NOTES

Part I: Spy of the Century

Chapter 1: The Tallest Building in Moscow

It reminded him of his idea: see Chapter 3.

According to several Russian accounts: the KGB ‘training film’ showing a reconstruction of the arrest can be seen in Penkovsky, espion pour la paix (Betula Productions/France Télévisions, 2011). See also Lubyanka 2, an official history of KGB operations published in 1999 in collaboration with the Moscow City Archives, p. 279; Inside Story: ‘Fatal Encounter’ (BBC/Novosti Press Agency, 1991); and the unnamed senior KGB official quoted in The Spy Who Saved the World by Schecter and Deriabin, p. 412. No account specifies precisely when Penkovsky was arrested, and it may be that it happened on 22 October, Washington time, i.e. the morning of 23 October in Moscow, after Kennedy’s speech. But as most sources say 22 October and it seems most likely that this would refer to Moscow time I have placed it before the speech.

‘the tallest building in Moscow’ on account of its floors of cellars: it was also called this because ‘you can see Siberia from it’.

a special room filled with transparent plastic pipes: Penkovsky described this to his case officers; see ‘Meeting 7, Birmingham’, 27 April 1971, paragraph 12, CIA.

the previous winter: Molehunt by Wise, pp. 132–4.

offered to turn triple agent: ‘Interrogations of Oleg Penkovsky’, Central Archive, FSB, cited in Khrushchev’s Cold War by Fursenko and Naftali, p. 477 and corresponding note. See Chapter 13.

inspired one of his best-known books: In The Russia House, le Carré updated the Penkovsky operation to the glasnost era, but retained the basic thrust of events. It contains many astute insights into the operation, particularly regarding the frictions between the CIA and MI6 and the problem of doubting one’s best sources. Le Carré acknowledged that Penkovsky was an inspiration for the character ‘Goethe’ in an interview with Der Spiegel, 7 August 1989; quoted in Conversations with John le Carré, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman (University Press of Mississippi, 2004), p. 120. Le Carré was also a close friend of MI6 officer (and later head of MI6) Dickie Franks for many years, and may have had first-hand information about the operation from him: Franks recruited Greville Wynne, and several telling details in the novel were not known at the time. Echoes of the operation can also be found in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, for example the way in which the MERLIN material is guarded and revered by a few MI6 officers, and later comes under suspicion of being disinformation (although there were different reasons for that with Penkovsky’s material). For his friendship with Franks, see ‘Sir Dick Franks: Wartime SOE officer who became Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in the Cold War’ by Alastair Rellie, Independent, 30 October 2008.

‘the spy of the century’: The Perfect English Spy by Bower, p. 271.

 

Chapter 2: The Man on the Bridge

It was eleven o’clock . . . tinged with grey: ‘Memorandum for the record, Contact and Debriefing of Henry Lee COBB on his meeting with [REDACTED] in the USSR’, 28 September 1960, CIA; American ‘embassy memorandum’ quoted in The CIA’s Russians by Hart, p. 61; transcript of interview with Joe Bulik on 31 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

Neither of the students . . . give them a letter: ‘Memorandum for the record: Contact and Debriefing of Henry Lee COBB on his meeting with [REDACTED] in the USSR’, 28 September 1960, CIA.

‘Byl’: ‘Joe Bulik interview with Eldon Ray Cox’, 6 September 1960, CIA.

the downing of a U-2 over Sverdlovsk: for contemporary reports of the incident, see ‘Soviet Downs American Plane: U.S. Says It Was Weather Craft: Khrushchev Sees Summit Blow’ by Jack Raymond, New York Times, 6 May 1960; and ‘U.S. Concedes Flight Over Soviet, Defends Search For Intelligence, Russians Hold Downed Pilot As Spy’ by Drew Middleton, New York Times, 8 May 1960.

‘an officer friend’ . . . by the time he had landed: ‘Joe Bulik interview with Eldon Ray Cox’, CIA; and ‘Memorandum for the record: Contact and Debriefing of Henry Lee COBB on his meeting with [REDACTED] in the USSR’, 28 September 1960, CIA. Gary Powers wrote in his memoir that he had not lost consciousness after his plane was hit, although his head had ached on landing. See Operation Overflight, pp. 82–9.

thrust two sealed envelopes . . . vanished into the night: ‘Joe Bulik interview with Eldon Ray Cox’, CIA; Interview with Eldon Ray Cox on ‘Going Public’, KRCU, Southeast Missouri State University, 26 April 2009; ‘Memorandum for the record: Debriefing of Vladimir I. Toumanoff re [REDACTED]’, 5 October 1960, CIA; and Schecter and Deriabin, p. 41.

The two students had very different reactions . . . fuming at the scolding: ibid.

a large transparent box of double-wall Plexiglas . . . nicknamed ‘the Tank’: Tchaikovsky 19 by Ober Jr., Kindle location 2319.

an electronic sweep: with the embarrassment of Gary Powers’s capture dominating the news, on 26 May 1960 Henry Cabot Lodge, the American ambassador to the UN, showed the Great Seal and its microphone to the Security Council. See Wise, p. 14; and Spycraft by Wallace, Melton and Schlesinger, p. 162.

some staff had taken to communicating: see Undiscovered Ends by Kent, p. 104, which mentions this technique being used by a British diplomat in Moscow in 1964; and ‘Rep. Podell Followed, Spied Upon In Moscow’, Associated Press, Palm Beach Post, 4 June 1971, which discusses its use by Jewish dissidents. When this practice was reported in the American media in 1987, President Reagan referred to it in his White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner speech: ‘And we’ve still got that spying problem at our Embassy in Moscow. You have to use a child’s magic slate to communicate. I don’t know why everyone thinks that’s such a big deal. The Democrats have been doing the budget on one of those for years.’ Remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Association Annual Dinner, 22 April 1987, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

stationed in neighbouring buildings: Tchaikovsky 19 by Ober Jr., Kindle location 4694.

Joining Abidian: ‘Memorandum for the record: Debriefing of Vladimir I. Toumanoff re [REDACTED]’, 5 October 1960, CIA; Schecter and Deriabin, p. 10.

‘My dear Sir!’: ‘Letter in Russian Regarding Penkovsky’; and ‘Doc Is Letter Translated From Russian And To Be Passed To Appropriate Authorities’, both CIA.

a detailed description of the location of the dead drop: ‘Plan (diagram) for marking signals and of dead drop, CIA’. See Appendix A for a reproduction of this.

‘The main entrance is open . . .’: ‘Plan (diagram) for marking signals and of dead drop’, CIA.

The writer also left detailed instructions: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 427. It is probably simply an oversight that the CIA has not declassified the original page regarding the signal for the dead drop, as the diagram showing it and other parts of the letter referring to it have both been declassified, and the text of this part of the letter was reproduced by Schecter and Deriabin with CIA approval.

‘I know that you have no sound basis . . .’: CIA SpyMaster by Ashley, p. 144; ‘Memorandum for the record: Debriefing of Vladimir I. Toumanoff re [REDACTED]’, 5 October 1960, CIA; Wise, p. 55. The list of names has not been declassified.

a photograph of three men: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 12; Ashley, p. 144.

It was raining again . . . walked off into the night: Interview with Eldon Ray Cox on ‘Going Public’, KRCU, Southeast Missouri State University, 26 April 2009; and ‘Man tells about encounter with Russian spy’ by C. J. Cassidy, KFVS12, 28 April 2009.

‘near-paralysis’: Hart, p. 62.

annual quotas: KGB by Barron, p. 100.

made wonderful Martinis: Wise, pp. 45–7.

In 1959, the KGB had created ‘Department D’: Barron, pp. 225–6; Battleground Berlin by Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, p. 312.

In the 1920s, Soviet intelligence had created: for The Trust, see The Sword and the Shield by Andrew and Mitrokhin, pp. 34–5; MI6 by Jeffery, pp. 183–4; and Deception by Epstein, pp. 21–30. Later examples include the NTS (People’s Labour Union) and OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) in the Ukraine and WiN (Freedom and Independence) in Poland: see Bower, pp. 202–8; MI6 by Dorril, pp. 260–6 and 404–24; and Epstein, pp. 34–42. Pavel Sudoplatov has also discussed how Soviet intelligence set up fictitious underground organisations in Germany and Russia: see Special Tasks, pp. 155–6.

This had happened with Lieutenant-Colonel Pyotr Popov: Hart, pp. 54–5; Ashley, pp. 132–6; Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, pp. 277–81.

smuggling out of the country wheat and rye hybrid seeds: ‘Coloradan Recalls Years as Link to Key Soviet Spy’ by Greg Lopez, Rocky Mountain News, 28 October 1992.

‘mortal enemy’: transcript of interview with Bulik for Cold War, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

He now headed SR/9 . . . presence in Moscow at all: Wise, p. 46; Cold Warrior by Mangold, p. 374, note 15. The CIA had overt and covert sides.

‘knew how to keep a secret’: Pete Bagley to author, 24 May 2011.

All clues as to the identity: Leonard McCoy to author, 20 November 2011. McCoy distributed the document, but was also not informed of the source’s identity. McCoy still works for the CIA, and cleared all the information he provided me with the agency in advance, although neither he nor they have seen this book. In his written responses to me, McCoy referred to ‘Penkovskiy’, a frequent spelling for his name in the West during the Cold War. I have altered this throughout to the now standard Penkovsky for the sake of consistency, but have not changed anything else in his responses.

‘It looks like we’ve got a live son of a bitch here’: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 12.

There were reports: ibid., p. 14.

looked decidedly Latino: transcript of interview with Bulik on 31 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

Interviewed in a Washington safe house: ‘Memorandum for the record: Contact and Debriefing of Henry Lee COBB on his meeting with [REDACTED] in the USSR’, 28 September 1960, CIA.

‘That’s the man’: interview with Cox on ‘Going Public’, KRCU, Southeast Missouri State University, 26 April 2009.

didn’t want any further intelligence headaches: Ashley, p. 147.

became convinced that the KGB: ‘Letter No. 1 from COMPASS’, 11 October 1960, CIA.

He proposed that Penkovsky: ibid.

‘an unmanageable beast’: ‘Report from COMPASS’, 9 January 1961, CIA.

he followed one of the scientists: ‘Reported Provocation Attempt’, 30 December 1960, CIA.

on returning to London: ibid.

COMPASS fluffed it: Wise, p. 56; ‘Memorandum for the record: Conversations with Mr. Helms by CSR, SR/COP and ACSR/9’, 25 July 1961, CIA.

a visiting Canadian geologist: ‘Office memorandum: Meeting with Mr. Pankovski [sic], State Scientific and Technical Committee’, 13 January 1961, CIA; and Hart, pp. 66–7. In April, a new Canadian ambassador was appointed, Arnold Smith, and in reviewing the situation decided it had been handled badly – the Canadians decided to inform MI6 of the earlier approach, but by then MI6 and the CIA had already agreed to run the operation. See ‘Canada Spurned Soviet Spy In ’61’ by John F. Burns, New York Times, 3 March 1991; Wise, p. 56, footnote; and Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 28–33.

‘pleasant and well-mannered . . . weak and frightened look’: Hart, p. 65. MI6 has yet to declassify this document, or indeed any other associated with this operation, but it is quoted in this former CIA officer’s book. Hart stated in his introduction that he had been granted access to the CIA’s Penkovsky files, which is presumably where he found the copy of this British report.

without a clear idea: see Mark Frankland’s surreal account in his memoir Child of My Time, pp. 79–82.

recruited into this game: an account of this, with names changed, appears in The Man from Moscow by Wynne, p. 31; see also obituary of Dickie Franks, Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2008; and obituary of Dickie Franks by Alastair Rellie, Independent, 30 October 2008.

lunch at The Ivy: The Man from Moscow by Wynne, pp. 25–6.

On 6 April, he visited Wynne . . . take them back to London: Hart, p. 67; The Man from Moscow by Wynne, pp. 42–3.

drew him to one side: Hart, pp. 67–9; The Man from Odessa by Wynne, pp. 217–19.

