The Rest Is Classified - 82. The Man Who Saved The World: Britain’s Best Ever Agent (Ep 3)

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

Oleg Gordievsky is now recruited as an agent for MI6 and he is providing intelligence of the highest order, but is there a chance he’ll be rumbled by the KGB? Who will keep him safe in London? And what does Oleg himself have to do to ensure his identity remains secret? Listen as David and Gordon continue their series on Oleg Gordievsky by looking at his time in London, his crazy KGB colleagues, and the molehunt he conducts into the British security services. ------------------- Join The Declassified Club: Start your free trial at ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠ - go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, quarterly livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ⁠ ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com. After the modest proportions and cleanliness of Copenhagen, London seemed a colossive. mess. A car from the Soviet embassy met us, in our drive into the west end of the city was itself a revelation. I had frequently read that London was one of the richest cities in the world, but here was a vast, undistinguished urban sprawl, with street after street of grimy old houses litter in the gutters and appalling traffic. Our plane in came at about six in the evening,

so that by the time we reached the flat, our priorities were to put the girls to bed and settle in. Much as I wanted to ring the secret number I had carried in my head for the past four years, I had no chance to do so. I knew nothing about our surroundings and had no idea who might be watching us or from where. Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I am David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And those are the words of Oleg Gordievsky as he lands in one of the truly most awful cities in the world, Gordon.

London. He's arrived in London. He is maybe questioning his decision to spy for the British. I can only imagine the wonderful reaction he may have had to landing in the paradise of Washington, D.C. had he decided to offer himself up to the Americans. But Gordon, he has made this faithful choice years earlier to spy for British intelligence. And now he has arrived in, this is an amazing, just an amazing coup for the British. He has arrived. to work out of the London resident or for the KGB and pick up his spying once again for the British. That's right. After being recruited in Denmark, he then paused in Moscow. Too dangerous to run him there. But he's got this prize of a job in London. And that description of London, it is slightly galling. I mean, but it is true.

If anyone knows London, the first time you go there, it is, you know, it's a kind of sprawling, chaotic place. What is crazy, of course, is it's his first time in this country, which he's agreed to spy for. He's signed up for the Brits, and he's never set foot in Britain, and now he finally is arriving. It's the summer of 1982. He's kind of slightly shocked by it. Maybe it's worth just a moment to paint a picture of Britain in 1982, because it's a pretty tumultuous time. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, and she's doing it.

effectively a kind of shock therapy to the British economy in which unemployment has skyrocketed up to 3 million. Industrial unrest is starting and it's going to get bigger in the coming years. There's a lot of anger and social division, but equally, Margaret Thatcher's popularity had just skyrocketed because she's just that spring won the Falklands War. I saw that on an episode of The Crown. Very good. Entirely accurate. Exactly. To prepare for this podcast, I want to just. I watched an entire season of the crowd

And I feel now Like I'm just I'm deep in the cesspool Of early 1980s Great Britain She might have lost the election But she's won a war Which always helps politically So yeah

That's the kind of world Oleg is finally arriving in With his family With his wife With his two daughters He goes to his flat He's given one of these KGB flats It's actually small and dark

It's not as nice as Not just not as nice as Copenhagen But not even as nice As Moscow flat which is saying something. That's a little surprising. It is, but I think it's a Soviet flat in London rather than just a random London flat. Yeah, that's fair.

It's in West London, because the embassy is in Kensington Palace Gardens. And this, we should say, is a particularly posh bit of London. And where the Soviet embassy is, or the Russian embassy and the Russian residence is pretty fancy. My only time in the – I once did go into the residency of the Russian ambassador in Britain. I was invited to kind of interview meet. kind of cyber official and they said come to the residency and i made the terrible mistake david of taking my phone with me oh that does seem like a mistake which was a terrible mistake looking back this was a long time ago a naive young journalist because as soon as i got out of the

embassy my phone was just playing up like crazy honestly it was like kind of asking me to re-input my passwords it was you know it was heating up and i was like yeah i probably should have left that in the office but that was in that was in kensington palace gardens you were assaulted by every bit of malware. The Russian Federation could throw at your phone in the span of an hour. It's interesting. I do remember that the ambassador's residence, same one in Oleg's time, and they're beautiful buildings, but they're also slightly dark and ominous and Soviet and slightly gloomy. That's just your prejudice against... It might be. With due apologies to the current Russian ambassador and his team, please

write into the podcast if you wish to complain. Join the club. Join the declassified club. I'm sure they already are. But in addition to Oleg, now being in this city as, you know, these are his words, Gordon, street after street of grimy old houses, which is definitely not how I would think most of London. He's in a viper pit of a KGB residentura also, which is different from his situation in Copenhagen. Yeah, no more Mikhail Lubimov, Smiley Mike in Copenhagen and kind of happy walks in the woods. London, the KGB station, the residence. as a insurer in London, is, as you said, it's a viper pit. It's full of kind of intrigue, backbiting, egos.

