The allegiance of Hollis remains a debated historical issue; the MI5 official website has cited Gordievsky's revelation as a vindication of Hollis. She was interrogated and detained for some six years, the Soviets presuming (wrongly) that she had been complicit in Gordievsky's activities. If youd like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. 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. 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. After three years, Gordievsky had to go back to Moscow. Victoria Hislop doesnt care if men read her novels. [29] He claimed that he was poisoned with thallium by "rogue elements in Moscow". However, he does view him as stunningly naive. 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. Edit. 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. Gordievsky got disenchanted with the KGB and by Russia after their invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Airport officials said the British. He had a prodigious memory and thorough knowledge of current and former KGB operations. Gordievsky was posted in London as the Deputy Chief of the KGB at the embassy. It was reported in 2013 that Gordievsky was in a long-term relationship with a British woman he had met in the 1990s. In later life, Gordievsky has been cantankerous and reproving. The long absence took its toll, however, and he and his wife Leila separated not long afterwards. Soon afterwards, the Soviet government invited a prominent American, Donald Trump, to visit Moscow. However, he could not risk trying to escape openly. In an emergency, Gordievsky would turn up wearing a grey cap and holding a plastic Safeway bag. We use The comments below have not been moderated. So Im walking with Macintyre, a short, bespectacled 55-year-old with a tweed jacket and a fierce intelligence, through Corams Fields near Holborn. The methods are just different. Yelena Akopian was a 22-year-old German girl training to be a teacher, when Gordievsky met her in 1960s. cookies That creates an atmosphere in which its very hard to govern., How did the British secret services react when they found out Macintyre was talking to Gordievsky, putting together a detailed account of his spy work and escape? [2] MI6 allowed him to make his own decision whether to immediately defect to the UK and live thenceforth in secrecy under their protection, or to go to Moscow with the understanding that he could be interrogated, tortured, or killed if the KGB suspected his betrayal. He is known as one of the greatest spies in the world. This was the time when a mass exodus from East to West Berlin was taking place and the infamous Berlin wall was getting built. 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. and defected to Britain. [2], During his first Danish posting, Gordievsky became disenchanted with his work in the KGB, particularly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He was telling Thatcher what to say to Gorbachev and he was telling Gorbachev what to say to Thatcher. The spy mentioned the possibility of fleeing to London to his wife without telling her of his true identity and was quickly dismissed, which made him decide not to include her and his daughters, then aged five and three, in the Pimlico plan. He lost his marriage. 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. But he has interviewed all of the former officers involved in the case, who tell their stories for the first time. After a long period of no contact MI6 was delighted when Moscow sent Gordievsky to London. The. [2] Gordievskys British contacts were a colourful bunch. He was accompanied in his car by wife Caroline and their 15-month old daughter Florence, while in the other vehicle was his deputy Arthur Gee and wife Rachel. [4] He proved an excellent student at school, where he learned to speak German. 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. 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. It worked, due mainly to the quick thinking of the wife of one of the MI6 drivers, who changed her baby . In 1972 Gordievsky went back to Denmark for a second tour. He had two daughters with Leila. The double agent was MI5's greatest asset between 1982 and 1985, when he passed. 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. The result is a dazzling non-fiction thriller and an intimate portrait of high-stakes espionage. 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. They injected him with a truth drug but Gordievsky gave nothing away, so he was released. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. [7] He was questioned for about five hours. Do not sell or share my personal information. For tickets, go to www.cvhf.org.uk or call 01722 781133. The double life of a KGB insider recruited by MI6 features microfilm, Soviet secrets and a daring escape. [2] In 1974 he agreed to pass secrets to MI6, a step he viewed as "nothing less than undermining the Soviet system". "There has been accusation and counter-accusation. And she is still looked after by MI6. [20], Gordievsky included a discussion of his exfiltration in his memoir, Next Stop Execution, published in 1995.