Codename Hero - Soviet double agent Oleg Penkovsky (175)

Welcome to Cold War conversations the home of real stories of the Cold War and they would breathe down the phone a number of times I think it was three times a hang up and then do it again, and that would be I've got genuine actionable intelligence that there is an imminent nuclear strike and they did get that call This is Cold War conversations If you're new here, you've come to the right place to listen to first-hand Cold War history accounts Do make sure you follow us in your podcast app so that you don't miss out on future episodes In August 1960 a Soviet colonel called Oleg Pankovsky contacted the West to offer to work as a soldier warrior for the free world MI-6 and the CIA ran Pankovsky jointly in an operation that ran through the showdown over Berlin into the Cuban Missile Crisis Pankovsky provided crucial intelligence including photographs of rocket manuals that help President Kennedy end the Cuban Missile Crisis and a Verta War Code named hero Pankovsky is widely seen as one of the most important spies of the Cold War We speak with Jeremy Dunes the author of Dead Drop also called codename hero in the U.S Which investigates exactly how the Russians detected Pankovsky and why they let him continue his contact with his handlers for months afterwards Described as thrilling evocative and hugely controversial the book blows apart the myths surrounding one of the Cold War's greatest spy operations Now I could really use your support to help me continue to produce the podcast a simple monthly donation via Patreon entitles you to the sort after Cold War conversations drinks coaster as a thank you And you bask in the warm glow of knowing that you are helping to preserve Cold War history Still not sure listen to one of our patrons tell you why they donate it to the podcast I'm Tim from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I support the Cold War conversations podcast financially because the great research and the quality of the storytelling Interested in helping us just go to Cold War Conversations dot com slash donate so back to today's episode I'm delighted to welcome Jeremy Dunes to our Cold War conversation Oleg Pankovsky was a colonel in the G.I.U military Soviet military intelligence during the Cold War Who acted as an agent in place for MI6 and the CIA most famously during the Cuban Missile Crisis and he's sort of known as one of the great Agents of the West Hand during the Cold War. That's that's basically the story How did he become disillusioned with the Soviet Union? Yeah, it was a long long process. I think the Soviet Union was really run on kind of nepotistic grounds and who you knew in social context and Pankovsky I think early on in his career in military intelligence really thought that he was going to be a big flyer And he didn't quite have the contacts and it didn't quite work and he really wanted to be a general And it didn't happen. He had a couple of dodgy moments early on in his career Where his card was kind of marked he fell out with a head of station in Turkey and his career had basically stalled And he kind of stewed on it and became sour about it and eventually decided that He wanted to work for the West and sort of blow the You know blow the whole thing sky high essentially Because I think his father fought for the white Russians didn't he in the Russian revolution He did and he felt that that had been held against him We don't really know what exactly was holding him back later on all that was a real reason But once he had come over to the West and had started feeding intelligence It's clear from the debriefs that he was very Embittered by this he felt that he'd been discriminated against he felt that others who were less competent than him You know, he'd been passed over. It's a sort of classic Story of you know, that's a classic ideology for a double agent that he he felt he'd been passed over But nevertheless he portrayed himself as You know ideological that it wasn't anything really to do with that that the real reason that he was giving all these secrets Was because he thought that the Soviet system was corrupt and and needed to be stopped and that Chris Jeff was a madman And all of those sort of things, but I think it's pretty clear that A major part of his motivation was that he had not been promoted To general essentially and he also had some strange ideas about how to overthrow the Soviet you know But we come on to the who's in a in in a little while How did he try and make contact with the West because I presume being based in the Soviet Union? That wasn't going to be the easiest job It wasn't and he thought about it for quite a while I mean he was you know, he knew more than most people that there was massive amounts of valence that the KGB were everywhere So eventually he he approached a couple of American students. This was in August 1960 And he'd kind of been looking at them for a while. They were on a two-week study program in Moscow and he watched them for a bit and then he decided these were you know He would try and get hold of them There was a whole range of people he tried to kind of Sound out and see if they were interested in in listening to him and Basically people were too paranoid because most people in the West had been told you know Any Russian don't trust any Russians. They could be working for intelligence You know, this could be a provocation So he had tried with you know Canadian Attache and all this kind of stuff, but this was the real breakthrough When he spoke to these two two students because they actually went to the American Embassy