Oleg Penkovsky
Encyclopedia
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, codenamed
HERO ; April 23, 1919, Vladikavkaz
, North Ossetia, Soviet Russia
, – May 16, 1963, Soviet Union
), was a colonel
with Soviet
military intelligence
(GRU
) in the late 1950s and early 1960s who informed the United Kingdom
and the United States
about the Soviet Union placing missiles on Cuba
, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis
.
. Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev
Artillery Academy in the rank of lieutenant
in 1939. After taking part in the Winter War
against Finland
and in World War II
, he had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
A GRU officer, Penkovsky was appointed military attaché
in Ankara
, Turkey
in 1955. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. Penkovsky was a personal friend of GRU head Ivan Serov
and Soviet marshal
Sergei Varentsov.
, a scientist with MI5 in Britain, was convinced that Penkovskiy was a Soviet plant designed to lead the United States to the conclusion that the USSR's intercontinental missile capabilities were much less developed than they actually were.
The defector account says Penkovsky 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. Penkovsky eventually persuaded the British
spy 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. In his autobiography, Wynne says that he was carefully developed by British intelligence over many years with the specific task of making contact with Penkovsky. The CIA regretted their earlier mistake, but were included by the British and they shared future information. For the following eighteen months, Penkovsky supplied a tremendous amount of information to his British 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.
The view of Peter Wright is quite different. Wright was struck by the fact that, unlike Igor Gouzenko
and other earlier defectors, Penkovskiy did not reveal the names of any illegal Soviet agents in the West but confined himself to organizational detail, much of which was known already. Wright also noted that some of the documents were originals which in his opinion would not have been so easily taken from their sources. Wright is scathing in his condemnation of the leadership of British intelligence throughout nearly the whole Cold War period. He felt that the Soviet agents Philby, Maclean, Burgess and Blunt could all have been identified more quickly using the scientific methods that he proposed. In Wright's view, British intelligence leaders became even more paralyzed when Philby and the others defected to the Soviet Union. British intelligence became so fearful of another fiasco that they avoided taking risks. Aware of this sensitivity, Wright says, the Soviets planted Penkovsky to buoy up the sagging fortunes of their ineffective—and therefore highly useful—counterparts in British intelligence. Wright says, "When I first wrote my Penkovsky analysis Maurice Oldfield (later Chief of MI6 in the 1970s), who played a key role in the Penkovsky case as Chief of Station in Washington, told me: 'You've got a long row to hoe with this one, Peter, there's a lot of K's [knighthoods] and Gongs [medals] riding high on the back of Penkovsky,' he said, referring to the honors heaped on those involved in the Penkovsky operation." Wright is far more complementary of the CIA and even of the FBI who were initially and remained suspicious about Penkovsky. Greville Wynne seems to have remained convinced that Penkovsky was genuine and that Wynne's own sacrifices, including 18 months in the Lubyanka Prison, were all worthwhile.
Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin
does not once mention Penkovskiy in his comprehensive book. KGB defector Vladimir Sakharov
, suggests Penkovskiy was genuine, saying, "I knew about the ongoing KGB reorganization precipitated by Oleg Penkovsky's case and Yuri Nosenko's defection. The party was not satisfied with KGB performance... I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin." While the weight of opinion seems to be Penkovskiy was genuine, the debate underscores the difficulty faced by all intelligence agenices of separating fact from fiction.
would not detect the Cuban missile sites until it was too late to do anything about them. Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites on Cuba. Only this information allowed the west to identify the missile sites from the low-resolution pictures provided by US U-2
spy planes. Former GRU
Colonel and defector Viktor Suvorov
writes, "And historians will remember with gratitude the name of the GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last World War."
Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap
, a double-agent working for the KGB
. The KGB swiftly drew the conclusion that there was a mole in their ranks and set about uncovering him. Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962—before Kennedy's address to the nation revealing that U-2
spyplane photographs had confirmed intelligence reports and that the Soviets were installing medium-range nuclear missiles on the Caribbean
island—code named Operation Anadyr
. Thus President Kennedy was deprived of a potentially important intelligence agent that might have lessened the tension during the ensuing 13-day stand-off; intelligence such as the fact that Nikita Khrushchev
was already looking for ways to defuse the situation. Such information, arguably, would 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. The Soviet commander, General Issa A. Pliyev, commander in charge, had been given permission to use these weapons without consulting Moscow first.
and espionage
in a trial in 1963. Some sources allege that Penkovsky was executed by the traditional Soviet method of a bullet to the back of the neck, cremated and his ashes buried in the New Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow
. Former MI5 officer Peter Wright
believed that Penkovskiy was actually a double agent (see above) who, having completed his task of taking in the western intelligence services, was, after a show trial, awarded a suitable post out of sight in the Soviet Union. This, claims Wright, explains why Penkovsky never defected to the West when he had the chance.
As a side-note, GRU agent Vladimir Rezun, known for his controversial books produced under the pseudonym
Viktor Suvorov
, following his defection from the Soviet Union to the United Kingdom, alleges in his book Aquarium
to have been shown a black and white GRU film in which "a GRU colonel" is bound to a stretcher and cremated alive in a furnace as a warning to potential traitors. (A similar description of the process was later included in Ernest Volkman's popular book. However, Suvorov does not claim that the man in the film was Penkovsky.
television serial Wynne and Penkovsky, and Mark Bonnar
in the 2007 BBC Television
docudrama
Nuclear Secrets
.
The spying career of Oleg Penkovsky was the subject of Episode 1 of the BBC series "Nuclear Secrets", entitled "The Spy from Moscow". The programme featured original covert KGB footage showing Penkovsky photographing classified information and meeting with Janet Chisholm
. It was broadcast on January 15, 2007.
Penkovsky is also mentioned in three of Tom Clancy
's Jack Ryan books: The Hunt for Red October
, The Cardinal of the Kremlin
, and Red Rabbit
. In the Jack Ryan universe, he is described as the agent who recruited Colonel Mikhail Filitov as a CIA agent (code-name CARDINAL), and in fact had urged Filitov to betray him in order to solidify his position as the West's top spy in the Soviet hierarchy. The "cremated alive" hypothesis also appears in several Clancy novels.
Code name
A code name or cryptonym is a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage...
HERO ; April 23, 1919, Vladikavkaz
Vladikavkaz
-Notable structures:In Vladikavkaz, there is a guyed TV mast, tall, built in 1961, which has six crossbars with gangways in two levels running from the mast structure to the guys.-Twin towns/sister cities:...
, North Ossetia, Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
, – May 16, 1963, Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
), was a colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
with Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
military intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
(GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
) in the late 1950s and early 1960s who informed the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
about the Soviet Union placing missiles on Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
.
Early life and military career
Penkovsky's father died fighting as an officer in the White Army in the Russian Civil WarRussian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
. Penkovsky graduated from the Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
Artillery Academy in the rank of lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
in 1939. After taking part in the Winter War
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
against Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
and in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
A GRU officer, Penkovsky was appointed military attaché
Military attaché
A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission . This post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer who retains the commission while serving in an embassy...
in Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
in 1955. He later worked at the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research. Penkovsky was a personal friend of GRU head Ivan Serov
Ivan Serov
State Security General Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov was a prominent leader of Soviet security and intelligence agencies, head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as head of the GRU between 1958 and 1963. He was Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria, and was to play a...
and Soviet marshal
Marshal
Marshal , is a word used in several official titles of various branches of society. The word is an ancient loan word from Old French, cf...
Sergei Varentsov.
