All realised Gordievsky was unique. In later life, Gordievsky. [5] His second posting to Denmark ended in 1978, and he was recalled to Moscow this time for a lengthy period because he quickly divorced his wife and married a woman he had been having an affair with, and the KGB frowned upon affairs and divorces as immoral. Oleg resented the strict discipline, the endless paperwork, the malevolent atmosphere. Operation Pimlico plan was almost scuppered, Oleg Gordievsky: How a dirty nappy and bag of crisps saved British spy | News | The Times. If they are saying I am not affected by the poison, why did I spend two weeks in hospital? Moscow orders all over-65s to stay at home then adds the A million Britons abroad are told to come home NOW with more Saboteurs wreck Russian train cut power cables 37mi from Ukraine, Unseen footage of Meghan Markle during her teenage years, 'We're not your enemies!' [4], Gordievsky joined the KGB in 1963, and was posted to the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen in 1966. Aldrich Ames, a former CIA agent who became a mole for the KGB. Soon afterwards, the Soviet government invited a prominent American, Donald Trump, to visit Moscow. But he has interviewed all of the former officers involved in the case, who tell their stories for the first time. They didnt interfere, but they didnt stop me. He brought his kids as cover. Paintings hanging on the walls of his home in Surrey reflect his love of avant-garde art. After another failed attempt from the Danes, it was time for him to return home, to a more repressive and psychotic Russia, in 1970. Work with us; Blog Gen Z says telephone calls are microaggressions and sending an audio clip is more personal than a text, FBI joins manhunt for Texas killer who has been on the run for 36 hours after murdering family of five - including eight-year-old - after they asked him to stop firing his AR-15 rifle in his backyard, 'Vaping is the crack cocaine of tobacco': Experts say ultra-concentrated hit of nicotine makes devices WORSE than smoking - as data shows cigarette use at historic low, Could YOU spot a murderer? It was at this tricky point that MI6 came up with a plan to smuggle him out of the USSR, should the need arise. [5], In late April 1985 he was promoted to KGB station chief (resident-designate or rezident) in London at the Soviet embassy. Customise your myFT page to track Now this (barrier) is removed, he said. 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First he shook off his KGB tails, then made for the border with Finland, hiding in remote undergrowth until he was picked up by a rescue car driven by two British agents who, astonishingly, had brought along their baby. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/oleg-gordievsky-45102.php, 20th Century Film & Theater Personalities, 21st Century Film & Theater Personalities, 20th Century British Film & Theater Personalities, 21st Century British Film & Theater Personalities. and defected to Britain. Gordievsky's second wife, Leiladaughter of a KGB generaland their two daughters were sent back to Moscow, causing panic in MI6. Whatever little sense of belonging he had toward his country or his fathers beloved KGB, quickly changed into rage and anguish. Please. Hes estranged from his children. All rights reserved. offers FT membership to read for free. Although he almost certainly remained under KGB surveillance, Gordievsky managed to send a covert signal to MI6, which activated the elaborate escape plan, Pimlico, that had been in place for many years for just such an emergency. Thus, by one swift stroke of fate, he was inducted into the dangerous world of spies, in 1961. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the Settings & Account section. Stalin: General secretary of the communist party. It worked, due mainly to the quick thinking of the wife of one of the MI6 drivers, who changed her baby . When he escaped to Britain his family remained behind in Russia, and were only allowed to. He had a pretty South American wife that constantly asked for more money and he had to get it somehow to please her. Discover the stars who skyrocketed on IMDb's STARmeter chart this year, and explore more of the Best of 2022; including top trailers, posters, and photos. Macintyre wrote: It [the dog] wolfed it down before being yanked away by the unsmiling handler.. However, he now became sceptical. Gordievsky has written a number of books on the subject of the KGB and is a frequently quoted media pundit on the subject. Though he left school with a silver medal and as head of the Komsomol, the secretive undertone in the Gordievsky family had already left an indelible mark on him. When a 90-year-old retired Foreign Office secretary died recently the secrets of her Cold War past could finally be revealed. That does ring true. [28], Gordievsky lived for years in a "safe house" in London, and security has been tightened since the Salisbury poisonings. To order a copy for 21.50 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. 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. In contrast to Gordievskys wife, Yelena, she was shy and unworldly, but when she relaxed her laugh was loud and infectious. He was informed that he would never be posted overseas, and in June 1985, his family was brought back to the USSR. The only thing they were insistent on was that I didnt identify any of the intelligence officers by name., And why were those former agents so happy to talk? Oleg was called back to USSR and his family was later too. Description. He was a married man and a spy with a secret love affair with the daughter of a Major in the KGB, a life fit for a movie plot. The Kremlin genuinely believed the West was going to launch a first nuclear strike.. Gordievsky was forced to leave his second wife Leila and their two children behind in the USSR. PressReader. The episode, The Man Who Saved The World, recounts the "years-long effort by Gordievsky to pass Soviet intelligence to the British, all but preventing a nuclear Armageddon between the Soviet Union and the West". Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. May Day parade in Moscow, 1970, the year in which Gordievsky was singled out by MI6. Oleg Gordievsky: With Leila Gordievsky, Oleg Gordievsky, Ronald Reagan, Oliver 'Buck' Revell. Gordievskys mother was not thrilled when she was told that her younger son was following in his fathers footsteps. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, 'How can I fix this?' The marriage was in deep trouble anyway its frailty even more exposed when Gordievsky fell in love with Leila Aliyeva, a Russian-born typist for the World Health Organisation in Copenhagen. His father, his brother, and his first wife were all members of the infamous organization. IMDbPro. [2] They dont know where the other is., In 1997 the Queen made Gordievsky a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, the honour awarded to James Bond in Ian Flemings books. [2] Two British diplomats and their wives were Gordievsky's courier; to dissuade sniffer dogs at the Finnish border one of the wives dropped her baby's dirty nappy on the ground, causing the dogs to flee. Gordievskys brother, Vasili, who was training to be an illegal spy, told the officials that his brother would be interested in the service. However, the marriage was effectively dead by then and eventually it foundered completely. 'I was betrayed,' he told her. Gordievsky, who studied history, geography, economics, and international affairs, wanted to learn English as a language. 894646. [2] He steadily advanced in rank there with the help of secret aid and manipulation by MI6, which handed him abundant non-damaging information and contacts; MI6 also steadily banished his direct superiors back to Moscow on trumped-up charges so that Gordievsky took their place. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for $69 per month. Gordievsky has little contact with his two grown-up daughters, Maria and Anna, or his ex-wife Leila. In 1975, after a year of passing valuable information the West, he was called back to Moscow. After about a year, they realised that it must be Gordievsky. There is, he insists, nothing in Russia that he misses. Yelena Akopian was a 22-year-old German girl training to be a teacher, when Gordievsky met her in 1960s. The double life of a KGB insider recruited by MI6 features microfilm, Soviet secrets and a daring escape. He continued to deny the accusations until his death at the age of 96 eight years ago. It was the only time that the spooks managed to exfiltrate a penetration agent from the USSR, outwitting their Russian adversaries. For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital, click here. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, Oleg lost everything. He raised the alarm with his supermarket bag and gave his minders the slip. According to The Times, the couple met in secret trysts at various Copenhagen hotels every few weeks, but he could not divulge his life as a double agent to her and said half of my existence and my thoughts had to remain secret. It was a hair-raising journey featuring a KGB pursuit, a smelly nappy and a bag of crisps. Ames first met and sold classified information to a KGB agent on 15 May 1985, in Washington, DC; the following day Gordievsky received the telegram from KGB leadership recalling him to Moscow. Gordievsky was stuck at a desk job in Moscow, and she wanted to escape the mundane life she was living in a small house with her parents and five siblings. He was suspected of espionage for a foreign power, but his superiors stalled on taking any overt further action against him. 00:00:26. This signal would trigger a plan to smuggle Gordievsky into Finland in the boot of a diplomatic car. This is one of the few cases in which spying changed history., Gordievsky was even more intimately involved in the next historic development, when the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to London in 1984 for a meeting with the Prime Minister that would hasten the end of the Cold War. [2], During his first Danish posting, Gordievsky became disenchanted with his work in the KGB, particularly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On 19 July 1985, Gordievsky went for his usual jog, but he instead managed to evade his KGB tails and boarded a train to Vyborg, near the Finnish border, where he was met by British embassy cars, after they managed to lose the three KGB surveillance cars following them. In the meantime, he had learned English and closely studied the KGBs British files. It comes as the book The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre - revealed the daring Operation Pimlico plan was almost scuppered when British officials struggled to get then prime minister Margaret Thatchers approval while she was visiting The Queen at Balmoral because the phone line was engaged for 20 minutes while the monarch tried to borrow her mothers video recorder to watch Dads Army. In June 1985, he was joined in Moscow by his wife and two children, who had been living with him in London. the countries of your choice. Interview with Oleg Gordievsky and Leila Gordievsky, a