Tim Tate - The Spy who was left out in the Cold: The Secret History of Agent Goleniewski

Micha Goleniewski in Polish Army uniform, late 1940s. Goleniewski with his mother, Janina, and father, Micha, circa 19445. Goleniewski with his mother, early 1950s. The suave spy. Goleniewski during his employment as a Polish intelligence officer, mid-1950s. Goleniewski with the family he abandoned: his mother, Janina, his first wife, Anna Diachenko, and two of their children; early 1950s. Bahnhoff Zoo, West Berlin. The railway station was close to the Soviet-controlled zone and in 1959 the CIA set up a dead drop in the mens toilets for Goleniewski to leave his Sniper letters and pick up instructions from Washington DC. The border between East and West Berlin in 1961. That January, Goleniewski spent five days evading East German and Polish intelligence surveillance agents before finally defecting at the US Consulate. The Silver Towers apartment block in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York City, where Goleniewski lived with Irmgard from 1962 until his death. The CIA reneged on its commitment to protect them and to support their rent. Goleniewski in his Queens apartment, New York City, 1964. He sent the picture to his mother in Warsaw. Polish Intelligence intercepted and copied the photo. Irmgard Goleniewska (ne Kampf) in the couples Queens apartment, New York City, 1964. Goleniewski sent the picture to his mother in Warsaw. Polish Intelligence intercepted and copied the photo. The Portland Spies Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee, photographed by an MI5 surveillance team in 1960. Goleniewskis information led to their arrest and the discovery of a major Soviet intelligence network stealing British naval secrets. Russian spy Konon Molody used the fictional identity of Gordon Lonsdale to mastermind the Portland Spy Ring. He was exchanged in a spy swap in 1964, and was photographed in East Berlin in 1965. Portland Spy Ring members Helen and Peter Kroger posed as innocuous book dealers, living in a quiet London suburb. In reality, they were American-born Soviet agents Lorna and Morris Cohen, on the run from the FBI. They were exchanged in a spy swap in 1969 and photographed en route to Heathrow airport. The Portland spies hid their one-time code pads in the hollowed-out bottoms of cigarette table lighters. The tiny papers contained secret messages to be transmitted to Moscow. In 1953, MI6 officer George Blake returned to a heros welcome after two years in a North Korean prison camp. Eight years later, Goleniewskis information exposed Blake as a long-term Soviet spy who had betrayed some of the Wests most vital secrets to Moscow. He was jailed for 42 years but escaped from prison and fled to Moscow in 1966. Goleniewskis information exposed senior German intelligence officers Heinz Felfe (left) and Hans Tiebel (right) as long-term Soviet spies. In July 1963 they were taken under close guard to court in Karlsruhe and received lengthy prison sentences. For more than a decade, Swedish Air Force officer Col. Stig Wennerstrm was a Soviet spy, betraying NATO and US secrets to Moscow. After Goleniewskis information exposed him, he was put on trial in Stockholm in April 1964 and sentenced to life in prison. The Monster: Anatoliy Golitsyn and his wife Svetlana, enjoying the high life at the Coconut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, in 1961. The CIAs acceptance of Golitsyns false claim to be the only genuine Soviet Bloc defector paralysed Western intelligence for a decade and was a major factor in Goleniewskis fall from grace. James Jesus Angleton, the CIAs head of counterintelligence, never accepted Goleniewski as a genuine defector. Angletons disastrous and fruitless search for a mole inside the Agency devastated US intelligence. Senior MI5 officer Peter Wright was among the first British intelligence officers to be read in to Goleniewskis revelations. Like his American mentor, James Angleton, Wright led a devastating and unsuccessful hunt for a traitor inside the Security Service. After a military court sentenced Goleniewski to death in absentia, Polish intelligence mounted a ten-year operation to locate and neutralize him. In 1968 its agents placed his apartment under surveillance, sending sketch maps of the location back to Warsaw. New York City Marriage Registration Certificate for Aleksei N. Romanoff (Goleniewski) and Irmgard M. Kampf, 30 September 1964. Despite their previous wedding in Arlington, and Goleniewskis undissolved marriage in Poland, both he and Kampf swore on oath that this was their first marriage.Next page