Top British Double Agent into KGB Passes Away, Age 86

Double agent Oleg Gordievsky dies aged 86: Former British mole into KGB who gave Brits Russian secrets passes away in Surrey home after defecting in the 1970s

Former KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky has died aged 86.

Gordievsky was said to be Britain's most valuable spy inside Russia's intelligence agencies and spent many years leaking information to both MI6 and MI5.

He passed away peacefully at his home in Surrey, the BBC reports. 

Counter-terrorism police are assisting the coroner, but his death is not being treated as suspicious.

Gordievsky had lived in Surrey under police protection since Moscow became suspicious of him in 1985.

He narrowly escaped arrest, trial and a firing squad by getting smuggled across the border into Finland in the boot of a car.

Before becoming a spy Gordievsky had been languishing in a desk job at the KGB headquarters in Moscow for three years.

And so, when the plum job of a posting to the KGB station in London came up in 1981, he seized the opportunity.

He spent many years working as a double agent, passing vital intelligence to both Britain's MI6 and MI5

KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky has died aged 86

Gordievsky has lived in the ceremonial county under police protection since Moscow became suspicious of him in 1985 and he narrowly avoided arrest, trial and a firing squad by getting smuggled across the border into Finland in the boot of a car

Gordievsky worked undercover for the KGB – the Soviet secret service – in London in the early Eighties, sending reports back to Moscow. 

But he was also, bravely, spying for the West. 

The London rezidentura was one of the most active in the world, and he would be handling secrets of the first importance.

He put on a show of enthusiasm, obsequiousness and fake humility to the boss whose decision it was - a thoroughly unpleasant character known as The Crocodile.

Gordievsky loathed him.

But his toadying worked. He was appointed to the Soviet embassy in London, ostensibly to the diplomatic position of Counsellor but in reality deputy head of the KGB station housed there.

One by one, Gordievsky exorcised the demons of MI6 history.

For years there had been rumours of a ‘Fifth Man’, an unexposed member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt. 

Gordievsky confirmed it was John Cairncross, a former MI6 officer.

Pictured: Oleg Gordievsky is made a Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and St George by The Queen at Buckingham Palace

Pictured: KGB and MI5 Double agent Oleg Gordievsky (left) and codebreaker Alan Stripp pit their wits over the Mastermind

He was able to name a Soviet spy discovered in 1946 but never formally identified, as Leo Long, a former intelligence officer, and that an Italian nuclear physicist, Bruno Pontecorvo, who worked on Britain’s wartime atomic bomb research, had volunteered his services to the KGB seven years before he defected to the USSR in 1950.

He also laid to rest the long-held conspiracy theory - on which much angst had been expended in the intelligence services - that Roger Hollis, a former chief of MI5, was a Soviet mole.

Most importantly, Gordievsky also put to rest MI6’s anxiety about current operations. 

MI6 had expected to learn that there was a vast network of KGB agents in Britain, communist spies like the Cambridge Five who had wormed their way into the Establishment to destroy it from within.

But Gordievsky told them that the KGB had only a small handful of agents, contacts and illegals in Britain, none very threatening.

Moreover, his insider’s depiction of KGB operations indicated that MI6’s Soviet adversary was not the invincible giant of myth, but flawed, clumsy and inefficient.

It remained vast, well-funded and ruthless but its ranks included many time-servers, boot-lickers and lazy careerists with little imagination.

The KGB was still a dangerous antagonist, but its vulnerabilities and deficiencies were now exposed. It could be beaten.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14524551/KGB-double-agent-Oleg-Gordievsky-dies-aged-86.html

How Britain’s prize double agent PROVED Labour Leader Michael Foot took cash from the KGB: Cold War 'super spy' Oleg Gordievsky reveals a bombshell disclosure about the ex Labour leader hidden deep in the Moscow archives

At their first meeting with Michael Foot, in the offices of Tribune (the Left-wing magazine he edited), KGB officers posing as diplomats slipped £10 into his pocket (worth roughly £250 today). He did not object

Gordievsky recalled: ‘Foot freely disclosed information about the Labour movement. He told them which politicians and trade union leaders were pro-Soviet, even suggesting which union bosses should be given the present of Soviet-funded holidays on the Black Sea

Gordievsky opened a file to discover that ‘Boot’ was the Right Honourable Michael Foot, above, distinguished writer and orator, veteran Left-wing MP and leader of the Labour Party. If Labour won the next election, he would become PM

Foot, seen campaigning above in Plymouth. The KGB classified him as an agent. 

