Just the day before, Moscow had announced that a Soviet defense researcher named Adolf G. Tolkachev had been arrested as a CIA spy. 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. The Courier: Directed by Dominic Cooke. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. Colonel Penkovsky, who was tried with him, was sentenced to death for treason. Outwardly, Janet was an ordinary mother of four children. Penkovsky (right) during his trial. April 22, 1964. After taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Alexander Zagvozdin, ngi ng u b phn thm vn ca KGB, cho bit Penkovsky "c l b tra hi hng trm ln" trc khi b bn. This is quite shocking, since their countries are nearly at war. They were driven to the infamous Lefortovo prison for interrogation. They are in relation from previous few years of a strong relationship. He was free. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. Oleg Penkovsky had his sights set on moving to the West and building a better life with his family and, therefore, he was keen to expose some of the Soviet's most valuable military secrets. When the driver turned off the engine, Gordievsky could hear dogs close byAlsatians, he later learned. Greville Wynne And Oleg Penkovsky were two people who had a significant role in containing the cold war. Gordievsky believes they were waiting to catch him contacting British intelligence. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. As they walked on the beach that Saturday, he said his career was in trouble. We cant say their name. 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. We had neighbors that were very close. When Oleg Penkovsky offered Soviet military secrets to MI6, she became the go-between. He works as a computer programmer. 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. Long after the massive losses in 1985, the lingering questions still gnaw at their counterintelligence experts. I went into the bathroom, locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror.. How the traitor Oleg Penkovsky was 7 7.The Courier vs. the True Story of British Spy Greville Wynne Now a legitimate double agent, Oleg Penkovsky spent the next two years providing his Western contacts with stolen top-secret documents, war plans, military manuals and nuclear missile diagrams. We have no more information about his spouse. 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. 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. INTERVIEW WITH JOE BULIK - 31.1.98. Officially, he was shot to death. Some days passed before his boss, Viktor Grushko, drove him to a KGB dacha, saying some people wanted to talk to him. The results you delivered are amazing! I could not believe what was happening. [3] When the US Embassy in Moscow refused to cooperate, fearing an international incident, the CIA contacted MI6 for assistance. What neither the CIA nor Poleshchuk knew was that the apartment was a KGB operation. 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. Penkovsky and Wynne's motivation to steal top-secret intel from the USSR is driven by their desire to protect their loved ones from a nuclear holocaust. Bokhan put them on as Reiser drove to a safe house. For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. The film sees him arrested on a plane leaving. He was later traded in an exchange after the British had a Russian spy, Konon Molody in their custody. He might be dead, or hes living in his dacha now. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. Assisting him in his role as "courier" is Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), a far more experienced Russian agent. Enter Oleg Penkovsky. In simple terms, the GRU was Soviet army intelligence. More than a year before the crisis, they had recruited a civilian, British businessman Greville Wynne, to do so. Meet Hasekura Tsunenaga, The 17th-Century Samurai Who Traveled The World And Became A Roman Aristocrat, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. [18] In a 2010 interview, Suvorov denied that the man in the film[clarification needed] was Penkovsky and said that he had been shot. 276 to 280, "A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a LIttle Fish. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. Maria, then 16, was carrying the patatuff. Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. He was reputedly on friendly terms with Penkovsky,[21] which is very likely to have been a cause of his fall. 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. Her eyes were empty. Oleg Penkovsky saved the world from mushroom clouds and untold deaths in the fall of 1962. On September 21, 1985, Howard eluded FBI surveillance and escaped into the New Mexico desert with the help of his wife, Mary, and a pop-up dummy in his cars passenger seat (a technique he had learned in CIA training). As soon as I realized what this was, I closed everything up andstarted looking for an exterminator who could help me out. [19] Greville Wynne, in his book The Man from Odessa, claimed that Penkovsky killed himself. Wynne who was also arrested for espionage would claim that Penkovsky committed suicide in prison. His Girlfriend/boyfriends name is Not Available. The Wynne-Penkovsky case came at the height of the Cold War when relations between the superpowers were particularly strained. 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. Dunlap was just another source they had to protect. Impossible. Moscow, August 3, 1985: It was 2 a.m. when Andrei Poleshchuk got home. 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. 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. 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. Examining this moment in Cold War Era history, the film does a good job of remaining historically accurate with a . In this role, he amassed and assessed technical and scientific intel on the West while growing increasingly disillusioned with his own country. Keke Wyatt Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Net Worth, Fast Facts. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. Now, his relationship is perfect. This information allowed the West to identify the missile sites from the low-resolution pictures provided by US U-2 spy planes. Do you urgently need a company that can help you out? He had champagne and flowers waiting, a big basket of fruit, chocolates and a balloon. Oleg Penkovsky was a Soviet military intelligence colonel during the late Fifties and early Sixties responsible for informing the UK about the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba, to help build . Oleg and Vera are both even-tempered and have mutual respect for each other. Penkovsky joined the GRU as an officer, in 1953. Greville Wynne is a legend in the history books and his family has also benefited from it. They expected I would do something stupid, he told me. 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. 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. Our professional rodent controlwill surely provide you with the results you are looking for. This for the spy masters is an exercise in . In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. Penkovsky and Greville smuggled more than 5000 top-secret military documents out of the USSR. 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. 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. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. After many years, I understood him. It was the signal to launch his escape. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. MI6 and the CIA ran Pen. Penkovskys stolen files showed that the Soviet arsenal was smaller and weaker than the Americans had previously thought. Soon after his arrest she collapsed psychologically. 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. Janet Chisholms husband, Rauri Chisholm, worked with a man named George Blake who happened to be a KGB agent. He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers. Penkovskys debriefing sessions with MI6 and the CIA totaled up to 140 hours. Athens, May 21, 1985: After the Tuesday-morning staff meeting at the Soviet Embassy, Col. Sergei Ivanovich Bokhan stayed behind to talk to his boss, the local rezident of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. The CIA would want to debrief him at length to try to determine the full extent of his treachery. Over the course of his espionage, he delivered rolls of film, classified documents, and over 5,000 photos. But he reportedly committed suicide in a Soviet labor camp. Then, learn about Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet military man who saved the world from nuclear war in 1983. [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. The CIA. 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. 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. Penkovsky's true story is one of bravery, passing MI6 and CIA valuable information from inside Soviet intelligence. Stuzhin & Cheredintzev/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. 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