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- [00:04]
David McCloskey
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@the restisclassified.com Looking back now, I find it extraordinary that I was driven, driven so hard by ideological compulsion. Yet my feelings were immensely strong because I was living and working on the frontier between the totalitarian world and the west, seeing both sides and constantly angered by the contrast between the two. The totalitarian world was blinded by prejudice, poisoned by hatred, riddled by lies. It was ugly, yet pretending to be beautiful. It was stupid with without vision and yet claiming to be fit to lead the way and pioneer a path into the future for the rest of mankind. Anything I could do to damage this monster, I gladly would. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.
- [01:09]
Gordon Carrera
And I'm Gordon Carrera.
- [01:10]
David McCloskey
And that, dear listeners, was former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, writing in his memoir, which has an exceptional title, I feel, Gordon, next stop execution. And we are, in the coming episodes going to be telling the absolutely remarkable story of Oleg Gordievsky, the man, his life and times, his work for the KGB, his work against the KGB, as he ends up spying for Britain's MI6. And I think, Gordon, I mean, it's probably fair to say that Gordievsky is right up there as one of the most consequential spy cases run during the Cold War. I don't think that's hyperbole to put him in that pantheon.
- [01:57]
Gordon Carrera
No, I think that's absolutely right. I think there's a personal drama, there's excitement, there's all the other things, but it's also the importance of his case. And I sometimes get people asking, does spying really matter? And I think Gordievsky is so interesting because it is the one case where you can say this. This is about one man, one spy who made a difference, who had a direct impact not just, but certainly on the worlds of kind of counterintelligence and spy versus spy, but also on the kind of political and strategic direction of the Cold War. And I think all of that just makes him really, really interesting and really, really important.
- [02:37]
David McCloskey
The period that we'll be talking about, which is the period where he's most active is the late 70s, early 80s. And it's a period in the Cold War that's maybe next to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the point where there's the greatest risk of the Cold War actually going hot. And it's fascinating because, I mean, there's so many spy cases during the Cold War, where you could argue that maybe they don't actually make any practical difference on the outcome of events. And yet it does seem like with Gordievsky there's almost you could draw a line between this kind of atmosphere of rising tensions and Gordievsky's reporting, which as it made its way to London and other Western capitals, really helped leaders in the West, I think, make better decisions about how to deal with the Soviet Union, to understand the leadership of the Soviet Union and that insight that is why these spy services exist. So Gordievsky is absolutely one of the most consequential kind of figures in the world of espionage. I mean, probably at least in that last half century, we talked before, I.
- [03:43]
Gordon Carrera
Think, in the Tolkchev series about how only a few spies actually pay the bills for intelligence agencies. And I think Gordievsky is one of those because he is operating at this time. And I think it's maybe hard for people to remember that there was a bit in the early 80s, a period when the danger signs were flashing quite red and the tension was growing and, and the key to understanding why there was so much tension was misunderstanding on both sides. And that's when intelligence plays such a big role. Because intelligence can illuminate your adversary and help you understand them. Not just in the kind of crude sense of war fighting or finding out about spies, but actually helping you manage tension and prevent it boiling over. And I think that's why he's so interesting, because I think it is an example of when is human espionage important and when is digital or cyber espionage important, what can you do with people and what could you do with machines? But actually in this case, I think it needed a person to be able to tell people these things and talk to them and help them understand. And again, I think that's why Gordievsky is so important.
- [04:45]
David McCloskey
I think what we'll hope to do in telling Gordievsky's story, just like we did with Tolkachevs, is to shine a light on the really fascinating connection between these kind of world changing events and what's going on in the head of a single person. Because Gordievsky's psychology, I mean, as we'll see, he's a pretty abnormal guy. And I don't mean that in he's sort of a deviant or something like that, but he's got a particular psychology that I think is kind of alien. We should also note that this is essentially Gordon Carrera's super bowl because we have the nexus of Russia espionage and this is a source run by British intelligence. Sis, MI6. Right. This is not a source run by the Central Intelligence Agency. So this is his. His sweepstakes here. You've won the lottery, my friend. Congratulations.
- [05:41]
Gordon Carrera
And I'd just like to say the CIA will feature in our story, but not necessarily in the happiest way. We'll come to that later. Let's not spoil that surprise. It's not necessarily always the most positive role in this, but, yes, it is a story that I'm really interested in. And, I mean, Gordievsky died this year.
- [05:57]
David McCloskey
You knew him?