There's this figure called Arcadi Gook, who is the resident. He hates intellectuals. Hates people who read books, you know, people like ROLeg. He spends his day, I love this image. He spends his days in his office with the head of the counterintelligence team, drinking vodka out of tumblers and gossiping and plotting, especially against their own ambassador. That's like the one person they're really plotting against

is the Soviet ambassador to London if you're the KGB station chief. So it's not a happy place. And Gordievsky is this kind of young upstart. At that point, he's the number two in line PR, which is political reporting. But on his second night in London, Gordievsky walks to nearby Notting Hill. I think those days it was still a bit rougher,

but these days he'd be kind of mixing him with the tourists taking selfies. of pastel-colored houses, doubles back, turns down roads, walks into a pub. The Portobello Road Market, Gordon? Yeah, exactly. Probably get some bargains in those days. Down the side street and he finds a red phone box, what else, and he calls a number. And this is the number he's memorized. And it's interesting. It's a tape recording is waiting on the other end. And the tape recording has the voice of his former case officer. So clearly they've got this set up. Because of course, you don't know when he's going to call or when he's going to arrive, when he's going to be able to do it. So you can't have someone sitting by the phone waiting. You have an

answering machine, I guess, effectively, ready to go, you know, saying, hello, Oleg, welcome to London. Thank you so much for calling. We look forward to seeing you. Meanwhile, take a few days to relax and settle in. Let's be in touch at the beginning of July. That's nice. Personal touch. Yeah, it's a personal touch. He's a bit disappointed, I guess, because he's not speaking to someone live, but it's the voice he remembers from Copenhagen. I mean, that must be amazing after all those years. So the next time he calls, a few days later, it's rooted to the 12th 4th of Century House. That's MI6 headquarters. It was in Lambeth, south side of the river, grimy building. Lots of people who worked in it thought it would not have been out of place in the Soviet Union. It was that

grimy. Although, as we've heard, London's pretty grimy at that time. Grimy street after grimy street and your spy headquarters is covered in grime. I remind you of that next time you come to London, David. The call gets rooted to the Russia team on the 12th floor and is, you know, former handler from Denmark, answers and tells him they're going to meet the next day at the Holiday Inn on Sloan Street, another fancy bit of kind of West London, kind of near Harrod's department store. Also, Grime-soaked. Not Grime-soaked at those days. Sorry, Harrods. I think in those days, even in those days, it was run by a dodgy boss, but there we get. So he arrives in the lobby of the Holiday Inn. He spots his old handler, who's actually come back from abroad to meet him.

There's also a woman. We'll come back to the woman in a minute. They get up when they see him. They go to the back of the hotel, then the hotel car park. He follows them, gets into the car, and then they drive to a safe flat in Bayswater. Also, still in West London, it's got an underground car park, which is useful. And it's close to the Soviet embassy, Kensington Palace Gardens. He could get there quickly in the future if he needs to, but hopefully not so close that he's going to bump into people.

Now, he's introduced to the woman. It's the first time Oleg has met her, but she's known all about him for years. If you read his memoir, she's given a different name. I think it's Joe. Now, the woman in question was a woman called Valerie Petit. And she died in 2020, age 90. And at that point, her name became public and her role in the Gordievsky case. And there was an obituary of her, which kind of revealed it all. Maybe it's worth saying now, there is a kind of custom within, we're not custom, you know, a view which is about not naming MI6 officers who are, you know, still alive. Unless, and we'll come back to they've outed themselves and that will be the case with some of the people in this story. Or they're the chief. Or they're the chief. Exactly. The chief of MI6 is out.

But while they're still alive, there's a kind of caution about naming them for operational reasons. But in Valerie's case, when she was died, her role got revealed. Interesting woman, born 1929, goes to university, joins the foreign office, transfers to MI6.

She is described as having a genteel, mild-mannered home county's exterior. Can you translate that for Me. I guess home counties is, you know, it's the nice bits around London. They're slightly posh of it. I mean, it's a kind of New England, well-spoken, well-to-do manner. I think that's the closest way I can explain it. So this kind of outwardly looking like a genteel, well-spoken woman, but steely determination beneath the surface. Also, deep expertise. I mean, one of the few women to rise up the ranks, there were women. in MI6, but very few rise up the ranks in the Cold War period, unless you were particularly capable, I think, you know, and particularly strong-willed. It's a pretty sexist organisation. Old boys kind of environment. Old boys, club, you know, women for many years were not allowed onto the kind of fast stream of MI6. So there's a far stream and there's a general officer rank

and she would have been, she would have come through the general officer rank rather than in the far stream. But from 1978, she's read in on the Gordievsky case as she's working as a deputy to what's called P5. And P5 is the designation for the person and the team running Soviet cases wherever they are. And they're up on the 12th floor of Century House. And she's also going to be the person who's tasked with coming up with an emergency escape plan from Moscow, which of course will come back to and making sure it's maintained and up to date. Crucially, she's the kind of details person. She does the logistics. understands how to run the case. And people said she could command trust and affection.