And told them about it and he had a letter That he'd given to them and that was his contact with with with American intelligence and eventually this did actually Lead to the CIA and and MI6 getting getting in touch with him was there some worry even with CIA and MI6 whether he was the real deal or whether it was a A dangle if I'm going to use SB and arch terminal actually Yeah, they thought it could well be a dangle They had had members of their station who had been recalled through honey traps and other other kind of provocations So they investigated it. There was a guy called Joe Buick a CIA officer who Basically tried to figure out who is this guy from the he left this letter where he had had sort of rather Um in quite a Russian elaborate style said that he you know wanted to work for he wanted to work as a soldier warrior for the cause of truth For the ideals of a truly free world and a democracy of a mankind, you know, and he kind of had all this stuff And he he'd also included in this letter um a few sort of tantalizing Things he had a map of a dead drop and he also had a photograph In which he had um cut his his own face out of the photograph, but there was um an American Colonel who um was was photographed in in the who was also in the photograph who they were able to identify So eventually Buick You know, he interviewed these students and he he went some distance to going round to try to figure out Who is this guy and they eventually looking through lots of Files figured out that it was you know, Oleg Pankowski who was a colonel in in military intelligence, and they decided that You know, this might be This might be worth um going ahead with um, the problem they had was that they really didn't have um This was all being done from Langley. They didn't have any real presence in Moscow The British did But they didn't and so eventually um kind of going down the you know, lots of different routes They came to gravel win who was a British businessman who had also Um sort of who Pankowski'd also tried to kind of approach It's a classic kind of case of where the Americans had um a huge amount of resources But the British had a kind of way in um is quite common in these kind of operations And if you read any John Licario of which is largely a lot of it is inspired by this operation It's a very familiar thing that the Americans had the money basically um to to set up the operation um But a lot of the legwork was done by MI6 gravel win is the is the character played by Benedict Cumberbatch in uh the courier Film was win trained as an agent in any way I don't think he was. I mean a long time after this operation He did claim that he had you know some sort of um early experiences, but I'm not sure how much we can really trust him as a source um Due to what happened in the operation He was he was severely affected by um by this operation He was damaged by it psychologically and his his um his life in some ways one could say was ruined by this operation So after it he wrote a couple of books and he made various claims about his previous previous intelligence experience But I he might have had a little bit, but I think really he was a bit of an innocent thrown into this he was um He was a reasonably successful kind of import export guy and he spent a lot of time In locations behind the iron curtain trade fairs and uh you know trying to deal with the with the russians and the europeans And it was at one of these that um that he met Pankowski So he was a sort of useful Link he was useful cut out and and one of the major reasons that he was was because he was he wouldn't be Suspected by the cage you be because he didn't have any obvious intelligence links prior I have actually got one of these books. I've got contact on gorky street. Yeah Um which I read some time ago, but obviously some of these books you have to take with a pinch of salt I would take that one with a few with a few pinch of salt, yes What sort of info was Pankowski able to hand over to MI6 and the CIA He had an enormous amount of information. So I mean the first thing was You know that it might seem to us now sitting here in 2021. Okay, he was a colonel You know in Soviet military intelligence But that's partly because you know of this operation and the influence it had of of you know Reading John the caray, you know in all of these kind of things at the time You know this was one of the biggest coups they had had and the fact that he was senior enough In military intelligence meant that he really did know the whole Soviet system and the whole intelligence system And so just from his own head he could explain to them all of the internal politics and all the inside You know maneuverings of of lots and lots of people in power exactly how how it worked He could explain to them, you know, what would what the plans were in the event of a nuclear war You know how the um the Politburo were planning to escape, you know They had a separate underground system and and how how the KGB kind of kept control over society What they bugged exactly how they did it? How they used bugs in their cars an enormous amount of information very very detailed information organizational information But then on top of that he took photographs They trained him to photograph documents and he had access to a lot of Classified material through a sort of special library that he gained access to claiming that he was writing an academic article And he's he just spent a lot of time Photography material for them You know a lot of it quite dry, but a lot of it extremely useful Including you know manuals for missiles which eventually led to the