Thus began their fruitful relationship, one that involved Wynne hosting Penkovsky in London, who was visiting under the pretense of cultivate new opportunities in the West. Wynne dutifully passed the images to his contacts with British intelligence, who established their legitimacy. After the initial meeting in December 1960, Penkovsky provided Wynne with film of Soviet military documents and later promised more information if an arrangement with British or American intelligence could be made. “There’s a fair amount of source material from all different kinds of authors, so by reading everybody-not just Wynne’s books, but other historians, and the official history put out by the American side and the Soviet side - I was able to try and work out what made the most sense and what seemed liked disinformation,” says O’Connor.Įven though Wynne wasn’t exactly a reliable narrator for what he did during his time as a secret agent, the materials he smuggled from behind the Iron Curtain were the real thing. Deriabin’s The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War and other accounts that could be trusted more than Wynne’s own inventions. O’Connor makes clear that The Courier is “not a documentary,” even as he explains that he took pains to stick to the facts as much as they could be ascertained-drawing on works such as Jerrold L.
#THE COURIER TRIBUNE MOVIE#
While its standard for Hollywood films to take liberties with the facts, insert composite characters, devise imagined conversations, and smooth-out timelines to ensure a brisk pace, it’s less common for a based-on-a-true-story movie to have to be more truthful than the source material. “, bless him, for all his wonderful work, was a menace and a fabricator,” says Nigel West, who has written numerous books on British and American intelligence organizations, including two books specifically about fabricators in the intelligence arena. In the late 1960s, after he had been imprisoned for his spycraft and could no longer assist MI6 nor the CIA, the amateur spy authored a pair of books: The Man From Moscow: The Story of Wynne and Penkovsky and The Man From Odessa, that were riddled with falsehoods.
“The burden of that is hard to imagine.”īut as he began researching Wynne’s story, he learned that this ordinary man could also tell some extraordinary lies. “He just was an ordinary man who got thrust into this just extraordinary, life-altering situation that was going to define his existence forever,” says O’Connor. The film’s screenwriter, Tom O’Connor, found Wynne’s story of a nobody suddenly becoming a somebody compelling. These events serve as the inspiration for The Courier, the new film starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Wynne and Georgian actor Merab Ninidze as Penkovsky, out in theaters on March 19. Penkovsky’s information, and Wynne’s help in delivering it to British and American intelligence officers, would produce mountains of material, play a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and land both men in prison. Wynne went along, slightly concerned about whether Penkovsky was on the level and concerned about putting himself into a dangerous situation, kicking off what would be one of the most productive clandestine operations in Cold War history. Penkovsky felt stunted in his career with GRU and expected that by helping the West for a year or two, he and his family could be relocated and build a better life, and that he would personally be showered with recognition and honor. Wynne agreed, and during his visit to Moscow the following month he wound up connecting with Oleg Penkovsky, a lieutenant colonel in the GRU (the Soviet Union’s foreign-intelligence agency) who was eager to leak high-level military information to Western powers. Despite having no previous experience in intelligence work, Wynne was being recruited to serve as an MI6 agent. An industrial sales consultant who regularly traveled through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union representing British electrical and steel companies, Wynne was told it would be helpful if on his next trip, he could arrange for a meeting with a state committee in Moscow dedicated to developing opportunities with foreigners in science and technology, and report back on his conversations.
His dining companion, Dickie Franks, revealed himself to be an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, and asked Wynne for his help. In November 1960, Greville Wynne, a 41-year-old British businessman, sat down for a lunch that would change his life.
0 kommentar(er)