- [05:58]
Gordon Carrera
I knew the man. I kind of met him, I guess about 15 years ago when I was making a documentary about MI6 and then I wrote a book about MI6 and I used to go to see him. I can now say where I went to see him. Because you used to have to keep it secret. It was at an undisclosed location, which is now, you know, can be revealed. Was Godalming in Surrey, which is a very quiet, suburban kind of. Well, not suburban, sleepy commuter, quite affluent town, you know, outside of London. You turn up at the train station, someone picks you up, someone takes you to his house, you go there for lunch and he'd sit there and there'd be a bottle of red wine on the table and some sandwiches and then you talk. And that was the way with. With Oleg. It was a good aftersight, actually, into the life of defectors. And I think we'll come to that at the end as well, what it was like for him, the security around him, some of the scares that. Because there were some even recently around his security. And, yeah, I think that also gives you a flavour of the reality of life for defectors, including the most important, like Gordievsky. But, yeah, he was a pretty unique.
- [07:00]
David McCloskey
Individual and there's a great picture, which hopefully I think we'll put it on social media, or something of a younger Gordon Carrera sitting with Oleg. I'm sure he was enjoying himself, but he doesn't look very happy and neither do you. Everyone's kind of scowled.
- [07:14]
Gordon Carrera
No, I'm smiling, I'm kind of.
- [07:16]
David McCloskey
You have half a smile, like a thin smile on your face. And Oleg sort of looks like he looks frustrated.
- [07:21]
Gordon Carrera
I think that was his look. It's interesting, but I think he felt like, I'm a serious man. I must. When I'm having my picture taken. I don't think he did the smiles.
- [07:30]
David McCloskey
I don't think Russian smile in pictures a lot.
- [07:32]
Gordon Carrera
Maybe not.
- [07:33]
David McCloskey
I mean, someone reach out if you. If that's. If that's wrong. I mean, who is this guy? Begin at the beginning, Gordon. You know, we love to go back deep into context, of course.
- [07:43]
Gordon Carrera
So he's born in Moscow in 1938, and I think few crucial things will come to, but one of them is that the KGB is family to Gordievsky. Poor guy. So he is born. Exactly. I mean, his father is going to serve in its ranks, and his brother as well as Oleg himself are all going to be KGB officers, Although it's called something different in the 30s and. And within actually is slightly interesting, complicated home life, I think, of some of the seeds of what he will become, his betrayal and his discipline, I think. So his father's a committed Communist, joins the party soon after the 1917 revolution, which brings the Bolsheviks to power, creates the Soviet Union, working as a food official originally, then joins what's called the NKVD, but that's basically the forerunner of the KGB, around 1932. Oleg has an older brother, Vasily, born in 33, and then Oleg himself, born five years later. Now, it's interesting because even at this period, this is 1938, this is the era of Stalin and the purges and what's called the Great Terror. And Stalin is purging the Soviet system of officials, but including the secret police themselves. And his father is both part of that and in fear of it as a member of the nkvd, the forerunner of the kgb. For others are kind of strict disciplinarian, doesn't speak to his son about his work, but he always says the NKVD is always right.
- [09:15]
David McCloskey
I've always wanted to work for an organization like that, but that wasn't the CIA mantra. No, not quite.
- [09:22]
Gordon Carrera
But I guess you have to say the NKVD is always right, because if it's wrong, then you're in trouble. And I think Oleg can already sense that there's a kind of fear beneath what his father says about the nkvd. And his father is seeing colleagues around him being arrested as part of this great terror. And I think there's 28 flats in their apartment block, and people lived in apartment blocks based on their work. So these are all other kind of people involved in the security world. And a quarter of the flats were raided with the people who lived them taken away. And, you know, they're going to the gulags, they're being executed. There's going to be just this wave of terror and people exiled to Siberia. So if you have any doubts about this, you have to hide it, you have to keep it secret. But then on his mother's side, what's interesting. His mother's slightly different. His mother is more willing to question. His mother's eldest brother had been deemed an enemy of the people and had been sent to die in the camps in the Gulags. So you can see already his mother is going to be less keen on the system and her mother. So Oleg's grandmother had been religious and had tried to get Oleg baptized. His father had stopped it because it's an atheistic country, and he knew that would kind of get them killed as well. So you can see that the two different branches of the family are slightly tugging, hugging him already in slightly different directions. And Oleg's mother, you feel like, can see the brutality of the system. And he can hear his parents arguing in their bedroom at night about it.
- [10:50]
David McCloskey
A little bit more context on how nasty the Great Terror was. I mean, producer Callum has popped in here. 692 executions as part of the Great Terror. So we're not talking about, like a sort of, you know, lazy purge here. I mean, this is hundreds of thousands of people. And of course, in the. In the Gulags, I mean, I think the official figure is very low, but it's like 700,000 to, like, 1.2 million people, which are the estimate. So huge, huge numbers of people sort of pulled into this. And I do also find it fascinating, Gordon, because Tolkachev, the series we did earlier in the year, I mean, it's the same thing where you have family members who get sucked up into this, you know, into this meat grinder, and years later, you have these. These guys who joined the Soviet system and are sort of deeply resentful of it because of the. The deprivations and the predations of. Of the 1930s.