You know, it's interesting. There's going to be a deep bond between her and Oleg. And someone who knew both of them said to me just the other day when I was kind of researching, he said, if it was Hollywood, you would write the script differently with different looking actors. But it was a deep and personal commitment, but totally professional. And I guess what that person is saying is a kind of good point. If you're writing a Hollywood movie script, you'd have two young people who are glamorous and who would fall in love with each other and, you know, there'd be a kind a passionate affair. That is not what happened. That would be the Hollywood version of there. But there was this kind of really deep personal bond between the two of them.

And she is tasked with keeping him alive and keeping him safe and making sure, you know, he survives as a very productive agent. And that is her role. And she's not his case officer, though. It sounds like she's kind of managing, though, a lot of the tradecraft around the case. Is that fair? And that she's dealing with. with a lot of the details around, I don't know, everything from, yeah, tradecraft, combo plan, tasking. What do we actually ask this guy? And how does that connect to sort of broader intelligence requirements? It sounds like, frankly, she's doing most of the work. Yeah. From the MI6 side. Is that right? She's not running him, but she's almost running and

managing the case and the logistics around it. And Gordievsky is meeting her now for the first time. You know, he's been told they're going to meet once a month in this flat during his lunch hour. He already starts telling people some of these secrets he's got burned in his head. You know, can imagine he's got so much from his time in Moscow. Now, his handler is going to explain that he's now abroad. He's got a different posting. So he's going to pass Gordyeski over to a new case officer. So the person who's actually going to run him day to day, kind of always a delicate moment.

You know, we've seen previously in the previous episodes that can go wrong. Relationship has got to work. But this one's going to work. Gordievsky's new case officer is an interesting person. He's only in his mid-30s, dark care starting to recede, a details man, a bit like Gordievsky, natural empathy, and speaks Russian, which meant Gordievsky took to him straight away. So this is another person I'm going to name, even though he's still around, because this was John Scarlett. John Scarlett may be known to people because he's eventually going to become the head of MI6 in the 2000s

and rise to become the chief, C. He has never, I should say this clearly, has never officially overtly confirmed that he was Gordievsky's case officer in London. He is not supposed to. Gordievsky, this is interesting, has never been officially acknowledged, this is crazy, as an agent of MI6. I mean, it's kind of wild, but they still hold to the neither confirm nor deny, we're not going to mention him, even though so many books have been written about it, even though Oleg writes a memoir about his relationship with MI6, and, you know, lots of people talk about it. So it's an oddity of the British system. But Scarlett has never confirmed this, but it's widely known and understood and his name is out there. And Scarlett, you know, Dr. Sun, grown up in South London, good man.

Read history at Oxford, another good man before joining MI6. I thought you lived in Kensington, Gordon. In a grubby flat in Kensington. I couldn't afford a grubby flat in Kensington. That's for sure. South London is more my world. To get some real estate from the Soviet embassy to Russia empathy to kind of make it work. And Scarlett is, again, he's, he's interesting. In the last episode, we mentioned this guy, Harry Shergold, Shurgi, who is the person who's reconstituting MI6's Russia or Sovblock operations, you know, against the Soviet Union. And Scarlett is one of his, one of the people he plucks. And Shurgy had this thing about he would look at you entrance and he would go, you are the right kind of person for Sovblock work. I'm going to take you and make you one

of those people, and Shogi had this amazing reputation. And as a result, the people who were kind of plucked to work on the Sobloc became known slightly dismissively in MI6 as the Soblock master race. They did not refer to themselves this way. Is that right? But that was how the others did. So, you know, the other bits of MI6, because they walked around like, we're the guys who really know the secrets. We know secrets. Other people in MI6 are not allowed to know. We've been personally selected to kind of handle the hardest, toughest cases. And so the rest of them, and we'd kind of go, yeah, that's the Soblock Master Race for you. Scarlett was one of those, and he's a details, man, very precise, does his homework.

