what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child

Leonids original case officer blamed himself for years for letting my father down. 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. In 1945, Penkovsky married the teenage daughter of Lieutenant-General Dmitri Gapanovich, thus acquiring another high-ranking patron. 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. Privacy Statement "But you have a responsibility to honor the essence of what happened," says director Dominic Cooke. [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. That fall, the KGB rolled up all of the CIAs assets in the Soviet Union in a lightning strike that sent the agency reeling. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. Sergei Bokhan was also separated from his family for six years. After they drove home, he packed a gym bag and announced that he was going for a jog. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. He was an intermediary for the important Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky, who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence. 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. 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. But Wynne paid a heavy price for his heroism. From the day they talked, Wiser told me, we believed it was important for us to consider the strong possibility that Gordievsky was compromised by someone within the U.S. intelligence community., Wiser acknowledges that Ames may have lied or been mistaken about the dateAmes has conceded that he drank heavily before his meetings with the KGB. 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. 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 In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and Greville Wynne (Benjamin Cumberbatch) in The Courier. When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. As the film alludes, life never returned to normal for Wynne, who battled depression and the psychological after-effects of his incarceration. As they walked on the beach that Saturday, he said his career was in trouble. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. 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. 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). This is the scenario described in The mail, and that generally accepted by . The emaciated Wynne's returntohis middle-class Londonhomewherehis wife and child waited made for a jarring scene in newsreels at the time. | READ MORE. 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. At 4PM on the afternoon of July 19, 1985, Oleg Gordievsky dressed in a thin green sweater, faded green corduroy trousers and old brown shoes clothes he'd selected from the back of the wardrobe. The timeline just didnt work to explain Gordievskys recall to Moscow, FBI Special Agent Leslie Wiser, who ran the Ames case, told me. Hed been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . I could sense he had been tortured. Leonid was executed on July 30. If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. I was 18 years old. He sees that episode differently now. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. 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. 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. Terms of Use [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. Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. Penkovsky's espionage about Soviet missiles . Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of them finally answered: For espionage.. what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child. Andrei was allowed to visit him in prison only once, after he was sentenced to death. Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. He dropped it, sensing that he was getting into dangerous territory. 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. The next thing he knew, he woke up half-dressed in one of the dachas bedrooms. After Ames was arrested and charged with espionage, his attorney, Plato Cacheris, negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors: Ames wife, Rosario, an accomplice in his spying, would be spared a long prison sentence if he cooperated fully with the authorities. 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. "He came from a very humble background, but was always trying to better himself," says Cumberbatch. After school, she worked in London as a secretary before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. "In a way, it's a love letter to Penkovsky,"Cumberbatch says. 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. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. He did so, he said, to prove his bona fides as a potential KGB mole. 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. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. Oleg Gordievsky. 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. Bokhan froze. Her eyes were empty. Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. 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 1965 his journal, The Penkovskiy Papers, was published in the United States, though the books authenticity has been questioned by some. 276 to 280, "A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a LIttle Fish. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin". Welcome to the United States, one of them said. The information he provided on the Soviets . 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. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. Oleg Penkovsky was arrested in October 1962. This both kills the victim and disposes of the body in one fell swoop. Oleg Penkovsky and Greville Wynne are directly responsible for its positive outcome. OConnor makes clear that The Courier is not a documentary, even as he explains that he took pains to stick to the facts as much as they could be ascertaineddrawing on works such as Jerrold L. Shecter and Peter S. Deriabins The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War and other accounts that could be trusted more than Wynnes own inventions. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. 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. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. In June he was expelled from the Central Committee for 'having relaxed his political vigilance.' Penkovsky was portrayed by Christopher Rozycki in the 1985 BBC Television serial Wynne and Penkovsky. Poleshchuk was lured back to his fate. Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. I had no job. He asked for a fictitious Greek employee. In 1961, jet travel did not allow someone to fly from the U.K. to the U.S. and back again in 24 hours, says West. It said Bokhans son, Alex, 18, was having trouble in military school and suggested the deputy take his vacation now, three months early, and return to the Soviet Union to deal with him. He had been drugged. 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. Wynne died of throat cancer in 1990 at a London hospital. | 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. 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. Kent. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. 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. 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. 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. 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. They expected I would do something stupid, he told me. 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. (Howard, Russian authorities reported in 2002, died of a fall in his KGB dacha near Moscow. Col. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was considered the wunderkind of the Soviet intelligence services. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. After a meeting in Paris in September 1961, Penkovskys next trips were mysteriously cancelled at the last minute. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. His escape plan was bound under the flyleaf of a novel; he had to slit the cover open to read the instructions. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. 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. The burden of that is hard to imagine.. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Then the car started up again, and the radio, which had been playing pop music, suddenly boomed out SibeliusFinlandia.

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