Oleg Gordievsky (Former Colonel of the KGB and Bureau Chief in London) Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. Gordievsky says he first "dreamed" of living in London after the 20th party congress in 1956, when former Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev launched his famous denunciation of Stalin. Valerie Pettit (right) may have seemed to her neighbours in the village of West Clandon, Surrey, as an ordinary churchgoing elderly woman, but with her death came revelations of her central role in organising the 1985 escape of Russian spyOleg Gordievsky (left). The dog duly slunk off, says Macintyre. His father, his brother, and his first wife were all members of the infamous organization. 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. The cash went to fund the magazine Tribune. Gordievsky described Valerie as a 'perfectionist' who 'always showed me great kindness and a lot of patience'. Best-selling author Jane Green gives some 'brutal love' to a woman with nowhere left to turn, Experts are recommending 'Swedish death cleaning' - and they say it's your duty to your children, Donald Trump Jr. says Ron DeSantis is 'afraid to cross Paul Ryan and Fox' after Florida governor refuses to comment on Tucker Carlson being fired from network, Man with micropenis reveals how he broaches the topic with potential sexual partners, Tee off in the tee box: Moment a BRAWL between rival golfers erupts on Florida course after one group accuses another of playing too slow, Two teens, aged 16 and 18, are killed and four high schoolers are fighting for their lives after 19-year-old opens fire at Mississippi house party. Gordievsky described to Leila the Englishmen he'd met in Copenhagen witty, sophisticated people, full of laughter and generosity. However, he now became sceptical. They were married before his first foreign posting in Denmark. Former intelligence officers had to go back and ask permission to talk to me, but I was given total access. He sold info on all double agents in KGB working for CIA and then this new info about Oleg. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. 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. ' our meeting lasted four hours and after that i met her several times again,' he said. He would re-establish contact with MI6 as soon as it was safe to do so. He brought his kids as cover. It was obvious to me that I had been poisoned.. "[32], In 2018 Ben Macintyre published a biography of Gordievsky, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. [4] He proved an excellent student at school, where he learned to speak German. The daughter of a Russian mother and a father from Azerbaijan, she was tall and striking, with a shock of dark hair and deep brown eyes behind long eyelashes. Work in recent years included being a consultant editor for the journal of National Security, co-hosting a TV show titled Wanted in the Nineties and writing content for Literary Review. [2] He continued to provide secret documents and information to MI6. This averted a nuclear war between the two super powers. In later life, Gordievsky has been cantankerous and reproving. It set out the characteristics it was looking for in a potential agent: narcissism, vanity, greed and marital infidelity. There were stages in his journey. He sat in the back of a Finnish rental car as Pettit drove them north for the Norwegian border. The babys mother dropped cheese and onion crisps to distract them, then got out and changed her daughters nappy on the boot, letting the stinky results fall to the floor. If youd like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. For 11 years, he spied for MI6. Aldrich Ames, a former CIA agent who became a mole for the KGB. [2] Gordievsky felt, given the huge benefits MI6 would reap if he remained rezident of the embassy, that he was being encouraged by MI6 to return to Moscow as ordered, and decided on that;[2] MI6 began to revive a plan to extricate him if necessary. In 1990, he was consultant editor of the journal Intelligence and National Security, and he worked on television in the UK in the 1990s, including the game show Wanted. Just minutes later the cars parked up in a clearing in a forest where Pettit was waiting. 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. Leila Aliyeva, his second wife. 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. [33], In March 2020, Gordievsky's story was recounted in an episode of Spy Wars With Damian Lewis, on the Smithsonian Channel in the US, streaming on various cable services. These mutual signals indicated that the escape plan was to be activated immediately. His wife, Leila (an Azeri) was the daughter of a KGB officer and was unaware of her husband's defection. Gordievsky (pictured in 1976) continues to defy Moscow from a safehouse in Britain. IMDb Best of 2022. To order a copy for 21.50 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. 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He became outraged by the USSR's cruel crushing of the Prague Spring reform movement in Czechoslovakia in August 1968, and began sending covert signals to Danish and British intelligence agents and agencies that he might be willing to cooperate with them. She was interrogated and detained for some six years, the Soviets presuming (wrongly) that she had been complicit in Gordievsky's activities. Macintyre wrote: It [the dog] wolfed it down before being yanked away by the unsmiling handler.. He stayed there in a student hostel, made contact with his brother (who was already working there as a spy), and ran some errands (which he later found out was a litmus test for him). They would have been aged three and six. "There has been accusation and counter-accusation. For three years Pettit arranged weekly meetings withGordievsky at a safehouse in Bayswater, London, where he spilledthe deepest secrets of the Russian intelligence during the darkest period of the Cold War while enjoying beer and smoked salmon. Work with us; Blog [18] She and their children were on holiday in the Azerbaijan SSR at the time of his escape. He claimed he was the victim of a Kremlin-inspired assassination plot. He spoke extensively to Gordievsky, who is now 79 and living in the home counties a remarkable figure, proud, shrewd and irascible. Mikhail Lyubimov, his mentor, a Soviet spy. [26], In the Daily Telegraph in 2010, Charles Moore gave a "full account", which he said had been provided to him by Gordievsky shortly after Foot's death, of the extent of Foot's alleged KGB involvement. Unable to do so, he took his elder brothers advice and learnt Swedish. This page was last edited on 21 April 2023, at 03:32. In June 1985, he was joined in Moscow by his wife and two children, who had been living with him in London. Pettit (second right) stood next toGordievsky (left) as they stopped for a photograph on their way through