- [11:42]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, it's very similar, isn't it? So I think with Oleg, you know, this notion that you have to live a double life comes quite young. You know, you have to bury your feelings, you have to hide them. And of course, that's gonna make him a very good spy and a very good agent in his time, because he's understanding that need when on the surface, he describes himself as making himself appear as a normal Homo saveticus, which is this phrase which means a Soviet man, which means, you know, you are the perfect man. You are like those kind of propaganda posters. You know, you're bravely pushing forward for the revolution. But beneath the surface, he compares it to the double think that George Orwell talks about in 1984, which. Where you toe the party line in public, but in private, you know, that it's Wrong and that it's different. And, you know, parents warn their kids not to joke about things. And this. This ability to lead a different exterior and interior life seems to come really young to Oleg and quite naturally to him. He's in the youth wing of the Young Pioneers, and he's actually a leader of it, which is basically the Boy Scouts, plus Marxism. And, you know, he's head of the school branch, but inside his head, he's like a free thinker or. But on the outside, he's able to appear as this loyal citizen of the state. So I think that's really interesting. And then there's one. One memory that he recalls from when he's 17, which is when a man his father's age turns up at their door and he's looking thin, wearing strange clothes, and he says he was an old friend of his father, of Oleg's father from when they were young, and that he's just been released from the Gulag and he was hoping to see his old friend Oleg's father again, but then he's told, well, Oleg's father is now in the kgb, and he goes pale and he just vanishes. And then when Oleg's father comes home and finds out that this guy's been to visit, he's panicked and agitated. This plants these seeds in ogleg about what the system really is. We'll watch those seeds kind of, you know, grow through the series.
- [13:41]
David McCloskey
It is interesting how the entire Soviet kind of system and the way it seeps into the minds of its citizens actually prepares many of them for successful careers betraying it. Because even if he doesn't take the steps that he's going to take in the future, you have this double think system where you can operate as kind of a defector in place in your mind already. Right. And you think of how many other hundreds of thousands of kind of young Soviet citizens had basically betrayed the ideals and the mantras of the Soviet state. They don't take the steps necessarily, that Oleg does, which is an entirely different game. But you have all of this prepared mentally before he ever runs into a British intelligence officer, I think, in a way that the inverse isn't true. Right. The Americans who commit espionage, I mean, in particular later in the Cold War, you don't have this kind of gigantic pool of potential recruits who have defected in place from the American system.
- [14:46]
Gordon Carrera
It's interesting, isn't it? The nature of the totalitarian system also breeds people who will be quite good at betraying it because they understand the discipline and the need to Kind of have double lives. It's a really interesting point. So at school he's smart, he's bookish, he's got a voracious appetite to learn. He's cultured, good at languages, starts learning German, plans a career in the Foreign Ministry, goes to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He notices that other students choose not to read Western newspapers, so ordinary Soviet citizens couldn't read them. But here at the institute, you can read them to learn the languages, but they don't even want to do that because it's too risky, you know, to be interested in subversive views. But he's interested in them. He watches 1956 Soviet tanks crush the Budapest, the Hungarian uprising, when Hungarians were trying to loosen the grip of the Soviet Union. They're brutally killed. Interestingly enough though, he's still a part of the system, still not a defector or a dissenter. He's quite handsome young man, good company, but reserved. And I think that's a kind of another big character trait. He's kind of focused, disciplined. Here's the really interesting bit of his story. At age 19, he takes up long distance cross country running. And I was talking with someone who knew him well just the other day, and we agreed that this was actually one of the secrets to understanding his, his personality and his whole life, including as an agent. Because the qualities you need to be really good at long distance cross country, and he was good at it, are endurance and patience. You know, the ability to see things through, to overcome obstacles, to be single minded, even when you're in that race, block out everything to focus on it. Perhaps also to deal with a certain kind of loneliness, you know, the loneliness of the long distance runner. And it's not about being a sprinter, it's not about showing off. It's just about a disciplined finishing of the race. And I think that is Oleg, you know, that is his character in that kind of long distance cross country runner.
- [16:42]
David McCloskey
He's a grinder. He can just like grind. He's a grinder over long periods of time. And it sounds also like it would have been painful no matter how sort of grooved you got your mind to live this way, to live with just sort of a disgust and fear of the system around you and also be part of it. You can kind of understand why some of these students with him at school don't even want to look at the Western newspapers. I mean, obviously there's a whole security issue around it potentially, but it almost seems like it could be painful.