identification of the missiles on Cuba It did it did made me love reading your book that the CIA I think was suspicious about the quality of photos that Pankoski was taking and thought that he could possibly, you know Be working for for the KGB and these these photos are being taken by some KGB specialists So at one point when they met up with him in the West They asked him to take some photos of like five pound notes and and other things to Test out his ability and discovered that he he was really good at taking these photos Yeah, and also I mean that's interesting. I mean that that whole fear I mean you mentioned the dangle thing right from the start You know took quite a while took several four starts for them to take him on partly because of this fear and then even after they took him on It was constantly a worry, you know, is this too good to be true. You know eventually they concluded No, this is actually the real stuff. I mean that you couldn't possibly Construct all of this stuff. He was talking to them for hours and hours and hours as you say they tested him on the on the on the material In prompt to and you know whether or not you could take the photos and he was just providing so much information But of course it was a small group of people involved in this operation Then what happened is other people started doubting it is this too good to be true? How can you possibly know this? And as you know, you know they have to you know in espionage you have to compartmentalize your information So they couldn't tell everyone where they got it from because then it he you know it would be a security risk that perhaps if there was a leak Someone would be able to identify him So they tried to disguise his material in various ways with various different code names are used for it But the result was really at quite a high level people like yeah, but is this Is this real is this actually true? Can we what's the source of this can we trust it so In a way it demonstrates a problem that you can have It's a unique problem to have and is it in a way a luxury problem to have but you can have an intelligent source who is so good That it creates its own problems because people start doubting it and you start turning in on yourself As an agency and that definitely happened but during the operation and particularly after the operation those sort of Summersaults um that the security agencies were going through and sort of Now if you've listened this far you must be enjoying the show at least I hope you are The reason I say this is on the Spotify app you can now leave comments on individual episodes So do me a favor and hit that pause button and leave a comment It'd be great to hear from you and your interactions help push cold wall conversations up the Spotify rankings Whatever you do thanks very much for listening and now back to your episode The moments of doubt and then almost elation that yeah, we think he's okay and then Well actually this is An another element of of of doubt in there, but he did he must have seemed like An unbelievable gift with the level of information he he was giving them I mean they'd never had anybody like this before presumably prior to this point No, I mean they'd had a few that were sort of similar but that had gone wrong But I mean yeah, he did seem like a gift and it I mean another issue they had was you know keeping him sweet Because he was very temperamental. I mean as we've discussed you know his reason his motivations weren't entirely ideological despite his His opening gambit of a letter they were really Disillusionment and also he wanted payments, you know, he wanted A better life for himself and his and his family and he quite early on started talking about you know if you could give me a few diamonds that I could trade when I get back to Moscow and all of these kind of things and They were they were on a bit of a tyro because they could afford they could afford it But they they didn't want to seem too cheap They didn't and they didn't want to Annoy him so that he would you know get bitter on them. They needed to Establish trust with him And as he went on you know some of his demands. I mean, you know most infamously he demanded that he he meet with the queen You know, they obviously just could not introduce the queen to an active Soviet agent it was just was impossible to arrange that Even though there there was there was one looking after our art collection True previous one That's true she didn't she wasn't she wasn't aware aware of that but But yeah, so I mean they had to that that that was a really tricky thing because he really you know they were they kept sort of Massaging his ego if you like saying you know he needed to be reassured He was a great agent he was a gift, but he needed needed to be told this they needed to keep telling him it And they told him it succeeded and then he said well if I'm such a great agent You know presumably then the queen is going to want to meet me because You know one point they were they were having a meeting in a hotel room in London a debriefing and he said and he looked around and said one day There'll be a plaque in this room You know so it went to his head quite a lot And they couldn't they couldn't get the queen so they got You know dick white Head of MI6 to to come and so he sort of pretended to be an emissary from Mount Baton And Pankoski. I mean he he didn't like it basically. He wanted to meet the queen You know he wanted to meet Audrey Hepburn, so he was making all of these sorts of demands So he was a gift, but he was a difficult gift To handle The the thing that intrigued me and the one of the things