defected Russian agent and his wife. He was presented with the prestigious Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. A lot of what spies do doesnt amount to a hill of beans. That was when she, for the first time in her life, disapproved the regime and voiced her anger openly. Following the norm for teenagers at the time, Gordievsky joined the Komsomol, or the Young Communist League.. But they all returned to Moscow after he was recalled by the KGB, with his family told Gordievsky had suffered a heart problem. You can still enjoy your subscription until the end of your current billing period. Haydn : One of the composers. Vitaly: Yurichenko: A KGB officer. and Paul Bracchi for the Daily Mail You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many users needs. Gordievskys manner during these early encounters was oddly calm, leading the Brits to wonder if they were the victims of a classic KGB dangle. Gordievsky was sentenced to death by the Soviet Union after his escape from his country, a sentence which was never rescinded by post-Soviet Russian authorities. Only 2% of people can spot the odd couple hidden among the silhouettes so are you among them? and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, Its an old Stalinist technique called maskirovka, little masquerade, which means confusing everybody so that nobody knows what is real and what isnt. [7], Although MI6 had passed on information provided by Gordievsky to the American CIA, the British would not reveal their source, so the CIA had conducted a covert operation to discover who the source was. "There has been accusation and counter-accusation. For tickets, go to, Chalke Valley History Festival 24th 30th June 2019 The largest Festival dedicated entirely to History in the UK, Do not sell or share my personal information. But when they got to the border sniffer dogs detected Gordievsky in the boot of the car and began circling. Lying down in the boot of a Ford Sierra saloon, he was smuggled across the border into Finland. [9] He tried to send a covert sympathetic message to the Politiets Efterretningstjeneste (Danish Security Intelligence Service), called PET, but his three-year stint ended and he returned to Moscow before making any direct contact. He sat in the back of a Finnish rental car as Pettit drove them north for the Norwegian border. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was born on October 10, 1938, in Moscow, in the erstwhile USSR, to Anton Gordievsky, an NKVD official, and Olga Nikolayevna Gornova, a statistician. It set out the characteristics it was looking for in a potential agent: narcissism, vanity, greed and marital infidelity. Oleg Gordievsky, the most prominent Soviet agent to defect to Britain during the Cold War, personally pleaded with Margaret Thatcher to help secure the release of his family from Moscow. He said he was poisoned with thallium, a highly toxic metal used in insecticides which was favoured by the KGB in assassinations during the Cold War. The. [11], Gordievsky was suddenly ordered back to Moscow in mid May 1985, a few weeks after he had been promoted to KGB station chief in London. "[25], Gordievsky said that the KGB were puzzled by and denied the claim that Director General of MI5 Roger Hollis was a Soviet agent. I just dont know what to do. He expected an approach from western intelligence. His wife, Leila (an Azeri) was the daughter of a KGB officer and was unaware of her husband's defection. Hes always maintained that he made the right decision and I dont think I would challenge that, morally, in terms of what was happening in the world then., Leila Gordievsky did eventually come to Britain, after the end of the Soviet Union, but the marriage quickly failed. analyse how our Sites are used. Meanwhile, the book also reveals how years earlier Gordievsky had lived more than one double life after he began an affair with a typist Leila Alieva, the daughter of a high ranking KGB agent herself, while based in Copenhagen. In The Spy and the Traitor, an account of the Gordievsky case by the Times writer Ben Macintyre, she was disguised with the pseudonym 'Veronica Price'. In 1997 the Queen made Gordievsky a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, Then came Able Archer 83, a Nato war-game training exercise in November 1983, leading up to a simulated nuclear attack. MI6 boosted Gordievskys career by feeding him real, low-grade intelligence and by removing rival spies who threatened to expose him. However, he does view him as stunningly naive. People in Downing Street and the Oval Office didnt believe it at first, but Oleg managed to convince them it was true and say that unless they calmed down the fighting talk, the West would effectively press the button on its own destruction., Moves were made to calm down the Soviets, who never fired. Yelena Akopian, his first wife. Hes estranged from his children. 