Finland during the daring escape, Russian spy Gordievsky, widely acknowledged to be the most valuable secret service mole at the heart of the KGB, with his ex-wife Mrs Leyla Gordievsky. MI6 was waiting. [23], Gordievsky was appointed Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for "services to the security of the United Kingdom" in the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours (in the Diplomatic List). [3], The son of an officer of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police and precursor to the KGB), Gordievsky was born in 1938. Most people have no idea how close we were to nuclear war at that time, says Ben Macintyre, author of The Spy And The Traitor, which tells the extraordinary true story of a KGB agent turned British informant called Oleg Gordievsky. By then, he had been made the chief of KGB at the London embassy. Gordievsky seized both her hands and kissed them. Stalin: General secretary of the communist party. A Czechoslovak spy, Standa Kaplan, had defected to Canada. Description. This signal would trigger a plan to smuggle Gordievsky into Finland in the boot of a diplomatic car. 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. The family went with Gordievsky when he was posted to London in 1982 and they quickly settled, enjoying British culture and never realising what the double agent was actually up to as he divulged secrets to MI6 on a weekly basis. After Gordievskys brother died on duty, his request to leave Moscow was accepted in 1972, and he was sent to Denmark again, this time as the Second Secretary at the Russian embassy in Copenhagen. It included details of the KGBs attempts to influence western elections through active measures. When he escaped to Britain his family remained behind in Russia, and were only allowed to. His visa was cleared by the Danes intentionally, in consultation with the MI6. He was approached by the British intelligence head of the local station, codenamed Bromhead. His codename was SUNBEAM. He calmly accepted to take up the dubious role. Salisbury reaction: 'It would be comical but for the fact someone died', Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. The methods are just different. [7] He waited on a particular street corner, on a particular weekday at 7.30 pm, carrying a Safeway bag as a signal. Since settling here, he has worked as a security adviser and has often appeared on TV as an expert on Russian espionage. The double life of a KGB insider recruited by MI6 features microfilm, Soviet secrets and a daring escape. Soon afterwards, the Soviet government invited a prominent American, Donald Trump, to visit Moscow. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Macintyre's book claims he was also the source of the information that alleged former Labour leader Michael Foot was giving information to the Russians in the late 1980s. According to one officer present Pettit was visibly moved, 'her expression a mixture of recognition and love', despite usually disapproving of emotional outbursts. Upon his arrival in Moscow, he was sure that he was under surveillance and his house was bugged. 'I was betrayed,' he told her. He lost his marriage. At 7.30pm on Tuesdays British officers would watch a bread shop next to Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a diplomatic complex. or Following the norm for teenagers at the time, Gordievsky joined the Komsomol, or the Young Communist League.. [2], He studied at a prestigious Moscow University Moscow State Institute of International Relations and later undertook NKVD training, where in addition to espionage skills he mastered German and also learned to speak Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. When he tried it for the first time, it went unnoticed. 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. They didnt interfere, but they didnt stop me. Ronald Reagans rhetoric about the Soviet Union as an evil empire was interpreted in Moscow as a direct threat. He now receives a 20,000-a-year pension from MI6. [4], Gordievsky joined the KGB in 1963, and was posted to the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen in 1966. However, it cannot be legally carried out because of the Russian membership of the Council of Europe., He has written quite a few books on the KGB.. Gordievsky witnessed how people, trying to flee to the other side, were oppressed and shot at by the administration in East Berlin. [4] The building of the wall appalled him, and he became disillusioned with the Soviet system. He was finally able to divorce Yelena in 1979 and quickly married Leila, with whom he had had two daughters, Maria and Anna. Thirty years on, Gordievskys successful escape still seems incredible. It was a hair-raising journey featuring a KGB pursuit, a smelly nappy and a bag of crisps. He was put through grueling questioning for hours, but he did not divulge any information. However, there was no need to execute the plan at the time. It was the only time that the spooks managed to exfiltrate a penetration agent from the USSR, outwitting their Russian adversaries. Even more astounding was that in summer 1985 after Gordievsky was hastily recalled from London to Moscow by his suspicious bosses British intelligence officers helped him to escape. But earlier in 1985 he was called back to Moscow after officials suspected he was a traitor, prompting him to activate the Pimlico escape plan. He lost his marriage. Seven years earlier, as deputy to the head of MI6's Soviet Operations section, a 48-year-old Pettit devised a cunning way for British intelligence officers to get Gordievsky - recruited by MI6 in Copenhagen in 1973 - out of Moscow if he was ever under suspicion. university Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting. Edit. Summoned back to Moscow, he survived a KGB interrogation, despite being drugged. By this point Gordievsky was a junior spy abroad, working for the KGBs first directorate, and living in Copenhagen. [24] The Guardian newspaper noted that it was "the same gong given (to) his fictional cold war colleague James Bond. Gordievskys brother, Vasili, who was training to be an illegal spy, told the officials that his brother would be interested in the service. Gordievsky was locked in the boot and wrapped in silver foil to fool heat-seeking cameras, but his scent attracted sniffer dogs at the border. Olegs personal life was a romantic thriller of sorts. Asked if he knew anybody who might be of interest to western intelligence, Kaplan threw out a few names, including that of Gordievsky, who was a friend from the KGB academy, aware of the drawbacks of communism, and not so different from him, he said. He lives a very solitary life., But he adds: I dont want to make him sound like a tragic figure, because Ive never heard him express a single word of regret.
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