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TOP KGB DEFECTOR Oleg Gordievsky died in his UK home at the age of 86.
Code-named Hetman, Gordievsky was one of the most important spies in Britain during the Cold War.
Surrey Police said on 4 March, officers were called to an address in Godalming where “an 86-year-old man was found dead at the property”.
It said counter-terrorism officers are leading the investigation but “the death is not currently being treated as suspicious” and “there is nothing to suggest any increased risk to members of the public”.
For more than a decade, Gordievsky’s reports gave Britain invaluable insights into the thinking of the Soviet leadership and the covert machinations of the KGB.
Gordievsky is made a Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and St George in the UK Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
In the early 1980s he was able to warn the West that fears among the paranoid Soviet leadership of a surprise Nato nuclear attack had brought the two sides perilously close to war, prompting US President Ronald Reagan to dial down his anti-USSR rhetoric.
His intelligence was subsequently crucial in guiding Margaret Thatcher in her early contacts with the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, whose ascent to power helped bring the Cold War to a close.
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But in 1985, just as he had been appointed to the key post of head of the KGB residency in London, he came under suspicion as a British spy.
Summoned back to Moscow where he was drugged and interrogated, he quickly realised that his life was in danger and he needed to escape.
Using a long pre-arranged plan, a signal was relayed to his MI6 handlers.
A man walking past him in the street in Moscow carrying a Harrods bag and eating a Mars bar was the sign that his message had been received and the rescue was under way.
On 2 August 1985, in an operation personally approved by prime minister Margaret Thatcher, two MI6 officers, Raymond Asquith, great-grandson of former Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, and Andrew Gibbs, managed to give the Soviet surveillance the slip and smuggle their man across the border into Finland hidden in the boot of a car.
In his absence, Gordievsky was sentenced to death in Russia for treason.
Meanwhile, he established a new life, living in a safe house in London, writing a number of books and being received by Thatcher in Chequers and Reagan in the Oval Office.
Reagan’s meeting with Oleg Gordievsky in the Oval Office, July 1987 Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
In 2007, the former KGB officer was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II, being made a Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and St George (CMG) in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
It was, the press noted, the same honour held by the fictional superspy James Bond.
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@The Dude: so you tried to extrapolate the actions of a single person to the people of an entire country. Sounds exactly like what i was exposed to during the troubles in northern Ireland when ever i went to the UK. Wasnt right then and its not right now.
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