The Rest Is Classified - EXCLUSIVE: The Spy Who Smuggled Gordievsky Out of Russia

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

*Declassified Club exclusive: SUBSCRIBE to listen to the full interview* What does it take to smuggle the West’s most valuable Russian agent out of the Soviet Union, under the noses of the KGB? How do you lose a KGB surveillance team on the road from Moscow, while hiding a defector in the boot of your car? And how did the MI6 team manage to sneak Gordievsky past the Russian sniffer dogs on the Finnish border? Listen as Raymond Asquith - the MI6 Officer who led Oleg Gordievsky’s dramatic escape from Moscow in 1985 - recounts the nerve-racking details of the operation, the split-second improvisations that kept it alive, and the extraordinary legacy of the man once called the West’s most important spy. Plus, subscribe to the Declassified Club for access to the Cocktails Masterclass livestream. ------------------- 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 The full episode is available to members of the declassified club, sign up at www.therestisclassified.com⁠⁠⁠. 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 Restisclassified.com. Hello, Rest is Classified listeners, David and Gordon here. If you've been enjoying our latest series on the absolutely fascinating life of Oleg Gordievsky, we thought we'd treat you to an exclusive extract from our latest declassified club interview with the man who actually snuck Britain's most valuable spy out of Russia. That's right. I mean, the story of Gordievsky escaping from Moscow and then getting over the border into Finland is a wild tale.

and we've been speaking to the man who actually ran that operation on the ground. Raymond Asquith, who was the MI6 head of station in Moscow, who was driving the car as it picked up Gordievsky and it's a kind of remarkable interview to just get an insight into what it's like to be on the ground under that kind of intense pressure. It's an absolutely fascinating insight into what it's really like to be at the heart of an exfiltration. Well, that's right. And speaking of people who ran stations in Moscow, Gordon, for members who signed up at the rest is classified.com, but could it make the live cocktail masterclass that we ran last night where we cooked up some espionage themed drinks with two former CIA officers, one of whom ran the CIA's Moscow station at the height of the Cold War. If you didn't make that, you can access the recording by clicking the link in your declassified.

Club email or signing up to the Declassified Club at the Rest Is Classified.com. Never too late to make some cocktails. Or too early, like mine yesterday. Or too early. It's cocktail time somewhere. But first, here's the extract from that interview about Oleg Gordievsky. When exactly did you first set eyes on Oleg Gordievsky? We were, I think, 10 minutes late to the time we were due to meeting at the Rondi Boom. And he had got into rather a panic, and he started to walk down the main road towards us. And then he realized that was a silly thing to do.

And so he had only just got back into the bushes in the layby, which was a rough track road off the main road from Neningrad, as it been, to Wiborg, which was on the frontier with Finland. And he'd only just got back to hide himself in the bushes. and we arrived at a high speed off the main road, and he came out of the bushes straight away. I must say, smelling pretty high, you know. And sure enough, as we approached the rendezvous, the exact rendezvous spot where Kordievsky was supposed to be, we could see the KGB cars accelerating a great speed around the corner ahead of us.

If they'd looked in their rear. view mirrors at that exact point, they would have seen us, but fortunately they didn't. There was a point when I thought we would have to abort the operation, and then there would have been nothing for Gordievsky to do except return home or somehow. He wouldn't be able to find a way across the frontier, because that frontier was anxiously defended by the public unions, and they had a lot of guard-paces all the way along the frontier. And then you meet him at the rendezvous point. He goes into the car boot, I mean, very quickly, I guess that all takes a matter of, what, a minute or so for that to happen, so that you can get off again. I mean, there wasn't, I guess, much time to

think or to talk to him at that point. No, there wasn't any time. I mean, I timed it and it was less than two minutes. The original instructions were that my wife would get out of the car with a tray of sandwiches. I mean, it was very English, the whole thing. And that would be an indication to Gordievsky that he could come to the car. All that went completely by the board. We just stopped and he came out of the bushes straight away like a sort of troll car coming. He was covered in moss and ferns and mosquitoes and things.

So we didn't say anything. I just pointed to the boot, the trunk of my colleague's car and he knew he had to get in. And we had brought with us quite a lot of sophisticated equipment, but to answer your question, we were literally out within two minutes from RV point and not far off, because as you probably know in those days, they still are, I think in those days they had traffic police surveillance points all along their main roads, and they used to report between the traffic police, the Gaiae, the state automobile inspectorate it was

called. They used to phone ahead and say a foreigner is coming along or a diplomat is coming along and they would time you between the traffic. And if we were more than whatever it was, 10 minutes or 15 minutes behind schedule, they would come looking for you in the countryside. Hope you enjoyed that. If you like what you heard, you can listen to the full interview with Raymond Asquith by signing up to the club at the rest is classified.com.