 

Chapter 3: Spilling Secrets

shabby maze: see The Buildings of England by Nikolaus Pevsner (Penguin, 1951), vol. 41, p. 467; and England! An uncommon guide by Lawrence and Sylvia Martin (McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 80: ‘a vast tourist-warren with inadequate staff and elevator service’. In 1940, Donald Maclean and his wife Melinda stayed here after leaving the British Embassy in France, but moved after a near-miss on the building by the Luftwaffe. A Divided Life by Cecil, p. 104. It is now part of the Thistle chain.

A Polish intelligence officer . . . Peter and Helen Kroger: Bower, pp. 258–9.

Shergold had been a schoolmaster . . . British Zone of Germany: The Friends by West, pp. 17, 21, 124.

During the war he had worked: ‘Recommendation for Award for Shergold, Harold Taplin, Temporary Major P/174752, Intelligence Corps, Italy, Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’, 19 April 1945. UK National Archives, WO 373/72.

‘best Soviet specialist’: Bower, p. 259.

joined during the war . . . life as a traitor had begun: Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations by Richard C. S. Trahair (Greenwood Press, 2004), pp. 25–7; No Other Choice by Blake, pp. 5–144; Bower, pp. 258–61. According to Nigel West, the seeds of Blake’s treason were planted before his captivity by the North Koreans, and he was motivated by what he perceived to be anti-Semitism by Sir Oswald Peake, the father of an MI6 secretary who he was besotted with during the war, and who had made it clear that marriage between them was out of the question. West to author, 13 January 2013.

Blake had attended an early CIA–MI6 meeting . . . even the Head of Station, the Rezident, was not informed: Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, p. 215.

took just one measure: ibid., p. 226.

protecting him was worth the sacrifice: ibid., p. 218. Kondrashev also discussed the KGB’s decision to protect Blake in this way during a panel discussion at the Yale Club, New York, broadcast on About Books, C-SPAN2, 11 September 1997.

In the spring of 1956: Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, p. 227.

‘gangster act’: cited in The Berlin Tunnel Operation 1952–1956, Clandestine Services History, 24 June 1968, CIA, Appendix D, p. 94.

‘a penetration of the UK or US agencies concerned’ . . . ‘purely fortuitous’: ibid., Appendix A, ‘Discovery by the Soviets of PBJOINTLY’, 15 August 1956, CIA, p. 58.

he asked Blake to report . . . as a result of his own beliefs: Bower, pp. 264–6. Nigel West’s account suggests that Blake was not accused of having been brainwashed, but that in a break during the interrogation MI5 watchers saw him approach a telephone kiosk twice, evidently considering whether to contact his Soviet handler, and that when questioned about this later he couldn’t provide an explanation and confessed. See A Matter of Trust by West, p. 92.

off to his cottage in Richmond: Bower, pp. 266 and 268.

two-part ciphered telegram was sent: ibid., p. 268; The Art of Betrayal by Corera, p. 143.

‘about one year for each agent’. . . ‘more likely 400’: ‘40 Agents Betrayed’ by Chapman Pincher, Daily Express, 20 June 1961; and No Other Choice, pp. v–x.

would have resulted in their deaths: Spymaster by Kalugin, p. 160.

nearly half a million conversations . . . some 50,000 reels of tape: The Berlin Tunnel Operation 1952–1956, Clandestine Services History, 24 June 1968, CIA, p. 51.

‘rumpled and roly-poly’: Paul Garbler, cited in The Secret History of the CIA by Trento, p. 129.

He had been born . . . running this operation himself: Ashley, pp. 31, 44–50, 60–1, 80, 86–97, 151.

handed over a package: ibid., pp. 152–3; Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 46–7.

‘soldier’; ‘fixed sum’: quoted in Hart, pp. 57 and 68–9. Hart appears to have confused the timing, stating that this was the document Penkovsky gave Wynne at the airport in Moscow on 12 April: other accounts make it clear that this was in fact the letter he handed Wynne at Heathrow on 20 April. See Ashley, pp.152–3 and Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 41–2.

at around twenty to ten: ‘Meeting 1’, 20 April 1961, CIA. All following quotes and information in this chapter are drawn from this document, unless noted.

much to Kisevalter’s irritation: Bower, p. 275.

‘Here was a man’: ‘Ex-CIA chief, Russian friend made spy history’ by Bill Briggs, Denver Post, 18 August 1992.

might overplay his hand: Ashley, p. 189.

had become enraged: The Penkovsky Papers, p. 68; Schecter and Deriabin, p. 64.

small suitcases or satchels: ‘Meeting 2’, 21 April 1961, CIA.

He also suggested disguising them . . . placing them next to the targets: ‘Meeting 4’, 23 April 1961, CIA; ‘Meeting 5’, 24 April 1961, CIA.

‘real big mess’: ‘Admiral Burke’s conversation with Cdr Wilhide’, 18 April 1961, US Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961–1963, vol. X, Cuba, January 1961–September 1962, Document 121 (via the Naval Historical Center).

the difficulty of finding decent food: In June 1962, food shortages would lead to riots in the city of Novocherkassk, during which twenty-two people were killed.

 

Chapter 4: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

The team also examined: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 93.

‘Never fall in love with your agents’: transcript of interview with Bulik for Cold War, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

neurotic, vain and crazy: Bower, pp. 274–5.

That transcript . . . four o’clock sharp every afternoon: McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

the following evening: ‘Meeting 2’, 21 April 1961, CIA. All following quotes and information in this chapter are from this document unless noted.

‘war now could more or less be taken for granted’: Like It Was by Muggeridge, p. 299.

‘Where one stood in the Kremlin hierarchy’: Paul Garbler, quoted by Trento, p. 244.

episode reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy film: Ashley, pp. 190–1.

the greatest spy in history . . . in Britain’s interests: Ashley, p. 227; Bower, p. 275; transcript of interview with Bulik for Cold War, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

‘sweated crocodile drops’: transcript of interview with Bulik for Cold War, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

Penkovsky then returned to the Mount Royal: ‘Meetings 11 and 12, London’, 1 May 1961, and ‘Meeting 16, London’, 5 May 1961, CIA.

often eating at a Lyons Corner House: McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

he would like to meet Audrey Hepburn: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 140.

‘She has a pretty name’: ‘Meeting 13, London’, 3 May 1961, CIA. Perhaps to spare potential embarrassment, the name ‘Zeph’ was redacted in this document when the CIA declassified it in 1992. However, it appears unredacted in Schecter and Deriabin (p. 151), and is important to the story.

women with security clearance . . . meeting with a prostitute: Bower, p. 275; Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 221 and 268; Ashley, p. 211.

‘Well, Colonel,’ . . . tell the Queen about his work: ‘Meeting 14’, 3 May 1961, CIA. This meeting is dated 4 May by the CIA in its files, but the transcript shows it took place during the evening of 3 May, eventually ending at five past midnight on 4 May.

‘was clearly not impressed’: transcript of interview with Bulik for Cold War, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

‘I realised it was not what he wanted to hear’: Bower, p. 277.

Also on 4 May, the team rehearsed . . . ‘I don’t have such a nice one!’: ‘Meeting 15’, 4 May 1961, CIA.

‘Arrangements for receiving material from Subject . . .’: ‘Operational Instructions’, 5 May 1961, CIA.

entered a telephone booth . . .: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 175.

 

Chapter 5: Russian Roulette

Oleg Penkovsky walked into the Ministry of Defence complex . . . leaned the chair against the doorknob and took out his Minox: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 176.

Before he had left London . . . ‘Only for Officers, Admirals and Generals of the Soviet Army’: Leonard McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

McCoy knew from a previous operation: ibid. McCoy had analysed the intelligence from Soviet naval officer Nikolay Artamonov, who had defected to the United States in 1959 and taken the name Shadrin. Artamonov/Shadrin was killed by the KGB in Vienna in December 1975. See Shadrin by Hurt and Spymaster by Kalugin, pp. 171–9, for more information.

in four frames: George Kisevalter interview: ‘Penkovskiy Operation Parts Three and Four, Taped 22 October 1966’, CIA.

Wynne arrived in Moscow . . . from the Special Collection library: Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 176–7.

‘some no-star hostel in the wilds of Cornwall’: The Man from Moscow by Wynne, p. 27.

Felicity Stuart sent a ciphered message: Stuart to author, 20 November 2011.

operated out of a warehouse in Alexandria: McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

He had visited: ibid.

MI6 reassigned their own analyst: ibid.; and George Kisevalter interview: ‘Penkovskiy Operation Parts Three and Four, Taped 22 October 1966’, CIA.

‘There are two hundred and forty people . . .’: The Russia House by le Carré, p. 151.

In Britain, 1,700 people: Spycatcher by Wright with Greengrass, p. 265.

Dick White also gave the go-ahead . . . a further MI5 officer was similarly informed: The Defence of the Realm by Andrew, pp. 493–4 and p. 955, note 52.

The CIA gave Penkovsky . . . most classified secrets: transcript of interview with Sidney Graybeal, Cold War, episode 21: Spies, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University; Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 274–5; Wise, p. 117.

‘ultimate achievement’: ‘Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military Intelligence (Book IV)’, United States Senate (United States Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 58.

‘He lies like a grey stallion’: ‘Meeting 7, Birmingham’, 27 April 1971, CIA.

‘did not exactly fit the views of anyone at the meeting’: ‘Memorandum of conversations with Ed Proctor and Jack Smith, Re: The Use of Chickadee Material in NIE 11-8-61’, 7 June 1961, CIA.

‘a sharp downward revision’: ‘CIA/DI/ONE National Intelligence Estimate 11-8/1-61, Supplement to NIE 11-8-61, Strength and Deployment of Soviet Long-Range Ballistic Missile Forces’, 21 September 1961.

‘it tentatively supported . . .’: ‘Closing the Missile Gap’ by Leonard F. Parkinson and Logan H. Potter, 28 May 1975, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA.

‘It is my view . . . Penkovsky was able to give us.’: transcript of interview with Bulik on 31 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

‘splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces . . .’: quoted in ‘CIA: Maker of Policy, or Tool?’, New York Times, 25 April 1966.

‘a tough struggle going on in the back alleys . . . no quarter asked and none given’: ibid.

‘joy juice’: Jack Kennedy by Barbara Leaming (W. W. Norton, 2006), p. 296.

‘the cherubic to the choleric’: ‘USSR: Vienna meeting: Background documents, 1953–1961: Briefing book, notes on Khrushchev’, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

‘The important thing is to make the Americans believe that . . .’: Sergei Khrushchev revealed this at the Havana Conference in 1992. See ‘Transcript of Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Havana, Cuba, January 9–12 1992’ in Cuba on the Brink by Blight, Alleyn and Welch, p. 130.

Kennedy had expressed surprise: ‘Record of a meeting held on President Kennedy’s yacht, “Honey Fitz”, on Thursday 6th April at 4 p.m., Top Secret’. Records of the Cabinet Office, East–West Relations, UK National Archives, CAB 129/105.

‘invoke a war’: see Chapter 4.

Kennedy used back-channel communications with Georgi Bolshakov: Khrushchev’s Cold War by Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 353–4. Some sources say Bolshakov was in the KGB, but most agree he was GRU. See The Sword and the Shield by Andrew and Mitrokhin, p. 181, which specifies he was a colonel in the GRU, like Penkovsky.

‘the torch has been passed . . .’: ‘Inaugural address by John F. Kennedy’, 20 January 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

‘the greatest detonation . . . 95% probability that there will be no war’: ‘Minutes of Soviet party presidium meeting’, 26 May 1961, edited and annotated by Timothy Naftali, translation by Rivkin and Naftali, Kremlin Decision Making Project, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. See A Cardboard Castle? edited by Mastny and Byrne pp. 16–17.

privately estimated that there was a one in five chance: With Kennedy by Pierre Salinger (Doubleday, 1966), p. 190.

‘the Soviet Union will do so and nothing will stop it’; ‘let it be so’: ‘Memorandum of Conversation, Vienna, 3 June 1961, 3 p.m.’, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. XXIV, Laos Crisis; and ‘Talking Points Reviewing Conversations between President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev’, 3–4 June 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. V, Soviet Union, Department of State, Washington, DC.

