He was being accused of treason, and yet was being sent on holiday. We are done for., Gordievsky, a keen badminton player, and right in his KGB uniform, switched his loyalty from Moscow to the West and took on the dangerous role of a double agent. Meet the notorious DOUBLE AGENT who worked for the KGB and MI6 Gordievsky says he first "dreamed" of living in London after the 20th party congress in 1956, when Khrushchev launched his famous denunciation of Stalin. You may be wondering why Macintyre applies the label spy to the double agent Gordievsky while applying traitor to the double agent Ames. . 'I was supposed to die,' he says. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Gordievsky, 53, was not at the airport to greet them, saying he preferred to meet them in private. Furious truckers slam California for banning sale of new big rigs and buses that run on diesel by 2036 to slash emissions - warning it'll drive businesses into bankruptcy, Warning, your tampon may cause cancer: Period product makers could be forced to state health risks on labels amid mounting fears about risks, The Met Gala begins! He became upset at not being promoted - feeling that he should be a general - so offered his services to the West. She and his daughters returned to Russia, using her maiden name. As the sound faded, a tramp erupted from the undergrowth, unshaven and unkempt, covered in mud, ferns and dust, dried blood in his hair, a cheap brown bag clutched in one hand, and a wild expression on his face. Later that evening, two MI6 officers Roy Ascot, the MI6 station chief in Moscow, and his colleague, Arthur Gee made an early exit from a party at the British embassy and headed for their cars. Finally, over drinks in an elegant hotel, Bromhead made his ask, and Gordievsky crossed over. My soul was aching. He began to question all the Soviet dogma that he had been learning since birth. Oleg Gordievsky - Wikipedia Ostensibly they were going to Helsinki for a doctors appointment and shopping that is what they told Soviet authorities when they applied for permission to travel. We have one extra guest. Now all that remained was to get out of Finland and away from possible Soviet pursuit. It was half past five, Saturday, end of the working day. After a furious debate inside MI6, the final decision on whether to go was left to Gordievsky. The final hurdle was passport control itself. They poured me some cognac and I felt like someone else. When he escaped to Britain his family remained behind in Russia, and were only allowed to. A number of spies were expelled by both Britain and the USSR. He likens post-communist Russia under Putin to Mussolini's Italy. A strident figure of a man, he passed to the British vital details of Moscow's espionage operation in London. Recruited in 1974 in Copenhagen by MI6, Gordiyevsky, a KGB colonel, was an unparalleled source within the secretive Soviet state, passing reams of information to the British, who shared it with the CIA. The prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was informed about the impending crisis in UK/Russian relations. So when the train pulled into the main station at Leningrad, he was among the first off, walking swiftly to the exit, not daring to look behind. He took with him a backup escape plan written by British spy John Scarlett, the man who went on to become "M," the head of MI6. From Oslo, Gordievsky flew to London and his new home. The plan was to link up with Gordievsky in a lay-by 16 miles short of the border. As we described on Saturday, in the first part of a major new serialisation, KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky was recruited by Britain's MI6 as a double-agent while serving in the Soviet embassy in. Nothing was done to look for him or raise the alarm. He shot into it and came to a stop, with Gee just a few yards behind. Oleg Gordievsky - today's latest news and major events - Sputnik With that, Gordievsky knew, finally, that he had They had got him drunk on cognac while a KGB general grilled him for four hours. the "horrible, horrible music" (294), as Oleg Gordievsky described the Greatest Hits of Dr. Hook the defecting KGB colonel and devotee of classical music now heard from his hiding spot in the car trunk the enchanting notes of Jean Sibelius' Finlandia coming from the cassette deck. The defection of Gordievsky was one of the UKs greatest security coups, delivering a stream of high-grade information. "Everything here is divine, compared to Russia," he said. Your password has been reset. Thirty Years Later, Soviet-Era MI6 Double Agent Describes Escape From KGB The plan was backed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: if uncovered it would spark a major diplomatic incident; for Gordiyevsky it would mean certain death. In order to unsubscribe you will need to sign-in to your Gates Notes Insider account. They seemed to be closing the net. He had exactly one-and-a-half hours to make the journey by foot to Moscows Leningrad Station, dry-cleaning as he went, slipping this way and that, breaking into a jog at times, all to throw off his KGB tail. I was hardly able not to lose the remainder of my clear mind. Thats it, thought Ascot. How VERY stylish! Many felt Russia's blundering espionage ring was more of a joke than a threat to US security. When British intelligence officer Michael Bethany contacted the KGB with an offer of cooperation and passed sensitive documents, the KGB resident in London dismissed the offer, thinking it was a trap set by MI5. Within an hour Gordiyevsky was at Moscow's Leningrad train station, where he bought tickets to Leningrad before travelling by suburban electric train to Zelenogorsk. What if an alarmed fellow passenger reported him to the guard or the police as a suspicious person? He cut his