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Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky was a senior military intelligence officer working for the GRU in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. A joint operation between the CIA and MI6 was established, and Penkovsky would for the next 18 months, and with the help of ‘courier’ Greville Wynne, supply top-secret Soviet documents and information to the West.

For decades it was believed that the intelligence provided by Penkovsky allowed the United States to determine that the U.S.- Soviet missile gap was in its favour, discern Nikita Khrushchev's intentions in Berlin, and ultimately identify Soviet missiles in Cuba.

Few names have been as mythologized in spy history as that of Oleg Penkovsky. According to popular lore and even mainstream media, he is the "spy who saved the world" during the Cold War's most perilous moments, the Berlin and Cuban missile crises.

But in recent years, newly declassified information and the testimony of those involved in the Penkovsky operation on both sides of the Iron Curtain have told a somewhat different tale.

An alternate hypothesis suggests that Penkovsky's contribution to US and British intelligence and policymaking has been grossly exaggerated, distorted, and in some cases, entirely falsified. Some now believe that Penkovsky was in fact a genocidal maniac and a self-aggrandizer. Far from helping to avert a global nuclear conflict, he nearly provoked one.

Oleg Penkovsky was compromised by the KGB many months before his arrest. The unanswered questions that remain are, what happened during that time? Why did the KGB knowingly allow Penkovsky to continue supplying Soviet secrets to Western intelligence? Did they have a hand in what was being passed on, and if so, had Penkovsky become a triple agent?

As is often the case in matters of espionage, the facts are murky and the records incomplete. So, what then is the truth about the spy they say saved the world?

#spystories #coldwar #olegpenkovsky

Sources and further reading 📚: (affiliate links) 🛒:

📕 Dead Drop by Jeremy Duns - https://amzn.to/3ZX4Znx
📘 The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War by Jerrold L. Schecter & Peter S. Deriabin - https://amzn.to/3T6NGye

Other spy books you may enjoy 📚: (affiliate links) 🛒
📕 A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell - https://amzn.to/3xJ7M7y
📘 Wolves at the Door: The True Story Of America's Greatest Female Spy by Judith Pearson - https://amzn.to/3KpP9NQ
📗 S.O.E.: An outline history of the special operations executive 1940 - 46 by M.R.D Foot - https://amzn.to/3IjrhIO
📕 Next Stop Execution by Oleg Gordievsky - https://amzn.to/3oQPA7U
📘 The Spy and the Traitor by Ben McIntyre - https://amzn.to/3SniRVh
📕 Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century - https://amzn.to/3J1u1wC
📘 The Widow Spy by Martha Peterson - https://amzn.to/3GY0lh5
📕 Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda - https://amzn.to/3ZVT1LO