Work for (or against) Western intelligence
There are two very different opinions about Oleg Penkovsky. While the majority of observers seem to feel that he was a genuine defector as described in The Penkovsky Papers, Peter WrightPeter Wright
Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
, a scientist with MI5 in Britain, was convinced that Penkovskiy was a Soviet plant designed to lead the United States to the conclusion that the USSR's intercontinental missile capabilities were much less developed than they actually were.
The defector account says Penkovsky approached American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
students on the Moskvoretsky Bridge
Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge
Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge is a concrete arch bridge that spans the Moskva River in Moscow, Russia, immediately east of the Moscow Kremlin. The bridge connects Red Square with Bolshaya Ordynka street in Zamoskvorechye. Built in 1936-1937, it was designed by V. S...
in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in July 1960 and gave them a package, which was delivered to the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
. CIA officers delayed in contacting him because they believed they were under constant surveillance. Penkovsky eventually persuaded the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
spy Greville Wynne
Greville Wynne
Greville Maynard Wynne was a British spy famous for his involvement with, and imprisonment as a result of, the espionage activities of Oleg Penkovsky.-Life:...
to arrange a meeting with two American and two British intelligence officers during a visit to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1961. Wynne became one of his couriers. In his autobiography, Wynne says that he was carefully developed by British intelligence over many years with the specific task of making contact with Penkovsky. The CIA regretted their earlier mistake, but were included by the British and they shared future information. For the following eighteen months, Penkovsky supplied a tremendous amount of information to his British Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
handlers in Moscow, Ruari and Janet Chisholm
Janet Chisholm
Janet Chisholm , born Janet Anne Deane, was a British MI6 agent during the Cold War.She was born in India and educated in Berkshire studying Russian and French. After school, she worked in London before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany...
, and to CIA and SIS contacts during his permitted trips abroad. Most significantly, he was responsible for arming President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
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.
The view of Peter Wright is quite different. Wright was struck by the fact that, unlike Igor Gouzenko
Igor Gouzenko
Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko was a cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. He defected on September 5, 1945, with 109 documents on Soviet espionage activities in the West...
and other earlier defectors, Penkovskiy did not reveal the names of any illegal Soviet agents in the West but confined himself to organizational detail, much of which was known already. Wright also noted that some of the documents were originals which in his opinion would not have been so easily taken from their sources. Wright is scathing in his condemnation of the leadership of British intelligence throughout nearly the whole Cold War period. He felt that the Soviet agents Philby, Maclean, Burgess and Blunt could all have been identified more quickly using the scientific methods that he proposed. In Wright's view, British intelligence leaders became even more paralyzed when Philby and the others defected to the Soviet Union. British intelligence became so fearful of another fiasco that they avoided taking risks. Aware of this sensitivity, Wright says, the Soviets planted Penkovsky to buoy up the sagging fortunes of their ineffective—and therefore highly useful—counterparts in British intelligence. Wright says, "When I first wrote my Penkovsky analysis Maurice Oldfield (later Chief of MI6 in the 1970s), who played a key role in the Penkovsky case as Chief of Station in Washington, told me: 'You've got a long row to hoe with this one, Peter, there's a lot of K's [knighthoods] and Gongs [medals] riding high on the back of Penkovsky,' he said, referring to the honors heaped on those involved in the Penkovsky operation." Wright is far more complementary of the CIA and even of the FBI who were initially and remained suspicious about Penkovsky. Greville Wynne seems to have remained convinced that Penkovsky was genuine and that Wynne's own sacrifices, including 18 months in the Lubyanka Prison, were all worthwhile.
Former KGB major-general Oleg Kalugin
Oleg Kalugin
Oleg Danilovich Kalugin , is a former KGB general. He was a longtime head of KGB operations in the United States and later a critic of the agency.-Early life and the KGB career:...
does not once mention Penkovskiy in his comprehensive book. KGB defector Vladimir Sakharov
Vladimir Sakharov
Vladimir Nikolayevich Sakharov is a retired Soviet football player.-International career:Sakharov made his debut for USSR on October 12, 1975 in a UEFA Euro 1976 qualifier against Switzerland .-External links:...