speed from 70mph to 30mph and then 25mph. Leyla Gordievsky, 42, flew into Heathrow Airport with her daughters Maria, 11, and Anna, 10, after being allowed to leave Moscow - six years after her husband defected to Britain while working as the KGB chief in London. A Ukranian. THE two MI6 cars, a Saab and a Ford Sierra, had been followed all the way from Moscow. Leyla Gordievsky holding up large bottle of| champagne, daughters Then, with their wives, one carrying her 15-month-old baby daughter, they drove west in the direction of the Soviet Unions border with Finland. After he sobered up at home, Oleg Gordiyevsky turned to his last resort -- an emergency escape plan devised by the British intelligence services that was hidden in invisible ink in a collection of Shakespeare sonnets. The office of British Prime Minister John Major said earlier today that he would ask Soviet officials when he visits Moscow on Sunday to allow the Gordievsky family to leave. Oleg Gordievsky is widely recognized as one of the most damaging double agents in the history of Soviet espionage. He also came with Marina [Litvinenko's wife]. Are you sure you want to deactivate your account? They agreed to abandon attempts to free Gordievskys family and expel 25 identified Soviet intelligence officers. For years these covert surveillance photos were the only images available of him. Posing as tourists, his MI6 handlers from London had come to meet him and made a phone call to headquarters with a coded message: The fishing has been very good here. Registered office: 20 Vauxhall Bridge Rd, London,SW1V 2SA, UK. It was horrible, horrible music. Thousands of young Leftists from 157 countries were pouring into Moscow for the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students. The book is every bit as exciting as my favorite spy novels. It did not work and Gordievskys wife and children only visited him after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 776 pp. Postcript: After his arrival in Britain, Gordievsky spent four months at Fort Monckton, a training base near Gosport, Hants, for one of the most extensive intelligence gathering and distributing exercises undertaken by MI6. Many are now billionaires. He broke into a run, the sweat pouring off him. The future defector entered the KGB's First Chief Directorate in 1962, at the. I wanted to work for British intelligence and was looking for a chance to do so. Officials are agnostic but pessimistic about the chance of success. Following his latest summer reading list, heres a guide on where to start reading like a president. Hetman the codename under which Gordievsky operated had disclosed that at least 25 Russian and east European diplomats based in London were spies. The cars funnelled towards the final barrier. Please complete your account verification. She was presented with a memorandum, rated top secret and strictly personal, by Charles Powell, her foreign affairs adviser. "Abscheulich," he replied, using the German word for abominable and loathsome. The spy and the people sent to rescue him stared at one another in disbelief. A double agent for MI6, Oleg Gordievsky helped avert a nuclear confrontation and bring about the end of the Cold War. I learned about this episode from British journalist Ben Macintyres newest book, The Spy and the Traitor. Gordievsky is familiar with these kind of "deep-cover" operations. The entrance to the lay-by was 300 yards ahead, marked by a distinctive rock and with a screen of trees on the roadside. (modern), Oleg Gordievsky in London in 1991. 2.30 passed. Adapted from The Spy And The Traitor by Ben Macintyre, published by Viking at 25. MI6 bought him a house in the London suburbs, where he lived under a false name. Published: 18:12 EDT, 27 November 2018 | Updated: 18:31 EDT, 27 November 2018. But something snapped inside Gordievsky when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, in 1968. An MI6 officer. Theoretically, he suggested, he might return to Moscow if there were a democratic government but there is little prospect of that. Ben Macintyre 2018. Spy in London, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/07/world/soviet-turmoil-family-joins-kgb-spy-in-london.html. He made no farewell calls to his mother or sister, although he knew he would probably never see either of them again. Mrs. Gordievsky, speaking in English, said as long as the KGB followed her she knew he was alive. He left no note of explanation or justification. Finally, a third control meeting was successful. Movies. She placed her baby, Florence, on the car boot, directly over the hidden spy, and began changing her nappy which Florence, with immaculate timing, had just filled. [2] At 2:20 a.m. two cars with two drivers arrived. Documents released to the National Archives in Kew expose the complex calculations shaping cold war espionage, while politicians cultivated a thaw in personal relationships with Mikhail Gorbachev. All. Fast asleep on sedatives, hed apparently fallen out of his bunk. Passing multiple Soviet checkpoints, the British agents relied on the diplomatic plates for the cars not to be checked at the border crossings. