The Colonel Who Sold Secrets on a Moscow Bridge, 1960
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The Colonel Who Sold Secrets on a Moscow Bridge, 1960
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A Soviet colonel walked up to strangers on a Moscow bridge in July 1960 and handed them military documents from inside the GRU - then vanished back into the city. He later told the West that the Soviet nuclear arsenal was smaller than claimed and that mass production of ICBMs had not yet happened; how much did Moscow know about him at the time, and when did that knowledge arrive?
In this episode, you will hear the account of Oleg Penkovsky’s decision to pass GRU secrets to Western intelligence, the failed initial approach to the American Embassy, and how a British industrial salesman became the crucial conduit. What did Penkovsky risk by revealing the exact signatures and footprints of Soviet missiles, and how did those revelations reshape the Cold War standoff?
Person: Oleg Penkovsky
Date (birth): April 23, 1919
Event (bridge handoff): July 1960 on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge
Contact: Greville Wynne met Penkovsky in London, April 1961
Revelation: Exact visual signatures and physical footprints of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missiles
- Penkovsky was born on April 23, 1919 during the Russian Civil War.
- He graduated from the Kiev Artillery Academy and was commissioned in 1939.
- He joined the GRU in 1953 and was posted to Ankara in 1955 before being recalled.
- In July 1960 he handed a package of military documents to two American students on a Moscow bridge.
- Penkovsky’s first direct meeting with Western intelligence took place in London in April 1961 with four officers present.
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