I really like about your book is some of the details You've got in there, but when he first turned up he had this crazy idea about putting Low-year nuclear weapons in bins or around Moscow Yeah, and other cities as well I mean this is this is on the face of it Insana. I mean this is another problem that they had was that they had to distinguish I mean I said before that he had a lot of background information So he had a lot of knowledge just from being in the position that he was in But he also had a lot of ideas. He had a lot of opinions And it was quite difficult sometimes for them to Distinguish, you know, what's intelligence here and what's just this guy's view, you know So he was coming up with lots of stuff about so he's sort of he was obsessed with khrushchev and thinking that this guy was was a maniac And that he was heading he was taking the world towards You know nuclear confrontation But Pankowski's kind of idea which was coming up with some sort of yeah miniature, you know a nuclear bomb So you could play secretly in bins around Moscow, around KGB headquarters and so on you could just sort of destroy the whole of the Soviet Union in one fell swoop and I mean we don't have obviously, you know We have the transcripts of these debris, but I would have loved to have been you know Flying in the wall to see you know the MI6 and CIF was officers reaction to this because it's a completely loopy idea But again, you know, they had to he had a lot of loopy ideas. He he he came up with a lot of odd things And they had to keep a straight face they had to humor him they had to Sort of chive him along, but not so much that he would get irritated Um, you know, they had to squeeze a lot of information out of him. They didn't have that much time. They were meeting for three or four hours at a time Um, and dealing with someone who was quite volatile. So yeah, it was a tricky customer, I would say Yeah, high maintenance High maintenance. Yeah, absolutely absolutely One other thing that I was I was intrigued about was um that they agreed with him some sort of Procedure of ringing various phones in order to warn of a first strike if he thought the Soviet Union was about to Make a first strike with nuclear weapons Yeah, I mean this came about because of the Berlin war and Pankowski had Pankowski claimed after the war went up that he had actually had knowledge of it a little bit beforehand that he'd he'd been at a party and he'd heard discussion of it And so of course they said well, you know, why why didn't he tell us and the procedures they had because Of him being in Moscow and and the how complicated it was to put stuff in the dead drop and things like that They realized that it was too unwieldy It took too long and as a result they had missed that Early information about about the Berlin war going up with them. I'm not sure what they could have done about it But then they started thinking well, you know, what if things go really bad and you know, we we have some kind of first strike situation It's not enough that he just totals along to his dead drop and um then we Get us get a sort of signal in his window when we when we when someone goes past The next day on the way to the office, you know, we need we need some emergency procedure So they came up with this thing. There were two numbers one American and one British that he could call And they he would breathe down the phone a number of times. I think it was three times Hang up and then do it again, and that would be you know, I've got um, you know genuine actionable intelligence that There is an imminent nuclear strike and available and they did get that call The Americans and the British both got that call um But I think as I discuss in my book It's pretty clear that this was after Pankowski had been arrested and the most likely explanation is that Well that he'd been interrogated by the KGB and he had Probably given them this information telling them that it was a different type of signal And a signal that they would have wanted to test Um, and again, it's similar to the thing that you just mentioned which is the um, you know, bomb, you know, nuclear weapons and bins Which is that he basically wanted you know, just to blow the whole thing up They'd caught him and so that was the sort of that was his solution So I mean, that's a very very volatile agent you're dealing with both at the beginning and at the end of his career He essentially proposed and tried to you know create a nuclear conflict if you like But I you know, I am amazed by that because it you know He's a volatile agent and you're basically giving him Not the ability to new launch nuclear weapons, but certainly to Ratch it up You know the tensions between the Soviet Union and and the West Yeah, it's a difficult thing. I mean, I think they hadn't really thought it through that much because when it actually happened when the call came Um, they didn't act on it um the call that came to the American officer human Gomory He sent up the line and they thought about it for a bit and dismissed it Um, but when it came through to um the British officer I mean, he just thought no that's not you know, he didn't he didn't act on it at all Um, and I'm not sure really How they could have acted on it. I mean really would a few breaths down a phone Um, I have managed to have the power to have changed it. I don't know um, but I suppose Um, you know, the Cuba crisis was coming into view and they were just They were they were they were they were they were shaken by the fact that um, they had missed the Berlin wall thing And he was constantly. I mean, Pankowski was constantly