The true story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold War’s most dangerous operation
My version: Paperback
Genre: Non-Fiction, Espionage, Russia, Great Britain, U.S.A.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster U.K.
First published: 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84983-929-7
Pages: 258 (plus author’s note, appendix, notes, select bibliography, index)
Bought
From the cover:
In August 1960, a Soviet colonel called Oleg Penkovsky tried to make contact with the West.
His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. He handed them a bulky envelope and pleaded with them to deliver it to the American embassy. Inside was an offer to work as a ‘soldier-warrior’ for the free world. MI6 and the CIA, ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through the showdown over Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He provided crucial intelligence, including photographs of rocket manuals that helped Kennedy end the Cuba crisis and avert a war.
Codenamed HERO, Penkovsky is widely seen as the most important spy of the Cold War, and the CIA-MI6 operation, run as the world stood on the brink of nuclear destruction, has never been bettered.
But how exactly did the Russians detect Penkovsky, and why did they let him continue his contact with his handlers for months afterwards?
Could it be that the whole Cuban Missile Crisis was part of a Soviet deception operation – and has another betrayal hidden in plain sight all these years?
Thrillin, evocative and hugely controversial, Dead Drop blows apart the myths surrounding one of the Cold War’s greatest spy operations.
Absolutely supreb book. Not much more to be said about it really. But I’ll have a go…
If you’ve seen the 2020 film The Courier, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, you’ll know some of the background to what is going on here.
Oleg Penkovsky was a Soviet colonel who served as a high-level spy for the United States and Britain during the Cold War. He provided the West with a wealth of information about Soviet military capabilities and plans, including the existence of the highly secret SS-9 missile, which was capable of reaching the United States.
Penkovsky was born in 1919 in Odessa, Ukraine. He joined the Soviet Air Force in 1939 and rose through the ranks to become a colonel in the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. In 1961, he began to pass classified information to the United States and Britain through a contact in the British embassy in Moscow.
Penkovsky’s information was extremely valuable to the West. He provided details of the Soviet military buildup, including the development of new weapons systems, the deployment of troops, and the planning of military exercises. He also provided information about Soviet nuclear weapons programs and the Soviet leadership’s intentions towards the West.
Penkovsky’s espionage activities were discovered by the KGB in 1962. He was arrested and tried in a secret trial, where he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. He was executed on May 19, 1963.
Penkovsky’s death was a major blow to Western intelligence. However, his information had a significant impact on the Cold War. It helped to convince the Kennedy administration of the need to increase its military spending and to take a firmer stand against the Soviet Union. It also helped to lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis, a confrontation that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Penkovsky’s legacy is complex. He was a traitor to his country, but he also provided vital information to the West that helped to prevent a war. He is a reminder of the dangers of espionage, but also of the importance of intelligence gathering in a world where nuclear weapons are a threat to humanity.
Given that you know Oleg Penkovsky dies at the end (or before the end actually, but you know what I mean) when you start the book, it is still full of tension and danger, on a parr with the (fictional) assassination of De Gaulle in The Day Of The Jackal. The writing is pretty much perfect all the way through, shrewd and to the point, I could clearly see Jeremy Duns’ journalistic background at work. The risks Penkowski took, were enormous, why did he take them? He wanted to get out, but the US wanted him in. The Soviets weren’t that keen on letting him go either, obviously. Jeremy Duns presents him here sympathetically, but always objectively. Of course, Duns has hindsight on his side, but never seems to use things that have come out subsequently, against Penkovski. Of course you want him to get away with it, of course you want him to live happily ever after in some CIA safe house somewhere, but also you know that that really is never going to be on the cards with such a high profile member of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
A remarkable piece of work, very readable, intreguing and satisfying. I really cannot praise this book highly enough.
Couldn't I Just Tell You 