Posted on . The films screenwriter, Tom OConnor, found Wynnes story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. His spying career was the subject of episode 1 of the 2007 BBC Television docudrama Nuclear Secrets, titled "The Spy from Moscow" in which he was portrayed by Mark Bonnar. | READ MORE. Among the materials Penkovsky provided to Wynne were four photocopies of plans for construction sites of missile-launching installations in Cuba. [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. 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. He was the real deal. Wynne had worked as both Penkovsky's contact and courier; both men were arrested by the Soviets in October 1962. 445 & 35. [19] Greville Wynne, in his book The Man from Odessa, claimed that Penkovsky killed himself. Penkovsky was executed but there are conflicting reports about the manner of his death. He had been drugged. Make way for his amateur,everyman spy Greville Wynne in "The Courier," now on premium VOD6. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. 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. It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. [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. Her eyes were empty. Leonids original case officer blamed himself for years for letting my father down. [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 following article hopes to help you make more suitable choices and . After taking part in the Winter War against Finland and in World War II, he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Because his father opposed the Communist revolution, Penkovsky was routinely denied promotions. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. The Cuban Missile Crisis was high-stakes brinkmanship played out between US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, bringing Washington and Moscow to the precipice of nuclear war in October 1962. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, they sentenced Wynne to eight years in prison. He just couldnt tell the truth. 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 was recruited to MI5 just before World War II. Wynne agreed, and during his visit to Moscow the following month he wound up connecting with Oleg Penkovsky, a lieutenant colonel in the GRU (the Soviet Unions foreign-intelligence agency) who was eager to leak high-level military information to Western powers. 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. I was 18 years old. He sees that episode differently now. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. It was apparent that Soviet counterintelligence agents did not yet have enough evidence to arrest him. When Bokhan escaped from Athens, the KGB hustled his wife back to Moscow, searched her apartment and began a series of interrogations. Penkovsky's fate is also mentioned in the Nelson DeMille spy novel The Charm School (1988). Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Penkovsky was portrayed by Christopher Rozycki in the 1985 BBC Television serial Wynne and Penkovsky. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. The Soviets had arranged for the apparent good news to reach his wife through a friend and former co-worker in Moscow, who wrote to her in Lagos. The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. Murder by Cremation. 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. 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. Like Popov, Penkovsky volunteered his services and Kissevalter was called in to handle the spy, in league with two counterparts from the British Secret . For those who are betrayed, the damage persists long after the initial shock passes. An industrial sales consultant who regularly traveled through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union representing British electrical and steel companies, Wynne was told it would be helpful if on his next trip, he could arrange for a meeting with a state committee in Moscow dedicated to developing opportunities with foreigners in science and technology, and report back on his conversations. Bokhan froze. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine 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 While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. After attending the Military Diplomatic Academy (194953), he became an intelligence officer, serving primarily in Moscow. Advertising Notice On October 29 of that year, just hours after the Soviets stood down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Wynne went to Soviet-occupied Budapest with a traveling exhibition of British industrial goods, against the advice of his MI6 handlers. 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. Long after the massive losses in 1985, the lingering questions still gnaw at their counterintelligence experts. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . For a long time he resented the impact of his fathers CIA spying on his own life. 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. He was an intermediary for the important Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky, who was engaged in selling arms and weapons secrets to British intelligence. 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. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. Before his father left Lagos, Andrei said, he gave a gold watch to his CIA case officer at the time. 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 . 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. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, By the way, Sergei, this cable came in and tossed it over. Penkovsky supplied the West with information on Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba and has been dubbed the spy of the century. It also helped Americans to understand how limited the Soviets capabilities actually were in the area, so as tensions grew during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy knew how much rope he could give [Soviet Premier Nikita] Khrushchev, as Duns puts it. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. [13], Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962. Penkovsky joined the Soviet Red Army in 1937 and served as an artillery officer in World War II, being severely wounded in 1944. 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. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. He has two daughters. In Athens, Bokhan called an emergency telephone number that rang in the CIA station inside the American Embassy. Dont call us, well call you in a couple years. When Greville got out of prison, he was not prepared, as people obviously are not in those circumstances, to be ignored.. The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. 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. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. Brought up in the North Caucasus, Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy with the rank of lieutenant in 1939. It led to him and a Soviet double agent, Oleg Penkovsky, becoming firm friends, involved in . The daughter of a Russian mother . The mere belief that theres another mole, whether correct or not, can cause chaos inside an intelligence agency. These things have to be run to ground.. Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. 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. British intelligence officer and Soviet spy. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. 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. There were certain anomalies that took place that we just couldnt put our finger on., And Bearden says, I remain convinced there is a fourth man. As a top ranking Russian officer, he sinks into the depts and rises to the heights of international intrigue. 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. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. They had to go through a show trial, basically, so on the stand Wynne accused MI6 of using him as a dupehe may have just been saying whatever he could say because he worried they might execute him, says Jeremy Duns, an author of several spy novels set during the Cold War as well as the history book Codename: Hero: The True Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold Wars Most Dangerous Operation. "He did make a life for himself, but Greville Wynne did pay a big price for his service. 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. Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was the signal to launch his escape. Hanssen, who was convicted of espionage, is serving a life sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado. 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. After some months, she was released. "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. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. The FBI declined to comment on whether the search Wiser began is continuing. 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. Penkovskys dynamism and enthusiasm, his wide-ranging and passionate denunciations of the Soviet system and its leaders illustrated with anecdotes, fascinated and captivated the American and British teams, write Schecter and Deriabin. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Penkovsky was portrayed by Eduard Bezrodniy in the 2014 Polish thriller Jack Strong, about Ryszard Kukliski, another Cold War spy. Why did Wynne make up so much, when the truths of his 18 months as a spy are already filled with astounding details? That happened several times.. Five days after Bokhan received the cable about his son, he took his wife, Alla, and their 10-year-old daughter, Maria, to the beach. What happened to wife of Oleg Penkovsky? 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. In 1949 Penkovsky transferred from the regular army to the Soviet army intelligence directorate (GRU). what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child. The first meeting between Penkovsky and two American and two British intelligence officers occurred during a visit by Penkovsky to London in April 1961.