talking about Um, nuclear war, Christophe wants a war um, and he's leading the world to to war and you know You could say that that was a pretty accurate description in some way um, so I guess um at some point they thought And also his his intelligence had eventually taken on you know, it had been accepted and it had um at a fairly high level You know, it was influential and so at some point I think they thought, you know, we have this guy, you know He's right there if he if he learns anything we need an emergency an emergency situation But yeah, it's a it's a strange. It's a very very strange Moment in the Cold War I would say yeah, and I guess you know, you've got to also remember at that time There was no satellite cover over the Soviet Union. I mean, there were the U2 Flight uh, which were obviously uh ended with Gary Powers being uh shot down, but um, they didn't have the visibility of like big troop movements Or anything like that during during this period. So I get I guess it's understandable And no hotline because I mean the hot the hotline was created because of the Cuban Missile Crisis So I guess this was their their version of a hotline, but yeah, it's a it's a crazy thing now Pankowski is able to travel to the to the west because he's part of various trade missions which is where the Western intelligence services are able to you know speak to him face to face and and Get him to download this information, but he's also passing information while he's in Moscow, isn't he? Yeah, so the problem they had there was um for most the operation as I mentioned earlier the Americans didn't really have any any presence there They had all sorts of trouble trying to do it and of course Moscow was the headquarters of the KGB There were I think 10,000 KGB You know staff in Moscow and if you were foreigner you were basically in a fishbow You know, you were just under constant surveillance the whole time. So how You know how to do it? So they tried a few things they they had ideas that he would sort of um throw through documents uh over the wall of the American embassy and this kind of thing Which didn't really go anywhere Um they had a dead drop behind a radiator and a block of flats which was Pankowski's original idea um But eventually they decided that um they needed some sort of um face-to-face thing and so rawrichism who was head of uh MI6's station um came up with this idea of using his wife um janitism Um they had young children she went out walking she seemed to be under very light surveillance uh who was suspect her So they had this this kind of ruse where she was she would go to the park on a Sunday and uh with the pram And Pankowski would wander up and he would sort of say what you know nice looking children you have and sort of chit chat a bit with her And then he would pass a box of sweets um as a gift for the children and she would say thank you very much And she would put it in the pram and you know hidden hidden in it were where the micro films and so they managed to do this um You know, I mean it's sort of weird when you when you start looking at the um the the declassified material You know you have a harry shurgold who was one of the MI6 officers his detailed instructions for this Um, you know a very kind of broadly say arrangements for receiving material from subject by the use of a lady Children and prams in a park will be passed to him via win or failing this through dlb mean in dead letterbox But you know the use of a lady children and prams. I mean it's a very inhuman way of describing you know quite a A bizarre and Fraught intelligence operation um, but they managed they did manage to um they did manage to do it They managed to pull that off. So that was that was one way um, they did it and there are various Other encounters that he had they they gave him sort of packs of cigarettes that he could use to put micro film in And there were parties at the american embassy and this kind of thing He placed uh micro film in a in a toilet system In the american embassy in Moscow at one point that was then recovered And I mean it's one of the things I found fascinating research in this was was really is no exaggeration How much they were under surveillance so um the british embassy was piping um, you know Through through they had speakers in every corridor that was sort of piping gibberish that they'd recorded to sort of mask their own conversations And in the american embassy They were writing things on it on a kind of etchous sketch pad So no one no one talked to each other. So they were they were paranoid, but I think probably rightly so Well, yeah, didn't they find a bug in the ambassador's Office that had been placed inside some piece of artwork that had been given to him Yeah, it was in a it was in a seal that had been given to them by some russian school children And they'd found that not long before so yeah, they were completely Paranoid about it and and when it eventually all came out. I mean I mean, in fact one of the one of the things a lot of the stuff that happened in the operation Pankowski had warned them about so one of the things he said in one of his very early debriefs is he said all restaurants You know, you can't meet in restaurants. That's why I've suggested a dead drop because the kgb Bugs them so any restaurant that any foreigner goes to the ash tray on the table is got a bug in it But regardless of this several months later he was meeting gravel win in a Moscow restaurant and at the trial they played you know Played a tape of the conversation that they had so you know a lot of the stuff that he and he also talked about bugs and cars and all