Talk:Oleg Penkovsky

More detail
I think that this article should go more in depth with regard to the specific intelligence that Penkovsky passed on. I know, for example, that a major focus of the intelligence was missile-related. But as the article states, he brought a wealth of information which I believe we should include 68.106.99.114 03:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

____ I had to edit some of this, which was seriously NPOV and mocking western intelligence services and Penkovsky's motivation for becoming a spy.

Spies get pretty complicated pretty fast... Penkovskiy is now widely believed to have been a plant. Lonsdale is aka Rudolph Abel aka Konan Trofimovich Molodiy (all believed to be pseudonyms), who ran Harry Houghton (cyptonym Shah) at the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment, before Houghton got busted in 1960. This exposed Molodiy, which exposed Helen & Peter Kroger, pseudonyms of atomic spies Lona & Morris Cohen, sought by FBI since the '50s... They were known via VENONA (aka BRIDE ), which also revealled the Rosenbergs had little to do with exposing the Bomb to the Sovs... VENONA was first broken by Armed Forces Security Agency cryppie Meredith Gardner, & the break was immediately revealled to the Sovs by William W. Weisband, who had penetrated ASA... Armed Forces Security Agency is predecessor to NSA, which was recently revealled to be back in the habit of intercepting civil communications, which it's reputedly been doing since the '80s via software CARNIVORE ... Don't you feel so much safer now? Trekphiler 09:38, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a mess of conspiracy theories to me. Shadowrun 21:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, exactly.Biophys (talk) 00:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It isn't. It's all documented, including CARNIVORE, which was (IIRC) on "the fifth estate" (could've been "60 Minutes")   TREKphiler   hit me ♠  02:50, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Absolutely excellent breakdown. Thanks for this, Trekphiler! 2600:1700:9856:9740:DDF3:8A8:7679:A95F (talk) 14:21, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Just a query about who 'Jacobs' is - they are not mentioned elsewhere in the article: "The Soviet public was first told of Penkovsky's arrest more than seven weeks later, when Pravda named Wynne and Jacobs as his contacts..." 80.189.160.175 (talk) 19:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Not very funny end for a spy.
In the "Aquarium" book written by GRU defector to Britain Vladimir Rezun, he said he saw a black and white film where Oleg Penkovsky was burned alive by pushing him into a cemetery crematorium while tied to a strecher. 213.178.109.36 11:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Moving forward when I recall how my first born son’s name was chosen… first name after Alexander the Great and middle after a family WWII Marine Fighter Pilot hero who was KIA after his plane exploded upon refueling on Banika Island…I will no longer think of Alexander the Great who was no hero. I will in turn think the name of Oleg (Alex) Penkovsky…Hero of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the United States of America…and the world. Sorense (talk) 20:39, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

A fantasy, most likely
Right, this account comes from Aquarium, not Inside Soviet Military Intelligence. As such it is based on lurid rumors that circulated in Moscow after Penkovsky's public conviction and trial. Suvorov's claims that he's personally witnessed such sinister practices are not confirmed by other soviet intelligence defectors and there have been many. 216.99.34.131 (talk) 14:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Agent Hero
I cannot find a source for the title "agent hero". Has anyone else heard of this codename?--DizFreak talk Contributions 19:49, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * No.Biophys (talk) 00:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