‘negotiated solution’: ‘Current Intelligence Memorandum, Khrushchev’s Conversation with Ambassador Thompson on Berlin’, 25 May 1961, CIA.

‘The thought, though, of women and children perishing . . .’; ‘My impression was that he just didn’t give a damn . . .’: The Dark Side of Camelot by Hersh, pp. 253–4.

‘would perhaps envy the dead’: ‘Mr Khrushchev Ready for Test Ban’, The Times, 20 July 1963.

Newsweek claimed: ‘Showdown on Berlin’ by Lloyd Norman, Newsweek, 3 July 1961. See also Anatomy of Mistrust by Welch Larson, p. 127; and ‘Berlin Crisis Chronology’, CIA.

‘and were perhaps shooting each other instead of elk’; ‘ten of which could destroy . . .’; ‘ridiculous’: ‘Report by Her Majesty’s Ambassador In Moscow of His Private Conversation With Mr. Khrushchev on 2nd July, Annex G to Cabinet East–West Relations Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs’, UK National Archives, CAB/129/105.

‘the last president of the United States of America’: translated excerpts of speech by Khrushchev in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 3, (Autumn 1993), p. 59, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC.

‘an isle of freedom in a Communist sea’ . . . capacity for sea and airlift: unofficial transcript of President Kennedy’s report to the nation on Tuesday, 25 July 1961, US Delegation, NATO.

a 112,544-square-foot bunker . . .: This Is Only a Test by Krugler, p. 167.

In February . . . one ‘Doomsday Plane’ was in the air at all times: ‘Fact Sheet: E-6B Airborne Command Post (ABNCP)’, United States Strategic Command.

the Joint Intelligence Committee had noted with alarm: ‘Confidential Annex to minutes of J.I.C. meeting’, 29 September 1960, Joint Intelligence Committee, UK National Archives, CAB 159/34.

the telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire was adapted: ‘Early warning by Jodrell Bank’, The Times, 22 September 1961; ‘Jodrell Bank telescope “was secret nuclear missile warning system”’ by John Bingham, Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2008.

The ‘Four Minute Warning’ would also trigger: I also used some of this research in my novel The Moscow Option – see pp. 27–9.

‘the National Programme’: BBC War Book 1965, p. 130.

In late 1961, £72,000 . . . ‘impracticable’: ‘Equipment of Central and Regional Seats of Government, Appendix II to letter from F.G. Betts, BBC, to W.W. Norris, Radio Services Department, General Post Office, Secret’, 10 August 1961; ‘Equipment of Reserve Seats & Regional Commissioners’ Headquarters: Stockpiling of Records and Recorded Programmes, 222 Committee; letter from T.G. Mead, Civil Defence Department, Home Office, to Miss M.M. Randall, Radio Services Department, General Post Office, Secret’, 31 October 1961. BBC Written Archives Centre, E/56/31. Courtesy of Mike Kenner.

My Word!: ‘Broadcasts from the Bunker’: Document, BBC Radio 4, 28 January 2008.

two secret reports . . . one third of the population: ‘Machinery of government in war: Report of working party and related papers’, 1955, UK National Archives, CAB 21/4135; and ‘Thermonuclear weapons fallout: Report by a group of senior officials under chairmanship of W. Strath’, Records of the Cabinet Office, Minutes and Papers, 1955, UK National Archives, CAB 134/940. Both courtesy Mike Kenner.

‘The kind of person we want’: ‘Central Government Headquarters in time of war: General Papers’, unsigned letter, 28 June 1961, UK National Archives, T199/924.

The Gray Ghost, The Fisherman and The Scarecrow: Wise, p. 32.

‘wilderness of mirrors’ . . . disastrous consequences: Mangold, pp. 18, 20 and 47–8. The phrase ‘wilderness of mirrors’ is from T. S. Eliot’s Gerontion.

‘undoubtedly the most important case that we had for years . . . regarding the Berlin crisis’: ‘John M. Maury memo for the record on conversation with Mr. Angleton re CHICKADEE material’, 30 June 1961, CIA, quoted in Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 204–5.

 

Chapter 6: Sunday in the Park with Oleg

‘fit of intelligence lunacy’: Trento, p. 245.

the most dangerous city for espionage in the world: in 1994, Gervase Cowell stated that prior to the Penkovsky operation MI6 had never run an agent in Moscow – see ‘The Role of the Intelligence Services in the Second World War’ edited by Christopher Andrew, Richard J. Aldrich, Michael D. Kandiah and Gillian Staerck, Institute of Contemporary British History Witness Seminar, 9 November 1994, p. 45.

‘complete order of battle’: Bower, p. 278.

Janet Chisholm was no longer in MI6 . . . posted to the Allied Control Commission in Germany: Janie Chisholm to author, 30 August 2011. See also obituaries from The Times, 10 August 2004; Daily Telegraph, 6 August 2004; and the BBC, 12 August 2004.

‘immensely likeable’: unpublished manuscript by John Miller, provided to author. Biographical details from Janie Chisholm; Secret Classrooms by Elliott and Shukman, p. 23; and The Foreign Office List and Diplomatic and Consular Year Book for 1965, vol. 137 (Harrison and Sons, 1965), p. 159.

‘I was dying to go there . . . rushing off to burn the paper’: Felicity Stuart to author, 3 October 2011. Stuart, who is married, asked me to use her maiden name in this book, which was her name at the time of the operation. She provided me with information after seeking approval from MI6.

‘a “portakabin” toilet, bank vault and boardroom’: All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening by Miller, p. 104.

Ruari grandly proclaimed: ibid., p. 154.

Miller and Stuart were both frequent visitors . . . the children attended the city’s Anglo-American school: ibid., pp. 41 and 198; The Russians by Hedrick Smith (Sphere, 1976), pp. 26–7; Janie Chisholm to author, 30 August 2011.

Ruari would often dip into the bar . . .: ‘Power always has its rough edges but the British would rather not know’ by Mark Frankland, Independent, 12 May 1996. Frankland was the Observer’s correspondent in Moscow during this time.

‘He used to tell us children that he was Jeremy Fisher . . .’: Janie Chisholm to author, 16 August 2011.

‘He wrote as though it were all such a waste of his time’: The Fatal Englishman by Faulks, p. 238.

‘And they don’t seem to mind me being homosexual’: A Very Different Country by Faith, p. 24.

One former correspondent on the paper: Eric Downton, who was the Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent in 1953, has called the paper’s managing editor at the time, Roy ‘Pop’ Pawley, a ‘servile lackey’ of the secret services, and said that he was appalled at ‘the widespread use made of British foreign correspondents by Six’. Downton claimed that when the Telegraph posted him to Moscow he was ordered to work for MI6’s officer there, whose cover was the press attaché of the British Embassy, and that he was briefed by MI6 officers in London in advance. See ‘Why spies and scribes have a lot in common’ by Phillip Knightley, Khaleej Times, 11 August 2006; and Wars Without End by Downton, p. 337. Faulks also discussed the links between Pawley and intelligence in The Fatal Englishman, pp. 301–2, and Alistair Horne revealed that Pawley was ‘very cooperative’ with MI6 in his memoir But What Do You Actually Do? (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011), p. 140.

it may be that Wolfenden received similar instructions: there is some evidence for this. The Daily Express’s Moscow correspondent Martin Page was asked by MI6 if he knew anything about a Soviet diplomat at the United Nations, Yuri Vinogradov. Page refused to be drawn, but Wolfenden later told him that he had suggested to MI6 that they ask him about Vinogradov, as he knew Page had been in contact with him. See The Second Oldest Profession by Knightley, p. 386.

‘Everyone knows the private affairs of everyone else’: ‘The Western Village in Moscow’ by Jeremy Wolfenden, New York Times, 7 February 1965.

Burgess lived in a flat in the city . . . one of the pallbearers at his funeral: see Burgess and Maclean (Secker & Warburg, 1963) by Anthony Purdy and Douglas Sutherland, A Divided Life by Cecil and All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening by Miller.

Janet was wearing a brown suede jacket: ‘YOGA Meetings Second Phase – July–August in London, Meeting 18’, CIA.

a box of multi-coloured vitamin C tablets: This has been identified as a box of chocolates in many sources about the operation, but according to Janie Chisholm her mother was ‘most emphatic’ that they were vitamin tablets eaten as sweets. Janie Chisholm to author, 7 February 2013.

‘heroine’: ‘YOGA Meetings, Second Phase – July–August in London, Meeting 18’, CIA.

seven rolls of undeveloped film and two typewritten sheets of paper: this material has still not been fully declassified, but according to former CIA analyst Clarence Ashley it also included intelligence that pointed to the closing of the borders around Berlin. In his 2004 biography of George Kisevalter, CIA SpyMaster, Ashley wrote that Penkovsky had quoted Soviet defence minister Rodion Malinovsky as saying that he would put up concertina wire to stem the flood of refugees entering the West: ‘The Americans would come with their tanks – rubber treads, no less – just stop and stare, and would do nothing.’ Ashley, p. 199. ‘George told me that,’ Ashley said when I called him at his home near Langley to ask him about this point. ‘There’s no way to corroborate it,’ he added (Kisevalter died in 1997). Ashley to author, 13 August 2011.

‘an important statement on Berlin’: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 185.

Penkovsky told how he had visited . . . he would back down: ‘Memorandum for the Director of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, Subject: Comments of a Senior Soviet General Officer on Soviet Plans Regarding Berlin’, CIA.

senior members of the CIA . . . ‘an anarchist or crank’: ‘Memorandum for the record’, 13 July 1961, CIA.

Dulles met Kennedy in the Oval Office: Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 188 and 191.

‘operational history’ of their source . . . ‘more than a dozen Soviet Intelligence agents active in the West’: Operational History, 18 July 1961, and Evaluation of the Counterintelligence Product, CIA, both quoted in Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 194–5.

‘squeezed up to him’: ‘Meeting 19’, 20 July 1961, paragraph 4, CIA.

George Kisevalter later estimated . . . ‘Out of this world’: ‘George Kisevalter interview: Penkovskiy Operation Parts Three and Four, Taped 22 October 1966’, CIA. ‘Meeting 13, London’, 3 May 1961, CIA. ‘Meeting 15, London’, 4 May 1961, CIA.

From previous experience McCoy felt: the CIA had previously used polygraph tests on agents to establish their bona fides. Eight days before Penkovsky arrived in London, Yuri Gagarin had visited the British capital as part of a tour following his orbiting of the earth. Gagarin had left London on 15 July, but while in the city he had been accompanied by an interpreter, Boris Belitsky. A senior correspondent for Radio Moscow, Belitsky spoke cut-glass English and had managed Gagarin’s appearances with aplomb. But when not looking after the cosmonaut, he had been busy meeting with CIA officers in safe houses around London – in 1958, Belitsky had walked into an American Army office during the Brussels World Fair and offered to act as an agent. The CIA had given him the rather unsubtle codename WIRELESS. McCoy had been sent to London to help with Belitsky’s debriefings, but when he reviewed the transcripts he was dismayed: it was clear that Belitsky was under the KGB’s control, and was acting as a double agent. However, the CIA had fluttered Belitsky, and he had passed with flying colours. McCoy informed Langley of his suspicions, and they replied that he was to send all of Belitsky’s intelligence anyway: they would decide his bona fides. McCoy says his reputation was also attacked, and that he was cut out of the Belitsky operation. Penkovsky arrived in London, and McCoy returned to coordinating the translation, evaluation and distribution of his reports, as well as drawing up future intelligence requirements for the operation with MI6, MI5 and the Ministry of Defence. However, McCoy later became involved in the Belitsky operation again, and distributed all his material stamped ‘FABRICATION’, an assessment that was finally accepted by CIA headquarters. Leonard McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

McCoy remembers being summoned . . . ‘got up and left’: ibid.

‘a secret opposition’: ‘Meeting 23’, 28 July 1961, CIA.

he had asked to be made a colonel . . . took photographs of the Russian posing proudly in both outfits: transcript of interview with Bulik on 31 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University; Schecter and Deriabin, p. 217.