, suggests Penkovskiy was genuine, saying, "I knew about the ongoing KGB reorganization precipitated by Oleg Penkovsky's case and Yuri Nosenko's defection. The party was not satisfied with KGB performance... I knew many heads in the KGB had rolled again, as they had after Stalin." While the weight of opinion seems to be Penkovskiy was genuine, the debate underscores the difficulty faced by all intelligence agenices of separating fact from fiction.
Role in Cuban Missile Crisis
Soviet leadership started the deployment of nuclear missiles in the belief that WashingtonWashington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
would not detect the Cuban missile sites until it was too late to do anything about them. Penkovsky provided plans and descriptions of the nuclear rocket launch sites on Cuba. Only this information allowed the west to identify the missile sites from the low-resolution pictures provided by US U-2
Lockheed U-2
The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency . It provides day and night, very high-altitude , all-weather intelligence gathering...
spy planes. Former GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
Colonel and defector Viktor Suvorov
Viktor Suvorov
Viktor Suvorov is the pen name for Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun , a former Soviet and now British writer of Russian and Ukrainian descent who writes primarily in Russian, as well as a former Soviet military intelligence spy who defected to the UK...
writes, "And historians will remember with gratitude the name of the GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last World War."
Penkovsky's activities were revealed by Jack Dunlap
Jack Dunlap
Jack E. Dunlap was a United States Army sergeant stationed at the National Security Agency who later became a spy for the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.-NSA spying activities:...
, a double-agent working for the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
. The KGB swiftly drew the conclusion that there was a mole in their ranks and set about uncovering him. Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962—before Kennedy's address to the nation revealing that U-2
Lockheed U-2
The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency . It provides day and night, very high-altitude , all-weather intelligence gathering...
spyplane photographs had confirmed intelligence reports and that the Soviets were installing medium-range nuclear missiles on the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
island—code named Operation Anadyr
Operation Anadyr
Operation Anadyr was the code name used by the Soviet Union for their Cold War secret operation of deploying ballistic missiles, medium-range bombers, and a division of mechanized infantry in Cuba to create the army group that would be able to prevent an invasion of the island by U.S. forces...
. Thus President Kennedy was deprived of a potentially important intelligence agent that might have lessened the tension during the ensuing 13-day stand-off; intelligence such as the fact that Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
was already looking for ways to defuse the situation. Such information, arguably, would 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. The Soviet commander, General Issa A. Pliyev, commander in charge, had been given permission to use these weapons without consulting Moscow first.
Penkovsky's fate
Penkovsky is said to have been convicted of treasonTreason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
and espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
in a trial in 1963. Some sources allege that Penkovsky was executed by the traditional Soviet method of a bullet to the back of the neck, cremated and his ashes buried in the New Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. Former MI5 officer Peter Wright
Peter Wright
Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
believed that Penkovskiy was actually a double agent (see above) who, having completed his task of taking in the western intelligence services, was, after a show trial, awarded a suitable post out of sight in the Soviet Union. This, claims Wright, explains why Penkovsky never defected to the West when he had the chance.
As a side-note, GRU agent Vladimir Rezun, known for his controversial books produced under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Viktor Suvorov
Viktor Suvorov
Viktor Suvorov is the pen name for Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun , a former Soviet and now British writer of Russian and Ukrainian descent who writes primarily in Russian, as well as a former Soviet military intelligence spy who defected to the UK...
, following his defection from the Soviet Union to the United Kingdom, alleges in his book Aquarium
Aquarium (Suvorov)
Aquarium is a partly autobiographical description by Viktor Suvorov of the GRU . The account starts in 1969, when Suvorov, as an ordinary tank company commander, is recruited into intelligence analysis by an up-and-coming Lieutenant Colonel...
to have been shown a black and white GRU film in which "a GRU colonel" is bound to a stretcher and cremated alive in a furnace as a warning to potential traitors. (A similar description of the process was later included in Ernest Volkman's popular book. However, Suvorov does not claim that the man in the film was Penkovsky.