sorts of stuff Like that. They're actually sort of you know was was shown by the operation Incredible incredible But I think by the end of 61 and and the middle of 62 Pankowski isn't the only source for Western intelligence because there's the kgb major Galitson Yes defects in December and there's a foreign ministry first secretary in the Senko in in May 62 Yes, and this is where the story got a little bit complicated because also around the same time you had a lot of paranoia in British intelligence because Burgesson McLean had fled and they were slowly getting closer to philby and You also had George Blake and his trial So the closer that kind of betrayal all of those betrayals came to the fore Those you know all of the russians Were also kind of put under the microscope even more especially in a Senko who became a kind of totally surreal wild kind of I don't know how to describe it Basically they went mad and they started seeing shadows everywhere and Goodlitsin had some theories no Senko had theories and they started sort of playing off each other and blaming each other and come You know and everything everything started to get very very complicated and before long You know what's towards the end? So I mean Pankowski was was was was discovered but um the aftermath of it was really quite brutal Because you really had decades of doubts about all of these agents And in in July 62 Pankowski spots that win his under surveillance I think me it was about to meet him in a restaurant which seems crazy particularly after his warning of the microphones in restaurants as you As you said before. Yeah, so he's obviously fearful of being under under suspicion We then sort of move into the the Cuba missile Period or is he is he arrested just is Pankowski picked up before The Cuba missile period reaches its height. He first sees Pankowski first sees Surveillance in late 61 And it is a man and a black overcrowded and he worries And he kind of disappears and he goes off the grid and the CIA and my six are not really sure what's going on And it's not until March late March 1962 that he turns up again He just suddenly turns up at a cocktail party at the British Embassy He passes a pack of cigarettes behind his back to a scientific attach his wife British scientific attach his wife which contains 11 roles of Minox film and a letter And the letter explains this Surveillance that he's seen a man and a black overcrowded and a brown saloon and it gives a license plate so he Basically says let's kind of put it on on ice for a little for a little bit Which they then do after this you then have Galitzin's defection the CIA then then caught up in all that kind of stuff they sort of Hello, I'm Craig Donald from Aberdeen and I support Cold War conversations with a monthly donation because it marries interesting historical content with fantastic storytelling Ian is a great gift as an interviewer. He knows his subject so that the conversations are meaningful But he also allows guests to tell their own story Cold War conversations is part of my weekly routine and I would urge you to make it part of yours Want to be like Craig and help to preserve these incredible stories of the Cold War As a monthly annual supporter you'll be able to listen ad-free You'll become one of our community get the sort after Cold War Conversations drinks coaster as I thank you and your bass in the warm glow of knowing That you're helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to Cold War Conversations.com/donate to find out more or follow the link in the episode information Have a little bit less contact with Pankowski for a few months. They they have a he turns up at a screening for a film at the British Embassy And then a few days after that the CIA and MI6 draft a joint letter asking him Does he have any concrete information as to military measures being undertaken by the USSR to convert Cuba into an offensive military base And they specifically want to know if there any plans to play surface to air missiles on the island And so this is really the start of The Cuba missile crisis. However, Pankowski is now off the grid. He just doesn't turn up at the next meeting And slowly the Cuba missile crisis starts happening without him And it's really right towards the end of the Cuba missile crisis On the final day we think that Pankowski they finally realized Pankowski has been arrested What impact does Pankowski have on the decision making on the western side for through the Cuba missile crisis? Because obviously he's provided a lot of information on the Soviet missile Capabilities, which must be really useful to sort of try and second guess what the Soviets are going to do The Americans had lots and lots of photographs of the Soviets made a parades But they also had the field manuals that Pankowski had photographed in Pankowski And while they were looking through all of this information they came across a photograph of the R12 Which was designated the SS-4 by NATO forces An M-R-B-M and Pankowski had provided them the manual for that and Checking this against the U2 images. They realized that these were the same things So that sort of kicked it off in the first place But then yes the information itself they think gave Kennedy A little bit extra time because he knew that it would take three days for them for the Russians to actually kind of put this into action So that gave him a little bit of breathing space. However, I would say on the opposite side In a way, I mean we talked about the volatility of Pankowski that he was already, you know as soon as he met the Americans suggesting blowing up Moscow and other cities