- [17:12]
Gordon Carrera
And then also one Interesting, important fact, which we'll come back to in his love of running. At that time, he also gets to know a Czechoslovak student who becomes a good friend, who's also a runner. Meanwhile, his brother Vasily has followed in his father's footsteps. He's joined the kgb, interestingly enough, he's going to become an illegal, which, for those who haven't heard our previous episodes, are the kind of elite deep cover spies who go abroad posing as different nationalities, sometimes short missions, sometimes for years and decades. They are the elite of Russian spies. And his brother says, well, you know, Oleg's good at languages, you might be interested in it. And I think Oleg himself at this point sees the interest in following in his father and his brother's footsteps. I guess you can understand why perhaps, you know, even if he's got that bit of dissent, I mean, it's still an interesting career. It's the family business.
- [18:04]
David McCloskey
I also do think we'll, I mean, we'll talk more about some of the distinctions inside the kgb, but where his brother is working kind of matters. Right. Because they're talking about working in, I guess, what was then the first Chief Directorate of the kgb. Right. So it's, it's externally focused on. It's not the knuckle draggers and the second Chief Directorate who are keeping sort of watch on everybody at home. I can understand why to Oleg, it might appeal to him to sort of have a more external focus in his work.
- [18:34]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, it's probably the one chance, the one way you get to travel and go abroad. If he's interested in the world, you know, he's learning German. That thought is part of it. You know, he gets interviewed. He's not quite in yet, but he's on the path there. And then as part of his studies, he gets six months experience abroad and. And where does he go? He goes to Berlin. And it's so interesting. Again, there's this kind of almost cinematic quality of this because he arrives late on the evening of August 11, 1961 to stay at this student hostel. And already he senses there's something going on in the city because refugees have been heading west by the thousands. So we should explain Berlin is a kind of strange bubble with an Eastern and Western zone but sat in eastern Germany and people are flooding into the western zone to escape the East. And I think more than two and a half million have done this since the end of the Second World War.
- [19:25]
David McCloskey
Kind of voting with your feet against communism, right?
- [19:28]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. You know, young people looking for a better future. And of Course, this looks terrible for East Germany and communism, doesn't it? You're supposed to be the future, and all the young people are kind of leaving. So Gordievsky, just by chance, has arrived. You know, this moment when something absolutely pivotal in Cold War history is going to happen. Because he's warned on the evening after he arrives, don't go out anywhere by someone at the embassy, because the next morning after that, barbed wire is going up over the city and the Berlin Wall is being built to stop that flow of people. You know, this famous iconic thing is being put up in front of his eyes to stop people. And you get the desperate scenes as some people try and get up and get. Get over the wall before it's finished, you know, and people are killed at that moment. So he is witnessing again up close in this really intimate way, the reality of the communist system.
- [20:22]
David McCloskey
It is also interesting because it doesn't send him on some radical new path. Whatever he internalizes in Berlin for a while, stays inside. Right. Because he goes and continues sort of his process to join the kgb.
- [20:39]
Gordon Carrera
I think he's been tested out by the KGB at this moment. So he's not yet in. And they ask him to do a set of kind of quite small missions in Berlin. Like one is, he's to go and see this woman who had been in touch with the KGB and tell her that they want to resume contact with her and see if he can persuade her. And he turns up with some flowers, he talks to her, he writes a report. I mean, later he realizes that actually it was just a test, it was a game. She was working for them. She was reporting on him, basically to say, how did he do it and was he any good, rather than him having actually to persuade her. That was just a bit of a game. But clearly he's passing these tests. And so I think it is that lure of foreign travel, the thrill of.
- [21:22]
David McCloskey
Espionage, sometimes it's that simple. Right. It seems like it'll be a fun adventure, no matter what you might think about the overall organization or the system around you.
- [21:30]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think he's decided he can keep his descent closed deep inside him and outwardly lead this actually quite successful life as a KGB officer. So at that point, he is invited into the kgb. He can see the world opening up before him, and he's on a path to follow, I guess, in his father and his brother's footsteps.
- [21:55]
David McCloskey
Yeah. So maybe there with the blast furnace of potential treason lit inside Oleg Gordievsky's heart and Soul and mind. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll see how he gets on when he joins the KGB. Well, welcome back. It is 1962. Gordon and Oleg Gordievsky. I found this interesting, much to his. His mother's dismay. Has joined the first Chief Directorate of the kgb.
- [22:27]
Gordon Carrera
That's right. So he's in. His mother's not happy, as we said, she's a bit more of a dissenter. He's going to go to the Red Banner Institute to learn tradecraft for a year. All the students are given false names, so they don't use their real names. Is that same CIA? If you're a case officer, do you.
- [22:43]
David McCloskey
I don't know. I think it'd be very common to refer to people by their funny names, the name that you have on the system. But there's not like an official kind of code name or cover name given to agency officers when they're training. So that's. That'd be different.
