George Blake, a former British intelligence officer who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union and spent some of the most coveted Western secrets in Moscow, has died in Russia. He was 98 years old.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known as SVR, announced his death on Saturday in a statement, which gave no details. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences and hailed Blake as a “brilliant professional” and a man of “remarkable courage.”
As a double agent, Blake set out a Western plan to overhear Soviet communications from an underground tunnel to East Berlin. He also unmasked dozens of British agents in Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe, some of whom were executed.
In an interview with the BBC in 1990, Blake said he estimated he had betrayed more than 500 Western agents, but denied suggestions that 42 of them had lost their lives as a result of their actions.
Alexander Natruskin / Reuters
Blake has lived in Russia since his bold escape from a British prison in 1966 and was granted the rank of Russian intelligence colonel.
Born in the Netherlands, Blake joined British intelligence during World War II. He was sent to Korea when war broke out in 1950 and was arrested by the Communist North. He said he volunteered to work in the Soviet Union after witnessing a relentless U.S. bombing of North Korea.
In a statement issued in 2017 through Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Blake stressed that he decided to change sides after seeing civilian massacres by the “American military machine.”
“Then I realized that these conflicts are deadly dangerous to all of humanity, and I made the most important decision of my life: to cooperate voluntarily with Soviet intelligence and help free to protect world peace,” Blake said. .
In a 2012 interview with Russian government newspaper 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 he did not follow him, and drive to a secret apartment where he and his contact would hold a chat accompanied by a glass of Soviet goods. sparkling wine.
A Polish deserter exposed Blake as a Soviet spy in 1961. He was convicted of espionage charges in Britain and sentenced to 42 years in prison. In October 1966 he made a bold escape with the help of several people he met while in detention.
Blake spent two months hiding in his assistant’s place and then was driven across Europe to East Berlin inside a wooden box fixed under a car.
His British wife, who he left behind along with his three children, divorced him and married a Soviet woman and they had a son. He was decorated like a hero, decorated with the best 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, and said he and Maclean were particularly close.
Blake said he adapted well to life in Russia and joked at a meeting with Russian intelligence officers that it 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 condolence telegram.
Blake noted in his 2017 statement that Russia has become his “second homeland” and thanked SVR officials for their friendship and understanding. He said Russian intelligence officers have a mission to “save the world in a situation where the danger of nuclear war and the consequent self-destruction of humanity have been put on the agenda by irresponsible politicians.”
Blake added, according to the BBC: “It’s a real battle between good and evil.”
Bettmann through Getty