Video: George Blake is a secret agent of two intelligence services, who received 40 years in British prison and a pension of the KGB of the USSR
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Scout George Blake turned 95 a few days ago. According to his biography, you can safely shoot an exciting film. The MI6 agent, recruited by Soviet intelligence and sentenced to 42 years in the UK, is considered one of the most interesting figures in espionage history.
George Blake (George Behar) was born on November 11, 1922. His father was an Egyptian of Jewish descent and his mother was Dutch. At the beginning of World War II, 17-year-old George was taken prisoner by Germany, but soon escaped from there and joined the ranks of the Resistance in Holland. In 1943, he decided to move to the UK and changed his last name Behar to Blake. An overly active guy joined the British intelligence service MI6.
When World War II ended, it was replaced by the Cold War, so secret agents had to learn Russian. For this, George Blake was sent to study at Cambridge.
In 1948, the spy went to Korea. His task was to create an agent network in the Soviet Primorye. At the same time, war broke out between South and North Korea. When the North Korean secret services learned that Blake was a British agent, he was immediately sent to prison.
In the spring of 1951, George Blake was given three books from the Soviet embassy: Lenin's State and Revolution, Marx's Capital, and Stevenson's Treasure Island. So the KGB was preparing the ground for the recruitment of foreign agents. The Briton agreed to be recruited. He later claimed that he came to this decision himself without pressure. Even British intelligence admitted that Blake was an "ideological" spy.
After 3 years of imprisonment in 1953, George Blake returned to London. His code name was Homer. Blake was appointed deputy head of the department, whose task was to wiretap military communications in Austria. It was decided to repeat the same scheme in Berlin. A tunnel had to be dug to connect to Soviet telephone cables. When the connection took place, Moscow was already ready for this, since Blake transmitted the necessary information. The British began to listen not to secret negotiations, but to disinformation.
All this time, intelligence information was duplicated and sent not only to London, but also to Moscow. Practically all movements of British agents in Germany were controlled by Soviet intelligence officers. Thanks to Blake's activities, double agents were arrested, Lieutenant Colonel of the GRU Pyotr Popov and Lieutenant General "Stasi" Bialek. In 1956, in order not to declassify Blake, the Soviet special services "accidentally" discovered a tunnel with cables. There was a huge scandal.
In 1961, George Blake was betrayed by the Polish spy Mikhail Golenievsky. He was recruited by the Americans. The secret documents that Golenievsky took with him indicated that Berlin was a Soviet source of information. George Blake was among the recipients of this document. During a 3-month investigation, it became clear that this source was Blake himself.
After the arrest and interrogation, the agent confessed that he really worked for the USSR, and that he did it out of ideological convictions, and not because of money or blackmail. In May 1961, the court sentenced Blake to 42 years in prison.
The spy was sent to Wormwood Scrubs Prison. There he developed friendly relations with the Irish, who helped him to escape. It was a sensation. There were headlines on the front pages of how the KGB agents helped Blake, but they really had nothing to do with it.
While escaping, George Blake, jumping from a 7-meter wall, broke his arm. Friends took him in a semi-faint state to the apartment and there they secretly treated him for two months. By the way, the apartment where Blake was hiding was practically next to the prison. No one expected such insolence from him, so the agents combed the distant areas. On January 7, 1967, the spy flew to Hamburg, and from there he moved to Moscow.
In the Soviet Union, George Blake, who became Georgy Ivanovich Bekhter, was given a 4-room apartment and a dacha, and a KGB officer's pension was assigned. In 1990, the former agent published his autobiography No Other Choice. When Blake is accused of betrayal, he replied that he never felt British, because his roots are completely different:
Scouts are those people who are called heroes in some countries and traitors in others. These 5 most famous secret agents became legends of world espionage.
Recommended:
For which the legendary swindler Vanka Sly, who lived for 100 years, received 93 years in prison
Under the USSR, there were both thieves and bandits. There is one among them, which was considered the most incorrigible in the entire period of Soviet forensic history. This is Ivan Petrov, who bore the nickname Vanka Sly. The criminal had a flexible mind and special abilities that allowed him to deceive people and carry out grandiose scams. Fortunately, in all his life of crime, Sly has never shed human blood. Read in the material about the life and criminal "exploits" of Ivan Petrov
KGB VS CIA: What intelligence secrets during the Cold War of the two countries are known today
The arms race between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War forced both sides to intensify not only technological development, but also intelligence. The latter also required a very serious investment. Moreover, both scientific and financial. Considering the love of the Soviet side for military cunning and the principle "in war, all means are good" sometimes among the developments there were not only miracles of engineering, but also very funny little things. So what were the Soviet intelligence officers armed with?
How the USSR secret services managed to deploy an agent network in the heart of Great Britain: "The Cambridge Five"
It was one of the most high-profile spy stories of the last century. British intelligence services have long had a reputation for being reliable, efficient, and virtually impeccable. But there are also crushing failures on their account. The most significant was the defeat in the confrontation with the USSR, when five British representatives of high society neglected such a concept as loyalty to the homeland and became agents of Soviet intelligence. Moreover, it was not blackmail or big money that prompted them to do this, but ideological considerations
Corn mine: did the US intelligence services compromise Nikita Khrushchev's idea?
The head of the USSR, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1954, after assigning corn the status of "the main agricultural crop", called it "a tank in the hands of soldiers." Besides, Nikita Sergeevich felt genuine sympathy for the “queen of the fields,” as she would later be called. But corn happiness never came to the USSR. Probably a role in this was played by the US intelligence services
A double agent from the Abwehr, or Why intelligence agent Alexander Kozlov in the USSR was long considered a traitor
The risky combat path of Alexander Kozlov, who for a long time was considered a traitor to the Motherland, became known only years after the Victory. The scout Kozlov was never a coward, having managed to deceive the fascist intelligence Abwehr and brought a lot of benefits for the Soviet Union. On the account of the lieutenant - the Order of the Red Star, the Patriotic War, the Red Banner. And it just so happened on the duty of double service that, along with high Soviet awards, Kozlov had distinctions for services to the Reich