- [22:58]
Gordon Carrera
But when he's finished his training, he's actually quite disappointed because he thinks he's going to become an overseas illegal like his brother. But instead he's actually dispatched to the back office doing paperwork for their identities, you know, doing the. He's doing the COVID story and building up identities for the other people who get to do the fun. And it actually may be because they were nervous at the KGB about having two deep cover brothers out at the same time in case they could compromise each other.
- [23:25]
David McCloskey
He didn't screw up the training, though. There's no indication that he did. What?
- [23:28]
Gordon Carrera
There's no education. He was no anything other than successful. So he does a couple of years, 1963-5, in this office job. He spends his time reading books. Suddenly he's got access to books inside the kgb. Meanwhile, most of his colleagues are spending their time drinking. That will be a theme now. He does meet Yelena, who is half Armenian and 21 years old. She's quite modern, progressive, and wants to travel abroad. And they marry really quickly. When he looks back on it, you get the feeling this was because it was two people who felt they ought to get married. Both of them felt it was time. We need a marriage. If I'm going to go abroad, it helps if I've got a wife. She's looking for KGB officer, husband. They just kind of fall into that quite quickly. And it's interesting because this is something we might come back to a little bit in a bit because the KGB is quite conservative, actually, morally.
- [24:18]
David McCloskey
I always find this fascinating for an organization that commits so much murder. They really have, I guess, what to. Maybe our modern sensibility in 2025 would seem to be sort of archaic morals, but fervently held and promulgated throughout the organization. It's very fascinating.
- [24:39]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. Officers should be married. Divorce is bad. Homosexuality is never discussed. That was the kind of culture of the kgb. I agree, it's kind of interesting. But his marriage with Yelena, it pretty quickly cools. It pretty quickly becomes clear that he is quite traditional. I mean, he is quite patriarchal. The type of man who thinks I make the decisions. She's not into that. She gets pregnant without telling him she has an abortion. She doesn't want children. He finds out, he's upset. I think they're very quickly realising they're not compatible with each other, but they're together. And then 1966, he gets his first posting and it's to Denmark. So he's going to be what's called a line N officer. And he's been in Directorate S, which is the directorate which does illegals, and line N are the officers in the embassies who support illegals. And it's part of just the jargon. So his official cover is a consular officer. His real job, line in, it's going to be checking dead letter boxes, signal sites left by illegals. He's not going to meet many, but he's going to make sure there's cash for them to pick up when they need them. He's also going to build the legends for illegals. So, you know, the backstories, because as we said, they're often pretending to be Western rather than Russian, these deep cover spies. And so one of the things he has to do is he has to go find churches where he can either steal the birth registers or bribe the priests to give him access to the church registers so that they can insert names for people who will then become Danish but who are really Russian deep cover officers. I mean, what a weird thing.
- [26:22]
David McCloskey
It's a weird job to have in any. It's a weird job. From any angle, it seems like a strange job.
- [26:27]
Gordon Carrera
So, Soviet Embassy in Denmark. Three villas north of Copenhagen, separated from the American Embassy only by a graveyard. Love that fact. So bizarre. And the KGB station is the top floor of one of the buildings with, you know, the referentura, the swept rooms, protected from eavesdropping, where the cipher clerks work and the meetings are held. 20 civilian diplomats, but only six of those are real diplomats. I mean, that's just crazy.
- [26:54]
David McCloskey
Sounds like a Russian ratio to me there. Right.
- [26:57]
Gordon Carrera
14 out of the 20 are spies and six are diplomats. Now, one of those who arrives a bit after he does, but. But during his time in Copenhagen, will become his closest friend. And we're going to spend a bit of time on him because. Fascinating character, a close friend who he will end up betraying, which is why I think it's so important. And he's called Mikhail Lubimov, another very interesting character from our story. I've met him as well. I've sat down in his apartment in Moscow and his dacha outside of Moscow. And he is, I think, one of a kind. He's incredibly outgoing. He likes to laugh. He's a total Anglophile. So if.
- [27:36]
David McCloskey
If you took pictures with him, he would have been smiling then, like.
- [27:38]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, he would have been smiling. Well, we'll come to his code name in a minute. But he loves everything British. He had, like, kind of Margaret Thatcher mugs up on his shelf, I remember, in his apartment, you know, he loves single malt whiskey. He loves intrigue, he loves novels. He'd come to Britain in the 60s, very start of the 60s, to be a spy, and given the job of targeting the British Conservative Party and trying to recruit agents, there goes to their conference.
- [28:04]
David McCloskey
That seems hard, right? That's a hard.
- [28:06]
Gordon Carrera
It seems hard target. It's interesting because you talk to him and you read about him, and at that point, in the early 60s, actually, there was a kind of slightly more friendly attitude, I think, at that point. And so people like, oh, he's the Russian spy. Welcome, Mikhail. He drinks whiskey with Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels.