You know, it's what you need to run KGB agents. He'd actually served as a young officer in Moscow, but had been dangled by a Soviet naval officer who really was all the time under the control of the KGB, and he'd been identified. So that had meant his time in Moscow in the 70s was over. He's back in London, already identified by the Soviets, but he speaks Russian. So he's a kind of perfect person to be a case officer. for Gordievsky. It's a very good match. Oleg likes him immediately, says of Scarlet. He was a first class intelligence officer, but, you know, full of emotion and sensitivity. As the expression

goes in Russian, he had a fine structure of soul. The highest compliment from a Russian there. It's interesting. The agency had, has a similar kind of job profile to, it sounds like what John Scarlett was doing, which is officers, they call them like flyaway officers, where they are sort of Russia hunting specialists who, in most cases, are probably known to the Russian services, but at sort of short notice, could go out not to Russia, but to the third country, to meet with a Russian developmental or asset, to help with a recruitment, to help advise a local station, to, I guess, smooth over a misunderstanding. Like, there's kind of, they combine this kind of deep Russia expertise.

and obviously the language with the fact that they're actually not in Russia, right? They're sort of mobile characters. So similar needs, I guess, in both services, kind of created those types of roles. Yeah. And often it is easier to run agents outside of Russia, you know, because it's so hard to do them in the Soviet Union. So it's where you sometimes want your best people to work with them. And Gordievsky would come to these meetings.

He'd arrived by car during his lunch hour with whatever documents he could take. A few sandwiches, bottle of beer, waiting along the table, tape recorder. They only had an hour or so. So Valerie would photograph and copy the documents that Gordievsky had bought, whilst Scarlett and Gordievsky talked together in Russian to kind of speed things up and keep it accurate. Scarlett would do this for a couple of years. I mean, eventually right at the end, he's going to be rotated out, although Valerie kind of remains as the person in the room doing logistics.

And Oleg is just kind of spilling secrets at this point. And everyone who meets him says he was the best agent they ever dealt with. His discipline, his understanding, his motivation, everything about him is just so disciplined. He understands what they want. He's delivering it. You hear about other agents and they've got kind of crazy demands. And, you know, you go back to Penkovsky, who we talked about, who they're running in the early 60s. And he's, you know, they're having to find women for him.

And he's saying he wants to do this and he wants to do that. And he's kind of wild and slightly emotional. Gordievsky is just focus. When I asked him about what those meetings were like, you know, years later, he says they were intense and businesslike. And, you know, that kind of says it all. It's just kind of like, right, let's just focus on the intel. The fact that Gordievsky is extremely deliberate and not unhinged, right, in any of the typical ways, is really important because they're not in Moscow, but there really are security worries and concerns even in London, right? I mean,

you have this massive resident there, presumably. They could be, they could be. They could monitoring their own. Yeah, that's part of their job is, you know, in the KGB, is to kind of keep an eye on their colleagues and see what they're up to on the suspicious signs. And, you know, one day when Oleg is kind of walking out of the flat, he sees the car of his resident. Cardi Gutt go past. Gordievsky thinks has he spotted me? Is he going to ask what I was doing and where I was, but nothing happens. And they're meeting about once a week. There's a bit of debate in MI6. Is that too often? With the Penkovsky case, there was this tension between getting what you can and taking too many risks by driving it too hard.

But the reality is almost everything Gordievsky is saying in these meetings is classed as intelligence product. In other words, it's a report. And what they will then do is there's going to be what's called a reports officer is going to get assigned to the case. And this is a very experienced, again, a kind of Russia hand who'd been in Moscow, been indoctrinated in the case because of Moscow, and he's going to be the person who's basically looking at all the raw material scarlet,

bringing out and turning it into reports and then working out where those go around Whitehall. And they're working through the night. Scarlett kind of works through the transcripts straight away. Then they go to the reports officer who's working through the night to get this stuff out and get it into the intrays of everyone who needs it. And they're actually trying to doing it while not telling other colleagues in MI6 about what they're doing. They've got a cover story. They've got if you like kind of day jobs for these MI6 officers. about what they're supposed to be doing because they don't want the secret of Gordievsky to get around MI6 in case there's a leak or a mole. So it's intense for them as well. And, you know, they will say

there's never anything like it because it was just this kind of gusher of intelligence, which is coming out. How tight was the circle inside SIS, the people actually knew about the case or even knew who Gordievsky was? I think very few. I mean, you know, just within Russia House and then at the very top. And even within Russia House, I think they were pretty careful about what it was, because I think they know that that's where some of the danger lies. That's how cases get blown is when word gets out. And I think, you know, one of the advantages they've got is Gordievsky is more emotionally stable. He's more disciplined. I always like one person said to me, this is someone who sat with him and talked to him a lot. And they said, it was like there was someone in the control

room of Gordievsky's own head, kind of controlling him. And, you know, this person was like in the control room of his head, surveying the room, issuing instructions to Oleg himself about what to do. In other words, you know, there was always this kind of like kind of care and discipline about what he did. So it's always in control of his emotions. That discipline and keeping the circle tight is going to be vital because there are risks otherwise that, you know, their top agent could be compromised. Maybe there with Gordievsky producing. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll see how a potential compromise might bring everything to a screeching halt. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that

leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa 2026, XVI, X-C-90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome back. I, Gordievsky is passing tranches of material to MI6 on KGB operations in London. I guess Gordon, here, he is going to, with this kind of new access, start to give British intelligence all kind of insight into, I guess, what will become some traitors in their own midst. That's right. And I think that is one of the important aspects of Gordievsky's intelligence.