[3]. Moment commuter blasts eco-zealots, Royal superfans camping on The Mall ahead of King's Coronation, Women's rights activists and pro-trans campaigners separated, Cambridge students party in the park during annual celebrations, Russian freight train derails and bursts into flames after explosion, Historic chairs to be reused by the King for the coronation service, Hundreds of Household Division members rehearse for coronation, Braverman: People crossing Channel are 'at odds with British values', 'You motherf***ers don't understand': Bam Margera details 'turmoil', Ukraine drone strike hits major fuel depot in port Sevastopol. Under death sentence Oleg Gordievsky in London, 1997. leg Gordievsky was the most significant British agent of the cold war. In contrast to Gordievskys wife, Yelena, she was shy and unworldly, but when she relaxed her laugh was loud and infectious. According to one officer present Pettit was visibly moved, 'her expression a mixture of recognition and love', despite usually disapproving of emotional outbursts. He resolved to fight the communist system from the inside. After completing his escape, he would not see his family again until the collapse of the Soviet regime six years later, although their marriage soon ended due to their prolonged time apart. After about a year, they realised that it must be Gordievsky. Lying down in the boot of a Ford Sierra saloon, he was smuggled across the border into Finland. [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. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. For 11 years, he spied for MI6. I fell in love at first sight, [and] our love flared. Ronald Reagans rhetoric about the Soviet Union as an evil empire was interpreted in Moscow as a direct threat. 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. Paul Bracchi for the Daily Mail Joseph Curtis For Mailonline or Yelena Akopian, his first wife. 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. 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. Menu. Luke Hardings Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House is published by Guardian Faber. 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. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. Women played a crucial part. But attempts to get his family out of Moscow by diplomatic means failed. 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. Although he joined at a young age, his heart was never really in it. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. Hes estranged from his children. Oleg Gordievsky and Leila Alieva met in Copenhagen: she was a typist for the World Health Organization; he was an unhappily married KGB officer, and a spy for MI6. Gordievsky seized both her hands and kissed them. Gordievsky described Valerie as a 'perfectionist' who 'always showed me great kindness and a lot of patience'. Valerie Pettit 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 escape of a Russian spy. Hes paid an enormous cost. [9][2] MI6 subsequently made contact with Gordievsky, and began running him as a double agent in 1974. After defecting to the UK in 1985, Gordievsky did not meet his family for 6 years, till they were allowed to leave Moscow in 1991, and join the spy. 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. He raised the alarm with his supermarket bag and gave his minders the slip. False identities are being created all the time online, but at the end it does still come down to two people looking each other in the eye and saying, OK, I trust you.. They were reunited six years later but the marriage didnt survive. 2: Handel : One of the composers. Former intelligence officers had to go back and ask permission to talk to me, but I was given total access. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. 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. [7] He waited on a particular street corner, on a particular weekday at 7.30 pm, carrying a Safeway bag as a signal. Hes not gathering intelligence. But in 1985 Aldrich Ames, an irate CIA officer, called the KGB in Washington. Far from disappearing, because we do everything online now, the secret world is more important than ever. This was after Stalins death and during the brief period of relaxation Russia witnessed. He went on to be lauded as Britains most valuable Cold War spy and eventually became the head of the KGBs London station while actually undermining their efforts. 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. The Kremlin genuinely believed the West was going to launch a first nuclear strike.. A campaign to release Leila Gordievsky and daughters. After that, he was released and told that he would never work abroad again. Joseph Curtis For Mailonline Gordievskys brother, Vasili, who was training to be an illegal spy, told the officials that his brother would be interested in the service. Once the car reached safety the officer who was driving put Sibelius's Finlandia into the cassette player, and turned it up to full volume. Pettit was the architect of Operation Pimlico, an operation that smuggled KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky out of Moscow when he was betrayed by a disgruntled CIA officer in May 1985, The Times reported. [2], The value of MI6's recruitment of such a highly placed and valuable intelligence asset increased dramatically when, in 1982, the KGB posted Gordievsky to London, and he rose through the ranks there, gaining the ability to access higher and higher levels of Soviet secrets, which he passed easily to MI6 via a London safe house. Ive known for some time that I am on the assassination list drawn up by elements in Moscow, he said at the time. He had a pretty South American wife that constantly asked for more money and he had to get it somehow to please her. At 7.30pm on Tuesdays British officers would watch a bread shop next to Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a diplomatic complex. Oleg Gordievsky: With Leila Gordievsky, Oleg Gordievsky, Ronald Reagan, Oliver 'Buck' Revell. He arrived just as the Berlin Wall went up, and woke one morning to the sound of tanks rumbling past the Soviet embassy. 