- [28:24]
David McCloskey
Wow.
- [28:24]
Gordon Carrera
Going back to his. His demeanor, he was known by MI5 as Smiley Mike, which I like was his code name. And actually, in 1965, he tries to recruit a civil servant, and instead, two MI5 men come into the pub and say, your career is over unless you work for us. You know, and they try and turn him. He refuses, Goes back to Russia, writes his KGB thesis, which I discovered was something you did if you wanted a pay rise, basically you got an extra 10% pay if you wrote a thesis. If you wrote a thesis, and it's on English national characteristics and its use in operational work.
- [29:01]
David McCloskey
Oh, wow. Okay.
- [29:03]
Gordon Carrera
I asked for a copy and he said it. It's not declassified, but I think it basically says, you know, don't talk to people on the underground, you know, like on tube. That's the kind of advice was like, they don't like being talked to, but do go and buy around in the pub.
- [29:17]
David McCloskey
You Know, that feels like that's probably most of it, is just go to the pub and buy a bunch of drinks for people and get them talking.
- [29:25]
Gordon Carrera
So he's been in Britain and then he goes back to Moscow. Interestingly enough, the department which deals with Britain also deals with Scandinavia. So Britain and Scandinavia as countries, Denmark included, are all part of the same department in the kgb. Not sure why, historically, but it's interesting. They're all kind of lumped together. And this is going to be important for Gordievsky as well, because it's going to allow both him and Lubimov to, if you like, move between British and Scandinavian work. So Lubimov comes out to Copenhagen same time as Gordievsky. He's head of what's called Line Prior, which is political intelligence, misses the glamour of London. Who wouldn't? And then these two men strike up a really genuine friendship. And I find that kind of really interesting because I think they both recognise a free thinking streak in each other. I think they contrast themselves to the thuggish KGB officers who basically want to drink vodka in the embassy and watch films, and instead they want to go out in Copenhagen and listen to classical music and talk about politics. And so they are kindred spirits in that way. And I think they both recognise a slightly more liberal mentality about the world and they feel comfortable enough to talk politics with each other. So Oleg is there, he's enjoying life in Copenhagen, he's enjoying the freedoms. He kind of talks about it in his memoir. The fact he could borrow books from a library or the fact he can go listen to church music. These are the two things which he just loves. And I just like this. Like, at the time, one of the most prominent slogans in Moscow was, capitalism is rotting away. When people returned from countries like Denmark and their friends asked, well, is it rotting? They would answer, yes, but the smell of decay is wonderful. Now, here's where things, I think, get a little. A little bit unusual, because there's one aspect to the freedom that he takes advantage of, particularly, let's say, Danish freedoms in the 70s, Scandinavian being a particularly liberal society in which pornography is widely available, in a way, I don't think it was in Britain at the time. So Oleg is so taken with the freedoms that he goes and buys some gay porn mags and then shows them to his wife.
- [31:50]
David McCloskey
Feels like maybe not the person you would show the gay porn mags to. I don't know. Yeah, but he's doing this because he's so taken with the freedom.
- [32:03]
Gordon Carrera
I mean, it's not something I would do if I was in a country. Because I think he's trying to say, look how much freedom there is here. Look, you can even buy this. I still think I would maybe tell my wife that rather than go and buy the.
- [32:16]
David McCloskey
This is a case where telling and not showing might be appropriate.
- [32:19]
Gordon Carrera
It might be appropriate. It is a kind of weird thing to do now. I mean, I talked to people, I said, you know, was there any sign he was gay? And there's no sign whatsoever. In fact, you know, he has relationships with women through his life. There's absolutely no sign of it. So it does look like it was just a kind of a strange thing to do. But it's kind of significant anyway in his story.
- [32:39]
David McCloskey
I guess it's like, number one, it does show some of the childlike wonder that he seems to have with the openness of the west and Denmark in particular, which I think that is important, right, to his story, is that he's fascinated with it to a point where he's going to do something that, you know, sort of seems socially off. And then, I guess, secondly, it also seems to indicate that he's not really trying to patch things up with his wife because. Or that. Or that they're just so distant from each other that he maybe doesn't understand how. How it would land.
- [33:09]
Gordon Carrera
I think Yelena and he are certainly drifting apart. She gets a job actually for transcribing phone calls for the kgb and they're intercepting Danish surveillance calls. So he knows he's being watched. It's kind of interesting. But she's. She's also becoming more and more of a feminist. It's the 70s. I mean, in his memoir, Oleg says Yelena began to exhibit what I can only call anti domestic tendencies, which. And he starts to remonstrate with her. And. And as he says, as a form of retaliation, I took up cooking. I love the fact that he sees that as his way to get his own back by saying, well, I could cook too.
