Following the arrest of Penkovsky and Wynne in October and November 1962, the CIA and MI6 became entangled in arguments about how best to save them from their probable fates – the death penalty for Penkovsky and a long prison sentence for Wynne. Both sides felt it essential to do all they possibly could to save them, if only to show their respective agents how much they cared.
The CIA wanted to send an anonymous letter which would be sent covertly to the KGB and GRU through British channels, threatening public revelation of some of the material passed to the West by Penkovsky. MI6 at first objected strongly to this suggestion but later agreed that there should be some communication with the KGB/GRU. However, MI6’s suggestion went much further: they wanted to threaten detailed exposure of several categories of Penkovsky’s material and to make an official approach through London representatives of the KGB and GRU. There had never before been direct contact with the KGB/GRU and the CIA objected vigorously that they could not condone official contact with any Soviet intelligence agency.
MI6 proposed, in that case, that they would go it alone and take official unilateral action including the possibility of declaring a substantial number of Soviet intelligence personnel in the UK personae non grata.
This, in turn, was unacceptable to the CIA, both for its very unilateralism, and the inevitability of equal or greater retaliation in a persona non grata war. They would, however, consider the use of a written communication alluding to the possibility of revealing facts given by Penkovsky about official and unofficial representatives of the KGB and GRU abroad. The CIA would also be willing to use a cleared British attorney ostensibly acting on behalf of Mrs Wynne to communicate the message.
Joseph Bulik and George Kisevalter, the CIA half of the team who had debriefed Penkovsky, were angered by the bickering. It was wasting precious time and all of the proposed actions, they thought, were unlikely to help Penkovsky and would not send a strong enough message to potential defectors.
In a joint memorandum to their boss, the Chief of the Soviet Russia Division, dated 14 May, they submitted an elaborate plan that envisaged sending identical letters to two KGB and two GRU Rezidents in Bonn, The Hague, Copenhagen and Rome. Four points were chosen to ensure delivery. Each letter said that similar letters were being sent to the other three places, which would dissuade recipients from ignoring them. The content of the letter was intended to embarrass the recipients. A photograph of Penkovsky with Chief Marshal Varentsov would be enclosed. They recommended that their plan ‘be carried out without any reference to the British, in the light of the Soviet statement that the CIA “does not give a hoot about the fate of their agents”’. They believed it would ‘in no way jeopardise whatever plans the British have for negotiating with the Soviets for the release of Wynne’.
The Bulik/Kisevalter plan was rejected by Angleton but the CIA and MI6 did make a joint effort to embarrass the Soviets and possibly save Penkovsky from a death sentence. The Soviets ignored them.