Foot

Jack Jones, one of the most respected figures in the British trade union movement, was also a KGB agent. He had been one of the most powerful people in Britain

Liberal leader David Steele, Foot, centre, and Thatcher, right, hold their wreaths at the cenotaph for a Remembrance Day service

Foot's meetings with Soviet officials took place roughly once a month over lunch

Adapted from THE SPY AND THE TRAITOR by Ben Macintyre, published by Viking at £25. © Ben Macintyre 2018. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6427529/Cold-War-super-spy-Oleg-Gordievsky-reveals-bombshell-disclosure-ex-Labour-leader-Foot.html

Oleg Gordievsky in his student days at Moscow's eliste Institute of International Affairs where he was first recruited by the KGB

Covert surveillance photographs of Oleg Gordievsky taken by the Danish intelligence service PET during his postings to Copenhagen

For years these covert surveillance photos were the only images available of him

Gordievsky on the Baltic coast with Mikhail Lyubimov, a Russian novelist and retired colonel in the KGB

The MI6 filration team pause to take a souvenir photo en route to Norway a few hours after the fugitive spy crossed into Finland

Gordievsky, pictured in 1976, was hidden in the car boot as part of a British diplomatic convoy crossing between Moscow and Finland.

Traitor Aldrich Ames, a former CIA agent who became a mole and leaked information about Gordievsky to the KGB

Oleg Gordievsky, former colonel of the KGB and KGB resident-designate and bureau chief in London

Russian Spy Oleg Gordievsky, widely acknowledged to be the most valuable secret service mole at the heart of the KGB during the latter decades of the Cold War, with his ex-wife Mrs Leyla Gordievsky 

Trapped in Antartica With A Madman

This is the Antarctica research crew trapped in icy hell with co-worker who ‘snapped and started attacking them’

Nine members of an Antarctic expedition are locked up together at a research station 2,000 miles from civilization.

And one of them is a madman — accused of violently beating, threatening and sexually harassing at least two of his teammates.

The Post can reveal that the South African crew of three women and six men includes a glamorous doctor with her own skincare line and a deputy team leader who helped produce a short horror film during a previous stay at the station — along with engineers and a meteorologist.

The researchers on South Africa’s SANAE IV outpost won’t be relieved until December, when temperatures at the South Pole are at their warmest for the year and seasonal ice storms pass.

In happier times, the colleagues were all seen smiling together before they set off on their extended mission.

Pictures show the crew looking chummy together last November, shortly before they set off on the ill-fated 13-month mission on the base in Queen Maud Land, which is surrounded by a glacial ice sheet.

But the broad smiles and thumbs-ups they flashed as they posed for pre-mission photos proved short-lived.

According to urgent emails fired off to authorities from the remote base, an unidentified male member of the South African crew stuck at SANAE IV became “deeply disturbed” within weeks of arriving.

This was despite, the complainant alleged, authorities being warned about his behavior even before the team left South Africa on Feb. 1.

        One of the ladies

     Another of the ladies

The message, which was sent Feb. 27, alleged the crew member assaulted and sexually harassed colleagues, and even threatened to kill one of them, creating “an environment of fear and intimidation,” the Guardian reports.

“His behavior has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing. I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim,” the email said, as first reported on by South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper.

The identity of the crew member believed to have snapped was not released. But the roster of the researchers is as follows, according to the official South African National Antarctic Programme website:

• Mbulaheni Kelcey Maewashe, team leader and a senior meteorological technician
• Nivek Ghazi, deputy team leader and an electronics engineer 
• Dr. Sihle Mpho Lawana
• Nkululeko Welcome Khoza, a mechanical engineer
• Athenkosi Mabope, a communications engineer
• Geomarr van Tonder, an electronics engineer 
• Allowed Tumelo Seepane, an instrumentation technician 
• Alian Stuart Jacobs, a diesel mechanic 
• Lebogang James Tsime, a electro-mechanical engineer

     Happier Times

Currently, there are no plans to rescue the research team, leaving them trapped at the base without any outside contact until December, when a supply ship is due to moor up.