- [33:45]
David McCloskey
So that may have been exactly what she was attempting to accomplish by the anti domestic tendencies. But the magazines also, I mean, other than illustrating what's going on in his sort of mind and his home. I mean, they actually do kind of play an important role in this story, right, because they draw in some interest.
- [34:06]
Gordon Carrera
From elsewhere because of course, Danish security services keep their eye on Soviet diplomats and trying to work out who's kgb. And they watch him buy the born Max. So they've seen him buy them. And they also can see that he's having problems with his wife because of course, the Danes have broken into and bugged the flat.
- [34:29]
David McCloskey
And he's cooking. They're like, what's going on here? There's a Russian guy cooking his own meals. Something's wrong, Something's gone horribly wrong.
- [34:37]
Gordon Carrera
And I think that's exactly what they think. There's something weird going on. So that it goes down in his file. Interestingly enough, they will actually try a male honey trap on him. So at one point they. At a party, he meets some young guy who kind of says, oh, do you want to go for a drink? Or something like that. But Oleg, of course, isn't gay, so he's just like, yeah, no, no thanks, not interested. So, you know, that attempt fails because they kind of haven't quite read it. Now, another big thing happens in the outside world here, which is going to play a part in the story 1968. Gordievsky and Lubimov, the two friends, watch what's happening in Czechoslovakia and what's called the Prague Spring very closely because this is a moment of kind of flourishing or of the possibility of a more liberal Communism, where arts and freedom, more political expression are being allowed in Czechoslovakia by the government and reformers are in power and you've got this possibility of kind of Communism with a more human face. They're, of course, both really excited by this, him and Lyubimov, and fearful of what will happen. And then, of course, what they fear will happen happens, because their country, the Soviet Union and their organization, the kgb, is going to send in the tanks to crush them and put in a new hardline government.
- [35:54]
David McCloskey
He writes in his memoir that he didn't think that the Soviets would invade, that it wasn't going to happen. Which I think is interesting, having seen what happened in Hungary in 1956. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the story we did on MATROKIN and how 68 and the kind of, I guess, just the demonstration of the power realities in the Soviet system, it comes sort of just out of the woodwork.
- [36:23]
Gordon Carrera
Right.
- [36:23]
David McCloskey
You can just see clearly on display maybe the differences between west and east here. And it just like Matrokin, it seems to have a real impact on Gordievsky and Lubimov as well.
- [36:35]
Gordon Carrera
It looks like there's a generation of people within the Soviet system or Eastern European system who suddenly their kind of eyes are opened by this. Some of them will keep it to themselves, but some will end up in contact with the West. I do think there's an interesting parallel There with Russia invading Ukraine in 2022, a bit like the Soviet Union invading Czechoslovakia in 68. If you read very carefully the speeches of former CIA Director Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore, they are suggestive that this was a similarly disillusioning moment for Russian officials recently as they suddenly saw our country is actually going to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine. And the suggestion, of course no one's going to give us the details that there might be new Gordievsky's and Matrokins who are being recruited because of the disillusion at seeing Russia invade Ukraine. Of course we don't know how many or if it's true, but I think it's plausible at least.
- [37:29]
David McCloskey
You'd have to think, at minimum, that it's got to increase the potential recruiting pool. It would have to, because you would absolutely have Russian officials throughout military security services, foreign ministry, you name it, who would look at the invasion of Ukraine and say, that's ridiculous. But it doesn't cause them to leave. It causes them to, I mean, I guess do what Gordievsky is going to do, which is kind of defect in place in, in many ways. So again, a big difference between thinking something and actually doing something about it. But you'd have to think the size of the pool is larger now, similarly to 68.
- [38:03]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And Gordievsky definitely, you know, feels this alienation, that kind of seeds of dissent have been planted. So from now he is starting to think he hates this system and he wants to subvert it and that the best way of subverting it is not to resign, but to actually go work for the Western intelligence services. So he's starting now to think about offering himself up. And I remember when I talked to him about how he came into contact with MI6, he said, I was approached by MI6, yes. But in a way I provoked that approach because I wanted to get in touch with them. So I think what we're going to see as this story unfolds is the kind of complicated dance that actually happens sometimes with agent recruitment. You know, rather than it being a simple straight pitch or an offer, sometimes it's a little bit more subtle and complicated. And I think watching that unfold in the Gordievsky case in detail is really interesting. Actually.
- [38:55]
David McCloskey
It does seem like in Gordievsky's case that he's essentially self recruited at this point. He's a volunteer, right? He is self recruited. Like the puzzle has been fit together and he's already made the decision he doesn't need a case officer to Go and convince him of anything.
- [39:10]
Gordon Carrera
Persuade him, yeah, exactly.