We'll look at some of the others further down the line, but one of the aspects is he's able to give this insight into what the KGB has been up to in Britain. Now, some of that is history because he's been reading the files before he came out. And so, for instance, he can clear up some mysteries. There's always been this question in the 60s about whether the head of MI5, Roger Hollis, had actually been a KGB agent. And Oleg says there's nothing in the files about that. So he's able to kind of clear up some issues. He doesn't answer the question definitively, but it helps clear it up.

There's some more information about some other cases. There's an important politician in Norway, a rising star, there who's going to be arrested. and he's able to talk about what the KGB is up to in Britain at that moment. It's interesting because the KGB station is still busy, although it may be not as busy as it was in the 60s and not as successful. The resident is this Arkady Gukk, who we mentioned before. It's a very villainous name. It is a villainous name.

It's a perfect name for a KGB resident, isn't it? And he was exactly that, a kind of big, huge, bloated lump of a man, is how Gordievsky describes him. A bloated lump of a man with a mediocre brain, but a large reserve of low cunning. I mean... Is he the one who's drinking the vodka out of tumblers and sort of marauding around the residents or applauding against the ambassador? Yeah, exactly. He barely speaks English. He hates being in London. He's also paranoid. He thinks everything happening in the world is a plot by MI6 and the CIA. He's so paranoid.

He orders his staff not to use the underground, the tube. because he said that behind the advertisement panels along the walls of underground stations were glass-fronted booths in which sat members of MI5 spying on the KGBB. He's a KGB villain out of central casting, really, for a spy novel. As we're talking about him, it seems so stereotypical that actually, I think if I wrote this character in a book, someone would be like, come on, this is a cartoon. This is too much. This is too much.

That's him. And of course, he dislikes Gordievsky, because Gordievsky's kind of. cultured intellectual. And also Gordievsky's kind of, you know, young guy on the rise. It's a kind of paranoid embassy. It's claustrophobic. Gook's windows have special jamming devices and little radio loudspeakers installed in the space between the double glazing to try and deal with attempts by Britain to spy on them. You know, there's a metal line conference room in which they could meet free of bugs, which gets incredibly hot. You just get this feeling of a kind of nasty, dark, intense place.

And Gordievsky is obviously able to tell MI6 all about it, what people are up to. He chokes to Scarlett. You are an extra member of the KGB residency. In other words, you're as good as a member of the residency. You know all about it. You know the gossip and everything else. Which is, you know, I kind of think, I'm not sure if there's a MI6 officer, you want that to be your description. Honorary.

Yeah, Honorary. Colonel of the KGBB. Do you think that MI6 was surprised at how inactive the resident or it was because it does seem a little bit like there isn't some massive roster of British citizens that are working for the KGB, right? It kind of seems like vodka swilling Arcady Gook is the captain of a rather unimpressive ship at this point in time. I think the cupboard is pretty bare for the KGB in terms of agents. And what successes there are are kind of exaggerated. There's only like half a dozen or so really good age.

and a lot of them are focused on scientific and technical intelligence. You know, there's not a kind of Kim Wilby at this point. Lots of paper agents, you know, and they're on the books to make officers look busy to Moscow. Ever heard of that happening in an intelligence agency, David? It would never happen at the Central Intelligence Agency, Gordon, but I've heard of it happening in other lesser intelligence agencies. Of course, of course. There's also this interesting thing where the gradations of CIA officers,

KGB agents. Doesn't it just feel better to say those three letters, Gordon? Always, always. I spent too long, too much time with you. Because what they've got is you've got a fully paid up agent, but then you've got kind of categories below that, where you're trying to recruit someone, you're trying to develop them, and then you've got this level of what are called confidential contacts, which is a level below being a recruited agent. This is interesting. This has been one of the kind of slightly complicated. to things about Gordievsky's work, because confidential contacts are someone the KGB might take out for lunch, they might have a gossip with, you know, write up a report about it, kind of stuff diplomats and journalists do. That person might not know that the person they're meeting is a KGB officer or that it's going to be written up. Some might receive a fat

envelope with cash now and again. Seems like an indication. Which would be an indication. But often, you know, the KGB officer is reporting back, well, I've got this confidential contact. name's Gordon at the BBC. I'm having lunch with him every week. And, you know, we're going out for a few more lunches and I'm sure he'll be useful one day. But he's not quite an agent yet. But, you know, I just need to have another fancy lunch with him. There's an element in which they're playing a game, the KGB officers, because they want to make it look like they're busy and they might be about to recruit someone. And they frankly want a nice fancy lunch. So they're slightly exaggerating and inflating the contacts and putting them down as confidential contacts in order to kind of make

