“The Courier” (2020)

The work

The film was directed by Dominic Cooke from a screenplay by Tom O’Connor. Greville Wynne is played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Oleg Penkovsky by Merab Ninidze.¹

The real case

Oleg Penkovsky was a colonel in the GRU. CIA historians explained in 1992 that his material was handled through two channels, IRONBARK and CHICKADEE, and that many evaluations of the Soviet missile threat drew on IRONBARK material.²

Randy Burkett of the CIA History Staff writes in ‘Studies in Intelligence’ (2022) that as early as January 1959 Penkovsky had decided to defect from the USSR with his family. In July 1961 he passed Janet Chisholm seven rolls of film – 350 photos in all – and two typed pages of notes; while studying at the military academy he transcribed 1,500 pages of data on Soviet rockets and missiles.¹

Penkovsky and Wynne were tried together in early May 1963. Penkovsky was sentenced to death and executed on 16 May 1963; Wynne was given eight years in prison, but on 22 April 1964 he was exchanged for the Soviet illegal Konon Molody, better known as Gordon Lonsdale (see spy exchange).¹

What is accurate

Burkett confirms that Wynne was already an MI6 contact, providing reports to the British service based on his business contacts. Penkovsky did indeed turn up with several pounds of documents copied from the Dzerzhinsky academy.¹

He considers the film’s central point to be right: Penkovsky can legitimately be considered the spy who helped save the world from nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.¹

What was added or changed

According to Burkett it was Penkovsky, not MI6 or the CIA, who approached Wynne and convinced the reluctant businessman to carry a large package of papers.¹

The film dooms to obscurity a real participant in the operation, Janet Chisholm, who received film from Penkovsky and delivered supplies to him. Burkett notes that it was she, not Wynne, who filled that role. Nor was Wynne involved in the attempt to get Penkovsky out of the USSR.¹

The film invents Penkovsky’s direct access to senior Soviet leaders. Wynne was arrested in Budapest by the Hungarians, not – as on screen – by the Soviets.¹

What remains unclear

The sources differ on the date of Penkovsky’s arrest. Burkett writes that the KGB poisoned him on 7 September 1962, that he was hospitalised and arrested soon after; French Foreign Ministry material gives the date as 22 October 1962 (see Oleg Penkovsky).^1,3