, can cause chaos inside an intelligence agency. 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 domestic impact of foreign clandestine operations: the CIA and academic institutions, the media and religious institutions, Appendix B", The Capture and Execution of Colonel Penkovsky, 1963, "Nonfiction Book Review: The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War by Jerrold L. Schecter, Author, Peter S. Deriabin, With Scribner Book Company ISBN 978-0-684-19068-6", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oleg_Penkovsky&oldid=1136437646, Soviet people executed for spying for the United States, Russian people executed by the Soviet Union, Executed people from North OssetiaAlania, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from May 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Russian-language text, Articles having same image on Wikidata and Wikipedia, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from October 2022, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from January 2023, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. 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. 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. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. But unlike other famous characters, his personality, the role he played and what . An Extraordinary Bond: Dominic Cooke on The Courier. 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.'. Even the official accounts put out by American and Russian authorities regarding the Penkovsky affair include disinformation and spin that he, or any historian, has to navigate through. Your Privacy Rights It led to him and a Soviet double agent, Oleg Penkovsky, becoming firm friends, involved in . Then after your service, when you havent even told your family or friends about this, youre told, thank you very much, indeed. And yet to an intelligence agency, ignoring the possibility of a mole isnt really an option, either. The President of the Court declared Greville Wynne, aged 44, would serve three years in prison and five in a labour camp. Dead Drop: TheTrue Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold War's Most Oleg Penkovsky - Spartacus Educational Cookie Policy The burden of that is hard to imagine.. In June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. 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. After a meeting in Paris in September 1961, Penkovskys next trips were mysteriously cancelled at the last minute. I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin". Of course Cherkashin, who worked in the Soviet Embassy in Washington and handled Ames, may have been unable to resist a chance to taunt the FBI and the CIA. Penkovsky either was shot or killed himself in prisonthere are disputing accounts. He played a role in both the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. He divorced his first wife Sheila after his return before entering a second failed marriage. The Courier (2020) - IMDb Final part of the true-life story behind Britain's most valuable spy the imminent threat of nuclear war concealed by Soviet peace - JSTOR 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. Murder by Cremation. What happened to wife of Oleg Penkovsky? 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. Penkovsky's espionage about Soviet missiles . Your Privacy Rights The name of Oleg Penkovsky is not nearly as well known. I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. Boy and daughter now Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky were captured by the Soviets in 1962. In 1949 Penkovsky transferred from the regular army to the Soviet army intelligence directorate (GRU). After many years, I understood him. Wynne left The Ivy restaurant in Seven Dials that day probably wondering what he'd let himself in for. [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'". The Courier movie review & film summary (2021) | Roger Ebert 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. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine 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. Inside the CIA, Howard was blamed for Tolkachevs unmasking and subsequent execution, although Ames, too, had betrayed the researchers identity. But, he adds, I would never, ever see her smile again. She died three years later, in 1988. They know.. Updates? The KGB surveilled Janet and witnessed her meeting with Penkovsky. [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. [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. Wynne went along, slightly concerned about whether Penkovsky was on the level and concerned about putting himself into a dangerous situation, kicking off what would be one of the most productive clandestine operations in Cold War history. Within two weeks after his flight to the United States, he had a new name, a fake background, a Social Security number and a 9-millimeter Beretta. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. 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. Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites in Cuba to the West. Alex Palmer 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 always hoped Leila would join him in England. [4], Greville Wynne, a British salesman of industrial equipment to countries behind the Iron Curtain, was recruited by MI6 to communicate with Penkovksy. Picture of the Day - Caveman Circus He was about to be married, and his debts were mounting. 