themselves are good. The reality in this period, I think it's still true today for the most part, is that a case officer, be they inside the KGB, SIS, the CIA, the incentive is really around quantity of reports and recruitments, even fake ones and scare quotes, as opposed to quality. And obviously there's a balance, but I think that's why you get these kind of behaviors, right? It's like when you get down to the level of the case officer, they have a tremendous incentive to just jack up the numbers and not necessarily to spend a huge amount of time and energy on just a small number of potential, really juicy developmentals or confidential contacts who could turn into recruited assets, right? So the numbers game, I think it's really

part of the business, right? And kind of embedded in the way that the incentives are structured for a lot of these just, you know, line case officers. Yeah, I think that's right. Oleg is going to kind of reveal all these different confidential contacts and the different nature of them. Some of them, I have to say, it's going to be quite controversial because there are a series of left-wing politicians and union members who are alleged to have had contact with the KGB.

And one example, which will become particularly sensitive, but I think it's worth talking through, is that it turns out the editor of a left-wing newspaper called Tribune back in the 50s and 60s, was in contact with the KGB. That's what Oleg is going to say, come back to this. The problem is that by the time you get to the early 1980s, that left-wing journalist is now the leader of the Labour Party, Michael Foote. Now, there's real ambiguity about the nature of that contact.

It goes back to this point about, you know, is a lunch, what's past, you know, what's the nature of it? Michael Foote, of course, has no access to any secrets. He's not betraying any secrets. and he seems to have stopped meeting around the time of the Prague Spring and became much more anti-Soviet. But when this later comes out through Oleg's memoir, which we've mentioned, Michael Foote will sue for libel

of being accused of being an agent because that's what the headline is going to be and he's going to win that libel case. So that gives you an example of just how sensitive and complicated these relationships are and what was the true nature of it. So there's no allegation that Michael Foote was a spy or a conscious agent, you know, in that sense.

But of course, in the early 80s, even that claim from Oleg, which is going into MI6, that this person was a contact in some way of the KGB. Now, that is super sensitive because it's 1982. Potential political ammunition, right? There is a general election coming up in which this person is a candidate to be prime minister. And of course, the question is, you know, who do you tell about this? What do you tell to people? Now, Ben McIntyre's book should credit that spy and the traitor, which details the Gordievsky

case brilliantly. Ben in his book says that MI6 tell the cabinet secretary about this, fact of this contact, but then the cabinet secretary does not tell the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. The reason is the fear of it being used politically, the fear that someone will go, okay, there was some contact here, we're going to use that to smear him in the election campaign. And so it's kept within a very tight circle, this intelligence about whatever that contact was. I don't know. I mean, to me, it feels reminiscent of, you know, we won't go into too much detail,

but of recent questions about dossiers, politicians' contact with Moscow, or feels quite redol of the ability to use contacts to attack someone and the kind of the sensitivities around it and how you interpret contacts between someone and a foreign government or the KGB, when it's not always clear what it was. So I think, you know, it's very interesting in that sense in the Gordievsky case. But there's also going to be, and I guess this is really the sort of crown jewels of what an asset like Gordievsky might provide, he'll actually come to his handlers in MI6 with

a pretty shocking revelation about someone inside British intelligence who might actually be working for the Russians. That's right. This is one of the crucial contributions of Gordievsky, because he's going to stop British intelligence being penetrated by a mole, and also in that process, probably save his own skin. Because in June 1983, our Cardi Guk, our big hulking resident, sloshes vodka all over him, is he. The tumbler is thrust it, Gordievsky. And he says, Oleg, would you like to see something, this is my Russian accent, by the way, David, would you like to see something

exceptional? Gordievsky goes, yes. And he shows Gordievsky a British document outlining the order of battle. In other words, the makeup of the KGB and GRU military intelligence station in London. So it names who is suspected and who is known of being a KGB officer in London, and it's clearly a British document. And Oleg can see his own name is down as more or less identified. In other words, whoever wrote this thinks he is, but isn't sure. And it looks like it comes from MI5, and particularly K-Branch. And K-Branch is the counter-espionage branch task with spying on the Soviet Union and on its embassies in London, at least.

Their job is to kind of create that order of battle of the Soviet embassy in London and stand it. And Guk reveals to Gordievsky, it's been pushed through the letterbox of his home. It's the second packet to arrive. You know, the first came on Easter Sunday, which is interesting, because someone obviously picked that thinking less surveillance. And the letter accompanying that suggested a dead drop at the system of a cinema toilet on Oxford Street, classy, and was signed Cobra, which was the name Stalin had used before the revolution.

So someone has tried twice now to pass MI5 documents to the Soviet residents. So Girk, our man Girk. This is a big win here. This should be great. Senior Gook. Yeah. Yeah. Guck should be like, this is great.