And towards the end he kind of did something a little bit similar and I think In a way his he was constantly feeding his handlers a narrative of That Christophe is driving us towards nuclear war I'm not sure how helpful that was because they have to unravel the fact that Christophe didn't actually want to have a nuclear war That's not what that was not what his actual plan was Pankowski was constantly saying you know he would take you to the brink He wants to you know he wants to keep pushing you and the only way to beat this guy is to is to kind of Never stand down and I mean you know in a way that is what happened but in a way that was a very very You know strange thing to be suggesting and I think it through his intelligence fed into the way that Kennedy looked at it So you can see it in one way or another. I mean was it was Kennedy Who was acting more Kennedy or Christophe? I don't know and how much Pankowski's Narrative not so much as intelligence, but his actual opinions Seaped into the thinking. I don't know. I don't know if we really know at this point It's it's quite intriguing as to yeah, how how influential he he was In in that in that decision-making As as you said Pankowski was picked up or arrested just At the start of the Cuban missile crisis and then I think it's is it a somebody from the CIA goes to try and pick up something from a dead drop Yeah, they send a kind of they send a they send a junior officer to go and check and he's immediately arrested by the KGB That's a then they know then they know it then they know it's over and and when is picked up at a trade fair in Budapest as well Uh, which takes a couple of days later, but yeah, and then it's definitely over, you know There two main agents have gone. Did nobody warn when death because of these picked up a couple of days later Did nobody let him know that you know somebody might be feeling your collar? I don't know that's a very good question. No, I think I think that They basically This is this is probably you know An American was arrested Then they had to sort of you know, not not explain properly what had happened in the press And yeah, I don't know how they would have communicated to MI6 and how he would have communicated to win in Budapest But yeah, I mean, I I would imagine that I mean win was You know in the trial very bitter about MI6 He felt he'd been hung out to try and perhaps that that's a you know pretty rational and fair point to make, you know Your guy was picked up and no one warned me. He definitely felt aggrieved by what happened 11th of December Tasson announced Pankowski's arrest and the trial is May 63 only lasts four days Was wins defense? He was just an innocent businessman who'd been Lured in by MI6. Yeah His main defense was yeah, he'd been yordled or even tricked really By MI6 into doing it and he kind of went on a huge show Sort of denouncing MI6 which I think as I just said it was partly really you know He really felt that he'd been hung out to dry However, he kind of he didn't give away the whole game He didn't know their real names anyway, so he couldn't use the office's real names And he later claimed well, you know, what else could he could he have done, you know, this was this was This was the way out, but I mean there is some evidence that early on he offered to try to turn Pankowski for the KGB You know to work for the KGB but you know it's It's difficult to judge This man, I think he was He didn't ask to be in this situation. He wasn't a professional, you know, intelligence officer And he realized at some point fairly late on when he was in Moscow, you know That it wasn't it wasn't all a lag really that he was in serious danger when they came to the trial I mean he basically became desperate. He was desperate to survive So he said all sorts of things. I mean he gave all kind of outbursts Quite a few of which made the British press and quite a few of which he sort of had to live down You know for years later and try to explain why he'd acted and sort of retroactively come up with justifications for but the truth I think is that Like any of us in that situation. I mean you would say whatever you could you know, he's in the he's in the lubi anchor In the hands of the KGB. So I can't really blame him for that and You know, of course at the end of the trial he he was the lucky one if you like because you know, he was imprisoned Pankowski was not So so were you saying there that win offer to work for the KGB? There is some evidence to suggest that um, I don't know how I mean it's in it's in the book So you can you can gauge yourself. I mean one of the problems with this is who do you trust? But yeah, there is um, you know the the Soviet Officer who is in charge of the investigation has claimed in an interview that you know that this happened early on Uh, right and win win after the um after he you know came back to the UK. I mean he He sued lots of people for making claims about him um, and you know, he was a very He was a very unhappy man, you know, his his his uh Marriage fell apart and he he couldn't sleep and and slept on the floor and all this kind of stuff But he was traumatized by this so um, I and you know, that's afterwards But I imagine if you're picked up by the KGB, you know, it sounds sort of fairly glib You know, he's picked up by the KGB at a trade van Buddha pets But I mean imagine imagine that happening to you. Um, it would have been us utterly terrified So I think he probably just reverted to just trying to say anything that he possibly could To get out of it and as I say, I can't I can't really fault him for that No, I think I would probably be