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. Leila and the girls were called back to Moscow, unaware he was a double agent. The Institute of International Relations housed a small KGB station, which began looking for new recruits. [18] She and their children were on holiday in the Azerbaijan SSR at the time of his escape. [2], Unbeknownst to him, Gordievsky had been betrayed in early May (or early June 1985 at the latest) by CIA officer Aldrich Ames. Oleg Gordievsky in his KGB uniform (left); his wife Leila (right) Gordievsky had been brought up a loyalist, the son of a KGB agent, but his stomach was turned by the sight of the Berlin. For 11 years, he spied for MI6. There was great suspicion that a high-ranking American CIA officer, Aldrich Ames, who had been selling secrets to the KGB, reported Gordievsky's treachery to Soviet counterintelligence. Born in 1929 near the Lord's Cricket ground she was the eldest daughter of Charles Pettit, a solicitor who was badly wounded in the Second World War, and Valerie Douglas, a Scottish dancer. But Bonds not a spy, hes an assassin. Thirty years on, Gordievskys successful escape still seems incredible. They talk about their new life in England now Leila and the children have been allowed to join him after 6 years, and the possibility of a return to Russia and Moscow, their home town. It included details of the KGBs attempts to influence western elections through active measures. This was the most embarrassing failure in KGB history., Macintyre describes the former spy in his book as one of the loneliest men he has met. [7] He waited on a particular street corner, on a particular weekday at 7.30 pm, carrying a Safeway bag as a signal. He was able to crack open the inner secrets of the Kremlin. Theyre doing it on Facebook, theyre doing it on Twitter, but the technique is the same., What are they after? [2] After his arrival, he was taken to a KGB safe house outside Moscow, drugged, and interrogated. We have noticed that there is an issue with your subscription billing details. [16] Gordievsky was flown to the UK via Norway; in the UK, his MI6 codename was changed to OVATION. He felt sure that if she discovered the truth, as a loyal KGB officer herself, she would shop him. Cassettes of these conversations were sent back to London in a diplomatic bag. Like Oleg, Leila came from KGB stock: her father, Ali, had risen to the rank of major in the KGB, before retiring to Moscow. MI6 was waiting. Although he joined at a young age, his heart was never really in it. Godievsky was summoned back to Moscow (pictured) in 1985 under the guise of being made the head of the KGB in Britain. I went through a middleman to see him. It was the only time that the spooks managed to exfiltrate a penetration agent from the USSR, outwitting their Russian adversaries. He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. [2], After he learned to speak English and lobbied heavily for a position that opened up in London, the KGB posted Gordievsky to London in June 1982. 2: Handel : One of the composers. Gordievskys British contacts were a colourful bunch. (modern). ' our meeting lasted four hours and after that i met her several times again,' he said. His fathers obsession with the uniform and lack of morality of any sort did not instil much humanity in young Gordievskys heart. This was after Stalins death and during the brief period of relaxation Russia witnessed. Since settling here, he has worked as a security adviser and has often appeared on TV as an expert on Russian espionage. [7][2] Under increasing surveillance and pressure in Moscow and seriously suspected of being a double agent, in July 1985 he managed to send a pre-arranged covert signal to MI6 to be rescued. An operation named RYAN was put in place to find out the details of the attack. ", "How Britain's best Cold War spy was smuggled out of the Soviet Union", "Double agent Gordievsky claims he was poisoned by the Kremlin", "Former KGB defector claims he was poisoned by Russians", "SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL ENTERS THE WORLD OF GLOBAL ESPIONAGE IN SPY WARS WITH DAMIAN LEWIS", Biographer Ben Macintyre summarizes Gordievsky's life, career, and escape from the USSR, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oleg_Gordievsky&oldid=1150970448. Then as a KGB trainee he spent six months in East Berlin. Get local insights from Lisbon to Moscow with an unrivalled network of journalists across Europe, During her retirement Pettit lived with her mother and sister in Surrey. What he didn't tell her was about the secret life that awaited him. They would have been aged three and six. It wasnt as easy as turning up outside his front door., Security is still tight, particularly after the poisoning of the double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last year. [29] He claimed that he was poisoned with thallium by "rogue elements in Moscow". Oleg Gordievsky, pictured with wife Leila years after fleeing to the UK in 1985, is regarded as Britain's 'most valuable' spy during the Cold War, but only escaped Moscow thanks to the. He would re-establish contact with MI6 as soon as it was safe to do so. [8], Following his exfiltration from the USSR to the UK in 1985, he became of even greater use to the West, in that the information he disclosed (and had previously disclosed) could be immediately acted upon and shared without endangering his life, identity, or position. The methods are just different. A refresher memo was concealed in an OUP edition of Shakespeares sonnets. Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel. Oleg Gordievsky, Soviet spy and double agent. Published: 07:37 EDT, 24 March 2020 | Updated: 08:20 EDT, 24 March 2020. The corner was monitored by agents every week for seven years, even when Gordievsky was called over to work from the Soviet embassy in Britain in 1982. Former intelligence officers had to go back and ask permission to talk to me, but I was given total access. The dog duly slunk off, says Macintyre. The Soviets panicked and prepared to launch their missiles first, believing it was the only way to save themselves. His two books on Soviet intelligence operations with historian Christopher Andrew are invaluable.
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