“There were no incidents that required any of the nine overwintering team members to be brought back to Cape Town. All on the base is calm and under control,” South Africa’s Environment Minister Dion George told the New York Times.

The ministry later said it was “not uncommon” for some crew members to experience an “adjustment period” after arriving in the desolate location.

     Home Base

South African authorities insist they are in contact with the base on a near-daily basis.

“The department is responding to these concerns with the utmost urgency and have had a number of interventions with all parties concerned at the base,” Peter Mbelengwa, communications chief of the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, said in a statement.

The government claimed that the dispute was over “a task the team leader wanted the team to do — a weather dependent task that required a schedule change.”

Conditions on the base are currently reasonable — with highs of around 15 degrees — though it’s still “summer” at the South Pole. From March through September, temperatures can drop to minus-75 Fahrenheit, and it stays dark for months, with the sun never showing its face.

Brutal winds of more than 60 mph can batter the landscape.

SANAE IV, which is about 100 miles from the edge of the ice shelf, was founded in 1997 as a permanent research station on Antarctica — designed specifically to withstand the punishing conditions for decades. It’s built on the side of a massive ice cliff so that snow will pile up against it and help shield it against the wind and cold.

In an eerie twist, the previous team on the base, which included Ghazi, produced a short horror movie about life on the base back in 2023, it has been revealed.

“Those That Are Lost But Not Forgotten,” a horror short, was submitted as an entry to the Antarctic Film Festival two years ago.

The film features an expedition team that leaves the station and dies in the Antarctic wastes — and then their ghosts come back to haunt the remaining crew of the outpost.

“The creepy events that occur around the station frighten the remaining members causing them to run out of fear leaving the station,” the movie’s description reads.

Despite the recent scandal, the base is currently hiring for several vacancies, including two slots for electronics engineer posts.

The two-year contracts on the base pay a salary of just under 600,000 South African rand ($32,700) and include food, accommodation, and protective clothing.

“The incumbent must be able to work independently with minimal support under extreme pressure and without supervision,” the job description reads.

SANSA did not respond immediately to The Post’s requests for comment.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/19/world-news/antarctica-research-crew-trapped-in-icy-hell-with-co-worker-who-snapped-and-started-attacking-them/

The research group are trapped with a colleague who assaulted and threatened to kill one of his peers.

The team of nine scientists from South Africa are currently stationed at the Sanae IV base, a research centre located on the northern tip of Antarctica some 4,000 kilometres from their homeland.

Extreme weather makes leaving and entering nearly impossible, and they are set to remain on the mission until December despite calls for them to be evacuated. 

The group of scientists trapped in a tiny base in Antarctica have sent an email pleading to be rescued after they say a member of their team threatened to kill another colleague. The base is located in Vesleskarvet, Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

A researcher on South Africa's Sanae IV base sent a worrying email claiming one team member had attacked them and was issuing death threats. The man in question is also accused of sexually harassing another researcher.

They reportedly pleaded to be rescued, but an emergency evacuation operation would take at least two weeks to reach them - if weather conditions remain stable.

The author of the email, which was shared with South Africa's Sunday Times, wrote: 'Regrettably, his behaviour has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing.

'Specifically, he physically assaulted [X], which is a grave violation of personal safety and workplace norm. Furthermore, he threatened to kill [X], creating an environment of fear and intimidation.

'I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.'

Ahead of their expedition to the base, members of the group shared pictures together and described their excitement at partaking.

One of the team members posted on social media about their 'adventures' at the remote base in recent days, and previously described the 'thrill' at spending months the base with the small team.

A South African government official confirmed that one of the team member's threatening behaviour was triggered by 'a dispute over a task the team leader wanted the team to do – a weather-dependent task that required a schedule change'.

The author of the email seen by South Africa's Sunday Times expressed immense concern over their colleague's 'increasingly egregious behaviour' and called for immediate action to ensure their own safety and that of the team as a whole.

'I am experiencing significant difficulty in feeling secure in his presence,' the author wrote.

Neither the author nor the accused have been named.