I've got the chance to recruit a British intelligence official. You know, a serve and counterintelligence official. Should be party poppers champagne. Seems obvious to me, but I guess, again, any time in this story, pretty much, an intelligence officer is handed a gift, they immediately suspect that they're being played, right? Yeah, obviously. Exactly. Yeah, we've already established. Guck is paranoid.

You know, everyone's spying in it. on the underground. So he thinks it's a trap. He thinks it's a dangle. He thinks surveillance is everywhere. So he's convinced that his house must be under constant surveillance. So it'd be impossible for someone to do this and not be spotted. So it must be part of a game. And he also thinks, well, this guy is being clever passing on a staff list of the KGB in London. But of course, you know, this is stuff that I know already. So it's chicken feed. In other words, it's stuff that is being given by MI5 as part of the dangle, which can be compromised without any fear. But actually, the person who's doing it, turns out, thought,

no, I'm giving this because you can know that this is true, because it's your star-list. It actually doesn't seem like you'd have to think that hard to get to the conclusion. You just came to, but alas. Poor older Cardi Gert, you almost feel sorry for the KGB resident in London at this point. But Gordievsky, of course, for him... This is terrifying. This is like the nightmare. This is the nightmare for an agent, isn't it? is that there is someone within the organization you are spying for

who wants to turn traitor and is trying to get in contact with your service. So he immediately calls the number for an emergency meeting. He goes to see MI6 and it's so interesting because he goes, okay, you know, what game are you playing with Arkai Deguk? You know, what's your game? What's the trap? And it's Valerie who goes, uh, it's not, I don't know anything about a game.

There's no game in progress. I appreciate that your Russian mind immediately went to a complex game, a four-dimensional chess between us and the resident. But in fact, it's actually much more alarming than that. Yeah. So she's like, nope, nothing in play. And so now they know they've got a huge problem because someone is offering themselves up as a mole. And what do you need?

You need a mole hunt, David. You do. But how can you, so this is the problem, though, for MI6, right? is they know that the mole is inside MI5, right? And so it does seem very delicate of how you sort of broach this information to MI5. And I presume at this point, does MI5 know that Gordievsky is working for MI6? Well, what's interesting is a tiny number of MI5 officers know that he's their agent. Because, again, someone has to know because they have to know not to try and recruit Gordievsky.

Right. Or to do something which is going to kind of interfere with MI6 running him. So a tiny group within the counter-Soviet team need to know that. And of course, that is then the key to the mole hunt, isn't it? Because the person offering the information, the mole, clearly does not know that Gordievsky is an agent for MI6. Because if they did, there's no way they would go and offer material to the embassy and to Guk. knowing that there's a mole within there who could blow them, which is what happens. Or they could have been waiting to sell the more Primo stuff.

I don't know. It's a risk you're willing to take if you're the MI-16 because you actually really, someone's got to run the mole hunt, right? And so you can be pretty sure that that small number of MI5 officers who are in on the secret of Gordievsky are not the mole, because if so, they wouldn't have gone to Arcadi Guk and kind of tried to recruit it. So what you've got is a tiny, tiny group of people who can run that mole hunt and who you can be confident about. And it's a good example, isn't it, about why things are need to know?

Because actually, if Gordievsky's identity had been gossiped about within MI5, around even K-Branch, the counter-espionage team, it's over for him. You know, because you can imagine the mole would then go to Arcade of Gook and maybe taking the gamble. It's not him going, you've got a mole. And interestingly enough, one of those in on the secret? assigned to work the case, none other than Eliza Manning and Buller. Friend of the pod. Friend of the pod. For those who haven't listened, she was a guest on our declassified members club pod.

That episode is still there for people to listen to, isn't it? It's one episode where she talks about 7 and the July 7th attacks, but another in which she talks about her career within MI5, including this mole hunt. So there for club members. And we should say, I immediately led with Friend of the Pod. but the primary distinction is that she ran MI5 for many years. And then the second tier distinction would be friend of the pot, I think. You could argue which should go first.

But yes, she is later going to become head of MI5, amazing career. But she's going to actually hold meetings in her mother's flat because they can't use the MI5 office to meet. And at one point, Eliza's sisters asked to come around and they're told they can't because they're church meetings in the flat. You know, and one of the sisters complains that the mother had become very religious because there's meetings every night, you know. So they're using this base in her flat to kind of run a mole hunt. The small team become known weirdly as the Nagers. I think she told us that.

The Nagers. Yeah, which is a kind of weird name, I think. I think you come up with, like, weird names. And their code name for the traitor, whoever he is, or the wannabe traitor is puck. I think you could change one letter and you could get an expletive, which might explain how they feel about the person. But the suspicions, I mean, it's a good story in itself, and maybe we do a separate pod on the guy himself because it's really interesting.

But, you know, the suspicions based on the documents that have been passed to Arkadi Guk, narrow it down into MI5, who had access to those documents, and particularly to one officer called Michael Bettany, he's an odd ball. But is that the reason they focus on him? Because no, I think it seems like we had 50 people, and then we have this one weirdo in the group, and let's throw the resource. sources at him because he's bizarre.