‘For me it is not only your respect . . . That is also an alternative!’: ‘Meeting 30’, CIA.

‘even a few hours of a third world war if it is unleashed’: ‘Nikita Set for Talks on Berlin’ by Preston Grover, Montreal Gazette, 5 August 1961; see also ‘Berlin Crisis Chronology 1961’, CIA.

‘most enthusiastic’: ‘Memorandum for the record: Subject: Developments re [REDACTED]’, 3 August 1961, paragraphs 7 and 8, CIA.

On the evening of Saturday 12 August 1961 . . . The Iron Curtain had been made physical: The Great Cold War by Barrass, p. 133; Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, p. 375; ‘Remembering 1989’ by Brian Moynahan, The Sunday Times, 3 May 2009.

 

Chapter 7: ‘Atomic Hitler’

The Aeroflot TU-104 skimmed across the tarmac: ‘Meeting 31, Phase III – Paris’, 20 September 1961, CIA.

‘except with hostility and antagonism’ . . . ‘Britshits’: all quotes are from Leonard McCoy to author, 20 November 2011. Other details here are from Ashley, pp. 205 and 210–12, and Schecter and Deriabin, p. 227.

‘I can see now why you need twenty-five days in Paris’ . . . ‘we are keeping everything in readiness’: ‘Meeting 31, Phase III – Paris’, 20 September 1961, CIA.

‘MI6 sent the chiefs of its Soviet and European divisions’: McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

‘highly unusual’: On the Front Lines of the Cold War: Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, 1946 to 1961 edited by Donald P. Steury, CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1999, CIA.

‘firm decisions of this kind’; ‘construed’: ‘Soviet Tactics in the Berlin Crisis, SNIE 11-10/1-61’, 5 October 1961, CIA.

‘Khrushchev today is the new Hitler’ . . . ‘that is what all Russian people are afraid of : ‘Meeting 32’, 22 September 1961, CIA.

Janet Chisholm entered the room . . . Penkovsky was impressed: ‘Meeting 35’, 27 September 1961, CIA.

‘at the highest egotistical pitch ever noted’: Hart, p. 113.

Bulik had asked him for his help . . . to impress the British with his operational skills: Ashley, p. 211.

After one of the debriefing sessions . . . Bulik was privately awarded the same medal: McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

‘He proposed that I come to London . . . a task force in the Central Building of the original CIA address, 2430 E Street.’: ibid.

Kennedy had been given a proposal: See ‘JFK’s First-Strike Plan’ by Fred Kaplan, Atlantic Monthly, October 2001; and related documents in First Strike Options and the Berlin Crisis, September 1961 edited by William Burr, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 56, 2001, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

discussed plans with him for how he could contact them: ‘Meeting 37’, 2 October 1961, CIA.

‘from responsible Soviet officials’ . . . ‘Hello, Mrs Davison speaking’: Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 430–1.

In February 1962, Jones was replaced by Hugh Montgomery: see Wise, p. 120 (footnote), and The Penkovsky Papers, p. 273.

‘blow three times into mouth piece and hang up’: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 432.

Harold Macmillan was asked: ‘Letter to Prime Minister’, 5 October 1961, Cabinet Papers, UK National Archives, CAB 21/6081. ‘silenced’: ‘1. Draft letter appointing the Prime Minister’s Deputies for purposes of Nuclear Retaliation’, Cabinet Papers, UK National Archives, CAB 21/6081.

checklist for nuclear war: ‘Macmillan letter to Lloyd and Butler, Annex 2’, 18 October 1961, UK National Archives, CAB 21/6081. See Appendix B for the full document.

‘full nuclear response’: ‘Meeting minutes, Eyes Only For The President’, 14 October 1968, declassified by the Interagency Security Classifications Appeal Panel. See ‘US Had Plans for “Full Nuclear Response” in Event President Killed or Disappeared during an Attack on the United States’, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 406, 12 December 2012, edited by William Burr, National Security Archive.

‘I wasn’t a hundred percent certain that it was the signal . . . the following morning I sent a telegram to say I’d received it’: Stuart to author, 3 October 2011. The Soviets claimed later that this signal to Stuart was to signify Penkovsky’s safe return to Moscow: see TASS’s summary of the indictment, which dates the call to 16 October (Current Soviet Documents, 1:14, p. 7); and The Penkovsky Papers, p. 275, which dates it to 17 October. Stuart says this is wrong: the signal did not mean all was well (as it had when calling the assistant naval attaché John Varley in May), but that he was about to ‘go to the West’. It may be that Stuart simply misremembered an operational detail from fifty years ago, and there is no record in the CIA files or elsewhere that Penkovsky was to give such a signal in the event of his being about to travel to the West or defect. However, there is no mention of any signal to Stuart in CIA operational files. No MI6 files about the operation have been released, but a call to her on this date was mentioned in Penkovsky’s trial. Stuart also told me that the Soviet account of this was wrong without any prompting – I hadn’t considered it might be and had presumed it was, as described, to signal he had arrived safely. She also had a very lucid memory of many details of her life and work in Moscow, including deciphering the telegrams about George Blake, the bugging at the embassy and elsewhere, the muddy green Pobeda that followed her and how she avoided it, and so on.

stopped a blue Volkswagen . . . a sigh of relief : Fragments of Our Time by Martin J. Hillenbrand (University of Georgia Press, 1998), p. 195; Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe (Putnam, 2011), pp. 451–81.

soon peered through again: unpublished memoir by Felicity Stuart, p. 30.

Paul Garbler arrived in the city . . . it could sometimes take two days: Trento, pp. 226–7; Wise, pp. 50–1.

‘Bugging is funny in summer . . .’: Stuart to author, 20 November 2011.

 

Chapter 8: The Man in the Black Overcoat

a top-level meeting in London: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 286; Dorril, p. 707.

telephone rang in the Moscow flat of Alexis Davison: Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 288–9.

Alexis Davison immediately called Spaso House . . . must simply have been a false alarm: see Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 288–9; Wise, pp. 60–1 and pp. 117–21; and Spy Wars by Bagley, pp. 148–9. These accounts differ, but I have tried to triangulate what happened from the information in them: the CIA documents about this remain classified. Wise relates two incidents in which Abidian checked the drop, once ‘late in 1961’, but without having received any signal, and another a year later. He and/or his interviewees may have conflated the calls to Davison with those received by Montgomery the following year. It’s clear from Wise’s book that he didn’t know that there were two variants of the DISTANT signal, both of which were to be used for an early warning and only one of which signified the checking of the dead drop. Wise cannot have seen the CIA files about the procedures when he wrote his book, as they were only declassified the same month it was published, March 1992. It seems indisputable that two calls were made to the Davisons’ apartment on 25 December 1961: Schecter and Deriabin did have access to the CIA files about this and discussed the subsequent reaction to the calls from Harry Shergold, who told the CIA that Penkovsky had given no indication that anything was wrong at his meeting with Janet Chisholm on 23 December, nor mentioned activating the signal at his next rendezvous with her on 30 December 1961.

rang the doorbell at the home: Mangold, p. 50.

‘the most important defector in history’: Spytime by Buckley, p. 86.

He wanted a private jet . . . was eventually introduced to Robert Kennedy: Wise, p. 21; Mangold, pp. 66–7.

Angleton introduced . . . anything seemed possible: see Wise, pp. 5–9 and 96–7; and Bower’s detailed account of the British mole-hunts in The Perfect English Spy, pp. 290–340.

‘I tried to urge Shergold to cut down on the meetings . . .’: transcript of interview with Bulik on 31 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University. See also Ashley, p. 227.

‘heavily surveilled’; ‘seldom followed’; ‘fairly relaxed about her part in the operation’: ‘Memo for the record: Discussion between SR/COP, CSR/9, DCSR/9, [REDACTED] re: SR/COP’s European trip’, 1–5 February 1962; and ‘SR/COP conversations with [REDACTED]’, 6 February 1962, CIA. The latter redacted name is that of Shergold – see Schecter and Deriabin, p. 294.

‘She might have appeared so . . .’: Janie Chisholm to author, 16 August 2011.

‘handsome present’ . . . ‘speculated whether George Blake might know of him’: ‘Memo for the record: Discussion between SR/COP, CSR/9, DCSR/9, [REDACTED] re: SR/COP’s European trip’, 1–5 February 1962; and ‘SR/COP conversations with [REDACTED]’, 6 February 1962, CIA.

he spotted a car: ‘Translation of letter passed by Penkovsky dated March 28 1962’, 10 April 1962, CIA.

‘I have just heard from Shergie . . .’: ‘Letter from Oldfield to Maury’, 28 February 1962, CIA, quoted in Schecter and Deriabin, p. 296.

The occasion was a cocktail party . . .: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 300.

‘perhaps periodically’: ‘Translation of letter passed by Penkovsky dated March 28 1962’, 10 April 1962, CIA.

‘for an initial intelligence collection program only’: ‘“The Cuba Project”, Top Secret/Sensitive memorandum, MONGOOSE’, 2 March 1962, Department of State, Washington, Department of State, S/S Files: Lot 65 D 438.

‘a Communist Cuban terror campaign . . .’: ‘Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (CS)’, 13 March 1962, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, available at the website of the National Security Archive, George Washington University.

during an interval . . . aged just thirty: Epstein, pp. 52–3; Bagley, pp. 3–9 and 49; Hart, pp. 128–34.

potential future director: Dick Helms, quoted in Epstein, p. 46.

installed hidden microphones: Wise, p. 67.

codename BARMAN: Bagley, p. 291, note 1.

claimed that the KGB had detected . . . delivering a message via a dead drop: Bagley, p. 9; and Ashley, p. 254.

when he had recalled a lecturer . . .: ‘Meeting 2’, 21 April 1961, CIA.

Bagley and Kisevalter’s accounts of what he said differ . . .: Kisevalter claimed Nosenko mentioned the dead drop in Moscow in the May 1962 debriefings, while Bagley says he only discussed this at a subsequent debriefing with himself and Kisevalter in 1964. Nosenko died in 2008, but in 1991 former CIA officer Donald Jameson asked him to clarify this point. Nosenko said he couldn’t remember if he had revealed that he had overseen surveillance of Abidian in 1962 or in 1964, but said ‘it was something I knew about before ’62, and logically I would have mentioned it, but I don’t recall’. So it seems plausible Nosenko knew about the drop while the operation was still running, which would of course mean the KGB also knew about it. Kisevalter later claimed that as soon as Nosenko mentioned this he informed Langley that Penkovsky’s drop had been blown. If so, his warning seems to have been ignored, because the CIA later visited that dead drop again. This is doubly strange, because the CIA’s own instructions to Penkovsky had specified that the drop could only ever be serviced once, due to the ‘emergency nature of its use’. See Wise, pp. 71–2 and 120. Bagley insists Kisevalter muddled the dates, and says it is ‘unthinkable’ that in May–June 1962 the CIA had any indication that the KGB knew about Penkovsky’s Pushkinskaya Street dead drop ‘without our noticing or commenting or recording it anywhere, ever’. Bagley to author, 4 October 2012.

located in 225 acres of woods in McLean . . .: Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency edited by Smith, p. 160; and ‘Headquarters Tour’, CIA website.

Bagley and Kisevalter had both been recalled . . . chief of the Soviet Russia division’s counter-intelligence section: Bagley, p. 19; Wise, 130–1.

Maury felt the case had potential . . . was a KGB plant?: Bagley, pp. 19–27; Epstein, p. 74; Wilderness of Mirrors by Martin, pp. 110–11.

‘The first pressings from a defector . . .’: Their Trade Is Treachery by Pincher, p. 295.

Khrushchev told his foreign minister . . .: Khrushchev’s Cold War by Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 434–5.

‘tangible and effective deterrent’: Khrushchev Remembers by Nikita Khrushchev, edited by Strobe Talbot (Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 493–4.

In March, the GRU had produced two reports . . .: The Sword and the Shield by Andrew and Mitrokhin, p. 182.

‘a doctrine of pre-emptive attack’: underlined in original. ‘Soviet Strategic Doctrine for Start of War’, 3 July 1962, Current Intelligence Staff Study, CAESAR XVI-62, Office of Current Intelligence, CIA, p. 11. The document is stamped IRONBARK, indicating that Penkovsky was a source.

