George Blake, a former British intelligence officer who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union and passed some of the most coveted Western secrets to Moscow, has died in Russia. He was 98.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on Saturday announced his death in a statement, which did not give any details.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences, hailing Blake as a “brilliant professional” and a man of “remarkable courage.”
Photo: Reuters
As a double agent, Blake exposed a Western plan to eavesdrop on Soviet communications from an underground tunnel into East Berlin. He also unmasked scores of British agents in Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe, some of whom were executed.
Blake has lived in Russia since his daring escape from a British prison in 1966 and was given the rank of Russian intelligence colonel.
The UK considered Blake to be a traitor, but the man himself never agreed with that assessment and said that he had never actually “felt” British.
“To betray, you first have to belong. I never belonged,” he said.
The British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office declined to comment on Blake’s death.
Born in the Netherlands, Blake joined British intelligence during World War II. He was posted to Korea when the war there erupted in 1950 and was detained by the communist North.
He said he volunteered to work for the Soviet Union after witnessing the relentless US bombing of North Korea.
In a statement issued in 2017 through the SVR, Blake emphasized that he decided to switch sides after seeing civilians massacred by the “American military machine.”
“I realized back then that such conflicts are deadly dangerous for the entire humankind and made the most important decision in my life — to cooperate with Soviet intelligence voluntarily and for free to help protect peace in the world,” Blake said.
In a 2012 interview with the Russian government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Blake shared some details of his cloak-and-dagger adventures, including meetings with a Soviet liaison in East Berlin.
He said that once a month he would take a train to East Berlin, make sure that he was not being followed, and go by car to a secret apartment where he and his contact would have a talk accompanied by a glass of Soviet-made sparkling wine.
A Polish defector exposed Blake as a Soviet spy in 1961. He was convicted on spying charges in Britain and sentenced to 42 years in prison.
In October 1966, he made a bold escape with help from several people he met while in custody.
Blake spent two months hiding at his assistant’s place and was then driven across Europe to East Berlin inside a wooden box attached under a car.
His British wife, whom he left behind along with their three children, divorced him, and he married a Soviet woman and they had a son.
He was feted as a hero, decorated with top medals, and given a country house outside Moscow.
In the Soviet Union, Blake maintained contacts with other British double agents.
He said he met regularly with Donald Maclean and Kim Philby, members of the so-called Cambridge Five.
He said that he and Maclean were particularly close.
Blake said he adapted well to life in Russia and once joked at a meeting with Russian intelligence officers that he was like a “foreign-made car that adapted well to Russian roads.”
“He made a truly invaluable contribution to ensuring strategic parity and preserving peace,” Putin said in his telegram of condolences.
Blake noted in his 2017 statement that Russia has become his “second motherland,” and thanked SVR officers for their friendship and understanding.
He said that Russian intelligence officers have a mission to “save the world in a situation when the danger of nuclear war and the resulting self-destruction of humankind again have been put on the agenda by irresponsible politicians.”
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate