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The Shadow Dossier — The Colonel Who May Have Saved the World · The Shadow Dossier

• 0:00
  The Shadow Dossier. Act I. The Volunteer. In
• 0:09
  1960, a colonel in Soviet military intelligence,
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  the GRU, made contact with Western officials,
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  first approaching American students in Moscow,
• 0:20
  then British businessman Greville Wynn, offering
• 0:23
  to spy for the West. His name was Oleg Penkovsky.
• 0:28
  and his motives, as he later explained to his
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  handlers, combined disillusionment with the Soviet
• 0:34
  system and a genuine fear that its leadership
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  was dangerously reckless with nuclear weapons.
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  MI6 and the CIA jointly ran him as an agent starting
• 0:49
  in 1961, an unusually close intelligence partnership
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  for the era. debriefing him during his official
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  travel to london and paris and receiving film
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  he smuggled out through dead drops and wins courier
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  visits to moscow act 2 the material penkovsky's
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  access was extraordinary as a senior officer
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  with ties to soviet military research and rocket
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  forces he provided technical manuals deployment
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  doctrine and details on soviet missile capabilities
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  that western intelligence had previously only
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  guessed at perhaps most critically his information
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  helped western analysts understand the actual
• 1:35
  as opposed to feared capability and reliability
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  of soviet medium range and intercontinental missiles
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  that distinction became urgently important in
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  october 1962 When American U, two reconnaissance
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  photographed missile installations under construction
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  in Cuba, analysts drew directly on Pankovsky's
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  technical intelligence to identify the specific
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  missile types from their launch pad configurations
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  and to assess how quickly they could become operational.
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  His earlier reporting on Soviet missile technology
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  and doctrine is widely credited with sharpening
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  the Kennedy administration's understanding of
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  the danger and its actual timeline during the
• 2:24
  Cuban Missile Crisis. Act 3. The Arrest Soviet
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  counterintelligence had been watching Penkovsky
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  with suspicion for some time before the missile
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  crisis. reportedly alerted by surveillance patterns
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  around his contacts with Western officials. He
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  was arrested in Moscow in October 1962, at almost
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  exactly the moment his intelligence was proving
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  most consequential half a world away. Greville
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  Wynn, his courier, was lured to a meeting in
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  Budapest and arrested there shortly afterward.
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  Both men were put on trial in Moscow in May 1963.
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  Penkovsky was convicted of treason and executed.
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  The Soviet government announced his execution
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  but, unusually, gave few further details and
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  some later accounts, unverified, described a
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  more elaborate and brutal end designed as a warning
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  to other officers who might consider similar
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  contact with the West. Wynne was convicted and
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  imprisoned, then exchanged in 1964 for a Soviet
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  intelligence officer held in Britain. Historians
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  and intelligence officers still debate exactly
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  how much difference Penkovsky's intelligence
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  made during the missile crisis itself, since
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  by October 1962 the missiles were already visible
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  and being tracked directly. What is less disputed
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  is the cumulative value of nearly two years of
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  detailed technical intelligence on Soviet missile
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  forces. delivered at a moment when the two superpowers
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  understood remarkably little about each other's
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  actual military capabilities. Some Western intelligence
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  officers who worked his case came to regard him
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  as one of the most valuable agents of the entire
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  Cold War, and the nickname later attached to
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  him, the spy who saved the world, though almost
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  certainly an overstatement of any single agent's
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  influence on events that large. captures how
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  seriously his handlers took what he gave them
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  at the cost of his own life. This concludes declassified
• 4:57
  file number 056 of the Shadow Dossier, the colonel
• 5:02
  who may have saved the world. What dangerous
• 5:07
  secrets await in our next file? Subscribe on
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• 5:24
  This is the Shadow Dossier. Thank you for listening.