After a Soviet delegation returned . . . over fifty thousand Soviet troops stationed there: Khrushchev’s Cold War by Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 439–40.

hand-delivered to those in the know: Nikolai Leonov, head of the KGB’s department for Cuban affairs in 1962, in Penkovsky, espion pour la paix (Betula Productions/France Télévisions, 2011).

In the alcove of a cloakroom . . .: Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 306–8.

‘send film and a small pistol . . .’; ‘We will continue to work until the last opportunity’: ibid., p. 309.

in which his old MI6 contact Dickie Franks was conveniently a sleeping partner, owned England’s longest articulated lorry: obituary of Dickie Franks, Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2008.

Wynne gave Penkovsky some records . . . if he could get him a gun: The Man from Moscow by Wynne, pp. 100 and 194–5; Hart, p. 119.

‘too nervy to take the pressure’: Faulks, p. 295.

‘the Moscow fear’: le Carré, p. 148.

The CIA analysed every moment: ‘[REDACTED] Meeting with [REDACTED] at Fourth of July Reception’, 6 July 1962, CIA.

Wynne met Ruari Chisholm: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 315. This account and Hart’s both appear to be based on an account Wynne wrote of his movements that remains classified, presumably because it was written for the British.

‘You are being followed’: Hart, p. 120, The Man from Moscow by Wynne, p. 196.

 

Chapter 9: The World Holds its Breath

‘We conclude he is under suspicion . . .’: ‘Memorandum on Counterintelligence Activities’, 20 July 1962, CIA. Around half of this document remains redacted. See also Schecter and Deriabin, p. 318.

‘1. Communications with HERO must be maintained . . . and his clandestine communication role will cease.’: ‘Memo for the record’, 26 July 1962, CIA. Only the first page of this document has been officially declassified – the remaining excerpt quoted here is from Schecter and Deriabin, p. 319. As with other discrepancies, this is, in effect, declassification, as the CIA provided those authors with the documents.

‘covert agent’; ‘one special phase of operations’: ‘Memorandum for Deputy Director (Plans); Expenditure Authorization’, 30 July 1962, CIA. See Schecter and Deriabin, p. 257.

Reliable reports suggested: ‘Timetable of Soviet Military Buildup in Cuba, July–October 1962’, Document 2 in CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis edited by McAuliffe.

McCone examined intelligence that included: The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 edited by Chang and Kornbluh, p. 365.

‘including medium range ballistic missiles’: ‘Memorandum: Soviet MRBMs In Cuba’ by John A. McCone, 31 October 1962, Document 4 in McAuliffe. In this memorandum following the crisis, McCone set out his own chronology of his suspicions.

‘The only construction I can put . . .’: ‘Chronology of John McCone’s Suspicions on the Military Build-up in Cuba Prior to Kennedy’s October 22 Speech’, CIA memo, 30 November 1962, quoted in President Kennedy by Reeves, p. 339; see also Memoirs by Krock, p. 352.

his subordinates advised him: ‘The “Photo Gap” that Delayed Discovery of Missiles’ by Max Holland, Studies in Intelligence, 49:4 (2005), CIA; Memoirs by Krock, p. 352.

‘rocket installations in Cuba’: Chang and Kornbluh, p. 366.

‘Were it to be otherwise . . .’: ‘US Reaffirms Policy on Prevention of Aggressive Actions by Cuba: Statement by President Kennedy’, 4 September 1962, Department of State Bulletin, vol. 47, p. 450.

Penkovsky finally reappeared . . . if he needed to escape suddenly: ‘[REDACTED] Forwarding Of Material Received 27 August, From Chief of Station Moscow’, 29 August 1962, CIA; and ‘[DOC UNDATED-PUB DATE EST] PASSPORT IX-SA NO. 601266’, CIA.

performed in the same production: Secret Classrooms by Elliott and Shukman, p. 23.

‘happily my career henceforth was quite hairy and turbulent’: ‘The Role of the Intelligence Services in the Second World War’ edited by Andrew, Aldrich, Kandiah and Staerck, Institute of Contemporary British History Witness Seminar, 9 November 1994, p. 44.

All these flats had tins of Harpic . . . ‘HERO NO SHOW’: Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 327–8.

sent a top-secret message . . . accompanied by a Project 627 nuclear submarine: ‘Report from General Zakharov and Admiral Fokin to the Defense Council and Premier Khrushchev on Initial Plans for Soviet Navy Activities in Support of Operation Anadyr’, 18 September 1962; and ‘Report from General Zakharov and Admiral Fokin to the Presidium, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on the Progress of Operation Anadyr’, 25 September 1962. Both in the Volkogonov Collection, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Reel 17, Container 26, and both translated by Gary Goldberg for the Cold War International History Project and the National Security Archive.

‘Food cannot be provided on the journey . . .’: Government War Book, BURLINGTON Manning Orders, Appendix B, First Information Slip, Annex 4, Treasury, UK National Archives.

‘used up in the first few hours and days after attack’: ‘FALLEX 62: Report by the Home Office’, May 1963, UK National Archives.

‘highest readiness stage since the beginning of the Cold War’: American Cryptology during the Cold War, Book II: Centralization Wins, 1960–1972 by Thomas R. Johnson (National Security Agency), pp. 330–1.

the eponymous villain’s plot: an early script treatment was partly inspired by the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. The James Bond Archives edited by Paul Duncan (Taschen, 2012), p. 31.

‘unwitting deception’: Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis by Garthoff, p. 48 (footnote). The precise wording used at this meeting is unclear. See Kennedy by Theodore Sorensen (Konecky & Konecky, 1999), p. 668; KGB by Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 474, which dates the meeting to 6 October (and, incidentally, refers to Bolshakov as a KGB rather than a GRU officer, something Andrew corrected in The Sword and the Shield); One Hell of a Gamble by Fursenko and Naftali, p. 219, which dates the meeting as 5 October using Robert Kennedy’s appointment calendar; and the same authors’ later and fuller account of this meeting in Khrushchev’s Cold War, p. 463.

In the early morning of 14 October . . . the same missile as in Heyser’s photos: Eyeball to Eyeball by Brugioni, pp. 182–99.

The SS-4 had a range of around 1,100 nautical miles . . . around 14,000 tons of TNT: One Hell of a Gamble by Fursenko and Naftali, p. 217.

entered Kennedy’s bedroom: Brugioni, p. 22.

‘This is the result of the photography’ . . . ‘or even a day or two.’: ‘Meeting on the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 16 1962’, The Presidential Recordings, John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises edited by Timothy Naftali, Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, vol. 2 (W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 397–401.

43,000 Soviet troops on the island . . . escalated to a full-scale conflict: Robert McNamara, foreword to Chang and Kornbluh, p. xi.

On the evening of 16 October . . . ‘the play-by-play account.’: The Presidential Recordings, John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises edited by Timothy Naftali, Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, vol. 2, (W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 431–2.

‘with fixed launchers zeroed in on the Eastern United States’: ‘McCone, Memorandum for File’, 19 October 1962, Document 60 in CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, CIA, 1992.

‘pursued solely the purpose . . .’ Blight, Alleyn and Welch, p. 494.

he was called in by the director: McCoy to author, 20 November 2011.

‘The magnitude of the total Soviet missile force being deployed . . .’ . . . ‘. . . put into motion last spring’: ‘Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, prepared by the Guided Missile and Astronautics Intelligence Committee, the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee and the National Photographic Interpretation Center’, 18 October 1962. Document 61 in CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, CIA, 1992.

‘I think we ought to think of why the Russians did this’ . . . ‘. . . we’re going to have the problem of Berlin anyway’: ‘Joint Chief of Staffs Meeting, October 19 1962’, The Presidential Recordings, John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises edited by Timothy Naftali, Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, vol. 2 (W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 581–2.

‘something funny in his voice’ . . . ‘than live without you’: Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (Hyperion, 2011), p. 263.

‘21 medium-range ballistic missile sites . . . avoiding the outbreak of a third world war’: ‘Conclusions of a Meeting of the Cabinet held at Admiralty House, S.W. I. on Tuesday, 23rd October, 1962, at 10.30 a.m., Secret’, Records of the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Minutes and Papers, UK National Archives, CAB 128/36.

‘speed of decision to be essential’: ‘Conclusions of a Meeting of the Cabinet, 23rd October, 1962’, UK National Archives, CAB 128/36.

informed of the situation at the same time: Draft: Vol. IV, Chap. II: The Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 5. CIA Historical Review Program, in the Mary Ferrell Foundation Collection.

a cartoon by Osbert Lancaster: Reproduced in Barrass, p. 120.

placed its military forces at DEFCON-3: The Cuban Missile Affair and the American Style of Crisis Management by Dan Caldwell (Rand Corp, 1989), p. 6.

‘large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction’ . . . ‘transform the history of man’: ‘Remarks of President John F. Kennedy’, 22 October 1962, Office of the White House Press Secretary, Papers of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston. JFKPOF-041-018.

‘My fellow Americans . . . from the soil of Cuba’: Reproduced in The Kennedys and Cuba by White, pp. 207–8.

‘SUGGEST HERO EARLY WARNING PROCEDURE . . .’: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 337.

 

Chapter 10: Nuclear Gun-barrel

‘extraordinarily high state of alert’; ‘as if to insure that Kennedy understood that the USSR would not launch first’: American Cryptology during the Cold War, Book II: Centralization Wins, 1960–1972 by Thomas R. Johnson (National Security Agency), p. 331.

‘piratical acts by American ships on the high seas’: Khrushchev’s Cold War by Fursenko and Naftali, p. 469.

placed the US Strategic Air Command at DEFCON-2: One Minute to Midnight by Dobbs, p. 95; One Hell of a Gamble by Fursenko and Naftali, p. 263.

‘slept with a wooden knife’: Khrushchev’s Cold War by Fursenko and Naftali, p. 469.

‘When I arrived he was already sitting at the table . . . “. . . something must be done to save the situation”’: Scali in an ABC News special of 13 August 1964, quoted in ‘Using KGB Documents: The Scali-Feklisov Channel in the Cuban Missile Crisis’ by Fursenko and Naftali, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 5 (Spring 1995), pp. 58 and 60, and in ‘John A. Scali, 77, ABC Reporter Who Helped Ease Missile Crisis’ by Lawrence Van Gelder, New York Times, 10 October, 1995. Also quoted and discussed by Fursenko and Naftali in One Hell of a Gamble, p. 264.

‘Fomin’ now suggested: ‘John Scali’s notes of first meeting with Soviet embassy counselor and KGB officer Alexander Fomin’, 26 October 1962, Document 44 in Chang and Kornbluh.

‘horrible conflict’ . . . perhaps prompted by someone close to Khrushchev: ‘Using KGB Documents: The Scali-Feklisov Channel in the Cuban Missile Crisis’ by Fursenko and Naftali, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 5 (Spring 1995), pp. 60–2; see also Fursenko and Naftali’s One Hell of a Gamble, p. 265, and Khrushchev’s Cold War, p. 616, note 69.

A CIA report from 26 October: ‘The Crisis, USSR/Cuba: Information as of 0600, October 26 1962, Prepared for the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, Memorandum, Top Secret’, CIA, p. 5.

he was in la Cueva de los Portales: Dobbs, p. 80.

‘We’re going to blast them now . . .’: recollections of Vadim Orlov, quoted in ‘Cuban Samba of the Foxtrot Quartet: Soviet Submarines during the 1962 Caribbean Crisis’ by Aleksandr Mozgovoi, Voennyi parad, 2002. The excerpt quoted here is from a translation by Svetlana Savranskaya of the National Security Archive.

‘staring at each other down a nuclear gun-barrel’: Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History by Ted Sorensen (Harper, 2008), p. 325.

‘chain reaction’ . . . ‘itching for a fight’: translation of telegram from Anatoli Dobrynin to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, 27 October 1962, original source Russian Foreign Ministry archives, quoted in We All Lost the Cold War by Lebow and Stein, p. 525.

‘We should invade today!’: The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963 by Michael R. Beschloss (HarperCollins, 1991), p. 544.