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. After Gordievsky escaped, a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to death in absentia. This gave American officials a clearer picture of what the Soviets were doing in the region, bringing in medium-range ballistic missiles. TOP 9 what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter BEST and NEWEST Penkovsky is perhaps the best known of Soviet double agents. The Penkovsky Papers by Oleg Penkovskiy - Goodreads | Meet your next A large man let him in and flashed a badge. The Courier vs. the True Story of British Spy Greville Wynne At least the timeline based on what Ames said when he was debriefed.If it wasnt Ames, then it was someone else, so we began to search for the source of the compromise, Wiser said. He just couldnt tell the truth. Oleg Penkovsky, aged 44. a scientific worker, told the court that he had passed the information through the child to Mrs. Janet ** Anna " Chisholm, wife of Mr. Roderick Chisholm, who worked at the British embassy from May, I960, to August last year. 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. 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. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. 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. The career of Oleg Penkovsky reads like a story by John le Carre. 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. Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benjamin Cumberbatch) in The Courier. Upon servicing the dead drop, the American handler was arrested, signaling that Penkovsky had been apprehended by Soviet authorities. 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. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine A colonel in Soviet military intelligence, Oleg Penkovsky, was working for them as an agent-in-place, photographing thousands of top-secret documents with a miniature camera, and delivering the. Make way for his amateur,everyman spy Greville Wynne in "The Courier," now on premium VOD6. He was recruited to MI5 just before World War II. Wright was bitter towards British intelligence, reportedly believing that it should have adopted his proposed methods to identify British/Soviet double agents. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. From a Moscow railroad station, he made his way by train, bus and taxi to a point near the Finnish-Soviet border, where he hid in some grass by the roadside until two cars stopped. The timeline just didnt work to explain Gordievskys recall to Moscow, FBI Special Agent Leslie Wiser, who ran the Ames case, told me. Kent. A drink-lovingbon vivante as portrayed onscreen, Wynne'sreal-life salesmanship and genuine naivet made him perfect for throwing off serious suspicion. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. The case of Oleg Penkovsky, a CIA and MI6 agent deep inside Soviet military intelligence, provided le Carr inspiration for The Russia House (1989). The Courier: Directed by Dominic Cooke. In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara. What Happened To Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky Family? Son 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. Oleg Penkovsky: Spy of the Century or Soviet Deception - The Moscow Times It was apparent that Soviet counterintelligence agents did not yet have enough evidence to arrest him. 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. "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. Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. 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). In Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky. David Wise is a journalist and author, best known for his expertise in espionage and intelligence. Your fathers been arrested, the man said. One theory is that Penkovsky wrote his message in broad brush strokes. 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 What Happened To Oleg Penkovsky Wife - Wakelet 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. Morbi eu nulla vehicula, sagittis tortor id, fermentum nunc. 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. Before his father left Lagos, Andrei said, he gave a gold watch to his CIA case officer at the time. This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . Intelligence agencies cannot tolerate unsolved mysteries and loose ends. You have the wrong number, he was told. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. Oleg Penkovsky saved the world from mushroom clouds and untold deaths in the fall of 1962. In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. Some of it just didnt add up, he says. 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. 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. Penkovsky (right) during his trial What happened next is unclear. It shortened her life, he said. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky ( Merab Ninidze ), a far more experienced Russian agent. After stops in Madrid and Frankfurt, a military jet flew him across the Atlantic. So the discrepancy between Ames timeline and the exposure of Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk remains unexplained. 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. He asked it be given to Joe, with a message, Here is something from Leo. By the time Joe learned of the gift, Andrei said, his father had been arrested. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. pictures of the galvin family; springfield, ma city council candidates; what happened to penkovsky wife Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. This was prior to President Kennedy's address to the US revealing that U-2 spy plane photographs had confirmed intelligence reports that the Soviets were installing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, in what was known as Operation Anadyr. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Here's what to know about Wynne's real history. In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. Alex Palmer is a travel and culture writer who lives in Brooklyn. 4 Cold War Double Agents Who Could Outfox James Bond - warhistoryonline Col. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was considered the wunderkind of the Soviet intelligence services. After dark they left for a small airport, where Bokhan boarded a CIA plane.