Portrayal in popular culture
Penkovsky was portrayed by Christopher Rozycki in the 1985 BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television serial Wynne and Penkovsky, and Mark Bonnar
Mark Bonnar
Mark Bonnar is a Scottish actor who is best known is playing Bruno Jenkins in Casualty. He has also acted in afterlife, Taggart and Wire in the Blood. He has appeared in Nuclear Secrets and The Bill in 2007. In 2009, he starred in the BBC One series Paradox...
in the 2007 BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
docudrama
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
Nuclear Secrets
Nuclear Secrets
Nuclear Secrets, aka Spies, Lies and the Superbomb, is a 2007 BBC Television docudrama series which looks at the race for nuclear supremacy from the Manhattan Project through to the Pakistani nuclear weapons.-Production:...
.
The spying career of Oleg Penkovsky was the subject of Episode 1 of the BBC series "Nuclear Secrets", entitled "The Spy from Moscow". The programme featured original covert KGB footage showing Penkovsky photographing classified information and meeting with Janet Chisholm
Janet Chisholm
Janet Chisholm , born Janet Anne Deane, was a British MI6 agent during the Cold War.She was born in India and educated in Berkshire studying Russian and French. After school, she worked in London before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany...
. It was broadcast on January 15, 2007.
Penkovsky is also mentioned in three of Tom Clancy
Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
's Jack Ryan books: The Hunt for Red October
The Hunt for Red October
The Hunt for Red October is a 1984 novel by Tom Clancy. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius and CIA analyst Jack Ryan.The novel was originally published by the U.S...
, The Cardinal of the Kremlin
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a novel by Tom Clancy, featuring his character Jack Ryan. It is a sequel to The Hunt for Red October, based on the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative and its Soviet equivalent, covering themes including intelligence gathering and counterintelligence,...
, and Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit is a New York Times bestselling novel by Tom Clancy. It incorporates the 1981 plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II.-Plot summary:...
. In the Jack Ryan universe, he is described as the agent who recruited Colonel Mikhail Filitov as a CIA agent (code-name CARDINAL), and in fact had urged Filitov to betray him in order to solidify his position as the West's top spy in the Soviet hierarchy. The "cremated alive" hypothesis also appears in several Clancy novels.
Further reading
- Oleg Penkovsky, The Penkovskiy Papers: The Russian Who Spied for the West, Doubleday, New York, 1966.
- Note: The book was commissioned by the Central Intelligence AgencyCentral Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
see . A 1976 Senate commission stated that "the book was prepared and written by witting agency assets who drew on actual case materials." See Author Frank GibneyFrank GibneyFrank Bray Gibney was an American journalist, editor, writer and scholar. Correspondent of Time, editor of Newsweek and Life, he was the vice chairman of the Board of Editors at Encyclopædia Britannica and wrote several books, most notably about Japan...
denied that the CIA forged the provided source material, which was also the opinion of Robert ConquestRobert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
. Other dismissed the book as propaganda and having no historic value.- 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 SonsCharles Scribner's SonsCharles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
, 1992. ISBN 0684190680 - Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry R. Schlesinger, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda, New York, DuttonDutton- Places :*Dutton, Alabama, town in the United States*Dutton, Cheshire, village in England*Dutton, Lancashire, village in England*Dutton, Montana, town in the United States*Dutton/Dunwich, Ontario, town and municipality in Canada*Dutton, South Australia...
, 2008. ISBN 0525949801 - Frederick Forsyth, The Deceiver", Bantam Books, 1992
ISBN 0-553-29742-2, p. 43, 4th line.
External links
- Oleg Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational website by John Simkin
- The Capture and Execution of Colonel Penkovsky, 1963
- 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