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, Bill's in Vogue! For the first few years of their enforced separation Mr. Gordievsky and his wife had no contact. But the relationship broke up in 1993, unable to cope with the pressure placed on it. Their note added that it was recognised that this would be hard for Hetman to accept. An army column was crossing the road and traffic had halted. Then the two cars rejoined the road, and accelerated away. But the Gordievsky case shows that the payoff can be enormousmaybe even world saving. They live under a different name, so the teachers and the school dont know about my situation.. The Soviet penetration of Western intelligence in the 1930s and 1940s gave Stalin a crucial advantage in his dealings with the West. Gordievsky, who began working for British intelligence in the early 1970s, fled from the Soviet Union to Finland in 1985 when his superiors began questioning him about intelligence leaks. Macintyre, who has a keen eye for detail, does a great job narrating the escape scene and all the ways it almost fails. Meanwhile, his wife, Leila, was forced to live under effective house arrest in Moscow. What they didnt realise was that he was alone. Given the pure cost (in dollars and lives) of running intelligence operations, it can be tempting to wonder whether the benefits are worth it. The three were met by Foreign Office officials, who accompanied Mrs. Gordievsky to a news conference. It was a venture fraught with risks. Ronald Reagans July 21, 1987, meeting with MI6 asset Oleg Gordievsky. He called MI6, Gordiyevsky recalls, and announced: "The luggage has arrived. Mrs Leyca Gordievsky (centre) with her children Maria and Annia she is the wife of former KGB defector Oleg Geordievsky. We have been fighting for this for so long.. Asked whether he believed changes at home were irreversible, Gordievsky said, I believe it has changed for ever, but how profound the change is I still dont know., Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. Community. Gordievsky's long-term companion is a British woman, whom he met in the 1990s. The family were finally reunited in Britain on September 6, 1991, three months before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Oleg Gordievsky - The Traitor and the Hero - YouTube Oleg Gordievsky was a high-ranking KGB officer turned spy for MI6. This year has been brutal on so many levels. I could see us turning into the lay-by and meeting a reception committee of uniformed people coming out of the bushes.. He knew that the KGB had eyes and ears everywhereand that if he were even suspected of collaborating with the West, he would be tortured and then executed. Gordiyevsky was summoned to the KGB's Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow, ostensibly so that he could be confirmed as station chief. ", KGB's former spy chief in Britain says he has no regrets about betraying the Soviet Union as he likens Putin to Mussolini, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Fifteen minutes later, a border guard appeared with their four passports, checked them against the occupants, handed them over and politely bid them goodbye. Three decades ago, Oleg Gordievsky was dramatically smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the boot of a diplomatic car. BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Oleg Gordievsky They managed to hide around the bend for a few minutes away from the KGB car following them from Leningrad. He had sent her and the children on a months holiday, to the dacha belonging to her father, an elderly KGB general, in Azerbaijan. Sorry, we were unable to unsubscribe you at this time. He said he was wearing a disguise on camera; he appeared with a goatee, lightly tinted aviator glasses and wavy red hair. All he had to do was inform the British of the proposed date of his extraction. Gordievsky said he was convinced that Putin was behind the 2006 assassination of his friend Alexander Litvinenko, who had defected to Britain in 2000. Suddenly, classical music was blasting out of the tape deck at top volume, no longer the soupy pop of Dr Hook, but the swelling sounds of an orchestral piece he knew well. Actually, no. Gordievsky inflicted more damage on Soviet intelligence than any other single spy. A profound book about tennis and much more. KGB defector pleaded in vain for help getting family out of USSR, files But the alleged incident has taken a visible toll on his health. In the USSR, he was sentenced to death in absentia for treason. In the wake of the Skripal poisonings, Gordievskys security measures were reinforced. Blake's and Gordievsky's careers mirror each other: Gordievsky lives on a civil service pension in the home counties; Blake on a KGB pension in Moscow. But the MI6 double agent couldn't risk openly fleeing. The Soviets, convinced that NATO was getting ready for a surprise nuclear attack, prepared for nuclear war. ', Six people are killed and at least 30 hospitalized after massive 40-car pile-up on Illinois Interstate 55 during dust storm, REVEALED: Bud Light owners hired ex-GOP staffers as Capitol Hill lobbyists on the SAME DAY the brewer released Dylan Mulvaney partnership that caused sales and stocks to plummet, Is a 'cryptic' COVID strain lurking in YOUR area? If Gordievsky found himself in trouble he was told to arm himself with a Safeway shopping bag and stand at a certain central Moscow street corner at exactly 7.30pm on a Tuesday. Five years later, an undercover officer in MI6Britains equivalent of the CIAnamed Richard Bromhead met Gordievsky at an art exhibit in Copenhagen. When he got to Leningrad station, it was awash with people. MOSCOW (AP) _ The new chairman of the KGB said today that the family of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky will be allowed to join him in Britain. Bromhead knew that Gordievsky was a KGB agent but knew nothing of his growing antipathy toward the Soviet Union. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. The foreign secretary [Sir Geoffrey Howe] wants to give up. By the time we get to that part, we already know that he survives. He would climb into the boot of one of the cars and be smuggled into Finland. In 2008, however, Gordievsky claims he was poisoned in the UK. When he escaped to Britain his family remained behind in Russia, and were only allowed to join him six years later following lobbying from Thatcher. Unless he could shake them off, he was going to have to abort the mission and leave Gordievsky to his fate. How many Russians do we expel? Gordievsky said he got to know Litvinenko "quite well" in the years before his murder. Sergei Skripal (right) and Yulia Skripal (left)were poisoned in Salisbury. There was an Englishman an MI6 officer working under diplomatic disguise who wanted to recruit me. I wanted to be recruited and he wanted to recruit me. (Under the KGB's unforgiving code, a traitor is always a traitor, and deserves the ultimate punishment.) Gordievsky was raised from birth to be a top KGB spy. Reagan recorded the following entry in his diary after the meeting: "Forgotthis morning had a. From the trunk of the car, all Gordiyevsky could hear was the driver turn on a piece of music by Sibelius called Finlandia. It was Gordievsky. He took no souvenir photographs with him or other emotional mementoes. "From my contacts," he said enigmatically, hinting at sources inside British intelligence. Soon after the Skripal poisoning, Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB bodyguard accused of murdering the defector Alexander Litvinenko a decade earlier, offered an intriguing response when asked whether Russia had also poisoned Skripal: If we had to kill anyone, Gordievsky was the one. As the last military vehicle trundled across, he hit the accelerator, and drove like fury, with Gee on his tail. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. In the summer of 1985, Gordievsky managed to evade his captors and was smuggled out of Russia. Thanks to her new $20m Harry Potter TV deal, it's JK Rowling who's having the last laugh over trans activists - as friends of the author, 57, say fresh 10-year Warner Bros. agreement is 'vindication', US will run out of money by JUNE 1 if Congress doesn't raise or suspend the debt limit: Biden FINALLY agrees to talks with McCarthy - after Treasury Secretary's warning there could be a catastrophic default in a MONTH, 'This movie is absolutely NUTS!' The surveillance cars caught up. When Mikhail Gorbachev visited Britain in 1984, Gordievsky was secretly briefing both sides: with the guidance of MI6, he was telling the Russians what to say to the British, and simultaneously warning the British what the Soviet delegation would say to them. By now, the men had returned with the completed paperwork. He had toyed with taking them, especially as MI6 had always included them in the escape plan. The CIA likes to know what it is receiving, and from whom, and so a special task force was established to try to establish who the British had recruited inside the KGB. In the first half of that year, President Ronald Reagan dramatically ratcheted up rhetoric, military spending, and psychological operations against the Soviets. After three hours of waiting in the forest, the escapee saw two cars with diplomatic plates. Gordievsky said in London that this raised his hopes that the abortive hard-line coup against President Mikhail S. Gorbachev might lead to a family reunion. He was on the run. The daughter of a Russian. His only hope for survival is to attempt a daring exfiltration plan. In 1968, when he was working as a KGB spy in Copenhagen, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. He declined to say precisely what happened. Former KGB agents, including Putin, now occupy senior roles in Russia's murky power structures. The last date is today's date the date you are citing the material. The couple divorced soon thereafter. He ran for an hour and was still miles short of the lay-by when a truck stopped and gave him a lift. Gordievsky was forced to leave his second wife Leila and their two children behind in the USSR. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, CMG ( ; born 10 October 1938) is a former colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate ( rezident) and bureau chief in London, and was a double agent, providing information to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1974 to 1985. Bill may send you a welcome note or other exclusive Insider mail from time to time. Ascots Saab was once again in the lead. They stared, open-mouthed, as the two British cars drove by, their faces registering a mixture of confusion and relief. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. I was supposed to die.". Instead, it was assumed that Gordievsky must have killed himself. what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child Viktor: Grushko: Chief of the Third Department. In 2021, 82-year-old Gordievsky lives on a civil service pension in Great Britain, gives interviews to mass media and according to former Russian intelligence officers makes a living by trading sensitive information about Soviet and Russian secret services. No suspected spy under KGB surveillance had ever escaped from the Soviet Union. Tom Balmforth covers Russia and other former Soviet republics from his base in Moscow. All rights reserved. Get the week's best stories straight to your inbox. You can read our policy on moderating comments. Fear and adrenaline can have a strange effect on the mind and the appetite. The pick-up had taken 80 seconds. Gordievsky, meanwhile, was sentenced to death in absentia; the order has never been rescinded. The Finnish official examined them, handed them back and came out of his kiosk to raise the barrier. The most successful Soviet intelligence operation during World War II, A Cold War SEX SCANDAL that involved a Soviet Spy and a toppled British politician, This Soviet sabotage maestro orchestrated political killings abroad & spied for the USSR. What about Putin? 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.

Delaware County Oklahoma Jail Inmate Roster, Julie Sommars Health, When A Member Is No Longer Qualified For Advancement, Articles O