MI6’s Head of Station, Gervase Cowell . . . simply sat on the information: The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst, 1945–2010 by Peter Hennessy (Penguin, 2010), p. 44.

‘He did nothing . . . real bravery and judgement.’ Sir Gerry Warner, interviewed by Peter Hennessy, Great Spy Books: Fact or Fiction?, BBC Radio 4, 1 December 2012.

‘While we have serious reservations . . .’: Corera, pp. 171–2.

He set out in his Ford: ‘Spies’ by Anatoly Agranovsky, Izvestia, 16 December 1963.

‘dry cleaning’: Spycraft by Wallace, Melton and Schlesinger, p. 485, note 12.

taken to a nearby militsiya station: ‘Dick Jacob debrief on his arrest, Tape No 4 – Friday Afternoon – November 9 1962’, CIA. Perhaps due to an oversight, the other tapes of this debriefing have not been declassified. In December 1962, an updated version of a propaganda film, Along the Black Path, was shown in fourteen cinemas in Moscow and broadcast three times on television, and featured footage of Jacob visiting the dead drop in Pushkinskaya Street, as well as photographs of Ruari and Janet Chisholm, Hugh Montgomery, Felicity Stuart, the Cowells and others involved in the operation. It also showed footage of Gervase Cowell presenting his passport at Moscow airport before leaving the country.

‘somewhat indifferently’: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 341, quoting the same debriefing by Jacob as above. Schecter and Deriabin note that the KGB were surprised to learn that Jacob was American, perhaps because their surveillance had been on Janet Chisholm. American counter-intelligence specialist David Major elaborated on this in a talk at the International Spy Museum on 15 October 2002, broadcast on C-SPAN, suggesting that the KGB ‘only thought they had a British spy’ when they arrested Jacob, and that they did not yet know that the CIA were even involved in the operation. But the indifference of an official in a police station may simply have been due to the nature of Soviet bureaucracy, and the KGB must have at least suspected that the CIA were involved: they made the call to Hugh Montgomery that led to Jacob going to the drop in the first place, where they ambushed him. It seems that at this stage they were not certain whether he worked for one, the other, or both: see Zagvozdin’s comment to this effect in Chapter 10. I think the likeliest reason for the KGB to have called Montgomery and Cowell is the one I outline in the first chapter: to catch a British or American intelligence officer red-handed visiting Penkovsky’s dead drop, so that they had proof of their involvement in the eyes of the world. This idea can also be found in the 1979 novel TASS Upolnomochen Zaiavit (TASS Is Authorized to Announce) by Julian Semyonov, which was a bestseller in the Soviet Union. The novel draws inspiration from KGB operations to catch three Russians working as CIA agents: Anatoli Filatov, Aleksandr Ogorodnik and Penkovsky. A sequel, Intercontinental Knot, also dealt with aspects of the Penkovsky operation, updated to the 1980s (as le Carré did in The Russia House). Semyonov claimed to have been given access to KGB operational files by Yuri Andropov, and to have interviewed a senior KGB officer involved in tracing Penkovsky.

Both novels contain information about the Penkovsky operation that was not in the public domain at the time, but TASS Is Authorized to Announce offers several intriguing insights into how the KGB may have been thinking during it. The novel follows a KGB team as they hunt for a traitor, codenamed MASTERMIND by the CIA, at large in Moscow. The CIA transmits coded messages to MASTERMIND, who is the best agent-in-place they have ever had – via radio: one message states they have bought him ‘medicine and some gold and silver articles’ as he requested, while another says that his intelligence is so valuable that they would prefer him to delay defection for another year, but that they have accumulated over $57,000 in his account. The KGB intercept some of these messages – they know they emanate from the CIA, but can’t decipher what they say. But the fact that they are being transmitted regularly makes them suspect that the CIA has an agent-in-place in Moscow. Other clues suggest that the CIA is planning a coup in Nagonia, a fictional African nation under Communist control. The team determines that the CIA’s messages could only be picked up by a very powerful radio, ‘such as a Philips, Panasonic or Sony’. They investigate several suspects to find out whether they own such radios, and after charting the precise times at which signals are sent, discount several by carrying out surveillance to see whether they were at home at those times.

The team eventually homes in on one man, Sergei Dubov. They break into his apartment when he is out, but find nothing incriminating. They set up surveillance from a flat across the street, and finally spot him removing film from a battery hidden in a torch, so arrest him. Dubov immediately offers to work against the CIA if they can guarantee his life. He starts to write a confession, and then kills himself with a poison capsule hidden in the pen – this is inspired by the Aleksandr Ogorodnik operation.

Dubov’s death creates a dilemma one of the team has already raised: ‘Unless we catch one of their local CIA agents red-handed, they’ll deny it.’ The team now has deciphered CIA messages to Dubov, but they refer to rendezvous locations using codenames, and they don’t know where these are. Surveillance reveals that CIA officers regularly drive past a certain stretch of road, seeming to check the area – one of these officers is called Jacobs. They eventually figure out that the CIA has a dead drop in a cache on the bridge over the Moskva, and that CIA officers check the drop if they see Dubov placing a lipstick mark on a particular lamp post nearby. The KGB finds one of their officers who looks reasonably like the dead Dubov, dresses him so up he resembles him and sends him to the lamp post to mark it. This leads to a CIA officer being arrested red-handed clearing the dead drop; the plans for the invasion of Nagonia are intercepted, and the KGB saves the day.

There are many very precise similarities here with the Penkovsky operation: like the fictional agent-in-place MASTERMIND, HERO received coded messages from the CIA via portable Sony and Zenith receivers – but he had also told the team that the KGB monitored radio traffic obsessively (Meeting 2, 21 April 1961, CIA). He was given medical items by his case officers, had a dead drop in Moscow that he could signal was loaded by marking a particular lamp post, and according to Nosenko, a lookalike of Penkovsky was also used at one point in the operation to check Janet Chisholm’s reactions to him. The novel even features a minor character called Zepp.

It seems Semyonov was granted access to KGB files for several operations, and picked what he found most exciting from them. In doing so, the book offers an explanation for the calls on 2 November that led to the arrest of Dick Jacob: the need for proof of the involvement of Western intelligence agencies before the trial. It also suggests another way in which the KGB could have been alerted to the operation: as radio messages were regularly being sent to him from Frankfurt, they could have deduced that there was an agent-in-place in Moscow from that alone, without any need to decipher the messages. See TASS Is Authorized to Announce, pp. 249–322. For more on Semyonov’s connections with KGB sources, see the discussion between Semyonov and Graham Greene in which they discuss Andropov (and, fascinatingly, Kim Philby) at http://www.semenov-foundation.org; ‘KGB link adds to author’s intrigue’ by Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun-Times, 13 October 1987; ‘In Yulian Semyonov’s Thrillers the Villains Are CIA Types – and Some Say the Author Works for the KGB’ by Montgomery Brower, People, 6 April 1987; and Neizvestnyj Julian Semenov: Razoblačenie (Unknown Yulian Semyonov: Exposure), compiled by Olga Semyonova (Veche, 2008) , p. 108.

‘this source will be of no further value’: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 347.

‘It’s just awful’ . . . ‘Why didn’t someone tell him to get out?’: Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., pp. 192–3.

‘start a game’; utterly terrified: transcript of interview with Alexander Zagvozdin, December 1997 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, Liddell Hart Military Archives, London, COLDWAR: 28/125.

‘but give me my freedom after this’: transcript of interrogation with Greville Wynne in Penkovsky, Facts and Fancy by Viktor Kutuzov (Novosti, 1965), quoted in Seven Spies Who Changed the World by Nigel West (Mandarin, 1992), p. 204.

‘Anne Chiskow’: transcript of interview with Alexander Zagvozdin, December 1997 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, Liddell Hart Military Archives, London, COLDWAR: 28/125. The surname may have been misheard for the transcription, but this is more evidence that the KGB story of knowing Janet Chisholm was working for MI6 before they detected Penkovky is implausible, as Zagvozdin still thought she was ‘Anne’ – from the context, it seems that this was the first he had heard of her. Zagvozdin also says he was only brought into the investigation in October 1962, shortly before Penkovsky’s arrest, so it seems his role was more to gather all the evidence than track Penkovsky, and it may be that he was never informed how he had first been detected.

‘be useful again to the Soviet Union’ Alexander Zagvozdin in Inside Story: ‘Fatal Encounter’ (BBC/Novosti Press Agency, 1991). Zagvozdin has given several interviews about the operation, and it looks as though he was appointed the acceptable public face for it after Gribanov’s dismissal. Zagvozdin may also not be his real name: Russian intelligence officers often employ aliases similar to their real names, and in a discussion of the operation in the 1968 book Front Taynov Voyny (Front of the Secret War) by Sergei Tsybov and Nikolai Chistyakov, his role appears to be taken by an ‘Alexander Gvozdilin’ – of course it may also be that this was an alias, or that neither of these is his true name. A 2004 interview with Zagvozdin contains a peculiar error: it states that spy novelist Julian Semyonov based the character ‘General Gvozdilin’ on him in his 1979 novel TASS Is Authorized to Announce – but there is no character of that name in that book. The novel does, however, feature a wily and noble KGB investigator, and as discussed in a previous note appears to include disguised information about the Penkovsky operation, so it may be that Zagvozdin confused two hagiographic representations of his career in discussion with his interviewer. See ‘General Zagvozdin: 80 years old’ by E. Malyshev, Dvinovazhe, 19 February 2004.

A rare KGB file: ‘Interrogations of Oleg Penkovsky’, Central Archive, FSB, cited in Khrushchev’s Cold War by Fursenko and Naftali, p. 477 and corresponding note.

‘I didn’t know much, but I used the bits that I knew, and they helped’ . . . ‘most important thing’: transcript of interview with Alexander Zagvozdin, December 1997 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, Liddell Hart Military Archives, London, COLDWAR: 28/125.

‘since he knew he was doomed . . .’: transcript of interview with Bulik on 31 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

‘in case of unexpected danger’; ‘blow three times into the mouthpiece’: ‘Spies’ by Anatoly Agranovsky, Izvestia, 16 December 1962; English translation: The Current Digest of the Russian Press, 14: 51, 16 January 1963, p. 27.

widespread attention in the British press . . . offending some influential people there: ‘Reds arrest Briton’, Daily Express, 6 November 1962; ‘Director suspected of spying’, Reuter’s report in the Guardian, 7 November 1962; ‘Spy arrest may be due to a prank’, Daily Mirror, 9 November 1962.

Joe Bulik repeatedly pressed: Bulik was himself accused of complacency regarding the handling of the operation. George Kisevalter was furious at the fact that John Abidian, who was not in the CIA, had serviced a dead drop that Nosenko had told them was blown, and claimed he had complained about it to Bulik. ‘I raised hell about it,’ he said. Bulik had apparently replied that it had been felt that Abidian, whose tour of duty in Moscow was due to come to an end, was safe to use to service the drop. See Wise, p. 120.

‘billions of dollars’ . . . ‘The only risk was to have some kid . . .’: transcript of interview with Joe Bulik on 31 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

Angleton forwarded his idea: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 371.

‘Quite recently’ . . . ‘cleared British attorney’: ‘Memorandum from Osborn to Deputy Director (Plans): Negotiations with SIS Concerning Letter to KGB/GRU’, 10 December 1962, CIA.

the TASS news bureau announced Penkovsky’s arrest: ‘Russian on spy charge in Moscow’, The Times, 12 December 1962; ‘Russians Arrest Science “Spy”’ by Jeremy Wolfenden, Daily Telegraph, 12 December 1962.

‘so far as I know’: ‘No news yet of Mr. Wynne’, The Times, 20 November 1962.

‘It’s not as though he is being kept in Bradford General . . .’: unpublished manuscript by John Miller.

‘more problems to the Soviets than to us’: ‘Possible Developments in the Trials of Oleg Penkovskiy and Greville Wynne’, 3 May 1963, CIA.

 

Chapter 11: The Trial

filmed the whole trial: One Chilly Siberian Morning by Botting, pp. 16-17; and Hart, p. 123. The court translator was none other than Boris Belitsky, the man the CIA had codenamed WIRELESS.

