Oleg Gordievsky - Knowledge

175: 183: 79: 515:, however, stated that "After six weeks of questioning Ames ... the FBI and CIA remain baffled about whether Ames or someone else first warned the Soviets about Gordievsky". An FBI report later stated that Ames had not advised the Soviets about Gordievsky until 13 June 1985; by that time, Gordievsky was under KGB surveillance but he had not yet been charged with treason as of 19 July 1985 when MI6 agents began the process of his escape. Nevertheless, biographer 636: 471:(PET, Danish Security Intelligence Service) but his three-year stint ended and he returned to Moscow before making any direct contact. By the time he arrived again in Copenhagen in October 1972 for a second three-year stint, both the PET and MI6 – which had been tipped off by one of Gordievsky's old university friends – felt he was a persuadable agent. MI6 subsequently made contact with Gordievsky, and began running him as a double agent in 1974. 421:, a step he viewed as "nothing less than undermining the Soviet system". MI6 gave him the codename SUNBEAM. His second posting to Denmark ended in 1978, and he was recalled to Moscow – this time for a lengthy period because he quickly divorced his wife and married a woman he had been having an affair with, and the KGB frowned upon affairs and divorces as immoral. During this Moscow period, it was too risky for him to send any information to MI6. 436:) in London at the Soviet embassy. He was suddenly summoned back to Moscow via a telegram on 16 May 1985. MI6 allowed him to make his own decision whether to immediately defect to the UK and live thenceforth in secrecy under their protection, or to go to Moscow with the understanding that he could be interrogated, tortured, or killed if the KGB suspected his betrayal. Gordievsky felt, given the huge benefits MI6 would reap if he remained 1961: 447:. After returning to Moscow on 19 May 1985, Gordievsky was drugged and interrogated, but not yet criminally charged; instead he was placed in a non-existent desk job in a nonoperational department of the KGB. Under increasing surveillance and pressure in Moscow and seriously suspected of being a double agent, in July 1985 he managed to send a pre-arranged covert signal to MI6 to be rescued. 825:; he refused to identify the associate, saying British authorities had advised against it. Gordievsky accused MI6 of trying to suppress the incident from being known. "I realised they wanted to hush up the crime," he remarked. "There has been accusation and counter-accusation. If they are saying I am not affected by the poison, why did I spend two weeks in hospital?" 425:

also steadily banished his direct superiors back to Moscow on trumped-up charges so that Gordievsky took their place. He continued to provide secret documents and information to MI6. While in London, his MI6 code name was NOCTON. The CIA – told of MI6's high-level informant but not his name or position – gave him the codename TICKLE.

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Gordievsky was suddenly ordered back to Moscow in mid May 1985, a few weeks after he had been promoted to KGB station chief in London. Although MI6 allowed him the option to instead defect and stay in London under their protection, on 19 May 1985 he left for Moscow. After his arrival, he was taken to

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After he learned to speak English and lobbied heavily for a position that opened up in London, the KGB posted Gordievsky to London in June 1982. He steadily advanced in rank there with the help of secret aid and manipulation by MI6, which handed him abundant non-damaging information and contacts; MI6

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a KGB safe house outside Moscow, drugged, and interrogated. He was questioned for about five hours. After that, he was released and told that he would never work abroad again. He was suspected of espionage for a foreign power, but his superiors stalled on taking any overt further action against him.

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agent: "Why is it they are speaking about Roger Hollis, such nonsense, can't understand it, it must be some special British trick directed against us". The allegiance of Hollis remains a debated historical issue; the MI5 official website has cited Gordievsky's revelation as a vindication of Hollis.

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at the time of his escape. She was interrogated and detained for some six years, the Soviets presuming (wrongly) that she had been complicit in Gordievsky's activities. However, the marriage was effectively dead by then and eventually it foundered completely. It was reported in 2013 that Gordievsky

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Although he almost certainly remained under KGB surveillance, Gordievsky managed to send a covert signal to MI6, which activated the elaborate escape plan, Pimlico, that had been in place for many years for just such an emergency. He waited on a particular street corner, on a particular weekday at

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The value of MI6's recruitment of such a highly placed intelligence asset increased dramatically when, in 1982, the KGB posted Gordievsky to London, and he rose through the ranks there, gaining the ability to access higher and higher levels of Soviet secrets, which he passed easily to MI6 via a

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gave a "full account", which he said had been provided to him by Gordievsky shortly after Foot's death, of the extent of Foot's alleged KGB involvement. Moore also wrote that, although the claims are difficult to corroborate without MI6 and KGB files, Gordievsky's past record in revealing KGB

1433:... my own view, shared by the majority of those involved in the case, that during his first meeting with the KGB in Washington, Ames provided sufficient information to prompt the investigation by Viktor Budanov and trigger Gordievsky's recall, but not enough to justify his detainment. 851:, on the Smithsonian Channel in the US, streaming on various cable services. The episode, "The Man Who Saved The World", recounts the "years-long effort by Gordievsky to pass Soviet intelligence to the British, all but preventing a nuclear Armageddon between the Soviet Union and the West". 528:

An elaborate escape plan from the USSR had been already devised for Gordievsky by MI6 in 1978, when the KGB called him back to Moscow for a few years after his second three-year stint in Copenhagen. The escape plan was code-named "Operation Pimlico", and was devised by an MI6 officer named

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and most people involved in the Gordievsky case believe that during his first visit with the KGB in Washington in early May 1985, Ames provided sufficient information to prompt an investigation by Colonel Viktor Budanov, the KGB's top investigator, and trigger Gordievsky's recall.

