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| GEORGE BLAKE |
British traitor George Blake still living in Russia
at the age of 90. He is one of the most notorious double-agents. He betrayed
Britain for six years. At the same he caused the deaths of dozens of British
secret agents. He is now called Georgy Ivanovitch and states bluntly that he
has no regrets. He also insists that the 40 years in Russia were his happiest
time. His statement was in a rare interview given to the Russian newspaper
Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
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| SUPPOSE TO BE IN BAD HEALTH ANDBLIND |
In 1961 he was caught and sentenced to 42 years in
prison but he escaped in 1966 from Wormwood Scrubs and managed to get to the
Soviet Union. The 42 years sentence was
one for each agent who had been executed. He was celebrated as a communist hero
and given a large flat in Moscow plus a luxury dacha (country house) all rent
free and a pensions of a retired colonel in the SVT. SVR is the Russian foreign
intelligence service. During the following years honours were given to him; even
as recently as 2007 from Mr Putin the Order of Friendship which is the highest
honours and the ceremony was at the Kremlin.
When Blake fled the country he left behind a wife
and three young sons, In Russia he married again and started a family. He
admitted that his years in Russia were the most happiest because he was in
peace. When in the West he was always looking over his shoulders.
However, by handing over documents he betrayed his colleagues
at MI6 and it is assumed he practically destroyed the network in Easter Europe.
His MI6 colleagues also worked under constant pressure of being exposed but
never expected it from a colleague within. It is assumed that there were about
400 agents whose treatment after being exposed were far harsher and
unimaginable what they must have gone through.
One master plan Blake spoiled was an operation to
tunnel through to East Berlin to eavesdrop in the Russian. He informed the
Soviets.
Blake was born in Rotterdam in 1922. His mother was
Dutch and his father was Turkish-Jewish. His real name was Behar. He escaped
from Nazi-occupied Holland disguised as a monk and joined the Special
Operations Executive.
In 1948 he joined the MI6 and after a crash-curse in
Russian he went to the British Embassy in Seoul, Korea. To establish a network
of agents. Luck wasn’t on hi side and he was captured within a few months by the
North Korean communist forces.
There he became a sympathizer of the communist
party. He stated that he became a communist at 13 under the influence of his
cousin Henri Curiel who became important members of the communist party in
Egypt. He also emphasized that he has no
connection with Britain unlike his Cambridge spies, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean,
Guy Burgess abd Anthony Blunt. He was not from Britain and therefore never felt
he belonged.
He thinks his final commitment came when in North
Korea as a prisoner he saw the relentless bombarding of small villages by
American flying fortresses. The villages were only occupied by women, children
and old people because the men were in the army. He remembered that he felt
ashamed to be part of the West which fought with overpowering, technically
superiority against absolute defenceless people. He felt he was on the wrong side and started
to belief communism would put a stop to war.
Blake’s first contact with the KGB was in 1955 in
Berlin were he supposed to recruit double-agents instead he delivered information
to the Soviet about the British and American operations. When he was posted in
Berlin, Vienna, Milan and Beirut he met a KGB agent every three weeks. He was also part of the discovery of CIA mole
Major Pyotr Popev of Soviet military intelligence. Popov was executed in 1960.
In the follower year Blake was unmasked by Polish
defector Michael Golenieski. Blake inmate Patrick Pottle and Michael Randle two
anti-nuclear activists thought his sentence was too harsh. On their release
they threw a rope ladder of the wall in Wormwood Grubs and drove him away in a
van.
One of many who sheltered Blake was an Anglican
vicar who was a CND supporter, Reverend John Papworth. Blake stayed in his
house in London for three days. The vicar
also helped to put a false compartment in a camper van which then took Blake
out of the country and to the Soviet Union.
Blake had the nerve to go to the European Court of
human Rights against Britain to claim his royalties for his book ‘No Other
Choice’. Guess what – he won.
He had to face a big shock when the Soviet Union collapsed
but he still has no regret for what he done. He admitted that he thought the
Soviet man was different being formed by the communist regime. In his previous
view a higher human being but he discovered in the meantime that it was like
that at all.
Blake admits that his only regret is having deceived
his first wife because she knew nothing about what he was doing. Over the years he established a relationship
with his three sons. James was a soldier and now is with the fire brigade. Patrick a vicar and Anthony a Japan
specialist. His son from the second marriage Mikhail who is 40 will celebrate
his 90th birthday with his other three sons together.