Because he's a bit odd. Because he's weird, yeah. Well, I think it was down to like three people or something like that. And then everyone, you can imagine to go, like, let's look at Bessidy first. Because he's, I mean, he's a real oddball. I mean, kind of working class background, brilliant at languages, goes to Oxford. But then, I mean, I think Ben McAtaire mentioned this, but he goose stepped around the college quad and played Hitler's speeches.

And Ben, he quotes a fellow student saying of him, he dressed like a bank manager and dreamt of being a storm trooper. I mean, that's kind of weird, and then goes quite hard left. But he still somehow gets tapped up to join MI5, which is kind of weird, isn't it? I don't know. That is weird. We talk to the HR people about why that decision was made. So he was playing Hitler's speeches and then he goes hard left.

Yeah, I think he's a bit all over the place. He's on his own journey. Yeah, that's the nice way. He gets sent to work on Northern Ireland to run informants and survives a car bomb. He's Catholic, so I think that's quite hard for him. He kind of seems to have traumatized him that experience. Ben says he lives alone with a plastic figure of Madonna, Russian icons, Nazi war medals, and pornography. All the essentials.

Yeah. Good grief. That is a strange list. I was going to say, I don't see any of that on your wall behind you from looking at the picture. No, none of the above. And this is all while working in K-Branch of MI5. I think there's been a vetting failure, MI5. I think we could say that.

Yeah, we've covered those extensively on the podcast. Yeah. Cloud Spooks. Another one. So immediately, you know, they start talking to his colleagues and it looks like, you know, he's suspicious. They follow him. They have his house broken into looking for evidence. They don't find anything because everything's well hidden.

He's getting a bit more desperate because, of course, Arcadi Gook, the fool has turned down this kind of agent. Yeah, he hasn't done anything with you. So he's like dropping letters. He's calling up Arcad. He's like calling him up going, hello. I mean, my five officer. You know, he just can't believe he's being ignored. It's crazy.

And anyway, he then mentions to a colleague that he's planning to go. in Vienna, and this kind of worries the mole hunters because they kind of go, they know that there's a known former KGB officer in London who's in Vienna, and they think he's going to go. So the order is, let's interrogate him before he goes, has to be done carefully, because obviously you can't tip off the fact that Gordievsky is providing information. He's on a training course, asked to come to a meeting. The idea, it's interesting, is to talk him into a confession. It's back to that problem, is they haven't got any evidence, you know, and he's not actually

been arrested, so he's not been read his rights. He's not got a lawyer, but they're just trying to kind of talk him into confessing. I mean, that's their best option. And they lay out the evidence before him. There's a photograph of Cook's daughter to suggest Bettany might have been photographed because it was under surveillance. It wasn't. And then he slowly starts to crack. He starts to talk about hypothetical spies who might have done things.

He says, maybe if someone had done something, they'd have done it like this. He expresses some sympathy for Kim and George. that being Kim Filby and George Blake, who clearly refers to in first name terms. And then he's kept overnight in a flat. He asked for a bottle of whiskey. Why does he just leave? So I think they've given him the impression that he can't when he actually can. Because I guess if he walks, he's saying I'm guilty.

I agree. I think he's an oddball. I don't think there's any other way around it. The next morning, I like this detail, Eliza cooks in breakfast. I wonder what she made for him. We didn't ask her. We should ask her. I don't know.

Do you think it's full English? I'd like to think it's a full English. English breakfast. Black pudding. Do you eat your black pudding? I don't eat black pudding. Whenever I've had an English breakfast, I leave the black pudding. Yeah, I'm sorry, traditionalists out there.

But he doesn't eat the breakfast, but he's had the whiskey. He cracks. And he eventually says, you know, I think I ought to make a clean breast of it. And he confesses. So thanks to Oleg, he has been vital as well as how could he cooks incompetence, you know, in preventing, you know, a new filby, a new penetration of British intelligence. Bettany will go on trial and be sentenced for 23 years. He actually died only back in 2018 after he was released from prison from alcohol.

But, you know, at the time, it's a pretty close shave for Oleg and, you know, pretty important victory. Well, maybe there, Gordon, with Oleg having delivered the goods, I guess, saved his own skin in the process. Let's break when we come back next time. We'll see how Oleg, I think, makes probably his biggest contribution to Britain enter the Cold War by really turning down the heat. of the Cold War. But don't forget, don't be an Arcadi Gook. Don't take this offer and just ignore it. Yeah, there is an offer.

There is an offer coming through your letterbox. And that offer is to join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com. And hear from Eliza Manning and Buller, lots of other fascinating spies, hear this whole series. So don't be an Arcadi Gook. Be an Oleg Gordievsky and join the club. The rest is classified.com. We'll see you next. next time.