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? Aldrich Ames, a former CIA agent who became a mole for the KGB. The Soviet Union subsequently sentenced him to death in absentia. Oleg Gordievsky and Leila Alieva met in Copenhagen: she was a typist for the World Health Organization; he was an unhappily married KGB officer, and a spy for MI6. The blanket would stop him being seen by infrared cameras as the car passed across the border into Finland. It was not until 1965, that he received his first assignment as a handler for spies in Denmark, under the cover of a consular official dealing with visas. By He was finally able to divorce Yelena in 1979 and quickly married Leila, with whom he had had two daughters, Maria and Anna. [19], Gordievsky's exfiltration greatly embarrassed both the KGB and the Soviet Union and resulted in disruptions by Viktor Babunov, the KGB's chief of counterintelligence, within the KGB including Sergei Ivanov's career with the KGB, who was KGB resident in Finland, as well as numerous members of the Leningrad KGB, which was responsible for surveillance of British subjects, and numerous persons close to Vladimir Putin, who was a member of the Leningrad KGB. Macintyre writes that Foot wasnt a Soviet spy. PressReader. Please. [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. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the Settings & Account section. The family loved life in the UK's capital and Gordievsky's career went from strength to strength; he was promoted four times, thanks to the British continually expelling his superiors. He spoke extensively to Gordievsky, who is now 79 and living in the home counties a remarkable figure, proud, shrewd and irascible. It was the only time that the spooks managed to exfiltrate a penetration agent from the USSR, outwitting their Russian adversaries. It charts his recruitment by the KGB, where his older brother Vasili served as a deep-cover illegal, and Gordievskys growing disillusionment with the grey totalitarian world of 1960s Moscow. [28], Gordievsky lived for years in a "safe house" in London, and security has been tightened since the Salisbury poisonings. While in London, his MI6 code name was NOCTON. 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. They would have been aged three and six. Macintrye had no access to MI6s archives, which remain secret. It was love at first sight for the pair but it meant Gordievsky had to worry about keeping the relationship from his shrewish wife Yelena as much as keeping his professional secrets from his KGB superiors. [4] The building of the wall appalled him, and he became disillusioned with the Soviet system. He lost his family. He was suspected of espionage for a foreign power, but his superiors stalled on taking any overt further action against him. "[32], In 2018 Ben Macintyre published a biography of Gordievsky, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. According to The Times, Mrs Gee produced the Golden Wonder cheese and onion crisps as the border guards inspected the vehicles and even fed one of the sniffer dogs with them. 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 later life, Gordievsky. There has been only one sinister episode during this gilded life in the stockbroker belt. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for $69 per month. The dog duly slunk off, says Macintyre. [2] A 1994 report by the Washington Post, however, stated that "After six weeks of questioning Ames the FBI and CIA remain baffled about whether Ames or someone else first warned the Soviets about Gordievsky". Gordievsky, who studied history, geography, economics, and international affairs, wanted to learn English as a language. When he tried it for the first time, it went unnoticed. Sep 20th 2018. . 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. Oleg Gordievsky was raised in a KGB family. The remnants of the KGB are still really angry about Gordievsky. But when they got to the border sniffer dogs detected Gordievsky in the boot of the car and began circling. Sophia : Casey's wife. Gordievsky in his student days at Moscow's elite Institute of International Affairs where he was first recruited by the KGB. and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, [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. 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). However, he now became sceptical. Gordievsky remains under sentence of death. I went through a middleman to see him. ' our meeting lasted four hours and after that i met her several times again,' 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. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Oleg Gordievsky in 1980, when he was still a double-agent At five o'clock on a Friday afternoon on July 19, 1985, a short, thick-set man in a worn jacket and corduroy trousers stepped out of a . In an interview with Seve Novgorodsev, sentenced in absentia at home to death, the traitor Gordievsky said first property from remaining in Moscow, his wife Leila (she is from a family of KGB) and two daughters wanted to confiscate it, but then the decision was canceled. the countries of your choice. But it was the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that propelled Gordievsky towards the west and, as he put it, determined the course of my own life. Gordievsky was called back to Moscow in 1985. [6][2] After returning to Moscow on 19 May 1985, Gordievsky was drugged and interrogated, but not yet criminally charged; instead he was placed in a non-existent desk job in a nonoperational department of the KGB. He brought his kids as cover. In 2008, he spent 34 hours unconscious in hospital after falling ill at his home. On July 16, 1985, a man could be seen standing outsidea bread shop on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the wide avenue running from the centre of Moscow, at 7.30pm. We have noticed that there is an issue with your subscription billing details. His first tentative step was to call his then wife Yelena from an embassy phone bugged by the Danes, and to declare: Theyve done it! Unlike his brother, Gordievsky was assigned a desk job in Moscow and was required to create documentation for other spies to mask their true identities. [5], In late April 1985 he was promoted to KGB station chief (resident-designate or rezident) in London at the Soviet embassy. They have a duty of care to her as they do to Oleg. Its author was Veronica Price a senior intelligence officer, working out of Century House, MI6s unattractive HQ. Gordievsky has little contact with his two grown-up daughters, Maria and Anna, or his ex-wife Leila. But she Did Elton Johns mother poison him against the father he The Spy And The Traitor is published in paperback, with a new afterword, on May 30 (Penguin), 8.99. 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". He sold info on all double agents in KGB working for CIA and then this new info about Oleg. But there is no doubt that he played a profound role in undermining the Soviet system, not least by explaining the paranoia and fantastical thinking inside the KGB to western policymakers and agencies. He began reading western newspapers. Now this (barrier) is removed, he said. For an extraordinary period he was briefing British and Soviet spies and Margaret Thatcher, who referred to him as Mr Collins. Only 2% of people can spot the odd couple hidden among the silhouettes so are you among them? He now receives a 20,000-a-year pension from MI6. The next stage of the plan would seeGordievsky meet MI6 officers at a layby in the woods south of the border with Finland. [2], Two of Gordievsky's most important contributions were averting a potential nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, when NATO exercise Able Archer 83 was misinterpreted by the Soviets as a potential first strike,[10] and identifying Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet heir-apparent long before he came to prominence. The rivalry between the MI6 and the CIA about gathering intelligence put their most prized agent at risk after 1982. university Premium access for businesses and educational institutions. All rights reserved. offers FT membership to read for free. He read German and learnt about foreign lands during his school days. There were close shaves, including an approach to the Soviet embassy by Michael Bettaney, a renegade MI5 loner. The Soviets thought it was real. 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. Gordievsky graciously accepted the award from the Queen, wearing top hat and tails. [29] He accused MI6 of forcing Special Branch to drop its early investigations into his allegations;[29] according to him, the investigation was only reopened due to the intervention of former MI5 Director General Eliza Manningham-Buller. Upon his arrival in Moscow, he was sure that he was under surveillance and his house was bugged. [34], Media related to Oleg Gordievsky at Wikimedia Commons, "Gordievsky" redirects here. 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. At lunchtimes he would slip out of the embassy and hand over microfilm strips to his case officer for copying. For details about Ben Macintyres book tour, visit penguin.co.uk/events, Ben Macintyre will be speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival on Saturday 29th June. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the Settings & Account section. Lunch followed. He told his wife Yelena nothing of what he was up to. Oleg resented the strict discipline, the endless paperwork, the malevolent atmosphere. Gordievsky. In the summer of 1982 Gordievsky moved to London and began regular meetings at a Bayswater safe house with his MI6 handlers. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. 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. [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. [12] Nevertheless, biographer Ben Macintyre and most people involved in the Gordievsky case believe that during his first visit with the KGB in Washington in early May 1985, Ames provided sufficient information to prompt an investigation by Colonel Viktor Budanov, the KGB's top investigator, and trigger Gordievsky's recall. 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