‘haunted’: Miller to author, 30 August 2011.

usually referred to in the trial as either ‘Ann’ or ‘Anna’ Chisholm: in the indictment, she was referred to initially as ‘Janet Ann Chisholm’, which was her name, but after that as ‘Ann Chisholm’. See Current Soviet Documents, 1: 1–14, pp. 5–15. This mistake was repeated throughout the trial and in many subsequent accounts – see later analysis of why this suggests that Penkovsky was the primary source for information about her.

‘Don’t forget the fruit gums, Mum!’: cartoon by Giles, Daily Express, 9 May 1963.

‘Mata Hari in a woolly skirt and sensible shoes’: ‘Mata Hari My Foot!’, Daily Express, 8 May 1963.

Ruari took one precaution: Janie Chisholm to author, 30 August 2011.

‘I cannot make any comment,’: ‘Mata Hari My Foot!’, Daily Express, 8 May 1963.

‘Suddenly friends knew what one did’: Stuart to author, 3 October 2011.

not even similar to the cover names: the team’s cover names were ‘Joseph Welk’ (Bulik), ‘Harold Hazelwood’ (Shergold), ‘George McAdam’ (Kisevalter, an implausible Scot) and ‘Michael Fairfield’ (Stokes). Schecter and Deriabin noted in The Spy Who Saved the World (p. 354) that the names Penkovsky gave at the trial were ‘phonetic approximations’ of those he thought he had been told by the team, but even allowing for differences in reporting and the most strangled of accents all are a long way from the cover names, phonetically or otherwise: ‘Oslaf’, for example, doesn’t bear any resemblance to any of them.

‘A thousand miles from here there are my own people . . .’: ‘Wynne “victim of Western espionage”’ by ‘Monitor’, The Times, 9 May 1963.

‘vague and bullied relationship’: ‘Why spies stay out in the cold’ by ‘Pendennis’, Observer, 26 April 1964.

‘That would come with it in our country’: ‘Threatened by British intelligence contacts, says Wynne’, The Times, 9 May 1963.

‘one of them by submarine’: ibid.

Wynne later claimed: The Man from Moscow by Wynne, pp. 99–100.

‘had all the makings of a fictional spy thriller’: ‘Pair Admit “Spying” on Moscow’, Boston Globe (via UPI ), 8 May 1963.

‘the need for other Oleg Penkovskiys’; ‘. . . a reflection of low moral level’: ‘Memorandum for: Chief, SR Division, Subject: Oleg V Penkovskiy’, 10 May 1963, CIA. Bulik sent a variant of this plan four days later, co-signed by Kisevalter.

‘Anna Chisholm, an intelligence agent . . .’; ‘death by shooting’: ‘Sentence on behalf of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’, Pravda, 12 May 1963.

‘a long roar of applause’: ‘Wynne sentenced to eight years’ by Mark Frankland, Observer, 12 May 1963.

‘not expecting a Butlin’s holiday camp’: ‘Mr Wynne may lodge an appeal’, Guardian, 13 May 1963.

‘talk in Moscow’: ‘Wynne sentenced to eight years’ by Mark Frankland, Observer, 12 May 1963.

‘masquerade’: ‘Trial of Mr. Wynne a Masquerade?’ by Victor Zorza, Guardian, 14 May 1963.

His hair had become increasingly grey . . . watching the procession: Tower of Secrets by Sheymov, pp. 390–1.

taken to Butyrskaya prison: ‘Oleg Gordievsky in an interview with Andrei Shary on the 40th anniversary of the Penkovsky case’, Radio Liberty, 9 May 2003. Gordievsky also claimed that Penkovsky was put in a cheap coffin and that his cremation was filmed because, in the atmosphere of the time, unless there was incontrovertible proof that Penkovsky was dead conspiracy theories would spring up and soon people would be saying they had spotted him alive.

executed at 4.17 p.m., and incinerated at 9.45 p.m. the same day: KGB memorandum shown in Penkovsky, espion pour la paix (Betula Productions/France Télévisions, 2011). There have been persistent rumours that Penkovsky was cremated alive, but this document refutes it. In 2001, former KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny also dismissed the rumour as one of numerous ‘fairy tales’ about the agency’s activities, and said that he had simply been shot. See ‘Spy vs. Counter Spy: Conversations with a Former KGB Chief’ by Nikolai Dobryukha, Moscow Times, 16 March 2001.

‘request for mercy’: ‘Sentence Carried Out’, Pravda, 17 May 1963.

 

Part II: The Fallout
Chapter 12: In the Cold

‘loss of vigilance and unworthy conduct’: Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower by Sergei Khrushchev (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), p. 682. See also ‘Penkovsky: Marshal Demoted’, Guardian, 30 May 1963.

Some three hundred Soviet agents were also reported: ‘“Spy” Envoys Recalled’ by James E. Warner, Daily Express, 20 May 1963.

‘I explained that after Penkovsky was apprehended . . .’: ‘Memorandum for the Record by Director of Central Intelligence McCone, Washington’, 26 February 1964, CIA.

Khrushchev was deposed: One Hell of a Gamble by Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 353–4.

The President disliked the fact: Getting to Know the President: CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952–1992 by John L. Helgerson, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1996, CIA p.68. Also see ‘Memorandum: Soviet MRBMs in Cuba, John A McCone’, 31 October 1962, Document 4 in McAuliffe, for an idea of McCone’s ‘I told you so’ tone after the crisis.

‘sufficient strength to knock out the USA and England’: ‘Meeting 32’, 22 September 1961, CIA.

‘patiently awaiting the time when we can begin a war’; ‘rain of rockets’; ‘In fact, there was talk about this with Castro and possibly a few rockets are already there’: ‘Meeting 1’, 20 April 1961, CIA.

‘I would like to get a report . . .’: ‘Top Secret memorandum from Kennedy to McCone’, 13 May 1963, CIA.

‘due to a combination of circumstances . . .’ . . . ‘multiplied the number of possible security leaks’: ‘The Compromise of Oleg V. Penkovsky’, CIA, quoted in Schecter and Deriabin, p. 373.

‘any information he supplied us . . .’ . . . ‘. . . hurt them for years to come’: ‘Memorandum for Deputy Director (Plans) – Subject: Oleg Penkovsky’, 23 May 1963; and attachment, ‘Bona Fides of the Penkovskiy Operation’, CIA.

‘more than 8,000 pages of translated reporting . . .’: ‘The Essential Facts of The Penkovskiy Case, memorandum from Richard Helms to the Director of Central Intelligence’, 31 May 1963, CIA. For the full memo, see Appendix C.

‘We think that the case was blown . . .’: ‘Penkovskiy Case, memo for the record’, 26 June 1963, CIA. A later memorandum, the declassified version of which still contains significant redactions, stated that an unnamed Soviet source had suggested that Soviet intelligence in the United States had realised that important information was leaking and had launched a ‘discreet investigation’ that, by a process of elimination, had led to Penkovsky: ‘Penkovskiy Case, memo for the record’, 8 July 1963, CIA.

‘Should the CIA amend . . .’: Newsweek, 15 July 1963, p. 7.

‘treacle-footed’; ‘the chummy reluctance of one Harrovian or Etonian . . .’: ibid., pp. 22–3. If this seems overly harsh, when MI5 investigated whether its deputy head Graham Mitchell was a Soviet agent fellow MI5 officer James Robertson strongly objected to the idea, partly no doubt because Mitchell happened to be his brother-in-law, but also because he felt that ‘social upstarts’ had no right to cast aspersions on a Wykehamist. See Bower, p. 330.

designing kitchen interiors: The Man from Odessa by Wynne contains an illustration of one of his designs.

According to MI5’s authorised history: The Defence of the Realm by Andrew, pp. 499–500. Neither the identity nor precise position of the source has been revealed, making it difficult to gauge their credibility. Andrew states that they were stationed within a KGB rezidentura, but an FBI memorandum by J. Edgar Hoover refers to a colonel with the Soviet mission to the United Nations, suggesting it may have been Aleksei Kulak, who was codenamed FEDORA by the FBI. See ‘Soviet Personnel Intelligence Activities Internal Security – Russia’, Director, Secret, 18 June 1963, John Profumo (BOWTIE) dossier, Part 1, p. 41, FBI. For further context, see ‘KGB did bug Profumo and Keeler pillow talk to steal nuclear secrets’ by Jason Lewis, Daily Mail, 24 July 2010.

‘suitably tailored’: The Defence of the Realm by Andrew, p. 496.

part of his job to re-examine the Penkovsky case: Bagley, p. 53.

‘“liquid affairs”, sabotage and assassination’: ‘Record on Cable from Chief, SR Division, re Possible KGB role in Kennedy Slaying from TH Bagley’, 23 November 1963, CIA.

‘who have long been connected to pro-fascist and racist organizations’: The Sword and the Shield by Andrew and Mitrokhin, p. 225.

‘float’ the idea of an exchange ‘to see what reaction it produced’: ‘Letter from SG Cartledge, British Embassy, Moscow, to PG Westlake, Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, Foreign Office, London’, 9 January 1964, UK National Archives, FO 181/1177.

pushed into a yellow Mercedes: ‘Espionage: In from the Cold’, Time, 1 May 1964.

told that if he spoke: The Man from Moscow by Wynne, p. 211.

Police on both sides . . . radio contact with British headquarters: ‘Wynne Flying Home’, Evening News, 22 April 1964; ‘Mr. Greville Wynne Freed in Berlin Exchange’, The Times, 23 April 1964.

took just twelve minutes: ibid.

In January, Yuri Nosenko . . . crucial intelligence about it: Bagley, pp. 80–7; Wise, pp. 132–4.

as Golitsyn had claimed: according to Golitsyn, the KGB had circulated a ‘special secret review’ of the Popov case among its staff that revealed he had been detected as a result of ‘reports from agents abroad’ and surveillance. Golitsyn, New Lies for Old (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984), p. 71 and corresponding endnote on pp. 373–4.

Now Nosenko told . . . from General Gribanov: Mangold, p. 344; Bagley, p. 152.

George Kisevalter recalled . . . uncovered his equipment: Wise, pp. 132–4.

using a wax: this detail is from a version of the story Nosenko gave in 1989. See The Storm Birds by Gordon Brook-Shepherd (Henry Holt & Company, 1989), p. 191.

Bagley wasn’t keen . . . bound for the United States: Bagley, p. 91, Epstein, p. 59; Mangold, p. 150; Ashley, pp. 277–8.

 

Chapter 13: The Iceberg War

‘man who came in from the cold’ . . . ‘late to bed’: ‘Should Intelligence Imperil an Innocent Man’s Life?’ by Chapman Pincher; and ‘So Nice to See You!’, both in Daily Express, 23 April 1964.

‘the Iceberg War’: ‘This Shadowy War’ by Pincher, Daily Express, 21 October 1965.

‘the only rule of espionage’: ‘U.S. Blunder Could Hit Britain’s Spy Network’ by Pincher, Daily Express, 12 November 1965.

Claims that the book was a CIA forgery emerged: the issue was finally settled in 1976, when the Church Committee Senate hearings concluded that by 1967 the CIA had secretly ‘produced, subsidized or sponsored’ well over a thousand books. The CIA admitted to the committee that one of these was The Penkovsky Papers, which wasn’t Penkovsky’s diary, as had been claimed, but had been stitched together ‘for operational reasons’ from the case materials. ‘Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence (Book I)’, United States Senate (United States Government Printing Office, 1976), pp. 192–4.

‘and he never came back’: ‘False, false . . . that book about my husband’ by Robin Stafford, Daily Express, 23 November 1965.

given a week to leave: ‘Out, Says Moscow’, Daily Express, 26 November 1965.

repeated problems with visas: ‘No Visa’, Observer, 20 November 1966.

travel privileges revoked: ‘Kremlin Curbs Diplomats’, Daily Express, 27 November 1965.

he had even warned: ‘Meeting 14’, 3 May 1961, CIA.

‘evasive and inconsistent’: Ashley, p. 279.

one of the CIA’s most controversial decisions: there are many accounts of this, but one of the most cogent is Mangold, pp. 151–69.