Scientist who just returned from Antarctic SANAE IV base where assault occurred reveals harrowing details of living in extreme isolation

A scientist who just returned from the remote Antarctica base where a crew member reportedly snapped and threatened to kill the team leader has opened up about the extreme, “unpredictable” environment on the frozen continent that can push many to their mental limits.

Dr Herman Van Niekerk, a geologist at the University of Johannesburg, has just come back from a two-month expedition to SANAE IV, the Antarctic base where a South African team of scientists have pleaded for help following the “deeply disturbing” behavior of a crew member.

“The Antarctic is often romanticized, but when people realize what’s waiting for them, well, there’s not a lot of people who feel they’re up to it,” Van Niekerk told The Telegraph.

“I’ve taken students out there and some of them just can’t handle the isolation, the extreme and frightening weather conditions, the perspective you lose when you can’t judge distances in the whiteness.”

In a situation described as a “real-life horror movie,” one of the nine trapped crew members sent a desperate email about a coworker they said violently beat, threatened and sexually harassed at least two others on the base, as first reported by South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper.

They described their colleague’s descent into “deeply disturbing” behavior, saying it had created “an environment of fear and intimidation. I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.”

All crew members undergo “psychometric tests” before heading to the base, Van Niekerk explained, “but you just can’t predict how that will affect people in reality when there’s no life for miles.”

Despite close vetting, Van Niekerk described the moment when one student freaked out.

“People only reveal who they are when they’re exposed to the extreme conditions,” he said, describing how the student refused to leave their tent on the expedition while they were stranded some 124 miles from SANAE IV.

     Dr Herman Van Niekerk

The worst is yet to come

The crew — stranded until at least December on the 1997-built base 2,500 miles from South Africa — includes engineers, scientists, and a doctor, but no one to manage security, Van Niekerk explained.

“There’s a doctor, mechanics and members of the South African National Space Agency. But there is nobody in charge of security, no firearms or anything like that,” Van Niekerk said.

On top of the deathly cold, with temperatures plummeting to lows of -9F, and winds reaching up to 135 mph, the upcoming Antarctic winter presents a fresh disorientating challenge.

From March, the base will be in almost complete darkness for the next 10 months.

“When there’s no daylight, you worry about people getting onto a different time cycle, with some people awake while everybody else is sleeping. It’s an extremely difficult environment,” he said.

There’s a rules list — but it’s not always followed

Van Niekerk has been taking teams of students out to the base for the past three years and described the conditions inside SANAE IV, made up of three two-story blocks.

Block A houses the laboratories, accommodation and a hospital wing, Block B features “a bar, a games room,” and a movie room, while Block C includes vital machinery such as “generators, water storage and purification,” he said.

A general rules list for crew members is up in the dining room, including guidelines on alcohol.

“You take what you need and have to make it last the whole season,” he said.

Romance between crew members is “spoken about and it’s frowned upon,” Van Niekerk said.

“But these are people and you can’t predict what’s going to happen. Relationships do start down there,” he said. “I know of people who were down there in 2016-17. They met there and got married and they’ve got two kids now.”

‘There are a lot of unknowns‘

Van Niekerk has described the “unknowns” and the loneliness that can make life on the edge of civilization particularly difficult, especially on the rare occasions they have to leave the base.

“Mostly when I’m out on snowmobiles. That’s unsettling because you can’t see the crevasses. The storms also come in very fast, even in the winter. There are a lot of unknowns,” he said.

The assault of a team member on SANAE IV’s team leader has been confirmed, and the individual who carried out the assault has reportedly since apologized by letter, South Africa’s Environment Minister Dion George said this week.

Despite that, there are no plans for the crew to have any direct contact with the outside world until December at the earliest, when a supply vessel is set to dock at Queen Maud Land after a 10-day voyage from Cape Town.

Even if authorities wanted to, it would be all but impossible for a rescue mission to the base now that Antarctic winter has started.

“That would be very difficult,” Van Kierken said. “It takes 10-14 days by boat and then a helicopter ride — weather permitting — for us in the summer. [Winter] would be difficult. I don’t think we’ll see those people again until December.”

https://nypost.com/2025/03/20/world-news/antarctic-scientist-reveals-details-about-sanae-iv-base/