AP reference
About this reference: "Editor Says He Got Soviet Spy's Story From CIA" from the Associated Press, is there a link or anything? Considering the topic at hand, inaccessible literature is not a good thing to have in the references, so a link or anything that solidifies this would be appreciated. Furthermore, the article cites this reference with the words "some believe ..." - who are those "some"? Is that something that should be modified to make it less ambiguous? Edit: The Article about Frank Gibney states the same thing, and cites the same non-linked AP press release. I know there always was controversy about whether or not the book was "commissioned" by western agencies, but an AP press release from 1985 sounds a bit too weak to present this as an established fact. Toumal (talk) 00:55, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * After searching through both the archives of APA.net as well as the AP archives, I could not find anything AP release regarding this bit of information. And that even though I was easily able to find the AP article about Oleg's trial dated 1964, which can be found here. Hence I'm going to remove this reference unless someone verifies its actual existence. Toumal (talk) 14:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A search gives plenty of information on this book, no problem in removing a reference, but the wide opinion that this was indeed a CIA book is well established with news, book and scholar results. It just needs sourcing of course, not complete removal from the article. --Russavia Dialogue 18:13, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * In the interest of NPOV, I've reworded the statement slightly. Ultimately it's going to be difficult to establish whether the book was commissioned by the CIA. However, the same goes for the opposite opinion: It's equally difficult to be sure they did not. I've included a reference in favor of the former, which is "American Spy". It should be noted, however, that this book also contains many factual errors (see a scorching review here) so it, like any other piece of information on this subject, should be taken with a grain of salt. It would be naive to think that while the CIA tried to influence public opinion, the KGB and GRU would not do the same.
 * In summary, I think it's a good idea to always keep in mind the CIA as a possible reason why this book exists. However, it needs a lot more than a few books by alleged ex-spies to turn this into a stone-hard fact. Until then, I'd leave it at "It is believed..." instead of "It is...". Agreed? Toumal (talk) 22:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Transliteration of last name
Shouldn't his last name be transliterated "Penkovskiy", in Cyrillic ит ends with both an I and an I kratkoye? Okto8 (talk) 21:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

KGB plant?
Shouldn't there be some mention in this article that Penkovsky is believed by some to have been a plant, feeding information to the US and UK on behalf of the KGB? I'm no expert on this, but Peter Wright (in Spycatcher, ch. 14) makes a good case for this. Robfuller (talk) 18:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Totally agree. 2600:1700:9856:9740:DDF3:8A8:7679:A95F (talk) 14:23, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Public Trial?
The article does not mention any trial of Penkovcly. However the TV documentary 'Secrets of War, The Cold War 05 Inside the KGB' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypuuxrxcVek) mentions (at around 37:40) that he was put on public trial and sentenced to death. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sejtam (talk • contribs) 07:17, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Portrayal in popular culture
The plot of the spy novel (1989) and movie (1990, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Connery) "The Russia House " bears striking resemblances to the Penkovskiy case in my opinion: A highly informed russian individual taking initiative to put information on the (alledged) incapability of soviet missile systems into western hands, western secret services having differing opinions whether the source is genuine, efforts to establish contact in russia, the source being captured, manipulated and subsequently "vanished" by the KGB.--77.189.51.245 (talk) 21:56, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

edit: Detail: Regarding the fact that the Penkovskiy material explicitly listed deficiencies in the soviet fuelling and targeting systems, I find it remarkable that one of the western secret service characters in the movie says, upon reading " Dante´s" manuscript: " If this is true, the soviet missiles wouldn´t even leave the silos..."77.189.51.245 (talk) 22:02, 7 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Why do people think that their opinions matter to Wikipedia? They don't. -- 72.205.126.89 (talk) 09:33, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Place of execution / death ?
Why is it not mentioned ? --213.172.123.242 (talk) 16:00, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Read the Russian article
GTranslate it or whatever. It contains interesting material and a different perspective. 93.34.80.151 (talk) 15:10, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Russian articles usually do have "a different perspective." LOL Was Kisevalter Nash? (talk) 07:03, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Who is "Jacobs"?
"Jacobs" is an orphaned name in the current version of this article. 2601:152:307:147C:8914:BE94:2D1B:40FE (talk) 07:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Richard “Dick” Jacobs, CIA. I had to look it up elsewhere. I don’t know the story well enough to expand it. -Location (talk) 10:20, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

His name was Richard Jacob, not Richard Jacobs. He was a twenty-five-year-old CIA officer working undercover as an archivist at the American Embassy in Moscow at the time of his arrest on 2 November, 1962. Was Kisevalter Nash? (talk) 07:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)