‘false statement’: Mangold, pp. 175 and 361–2, note 16.

Bossard regularly placed classified documents: see ‘21 Years for Missile Spy’, Evening Times, 10 May 1965; and ‘21 Years’ Gaol for Selling Secrets to Russians’, The Times, 11 May 1965.

One of Wright’s claims in Spycatcher . . . ‘“. . . and expect us to believe this?”’: Spycatcher by Wright with Greengrass, pp. 263–6.

Spycatcher has sold over two million copies: Peter Wright obituary, Daily Telegraph, 28 April 1995.

the CIA granted two authors: Schecter is a former White House press secretary who was instrumental in the smuggling of Khrushchev’s memoirs from the Soviet Union, while Deriabin was a former KGB major who had once been Stalin’s bodyguard, and who had defected to the West in 1954 – he had also worked on The Penkovsky Papers.

‘primarily on the combination of intelligence sources . . .’: transcript of interview with Graybeal on 29 January 1998 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

‘follow the progress of Soviet missile emplacement in Cuba by the hour’: Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Andrew, p. 496.

 

‘precise capabilities of the SS-4 MRBM . . .’: A Look Over My Shoulder by Helms with Hood, p. 216. Helms added that because Kennedy knew how long it would take to prepare the SS-4s to fire, and that there were no nuclear warheads visible on the island, this intelligence also gave the President a much clearer indication of how much time he had to negotiate with Khrushchev. That claim doesn’t quite seem to have been the case, though: in 2008, declassified US reconnaissance photographs revealed that the CIA had missed some crucial information – the Soviets had placed nuclear warheads on Cuba, housed in storage bunkers in Bejucal and Managua. See Dobbs, pp. 175 and 384–5.

 

Part III: Walking Back the Cat
Chapter 14: Beneath the Smoke

other Russian sources had done during and after the trial: see also Lubyanka 2, a glossy official history of KGB operations published in 1999 in collaboration with the Moscow City Archives, which repeatedly refers to her as Anna and Anne Chisholm, pp. 272–3.

the KGB had placed Ruari under surveillance in 1960: There is some evidence for this. John Miller relates in his memoir that Ruari Chisholm once gave him a lift home from the British embassy club and drew his attention to heavy surveillance from KGB cars behind and in front of them. He tells me he thinks this took place in the autumn of 1960. All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening by Miller, p. 155; and Miller to author, 22 February 2013.

‘we noted for the first time that Penkovsky or someone had a meeting with Anne Chisholm’: Schecter and Deriabin, p. 410.

‘protecting a mole in the American or British services . . .’ . . . ‘Counterintelligence even now cannot disclose how Penkovsky was uncovered’: ibid., pp. 410–13.

‘Our officers never saw those meetings’: Bower, pp. 286–7.

Penkovsky: Agent of Three Powers: ‘Documentary Detective’ strand, directed by Vakhtang Mikeladze, (RTS/FSB, 1997).

‘a mole inside the CIA . . .’: Schecter talking at the International Spy Museum, Washington, C-SPAN, 15 October 2002.

two high-profile Russian TV documentaries: Delo temnoe: Glavnyĭ predatel' Sovet·skogo Soyuza (Dark Deeds: The Chief Traitor of the Soviet Union), directed by Andrey Lazarev, NTV, first broadcast 7 June 2011; and Chelovek bez litsa: Pen'kovskiĭ (The Man without a Face: Penkovsky), directed by Alexander Dzyublo, Russia 1, first broadcast 14 July 2011.

‘James Garth’: Bagley, pp. 150–1.

he told me as we sat: Tennent ‘Pete’ Bagley to author, 24 May 2011.

debriefed Greville Wynne on his return: former CIA officer John Hart mentioned an undated debriefing of Wynne in The CIA’s Russians (p. 73), but did not refer to the Zepp incident, so until Wynne’s debriefings are declassified by either MI6 or, as they apparently have copies of them, the CIA, it is impossible to judge whether Bagley’s recall of this story told to him by McCaul and the date of the conversation Wynne had with Penkovsky are accurate. It’s hard to think of any good reason not to declassify Wynne’s debriefings after half a century.

reported directly to Dickie Franks: No Other Choice, pp. 182–4.

as he later claimed: The Man from Moscow by Wynne, pp. 22–6. Wynne claimed a much longer history of cooperation with MI5, and a ‘Captain James’ who lunched him at the Ivy in 1955. Wynne’s accounts are highly coloured and contain several errors, but it may still be that he was recruited before Blake left the department.

‘retired KGB colonel’ . . . ‘Don’t believe for a minute that old story . . .’: Bagley, p. 154.

Penkovsky, espion pour la paix: directed by Nicolas Jallot (Betula Productions/France Télévisions, 2011).

made him listen to one of the CIA transmissions on his transmitter: transcript of interview with Alexander Zagvozdin, December 1997 for Cold War, episode 21: ‘Spies’, CNN–BBC, Liddell Hart Military Archives, London, COLDWAR: 28/125.

He went on to head the KGB’s German department: Barron, p. 226; Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, pp. 312 and 493, note 19; and the biography of Sergei Kondrashev on the website of the SVR.

the KGB had decided it was time: The Sword and the Shield by Andrew and Mitrokhin, p. 20.

Kondrashev told him that the KGB had known . . . ‘they had this covered’: Bagley to author, 24 May 2011.

‘In each case . . . sheer luck and hard work’: Spy Handler by Cherkashin and Feifer, pp. 260–1.

‘It takes a mole to catch a mole’: Bagley, p. 143.

‘willing to fight’: ‘The Soviet Missile Base Venture in Cuba’, 17 February 1964, CIA, p. 86.

‘known to the British intelligence organs’ and worked ‘with their knowledge and on their instructions’: The Crown Jewels by West and Tsarev, p. 160.

‘the BBC revealed’: ‘Tory MP Raymond Mawby sold information to Czech spies by Gordon Corera’, BBC Online, 28 June 2012.

several different versions of the story: Faulks, pp. 267–8.

‘Yuri Krutikov’: I can find no mention of anyone of this name in any source other than Faulks’s book, but several details point to this being Yuri Krotkov, a charming and sophisticated gay playwright and screenwriter who assisted the KGB in compromising foreigners sexually. It may be that Faulks’s sources got the name slightly wrong, or that Krotkov adopted a cover name similar to his real one for the purposes of this operation, which was a common KGB technique (Gribanov did the same, calling himself Gorbunov): it seems extremely unlikely that two men with such similar names and characters were arranging honey traps for the KGB at the same time. Krotkov defected to Britain in September 1963 – there is no indication that he revealed he recruited Jeremy Wolfenden, but it may have been one of dozens of such operations, and he might not have realised it was significant, or even remembered it. It could also be that he did reveal it, but that British intelligence either ignored or suppressed the information: apart from his involvement in the operations against Maurice Dejean and Wilfred Burchett, very little has been revealed of his activities, and Krotkov was employed by the KGB for nearly two decades. For more, see ‘The KGB In Action’ by Krotkov, The New Review, 111 (June 1973), reproduced in The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives, pp. 290–305; and ‘Testimony of George Karlin [Yuri Krotkov], Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary’, United States Senate, Ninety-First Congress, 3, 4 and 5 November 1969 (US Government Printing Office, 1970).

‘The nature of any entrapment . . .’: Faulks, p. 234.

remembered where all the pick-up places were: ibid., p. 250.

‘to go along with what the KGB asked him’; ‘have a chat with MI5’: ibid., p. 268.

‘debriefed by the Foreign Office’: ibid., p. 271.

‘anything that he would not want the KGB to know’: ibid., p. 269.

Wolfenden had been reading his post: ibid., p. 270.

the Russians had forced him to file it: Knightley, p. 386.

‘a hastily-compiled list . . .’: ‘Wynne Reprisal by Russia’ by Jeremy Wolfenden, Daily Telegraph, 26 September 1964. See Appendix E for the full article.

Wynne’s relationship with them was soured: The Man from Odessa by Wynne, p. 267. Wynne doesn’t seem to have realised that the threat of a boycott was never followed through.

‘already become famous as the place . . .’: ‘Russians Arrest Science “Spy”’ by Jeremy Wolfenden, Daily Telegraph, 12 December 1962.

‘their own version of what Mr. Wynne said under interrogation’: ‘Russia delays articles on Wynne’ by Jeremy Wolfenden, Daily Telegraph, 10 September 1964. See Appendix D for full article.

‘they gambled that any information he gave . . .’: Faulks, p. 269.

‘Nobody in MI6 would have trusted him to that degree . . .’: Miller to author, 30 August 2011.

‘The truth could have been less sensational . . .’: Janie Chisholm to author, 16 August 2011.

‘all the bits about us’; ‘You mustn’t talk because we have an English girl . . .’: Faulks, p. 274. Wynne had said in court that when he had delivered a package to Chisholm he had been told that a ‘young English nursemaid’ slept in the next room, and that she used to ‘go out with Russian civilians’, but the bald statement that she would leak information to the press was not made. ‘Wynne: British Spy Chiefs Duped Me’ by Martin Page, Daily Express, 9 May 1963.

SULIKO: entry on Krotkov in A Counterintelligence Reader: American Revolution into the New Millennium (vol. III), edited by Frank J. Rafalko, US National Counterintelligence Executive, p. 195.

the snaring of the French and Canadian ambassadors: Maurice Dejean and John Watkins. For more on those cases, see Barron, pp. 170–92.

the flat in Chapligin Street: ‘Testimony of George Karlin [Yuri Krotkov], Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary’, United States Senate, Ninety-First Congress, 3, 4 and 5 November 1969 (US Government Printing Office, 1970), p. 9.

A small room with a large oak desk: Faulks mentions in The Fatal Englishman that the KGB had an office in the hotel, and that Wolfenden was taken there; see p. 268.

Epilogue

a $213,700 ‘resettlement’ package: ‘Memorandum on resettlement for Greville Wynne’, 17 February 1966, CIA. Cited in Schecter and Deriabin, pp. 366 and 469, note 27.

‘substantial’ damages: ‘Mr. Wynne was questioned over libellous article’, The Times, 14 February 1967.

Whittingham flew out: Sylvan Mason (daughter of Jack Whittingham) to author, 18 April 2011. A decade earlier, Whittingham had been one of the co-writers of Thunderball, the first planned James Bond film, before it had become enmeshed in a legal quagmire – see The Battle for Bond by Robert Sellers (Tomahawk Press, 2008).

the Chisholms moved to the Sussex countryside . . . ‘. . . that was a surprise.’: Janie Chisholm to author, 30 August 2011.

Janet Chisholm died in 2004: see obituaries from The Times, 10 August 2004; Daily Telegraph, 6 August 2004; and the BBC, 12 August 2004.

Shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union . . . ‘. . . as a result of the stress’: Janie Chisholm to author, 16 and 30 August 2011.

CMG Moscow: Cowell in ‘The Role of the Intelligence Services in the Second World War’ edited by Andrew, Aldrich, Kandiah and Staerck, Institute of Contemporary British History Witness Seminar, 9 November 1994, p. 46.

Gervase Cowell also became involved . . . chairman of the Special Forces Club Historical Sub-Committee: obituary of Cowell by Phillip Knightley, Guardian, 16 May 2000.

‘I help the old to remember and the young to understand’: see http://www.our-secret-war.org, a website inspired by his words that captures oral histories of special forces veterans.

‘the only MI6 officer who had a set of verses in Japanese haiku format published in The Jerusalem Post’: Elliott and Shukman, p. 23.

Kisevalter Center for Advanced Studies: Ashley, p. 13.

Joe Bulik retired in 1976 and became a rancher: ‘Ex-CIA chief, Russian friend made spy history’ by Bill Briggs, Denver Post, 18 August, 1992.

fell victim to James Angleton’s paranoia . . . aged eighty-eight: ‘CIA Cold Warrior Paul Garbler: Won Payment Over Loyalty Slur’ by Adam Bernstein, Washington Post, 6 April 2006.

anything else wouldn’t have worked: Ashley, p. 228.