Oleg Penkovsky

GRU officer

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to Britannica, he was born on 23 April 1919 in Vladikavkaz. By 1960 he had become a colonel in the GRU, and in 1960–1962 he was deputy chief of the foreign section of the State Committee for the Coordination of Scientific Research.⁴

A source for the West

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to Britannica, in April 1961, through the British businessman Greville Wynne, he offered his services to British intelligence. Between April 1961 and August 1962 he passed on more than 5,000 photographs of classified military, political and economic documents.⁴

CIA historians publishing documents on the Cuban missile crisis in 1992 explained that Colonel Penkovsky’s material was handled through two special channels: IRONBARK for documents and CHICKADEE for other information. Many evaluations of the Soviet missile threat drew on IRONBARK material.²

The State Department’s documentary series (FRUS) explains that one such evaluation was codenamed Iron Bark precisely because it drew on material from this important Soviet CIA source.³

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesThe International Spy Museum in Washington writes that Penkovsky copied documents with a Minox camera and that during the Cuban missile crisis his information told the CIA whether the Soviet missiles were operational. The museum displays a lead box used for his film; the lead prevented it from being X-rayed.⁵

Arrest and death

The KGB arrested him on 22 October 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963 he was tried and executed, according to French foreign ministry material from the diplomatic archives in Nantes.¹

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to Britannica, he was put on trial for treason in May 1963 and sentenced to death; an official Soviet announcement said he was executed on 16 May 1963.⁴