In the back seat were a jacket, hat and sunglasses. The information he provided on the Soviets . Dunlap was just another source they had to protect. During their visits, Penkovsky and Wynne would get out on the town, visiting restaurants, nightclubs and shops under the cover of talking business, with each man proudly showing the other around his home country. That Friday, Gordievsky received a cable ordering him to report to Moscow urgently to confirm his promotion and meet with the KGBs two highest officials. That the KGB ran a fourth mole is undeniable, Victor Cherkashin, a wily KGB counterintelligence officer, has written. When he began spying for the Russians almost a decade earlier, Ames was chief of the CIAs Soviet counterintelligence branch, entrusted with secrets that would be of incalculable value to the KGB. In 1961, jet travel did not allow someone to fly from the U.K. to the U.S. and back again in 24 hours, says West. During the 1960s, a corrosive mole hunt led by James J. Angleton, the CIAs counterintelligence chief, led to institutional paranoia, paralyzed operations aimed at the Soviet Union, and disrupted the lives of many innocent CIA officers who were fired or sidetracked in their careers. He drove across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. and entered Chadwicks, a popular Georgetown restaurant, where he handed the documents to a Soviet Embassy official named Sergei Chuvakhin. MI6's agent, however, eventually fell under suspicion, and was ordered back. It was surreal, like a bad nightmare, Andrei told me. He had lost a lot of weight. Their caution in this matter may have led to the missiles being discovered earlier than the Soviets would have preferred. Andrei Poleshchuk told me his fathers arrest was a disaster for his mother. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the. At least the timeline based on what Ames said when he was debriefed.If it wasnt Ames, then it was someone else, so we began to search for the source of the compromise, Wiser said. If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. [13], Penkovsky was arrested on 22 October 1962. The name of Oleg Penkovsky is not nearly as well known. They flew to New York and, with help from the CIA and the FBI, were reunited with Sergei at a motel near John F. Kennedy International Airport. Reiser was waiting in a car at the other end. Penkovsky was the highest-ranking Soviet official to provide intelligence for the West up until that time, and is one of several individuals credited with altering the course of the Cold War. The mole reported that Janet Chisholm, the wife of a British intelligence officer working in Moscow, was also active in collection activities herself. Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (Russian: ; 23 April 1919 16 May 1963), codenamed HERO,[1] was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. [20] The head of the GRU, Ivan Serov was sacked during the same period. In Russia, Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich PENKOVSKY, executed in Moscow 34 years ago is regarded as a traitor. Since Oleg Penkovsky offered his services to both the Americans and the British, the CIA and MI6 developed him jointly. pictures of the galvin family; springfield, ma city council candidates; what happened to penkovsky wife When Wynne visited Moscow in July 1962, his hotel room and luggage were searched, and he was tailed during his travels. Arrested? No, he was told, theyre here for you.. His real job was as a senior officer in the GRU, Soviet . A few days after Oleg Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow, the KGB flew his wife, Leila, and their two daughters there, and he broke the unwelcome news that they would not be posted back to London. Its OK. To be dead or to be alive was the question for my dad. One news account said he had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.). The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. They worked hard, shadowing British diplomats, to build up a "discovery case" against Penkovsky so that they could arrest him without throwing suspicion on their own moles. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life. It was in my fathers handwriting. Leonid Poleshchuk knew his first CIA case officer, who had recruited him in Nepal, as Joe. A large man let him in and flashed a badge. [2] On Varentsov's recommendation, he studied at the Frunze Military Academy in 1945-48, then worked as a staff officer. He just couldnt tell the truth. Oleg Penkovsky was a Soviet military intelligence colonel during the late Fifties and early Sixties responsible for informing the UK about the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba, to help build . An industrial sales consultant who regularly traveled through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union representing British electrical and steel companies, Wynne was told it would be helpful if on his next trip, he could arrange for a meeting with a state committee in Moscow dedicated to developing opportunities with foreigners in science and technology, and report back on his conversations. The films screenwriter, Tom OConnor, found Wynnes story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. Between April 1961 and October 1962, Penkovsky inflicted enormous damage on the Soviet Union. Both he and the Soviet leader. On October 29 of that year, just hours after the Soviets stood down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Wynne went to Soviet-occupied Budapest with a traveling exhibition of British industrial goods, against the advice of his MI6 handlers. [8] The KGB defector Vladimir N. Sakharov suggests Penkovsky was genuine, saying: "I knew about the ongoing KGB reorganisation precipitated by Oleg Penkovsky's case and Yuri Nosenko's defection. While Oleg was tried and executed by the Soviets, Wynne was sentenced to eight years in prison. In July 1994, Leslie Wiser, the FBI agent who unmasked Ames, flew to London to interview Gordievsky. "He came from a very humble background, but was always trying to better himself," says Cumberbatch. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. Oleksandr Marchenko told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: There is fighting in the city . Inside were three British intelligence agentsthe candy-bar man and two women, one of whom was Gordievskys MI6 case officer in London. what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child. Penkovsky informed the United States and the United Kingdom about Soviet military secrets, most importantly, the appearance and footprint of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile installations and the weakness of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile program. With the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994, it seemed that the mole hunters had found their quarry. It was the signal to launch his escape. He was senior enough that you could sit down with the agents for hours and explain the entire context of how Soviet intelligence worked.. This led to the publication of his dubious memoirs. I had no job. In all, Penkovsky had provided Western intelligence with about 140 hours of interviews and 111 exposed rolls of film, contributing to some 10,000 pages of intelligence reports. They were convicted of espionage. For a long time he resented the impact of his fathers CIA spying on his own life. He joined the Kiev Artillery School and became a lieutenant in 1939. These guys were in the foxhole togetherthey each had a secret that only the other man knew, says OConnor. But Ames always insisted to the FBI, the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee that he revealed no significant sources before his meeting at Chadwicks. Penkovsky was portrayed by Merab Ninidze in the 2020 British film The Courier, in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Greville Wynne. The same year, he said, they spotted the potential of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the assistant Soviet military attache in Ankara, Turkey. Penkovsky's espionage about Soviet missiles . After a meeting in Paris in September 1961, Penkovskys next trips were mysteriously cancelled at the last minute. The 23-year-old journalist had been working late for Novosti, the Soviet press agency. Wynne also enthusiastically embraced his role, enjoying the part of a daring secret agent where he could apply his salesman skills to a higher-stakes game. Poleshchuk was lured back to his fate. Because I knew it was a death sentence.. He underwent a debriefing by MI6 and cooperated with it and other Western intelligence services. Wynne and Penkovsky were both arrested by the KGB in November 1962, when some of the information their endeavours produced was of assistance to the West during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But his leaked information on Soviet missile capabilities and played a key role in President Kennedy'sstrong, successful stance duringthe Cuban Missile Crisis. His spying career was the subject of episode 1 of the 2007 BBC Television docudrama Nuclear Secrets, titled "The Spy from Moscow" in which he was portrayed by Mark Bonnar. Sooner or later they would arrest me.. He Had a Big Enemy", : , "Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence: X. In the morning, they took usmy mother, my grandmother and meand put us in separate black Volgas, Andrei said. Subsequently, a trade was exchanged after the British had a Russian government agent, Konon Molody, under his tutelage. Penkovsky's reporting of thirty years ago demonstrates that political and Economic failures were already eroding the foundations of the Soviet empire. He has a net worth estimated to be over $500,000. This photograph was taken in the hotel room at the Mount Royal in London in April 1961, after one of our meetings, where Oleg Penkovsky on the left and yours truly on the right enjoying a small glass of wine. Greville Wynne, a British spy who told in his celebrated memoirs how he pried loose some of Moscow's best-kept secrets and who served 18 months in a Soviet prison for His fear mounted. Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. Donec gravida mi a condimentum rutrum. Wynne was arrested and jailed as a spy The moonlighting spy was arrested on a business trip to Budapest in November 1962 and taken to the Soviet Union. Even though Wynne wasnt exactly a reliable narrator for what he did during his time as a secret agent, the materials he smuggled from behind the Iron Curtain were the real thing. Benedict Cumberbatch is known for bringing outlandish, extraordinary characters, from Marvel's "Dr. After a West German agent overheard a remark at Stasi headquarters, paraphrased as "I wonder how things are going in Cuba" he passed it on to the CIA. Battled mystery flu, fake crew cut facing Jodie Foster in 'The Mauritanian', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Wynne agreed, and during his visit to Moscow the following month he wound up connecting with Oleg Penkovsky, a lieutenant colonel in the GRU (the Soviet Unions foreign-intelligence agency) who was eager to leak high-level military information to Western powers. Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go. Never before had there been a Soviet spy like him.. Kent. Joe had become very close to my father and worried that some action by him, some error, had led to his betrayal.. Posted on . He was arrested by the Soviets in 1962 and executed the next. Welcome to the United States, one of them said. Cookie Policy For months, Andrei had been hoping his father would find him an apartment. From a Moscow railroad station, he made his way by train, bus and taxi to a point near the Finnish-Soviet border, where he hid in some grass by the roadside until two cars stopped. He was transferred to MI6 and assisted with the 1959 defection of the Soviet intelligence officer, Major Kuznov. Penkovsky never knew his father, who was killed fighting as an officer in the White Army in the Russian Civil War when he was a baby. In the Jack Ryan universe, he is described as the agent who recruited Colonel Mikhail Filitov as a CIA agent (code-name CARDINAL) and had urged Filitov to betray him to solidify his position as the West's top spy in the Soviet hierarchy. That happened several times.. Penkovsky was wounded in action in 1944, at about the same time as Varentsov, who appointed him his Liaison Officer. Alex Palmer She did, in 1991, but the strain caused by six years of separation proved too much to repair. Toasty. Penkovsky gave a huge amount of details about what missiles the Soviets had, how old they were, how there were queues for foodit was an extremely vivid portrait of the country and the people within intelligence, says Duns. Wynnes fabrications range from small to huge. He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them. After months of negotiations, the British government was eventually able to arrange a trade of Wynne for the Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale, whod been arrested the year before and was serving a 25-year sentence in England. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career. Meticulously documenting the wealth of information that Penkovsky provided, Schecter and Deriabin conclusively refute one of the enduring myths of the Cold War - that Oleg Penkovsky was a KGB plant. Penkovskys information, and Wynnes help in delivering it to British and American intelligence officers, would produce mountains of material, play a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and land both men in prison. He was like a walking dead man. President John Kennedy read it and understood. Occasionally the killer will opt to dispense with the coffin . He is the author of The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York. By 1960 he had become a colonel in the GRU and deputy chief of the foreign section of the State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research (196062), in which post his task was to collect scientific and technical intelligence on the United States, Britain, and other Western countries. what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter, what happened to oleg penkovsky daughter, what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and child, what happened to oleg penkovsky family, what happened to oleg penkovsky . He tried again, following the fallback plan, and this time a man carrying a dark-green bag from Harrods, the upscale London department store, walked by eating a candy bar. Wynne, despite claiming ignorance of what materials he was smuggling to the West, was sentenced to eight years in prison. In May 1963, after his trial, Izvestya reported that Varentsov, who had since achieved the rank of Chief Marshal of Artillery and Commander in Chief of Rocket Forces and candidate member of the Central Committee had been demoted to the rank of Major General. I could sense he had been tortured. Leonid was executed on July 30. Gordievsky never took a penny from MI6 until after he had defected to the U.K. His actions were motivated by a hatred of the tyranny of the Soviet system, and the degraded condition in which it. Cookie Settings, Liam Daniel, Courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. Updates? In Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky. U.S. counterintelligence agents have established that neither Howard nor Hanssen had access to the identities of all the American intelligence sources who were betrayed in 1985. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. He divorced his first wife Sheila after his return before entering a second failed marriage. Oleg Penkovsky, aged 44. a scientific worker, told the court that he had passed the information through the child to Mrs. Janet ** Anna " Chisholm, wife of Mr. Roderick Chisholm, who worked at the British embassy from May, I960, to August last year. The Soviets had arranged for the apparent good news to reach his wife through a friend and former co-worker in Moscow, who wrote to her in Lagos. A colonel in Soviet military intelligence, Oleg Penkovsky, was working for them as an agent-in-place, photographing thousands of top-secret documents with a miniature camera, and delivering the. American and British intelligence agencies believed the safest . The Spy Who Saved the World, by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, pp. A few months after the U-2 disaster, they had a breakthrough when a Col. Oleg Penkovsky approached them. The Cuban Missile Crisis. On that first day, Andrei pressed his questioners to explain why his father had been arrested. He was thin, pale and obviously sick. No child today is doing duck and cover drills or helping to build a fallout shelter. What neither the CIA nor Poleshchuk knew was that the apartment was a KGB operation. Sergei Bokhan was also separated from his family for six years. Dun s denouement is both startling and convincing a fitting climax to this irresistible real life thriller Francis Wheen, Mail on Sunday 'This excellent book contains lessons that are still valid in the 21st century' --Oleg Gordievsky, Literary Review 'This excellent book contains lessons that are still valid in the 21st . But as he began researching Wynnes story, he learned that this ordinary man could also tell some extraordinary lies. He did so, but nothing happened. He knew instantly that the cable was a ruse. "Most experts agreethat what Penkovsky provided on the Soviet's capabilities was extremely useful during the Cuban Missile crisis," saysRobert English, director of Central European Studies at the University of Southern California. Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents covers? Five days after Bokhan received the cable about his son, he took his wife, Alla, and their 10-year-old daughter, Maria, to the beach. Soon after they arrived in the United States, there was a ceremony honoring his father at a Russian Orthodox church in Washington. The burden of that is hard to imagine.. "He started as a nave amateur. In spying for Moscow on and off over 22 years, Hanssen revealed dozens of secrets, including the eavesdropping tunnel the FBI had dug under the Soviet Embassy in Washington and the identities of two FBI sources within the embassy, who were also executed. Terms of Use It was scary.. As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. He was flown to Moscow, imprisoned, and tried alongside Penkovsky, who it would later be learned had been arrested the week before Wynne entered Hungary. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oleg-Vladimirovich-Penkovsky, Public Broadcasting Service - Biography of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Oleg Penkovsky. Though a former colonel of the 'KGB' by designation, who was appointed "resident-designate" at the . The film seeshim arrested on a plane leaving Moscow and does not delve into his show trial for spying alongside PenkovskyinMay 1963. Oleg Gordievsky is a Russian-born former British secret agent. It is possible that Gordievsky, Bokhan and Poleshchuk fell under KGB suspicion through some operational error or communications intercept. He met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan, wrote a memoir and co-wrote a book on the KGB. For the following 18 months, Penkovsky supplied a tremendous amount of information to the CIAMI6 team of handlers, including documents demonstrating that the Soviet nuclear arsenal was much smaller than Nikita Khrushchev claimed or the CIA had thought and that the Soviets were not yet capable of producing a large number of ICBMs. "His clothes were sort of shrink-wrapped around this skeleton," says Cumberbatch, who spent three months losing weight and physically preparing to portray Wynne's final months of ordeal. He had been drugged. Would she ever live in the West? Gordievsky was told his London posting was over, but he would be allowed to remain in a non-sensitive KGB department in Moscow. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials. Terms of Use Penkovsky's American contacts received a letter from him notifying them that a Moscow dead drop had been loaded. During a trip to London in April 1961, the Soviet colonel held a series of . After some months, she was released. These events serve as the inspiration for The Courier, the new film starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Wynne and Georgian actor Merab Ninidze as Penkovsky, out in theaters on March 19. Within two weeks after his flight to the United States, he had a new name, a fake background, a Social Security number and a 9-millimeter Beretta. "And Greville played a big part in that.". Among the materials Penkovsky provided to Wynne were four photocopies of plans for construction sites of missile-launching installations in Cuba. But it was only a matter of time. He started having trouble breathing. Bokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. Long after the massive losses in 1985, the lingering questions still gnaw at their counterintelligence experts. His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the. In April 1985, he has said, he told a Soviet contact in Washington the names of two or three double agents who had approached the CIA but who were actually working for the KGBdangles, in intelligence parlance. He created his own computer consulting firm and dabbled in film production. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" star Rachel Brosnahan portrays CIA-contactEmily Donovan, who helps recruit Wynne in "The Courier." I will never forget the day when I got home and she was singing songs, melodies, no words, and looking insane. Ten agents were executed and countless others imprisoned. This gave American officials a clearer picture of what the Soviets were doing in the region, bringing in medium-range ballistic missiles. You are wondering about the question what happened to oleg penkovsky wife and daughter but currently there is no answer, so let kienthuctudonghoa.com summarize and list the top articles with the question. Oleg Penkovsky was arrested in October 1962. "Think about going back to life after that intense drama," Cooke says. Penkovsky approached American students on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow in July 1960 and gave them a package in which he offered to spy for the United States. We never drank too much, but we had to relax a little bit after one of our tiring meetings. Macintyre writes in the book. He was selected for the post of military attach in India, but the KGB had uncovered the story of his father's death, and he was suspended, investigated, and assigned in November 1960 to the State Committee for Science and Technology. The KGB took her to a sanitarium, where she was drugged and interrogated further. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. Oleg lives a quiet and unassuming life with his wife Vera (played by Maria Mironova) and their daughter Nina (played by Emma Penzina), who's about 5 or 6 years old. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Gordievsky's Wife was not with him live Former Colonel of the First Central Board of the KGB of the USSR, recruited in the mid-80s the CIA and worked for British intelligence, abroad called the largest Soviet "mole" after Penkovsky. Yet the secrets that the Soviet colonel passed on to the West helped keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from becoming the Cuban Missile War . When I found a job, the KGB called and they fired me. Thus began their fruitful relationship, one that involved Wynne hosting Penkovsky in London, who was visiting under the pretense of cultivate new opportunities in the West. Penkovsky had in the meantime become increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, particularly with the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. Omissions? Penkovsky never knew his father, who was killed fighting as an officer in the White Army in the Russian Civil War when he was a baby. His father, an avowed communist, served in the NKVD, Joseph Stalin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB. He asked it be given to Joe, with a message, Here is something from Leo. By the time Joe learned of the gift, Andrei said, his father had been arrested. In 1955 Penkovsky was appointed military attach in Ankara. The FBI declined to comment on whether the search Wiser began is continuing. Minutes passed. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. Cookie Settings, FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, John Hallisey / FBI / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images, Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. Top KGB officers had known for more than a year that Penkovsky was a British agent, but they protected their source, a highly placed mole in MI6. Peter Wright, a former British MI5 officer known for his scathing condemnation of the leadership of British intelligence during most of the Cold War, believed that Penkovsky was a fake defection. troops.[15]. He attended the prestigious Frunze Military Academy in 194548. [11] Former GRU captain Viktor Suvorov, who defected to the UK in 1978, later wrote in his book on Soviet intelligence, "historians will remember with gratitude the name of the GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. The emaciated Wynne's returntohis middle-class Londonhomewherehis wife and child waited made for a jarring scene in newsreels at the time. In fact, his contribution to U.S. intelligence and policymaking is exaggerated, distorted, and in several instances falsified. If it should turn out that the mole is no longer alive, the intelligence agencies would still run a damage assessment to try to reconstruct what and whom he might have betrayed. "Thistrue story is a very interesting, skewed way to tellingaticking time-bomb, spy-thriller.". They have two children, and he works as an independent research analyst for business and government contractors in Northern Virginia. From the day they talked, Wiser told me, we believed it was important for us to consider the strong possibility that Gordievsky was compromised by someone within the U.S. intelligence community., Wiser acknowledges that Ames may have lied or been mistaken about the dateAmes has conceded that he drank heavily before his meetings with the KGB. He had never told his wife that he was working for the CIAit would have put her in mortal dangerbut now he had to say something. When I came to Moscow, she left, he says, taking the children with her on a vacation. Penkovsky papers, they do provide a fascinating glimpse into the strange and distorted world of Communism in the Soviet Union. He had planned to write a memoir but died of malariabefore he could begin. Thus, Gordievsky was born, as it were, "into the KGB," in 1938 in Moscow. Penkovsky's father might have fled to the West rather than have died of typhus as Penkovsky had previously reported, the KGB prohibited Penkovsky from assuming his post in New Delhi but permitted him to remain in the GRU after his mother submitted a statement detailing her family's ignorance of her husband's fate.28 Oleg Penkovsky was a Soviet military intelligence colonel during the late Fifties and early Sixties responsible for informing the UK about the Kremlin's emplacement of missiles in Cuba. After Gordievsky escaped, a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to death in absentia. The operation was the most productive classic clandestine operation ever conducted by the CIA or MI6 against the Soviet target, as Schecter and Deriabin put it, and key to its success was the mustachioed courier with no prior intelligence experience. At first I couldnt even recognize him, Andrei said. His boyhood nickname, back on a collective farm in Ukraine, was Mole. Now a stocky, powerfully built man of 43, he had been working for the GRU for 16 yearsand feeding Soviet secrets to the CIA for 10. But the CIA and FBI debriefers soon recognized a glaring anomaly in Ames account: It was clear that those three agents had fallen under suspicion in May 1985before Ames insists he handed over the documents. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Before Leonid Poleshchuk left Lagos, he had asked the CIA for $20,000 to buy the apartment that was supposedly waiting for him. Wright noted that, unlike Igor Gouzenko and other earlier defectors, Penkovsky did not reveal the names of any Soviet agents in the West but only provided organisational detail, much of which was known already. The BBC produced a TV movie based on them. The documents provided by Penkovsky showed that the Soviet Union was not prepared for war in the area, which emboldened Kennedy to risk the operation in Cuba.