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Following his exfiltration from the USSR to the UK in 1985, he became of even greater use to the West, in that information he would disclose or had previously disclosed could be immediately acted upon and shared without endangering his life, identity, or position.

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as the Soviet heir-apparent long before he came to prominence. Indeed, the information passed by Gordievsky became the first proof of how worried the Soviet leadership had become about the possibility of a NATO nuclear first strike.

873:, which examined Gordievsky's vital work for British Intelligence, stopping Operation Able Tracer, helping NATO build peaceful relationships with Mikhail Gorbachev, and Gordievsky's dramatic escape from the Russian/Finland border. 1209: 507:, the British would not reveal their source, so the CIA had conducted a covert operation to discover who the source was. After about a year, they realized that it must be Gordievsky. Soon a high-ranking American CIA officer, 270: 2045: 608:

Gordievsky's exfiltration greatly embarrassed both the KGB and the Soviet Union and resulted in disruptions by Viktor Babunov, the KGB's chief of counterintelligence, within the KGB including

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in August 1968, and began sending covert signals to Danish and British intelligence agents and agencies that he might be willing to cooperate with them. In 1974 he agreed to pass secrets to

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Two of Gordievsky's most important contributions were averting a potential nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, when the Soviets misinterpreted the NATO exercise

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to drop its early investigations into his allegations; according to him, the investigation was only reopened due to the intervention of former MI5 Director General

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of the embassy, that he was being encouraged by MI6 to return to Moscow as ordered, and decided on that; MI6 began to revive a plan to extricate him if necessary.

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border. There he was met by British embassy cars, after they managed to lose the three KGB surveillance cars following them. Lying down in the boot (trunk) of a

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in Finland, as well as numerous members of the Leningrad KGB, which was responsible for surveillance of British subjects, and numerous persons close to

592:, a sentence never rescinded by post-Soviet Russian authorities, but which could not be legally carried out because of Russia's then-membership in the 398:. The building of the wall appalled him, and he became disillusioned with the Soviet system. After spending a year in Berlin, he returned to Moscow. 359:(the Soviet secret police and precursor to the KGB), Gordievsky was born in 1938. He proved an excellent student at school, where he learned to speak 367: 2010: 817:

In Gordievsky's opinion, the culprit was a UK-based Russian business associate who had supplied him with pills, which he said were the sedative

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on the ground, causing the dogs to flee. Gordievsky was flown to the UK via Norway; in the UK, his MI6 codename was changed to OVATION.

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Gordievsky has written a number of books on the subject of the KGB and is a frequently quoted media pundit on the subject.

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On 19 July 1985, Gordievsky went for his usual jog, but he instead managed to evade his KGB tails and boarded a train to

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In April 2008, the media reported that on 2 November 2007, Gordievsky had been taken by ambulance from his home in

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During his first Danish posting, Gordievsky became disenchanted with his work in the KGB, particularly after the

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Unbeknownst to him, Gordievsky had been betrayed in early May (or early June 1985 at the latest) by CIA officer

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Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer: the True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames

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after the newspaper alleged, in articles derived from claims in the original manuscript of Gordievsky's book

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in July 1985 under a plan code-named Operation Pimlico. The Soviet Union subsequently sentenced him to

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Gordievsky lived for years in a "safe house" in London, and security has been tightened since the

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named "Operation Pimlico" shows the story of Gordievsky's extraction from Moscow orchestrated by

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in recognition of his outstanding service to the security and the safety of the United Kingdom.

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to a local hospital, where he spent 34 hours unconscious. He claimed that he was poisoned with

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De Røde Spioner – KGB's operationer i Danmark fra Stalin til Jeltsin, fra Stauning til Nyrup

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Biographer Ben Macintyre summarizes Gordievsky's life, career, and escape from the USSR

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More Instructions from the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975–85

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On completion of his studies, Gordievsky joined the foreign service and was posted to

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On 26 February 2005, he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by the

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Instructions from the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975–85

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express surprise at the allegations that he read in a British newspaper about

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was in a long-term relationship with a British woman he had met in the 1990s.

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Although MI6 had passed on information provided by Gordievsky to the American

1994: 1927: 1876: 1525: 1420: 1326: 1111: 1005: 834: 787: 609: 516: 410: 182: 1273:"Thirty years later, we still don't know who betrayed these Cold War spies"" 1030: 2055: 1935: 1902: 1561: 847: 733: 717: 694: 674:(1995), that Foot was a KGB "agent of influence" with the codename 'Boot'. 661: 613: 597: 538: 508: 444: 429: 335: 312: 174: 117: 113: 1557:"Gordievsky: Russia has as many spies in Britain now as the USSR ever did" 1145:"The Spy and the Traitor review – a gripping tale of escape from the USSR" 78: 572: 565: 395: 391: 767:

Work in recent years included being a consultant editor for the journal

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Gordievsky said that the KGB were puzzled by and denied the claim that

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