Oleg Gordievsky
British spyWikipedia
28
MENTIONS
9
EPISODES
9
PODCASTS
Search complete. 28 mentions across 9 episodes found for "Oleg Gordievsky".
Oct 26, 2026
Gordon CoreraHOST
They were like, who is this guy? This guy called Oleg Kalugin who does that, but also a guy who we've met before in some of our podcasts, Mikhail Lyubimov.
Gordon CoreraHOST
Smiley Mike from our Gordievsky series.
Gordon CoreraHOST
Smiley Mike is a specialist on the English and he'd served in Britain as a KGB officer in the 60s.
Gordon CoreraHOST
He's written his KGB dissertation on British people.
29 MINS LATER
Gordon CoreraHOST
Yeah.
Gordon CoreraHOST
About Philby, right? Yeah.
Gordon CoreraHOST
And I found it interesting because Smiley Mike, Lubimov, friend of Philby, you know, always said to me, like, Gordievsky's a traitor, whereas Philby's a hero.
Gordon CoreraHOST
And, you know, I was like, well, what do you mean? He was like, well, Gordievsky changed sides.
Sergei CristoGUEST
who was charged in improving bilateral relations, but now we know that he was an intelligence officer, a pretty important one from a very privileged KGB aristocratic family with connections to lots of people who hated Britain and hated our heroes.
Sergei CristoGUEST
There was one connection to Litvinenko, another connection, his family connection was to Oleg Gordievsky, who passed away last year, was a true British hero.
Sergei CristoGUEST
who served this country for 11 years from the heart of the KGB in the closing years of the Cold War.
Sergei CristoGUEST
Anyway, so he was the character who approached me, wanted to talk about politics in the Conservative Party.
18 MINS LATER
Sergei CristoGUEST
Many of them probably worked long after, continued working and fascism was destroyed.
Sergei CristoGUEST
No, German fascism.
Sergei CristoGUEST
And, you know, I was a friend of Oleg Gordievsky, who was... probably the most important Western agent within the KGB in the 70s and the 80s.
Sergei CristoGUEST
And he kept saying to me that, you know, it was a, you know, Cambridge Five was really the top of the iceberg.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Since 1981, the KGB had run an intelligence operation code-named RYAN, a Russian acronym for a feared Western nuclear missile attack.
speaker_2NARRATOR
The main source on the Soviet reaction was an officer named Oleg Gordievsky, who was secretly working for British intelligence.
speaker_2NARRATOR
The archive notes that his accounts were uncorroborated, though they influenced American views.
speaker_2NARRATOR
A report by the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, declassified and posted by the archive in 2015, concluded that the United States may have inadvertently placed relations on a hair trigger.
Michael FeinbergHOST
And then in the late '70s and early '80s, something has changed.
Michael FeinbergHOST
The Brits are running not just Redwood, the subject of your book, but they're also running Oleg Gordievsky, who is arguably one of the most important spies to ever work for Western intelligence agencies within the Soviet Union.
Michael FeinbergHOST
And I'm really curious, why did these career KGB officers, knowing how easily that MI6 had been penetrated by their own service in relatively recent history, still decide to trust MI6 with their own safety and security?
Ben MacintyreGUEST
It's a very good question.
Ben McIntyreGUEST
So MI6 know it's coming.
Ben McIntyreGUEST
And those officers, I mean, I read another book about another KGB spy called Oleg Gordievsky.
Ben McIntyreGUEST
And the case officers in that case, in some instances,
Iain DaleHOST
around
Michael FeinbergHOST
And then in the late 70s and early 80s, something has changed.
Michael FeinbergHOST
The Brits are running not just Redwood, the subject of your book, but they're also running Oleg Gordievsky, who is arguably one of the most important spies to ever work for Western intelligence agencies within the Soviet Union.
Michael FeinbergHOST
And I'm really curious, why did these career KGB officers... knowing how easily that MI6 had been penetrated by their own service in relatively recent history, still decide to trust MI6 with their own safety and security?
Ben MacintyreGUEST
It's a very good question.
James DelingpoleHOST
Yeah
Roland PerryGUEST
... uh, Gordievsky and Andrews are dead wrong.
Roland PerryGUEST
They wrote a bo- ...
Roland PerryGUEST
They, they've said Cairncross was the fifth.
15 MINS LATER
Roland PerryGUEST
Now, the third element, which is to do with spy catcher, okay? So a lot of your audience will know about that particular operation because they were saying, uh, that Roger Hollis was a spy.
Roland PerryGUEST
I would say categorically, without any hesitation, he never spied for Russia.
Roland PerryGUEST
Even Gordievsky and, um, Andrew got it correct.
Roland PerryGUEST
They, they didn't think that he was spying for the Russians.
James DelingpoleHOST
Yeah
Roland PerryGUEST
... uh, Gordievsky and Andrews are dead wrong.
Roland PerryGUEST
They wrote a bo- ...
Roland PerryGUEST
They, they've said Cairncross was the fifth.
15 MINS LATER
Roland PerryGUEST
Now, the third element, which is to do with spy catcher, okay? So a lot of your audience will know about that particular operation because they were saying, uh, that Roger Hollis was a spy.
Roland PerryGUEST
I would say categorically, without any hesitation, he never spied for Russia.
Roland PerryGUEST
Even Gordievsky and, um, Andrew got it correct.
Roland PerryGUEST
They, they didn't think that he was spying for the Russians.
Brad GrahamHOST
I'm Brad Graham, the co-owner of the bookstore, along with my wife, Lissa Muscatine, and we are absolutely delighted to be hosting, uh, Ben Macintyre, who's here to talk about his, uh, terrific new book, Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy.
Brad GrahamHOST
Now, we all know Ben as the popular and much acclaimed author of 15 previous nonfiction books about war and espionage, written with his characteristic novelistic flair, uh, including volumes on British spies Kim Philby and Eddie Chapman, Soviet agent Ursula Kuczynski, known as Sonya, Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky, the Na- Nazi POW camp Colditz, Britain's, uh, Operation Mincemeat, which disguised the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, and a dramatic hostage crisis in 1980, not in Iran, but in the Iranian embassy in London.
Brad GrahamHOST
With, uh, Redwood, uh, Ben has once again delved into the annals of international intrigue, and drawing on interviews with former officers of, uh, MI6, KG- uh, KGB, uh, and the CIA.
Brad GrahamHOST
He's come up with a propulsive nonfiction thriller.
34 MINS LATER
Ben MacintyreGUEST
You don't tell the Americans who you've got because there's a danger of leakage.
Ben MacintyreGUEST
It could go wrong.
Ben MacintyreGUEST
And we s- Uh, the best example of that is the Gordievsky case, which you're familiar with.
Ben MacintyreGUEST
So Oleg Gordievsky was a KGB officer recruited by British intelligence.