Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky codenamed "Agent Hero" (born April 23, 1919, Vladikavkaz, died May 16, 1963, Soviet Union) was a colonel with Soviet military intelligence (GRU) in the late 1950s and early 1960s who passed important secrets to the West. He is considered one of the best assets the West ever had in the Soviet Union.
Early life
Penkovsky's father died fighting as an officer in the White Army in the Russian Civil War when he was only four months old, a fact that later became important in his life. Penkovsky had a negative experience with his superiors while working in the Soviet intelligence services in Turkey in the 1950s, and returned to Moscow. When his father's background was discovered by his superiors, Penkovsky's chances for any further promotion disappeared. This action was part of his motivation to decide to become a spy. He even approached American students on the Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow in July 1960 and gave them a package, which was delivered to the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA officers delayed in contacting him because they believed they were under constant surveillance.
Spy career
Penkovsky eventually persuaded Greville Wynne to arrange a meeting with two American and two British intelligence officers during a visit to London in 1961. Wynne became one of his couriers. For the following eighteen months he supplied a tremendous amount of information to his Secret Intelligence Service handlers in Moscow, Ruari and Janet Chisholm, and to CIA and SIS contacts during his permitted trips abroad. Most significantly, he was responsible for arming President John F. Kennedy with the information that the Soviet nuclear arsenal was much smaller than previously thought, that the Soviet fueling systems were not fully operational, and that the Soviet guidance systems were not yet functional.
Penkovsky was arrested by the KGB on 22 October 1962--before Kennedy's address to the nation revealing that U-2 spyplane photographs had confirmed intelligence reports that the Soviets were installing medium range nuclear missiles on the Caribbean Island--code named Operation Anadyr (see Cuban Missile Crisis). Thus the President was deprived of potentially important intelligence that might have lessened the tension during the ensuing 13-day stand-off; e.g., such as the fact that Khrushchev was already looking for ways to defuse the situation.[1]. Such information, arguably, have reduced the pressure on Kennedy to launch an invasion of the island--an action which, it is now known, would have led to the use of Luna class tactical nuclear weapons against US troops, as the Soviet commander, General Issa A. Pliyev, in charge had been given permission to use the weapons without consulting Moscow first[2].
Penkovsky's fate
Penkovsky was tried and convicted of treason and espionage in a show trial in 1963. As to his fate after conviction, accounts differ. Some sources allege that Penkovsky was executed by the traditional Soviet method of a bullet to the back of the neck and cremated. GRU author Vladimir Rezun, "Viktor Suvorov" claims in Inside Soviet Military Intelligence that Penkovsky was bound to a board with piano wire and 'cremated alive'. A more graphic account states that he was slowly fed into a furnace alive, as his closest friends were made to watch on, as a warning to other potential moles, a punishment that "The Soviets meted out to only their worst traitors"[3].
The spying career of Oleg Penvoksky was the subject of Episode 1 of the BBC series "Nuclear Secrets", entitled "The Spy from Moscow". The program featured original covert KGB footage showing Penkovsky photographing classified information and meeting with Janet Chisholm. The program was broadcast on January 15, 2007.[4]
Further reading
- Oleg Penkovsky, The Penkovsky Papers: The Russian Who Spied for the West, Doubleday, New York, 1966.
- Note: Penkovsky's purported diaries, smuggled out after his execution, it is commonly believed not to have been written by him, but to be an American creation in diary form yet still based on his interviews with American and British intelligence services. In truth, it has been recently divulged that the CIA actually wrote the book as a covert operation intended as a propaganda device.
- Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992. ISBN 0684190680
References
- ^ Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, "Khrushchev's Cold War", 2006. ISBN: 978-0-393-05809-3
- ^ Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshkov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, 1996, page 264, Harvard Press, Massachusettes ISBN: 0674-45532-0
- ^ Ernest Volkman, "Spies: The Secret Agents Who Changed the Course of History". ISBN: 9780471025061
- ^ "Nuclear Secrets The Spy From Moscow". IMDB. 15 January 2007. Retrieved 2007-01-16.
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