54 EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 115 2018Penkovsky, a Russian Army intelligence officer
who would go on to pass valuable information
to the US and UK. Some of the material
included false claims by Soviet leader
Krushchev about the number of nuclear
missiles the Soviet Union possessed at the
time of the 1962 Cuba crisis. Penkovsky was
arrested and identified Wynne as his contact
man who was given an eight-year prison term.
At his subsequent trial, Penkovsky was found
guilty of treason and duly executed, despite
covert attempts made by the Foreign Office on
the suggestion of MI6 to arrange an exchange
of sor ts. Wynne was luckier, he was released
in 1964 in exchange for Konon Molody, a
Russian spymaster who used the name
Gordon Londsdale.
Wynne would go on to
write a number of spy
books, including The
Man from Moscow:
The Story of Wynne
and Penkovsky. It
caused quite a stir at
the time, because of
its intimate por trayal of
the espionage
business. In one of his
books, he also said
Penkovsky committed suicide in jail. Other
stories from behind the Iron Curtain also
emerged about the end days of Penkovsky,
including one which said he had been burned
alive, naked in an incinerator for his crimes
against ‘Mother Russia’. This was probably a
story filtered to the media by the KGB intended
as warning to other would-be spies.
MI6 agent Oleg Penkovsky at his trial
KGB spy handler
Konon MolodyKonon Molody (right) with
exchanged spy Rudolf Abeluenter Guillaume, a deep cover agent
for East Germany’s Stasi, was one of
West German chancellor Willy Brandt’sT
SECRET AGENT OR ACTIVIST?he spy agencies of
Britain and Russia
would engage
again just a few short
years later after the
Penkovsky and Wynne
affair. In 1969, the
countries struck a deal to
release KGB spies Peter
and Helen Kroger from
prison early in exchange
for the freedom of
lecturer Gerald Brooke.
He had been jailed in the
Soviet Union for
distributing ‘subversive’
literature. The Krogers
were far more important
of course, they were part
of a group of five agents
known as the Portland
spy ring. They had been arrested for passing
secrets from the Royal Navy’s underwater
warfare establishment in Dorset.Many opponents of then Prime Minister Harold
Wilson, who had sanctioned the exchange,
were furious. They saw only one winner in this
case - Russia.
However, in later years
it emerged Brooke had
secreted concealed
documents including
some written in code,
to and on behalf of
operatives of the
National Alliance of
Russian Solodarists
(NTS). Founded in
1930, the group were
anti-Communist.Peter and
Helen KrogerG
AGENT OF INFLUENCEclosest aides. Guillaume was inadvertently
blamed for helping to topple the Brandt
administration - this after he was outed as a
spy in 1974. It was an action some former
contacts with the Stasi now acknowledge was
a “major turning point in the effort to infiltrate
the West German Government.” One sourcesaid, “having worked so hard to get him close
to the mechanisms of government, it was a
disaster to see Brandt go.” Even Markus Wolf,
the legendary Stasi spy chief said “it was
something we did not intend and certainly
never imagined would happen.”Guillaume served eight years of a 13-year jail
sentence (his wife also received an eight-year
term) before he was handed over to East
Germany in 1981, in exchange for captured
Western agents. West Germany’s entire
counter-intelligence ‘mindset’ changed after
the incident, causing a much more aggressive
policy in identifying Moscow-backed foreign
spies.As a sidenote to the spy affair, when the two
Germany’s were reunited, Guillaume sup-
por ted Wolf at his treason trial in 1993.Guenter Guillaume (right) with, West
German Chancellor Willy Brandtmerican journalist and Harvard
graduate, Nicholas Daniloff, was
Aarrested in Moscow by the KGB on 2THE KGB’S 24-HOUR RUSESeptember 1980. His reporting on Soviet
affairs had upset many in the Kremlin and the
KGB set about inventing a spy drama which
saw him accused of securing classified
papers and espionage. But there was alsoThe Kroger’s homeGerald Brooke