doing the same thing in that situation to be to be uh Honest um, yeah, have you how was win treated by the KGB? I mean what what sort of interrogation was he knocked about Or was it more psychological? He claimed, I mean, we don't You know, it's difficult to know that we he he claimed uh, I mean in his his book is Or his books have quite a bit about this and it's sort of Psychological some physical kind of, you know Suffering but it's sort of there's a lot of it about how you know how dirty he found them and how sweaty they were and you know Their cologne's was cheap and all this kind of stuff. Um, so it's it's very difficult to separate the kind of British stiff upper lip You know and kind of propaganda kind of thing. He's sort of presenting himself as a little bit of a James Bond figure and a little bit above It all who actually happened. I think he probably wasn't seriously tortured But you know, it would have been an incredibly grim. I mean going to any prisons grim going to the lubianca and he was sent to another prison out in the middle of nowhere Um, it would have been it would have been cold and grim and you know horrible And he never really fully recovered from it. I think Now he's he's sentenced to five eight years five years in a labor camp and Um, I presume three years in a prison But he is released after 16 months. I think the From what I understand the British government will worried about his welfare and his health And they trade him for Common molyty aka Gordon Lonsdale Who featured in our episodes 138 and 139 about the the Portland spy rings. So these all these all link together in the end and there's a um a classic exchange at uh, I think it's here Straser checkpoint in Berlin And what do we know about the fate of Oleg Pankowski? Well, he would shot basically. I mean, there's there's a an incredibly persistent rumour Um, that you know, he was cremated in the KGB filmdom and everything um, which is one of those kind of things that you sort of want to be true because it's so grizzly It sounds like it should be true But in my research, I think it's pretty clear that they just shot him um at the prison Because you know, there's a death, you know, certificate that says it um and You know, that's the easiest thing to do the idea that you're gonna you're gonna go through all of that is is a little bit unlikely and I and comes from a MI6 sponsored Propaganda memoir of a other defector um having said that they did go to some quite elaborate length. So it does look like Um, after they arrested Pankowski the KGB forced him basically I suppose by threatening his family to relive or or replay Everything he'd done So they got him to sort of sit at his desk and photograph documents and visit his dead drop and they got someone who looked like janitism Um to kind of walk along and they made a training film out of it um and you can tell that you know I'd go into this in detail in the book about why I don't think this is the real real surveillance footage But it's quite hammy and and they keep sort of cutting back and forth to the kind of brave KGB officers who are following him and And so they did go to some elaborate length. So I wouldn't say it's impossible that they they cremated him But I think it's extremely unlikely and often Razor says they probably just shot him in the prison One of the things We've not covered and there's a lot of detail in in the book So I do recommend you get the book because we're you know We've just sort of scratched the surface with what we've covered here But the big question that we've not covered which is Investigated at some length in the book is how penkowski was betrayed Yeah, I suppose this is the kind of uspear of my book or or the heart of it which which really comes afterwards I mean one aspect is the kind of propaganda war that kind of came with with the publication of the penkowski papers and another is the kind of You know paranoia and the mole hunt that that happened that we we talked about before with the whole atmosphere of Blake and Philby and The Senko and everything, but the other one is really that You know the story that the KGB have about how they caught penkowski seems a little bit too neat that they basically kind of accidentally stumbled upon him Through light surveillance and in the book. I've tried to propose Some various ideas about other things that might have happened including one sort of key Key theory about what I think might have happened And we're going to leave it there listeners leave you tantalized The book is called dead drop in the UK the true story of Oleg penkowski and the cold war's most dangerous operation In the United States, it's called code name hero. There will be links in the show notes Which will show a Link to the books as well as some videos of penkowski Now you wouldn't be listening to this podcast without the generous support of our patrons However, I want to especially thank our polypuro level members who are contributing a generous 30 U.S. dollars a month to keep us on the air They are Tony Sowards, Sam Hardwick, Nicholas Butter, Mark LeBans Jeffrey Jones, Matthew Comstock, Ryan Fleming, Frederick Esposito, Jack Madwed and Peter Ryan Don't forget if you like one of those cold war conversations coasters and help support the show Then head over to coldwarconversations.com/donate If you can't wait for the next episode please visit our Facebook discussion group Where listeners just like you continue the cold war conversation Just search for cold war conversations in Facebook Thank you very much for listening. It is really appreciated. 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