- [39:11]
David McCloskey
It's just a matter of getting in touch, which is very delicate, very delicate.
- [39:17]
Gordon Carrera
When you're a KGB officer. And so he's thinking, how do I provoke a pitch? You know, and it's interesting. He. He calls his wife from a phone that he knows is tapped by Danish intelligence, Western intelligence, in the wake of the Prague Spring, in the wake of the tanks going in to the Prague Spring, and he says, they've done it. It's unbelievable. I just don't know what to do. He believes, well, okay, this is my attempt very subtly to signal that, you know, I want out. And he hopes that someone's going to pick up on these comments, but. But it doesn't look like they do at this point. Gets recorded, no doubt, and transcribed. But I think it's just maybe too subtle and maybe the Danes have got a lot to look at and there's a lot going on at this time because there's no trace of it that that phone call actually, you know, leads to anything. But in his mind, he is already starting to think, how do I invite that pitch? And then before he can do much more, his time in Denmark is up and, you know, January 1970, he's back in Moscow because the posting is over and he's back in this kind of grey, drab Brezhnev era. And what's interesting, though, he doesn't know that actually the cogs are beginning to turn somewhere else. Back In London, at MI6 headquarters, his name has come up for the first time. And it's really interesting because it goes back to his running and his Czechoslovak friend who was a runner, and that friend had also become a spy, but he had defected in the wake of the Prague Spring. And he'd been asked, are there any other Soviet officers, you know, or officials, you know, who might be good for Western intelligence to target? And he says, yeah, there's this guy, Oleg Gordievsky. So that note, you know, will then come across the desk of a very capable young MI6 officer in London who'd studied Russian, you know, will be involved in actually many of the great Russian cases of the following decades. You know, he's just joined in the 60s. So he spots this and he gets in touch with the Danes, with whom the Brits work closely. And that relationship is going to be very important. And the officer is going to go through the files and see that the Danes have some interesting leads on him. But he's now back in Moscow. And so they have him down as someone to watch, but nothing more. But he is given a name, which is Sunbeam.
- [41:38]
David McCloskey
Sunbeam. Well, with those rays of light, Gordon shining and the sort of drabness of Brezhnev's Moscow. Let's end there and when we come back next time, we'll see how Oleg Gordievsky takes this massive step to begin spying for Great Britain.
- [41:56]
Gordon Carrera
But don't forget, you don't have to wait. You don't have to be like Oleg, carefully planting seeds through intercepted phone calls. Because we're here for you. And you could just come and talk to us. We're pitching you directly.
- [42:12]
David McCloskey
We want to recruit you to join the Declassified Club.
- [42:15]
Gordon Carrera
Join the Declassified Club, where you can hear all the episodes right now of this series and there's lots of other great kind of goodies for you as a club member. And you just have to go to the restisclassified.com and join up. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.
- [42:30]
David McCloskey
We'll see you next time. Hey, it's Anthony Scaramucci from the Restless. Politics US if you're looking for something to play next, Katie K. And I just launched a new miniseries about Ronald Reagan. We're digging into the real Reagan story, the rise, the drama, how his world has been turned upside down in the age of Trump.
- [42:56]
Gordon Carrera
We trace his rise from Hollywood to the White House, from his role in ending the Cold War to reviving the economy. And we also confront those scandals, Iran Contra, his assassination attempt and his failure around the AIDS epidemic.
- [43:09]
David McCloskey
Just search the rest. Politics US Wherever you get your podcast. Here's a clip from the series. Ronald Reagan knew how to go big and go bold.
- [43:18]
Gordon Carrera
He truly was the great communicator.
- [43:20]
David McCloskey
Together we're going to do what has to be done.
- [43:23]
Gordon Carrera
He regrounded the GOP and conservative principles. Free market, small government, and an unshakable faith in American exceptionalism.
- [43:31]
David McCloskey
Mr. Gorbachev teared down this Ronald Reagan shook the country.
- [43:39]
Gordon Carrera
People keep looking to government for the.
- [43:41]
David McCloskey
Answer, and government's the problem. President Reagan was shot in the chest by a gunman outside the Washington Hotel. We did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Uncomfortable as it is to admit, the.
- [43:52]
Gordon Carrera
40Th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th.
- [43:56]
David McCloskey
It's not Reagan's party anymore. Donald Trump destroyed Ronald Reagan. I thought he was great. His style, his attitude, but not great on trade.
- [44:05]
Gordon Carrera
Will we be the party of conservatism or will we follow the siren song of populism? Only one man has the proven experience we need.
- [44:15]
David McCloskey
Together, we'll make America great again. Thank you very much.
- [44:23]
Gordon Carrera
We hope you enjoyed that clip. To hear the full series, just search. The rest is politics, US.