All language subtitles for Damian.Lewis-Spy.Wars.S01E01.The.Man.Who.Saved.the.World.1080p.WEB.h264-CAFFEiNE

Any secret
agent walks a tightrope.

You have to know when to keep
going and when to jump off.

This is the story of oleg
antonovich gordievsky.

One of the west's most
valuable cold war agents.

It's how he risked everything to avert a third
world war That would destroy civilization.

And how he left everything he
knew, and everyone he loved,

To attempt one of the most
daring escapes in living memory.

For oleg gordievsky, it's about how enlightenment
Triumphed over brutal authoritarianism.

And how in the process he became one
nation's traitor And another nation's hero.

Oleg gordievsky was the son
Of a loyal kgb officer,

An ambitious diplomat stationed in the consular
department Of the soviet embassy in denmark.

In reality though, gordievsky was
no diplomat, But a russian spy.

A rising star of the kgb enjoying the freedoms
Of a liberal society, while secretly conspiring

To bring about its demise.

Denmark was a frontline state, If the cold war
turned hot, That was why denmark was important.

Between 30 and 40% of the employees
At the soviet embassy in copenhagen

Would actually be
intelligence officers.

This posed a mounting threat For
denmark's intelligence chiefs,

A threat which was becoming far more
sophisticated And harder to detect.

Kgb and gru officers from the 1950s,
They are taken out of a james cagney

Or a humphrey bogart movie.

In the 60s and the 70s, the kgb officer,
You couldn't tell him from the next guy.

Jorn bro was in charge Of the danish
intelligence service at the time.

A completely new sort of
intelligence officers appeared.

They were younger.

They were reasonably
well-dressed, well-groomed.

One such officer Was oleg
antonovich gordievsky.

I learned about him as
soon as he entered denmark.

And we rather quickly found Good
reasons to believe that he was kgb.

Kgb spymaster, mikhail lyubimov, Was a
friend and mentor to the young gordievsky.

I got acquainted with gordie in '67 when I arrived
To copenhagen as the deputy chief of station.

He was one of the few intellectuals, Very
interested in music, and he was there working

At our station in the
field of illegals.

Constructing and running a network Of
deniable russian agents under deep cover,

Gordievsky soon caught the eye
Of the danish security service.

Danish intelligence believed gordievsky
Was stealing the identities of the dead

To provide new identities
for his soviet illegals.

We saw him visiting cemeteries
And contacting clergymen,

And as he spoke to people
our interest increased.

With the cold war spying game
In full swing in copenhagen,

Both sides tried desperately
to recruit each other's agents.

What the danish intelligence services couldn't
know Is how easy recruiting this spy would be,

Because oleg gordievsky had
fallen in love with freedom.

During its 800 year history, Copenhagen
has won for itself a reputation

For liberal ideas and
advanced social thinking.

He met a country that was completely
different From that what he had been told.

It's a free country, people
can do what they want.

Perhaps most important of all,
people can go to the library.

You are allowed to read the books
Others are not allowed to read.

And he caught sight of the ways In which
the soviet society did not function.

It made a huge impact on gordievsky And made
him perfect to recruit him as an agent.

In 1968, a single
momentous event provided

A catalyst for his eventual
defection, the prague spring.

The kremlin sent in tanks backed by thousands of
troops To brutally suppress a popular uprising.

Over a hundred people
were massacred.

Gordievsky was really shocked About the
soviet invasion of czechoslovakia.

He grabbed one of the
phones at the embassy,

Called his wife back home and
was just crying his eyes out

And saying, well it's all over.

Gordievsky had lost his
faith In the soviet system.

And the phone call
was a pivotal moment.

Because it wasn't just gordievsky's
wife Witnessing his despair that day.

Danish intelligence had bugged
the soviet embassy's phones.

Our monitoring section asked me to come
over To the monitoring console and listen.

It was obvious that he
was in a mental uproar.

He was really
sorry, really angry.

He was very honest in his
attitude to what happened.

Later, analysts would consider If this was
a careless mistake on gordievsky's part

Or a signal to the other side.

He's a very bright
and intelligent guy.

So when he made this phone call I
think it was very deliberately done.

And we remarked it.

It wasn't forgotten.

That was the day where we
said, this man may be willing

To switch sides
and work with us.

By 1973, gordievsky had been promoted
To deputy of political intelligence

At the heart of the kgb's
foreign operations in denmark.

But the danes knew they lacked The experience
and manpower to run him as an agent.

So, for help in securing gordievsky's
services as a spy, They turned to their ally,

Britain's secret intelligence
service, sis, Also known as mi6.

Denmark's a small country, It had limited
resources, It did extremely well to identify him.

Charles powell went on To become margaret
thatcher's foreign policy advisor.

Britain was a close intelligence ally,
And they very wisely involved us too.

The question was, How to approach a high-ranking
official Stationed at the soviet consulate,

Without getting caught.

He was running every morning.

He was a great badminton player
and a good one by the way.

We agreed that it would be a very good idea
To make an approach in the badminton hall.

None of his colleagues
would be there.

In the spring of
1974, as gordievsky played

His regular game of badminton, mi6 made their
approach, Taking gordievsky completely by surprise.

The rendezvous at the badminton hall
Was a huge gamble for everyone.

The british couldn't be sure
Gordievsky wasn't a double agent,

Positioned by the kgb
to infiltrate them.

And for his part, gordievsky
couldn't be sure that the meet

Wasn't a trap set by the
kgb to test his loyalty.

Gordievsky agreed to a second
meeting At a public location.

This time, it was
with mi6 alone.

He doesn't want the danes involved
Because he knows that the kgb

Has a contact inside
the danish police.

No government member, no minister,
Was told about this operation.

In the center of copenhagen there's a big hotel
And that was the setting where oleg gordievsky

Met with his mi6 contact and the first steps
Toward him becoming a british agent was taken.

By the summer
of 1975, mi6 had their man.

But gordievsky insisted on three
conditions From his new employers.

He was never to be
followed or photographed.

His colleagues at the consulate
weren't to be compromised.

And unlike many other double agents,
Gordievsky wasn't to receive any payment

In exchange for secrets.

He's doing this for
ideological reasons.

He's doing this because that's what
his heart Is telling him to do.

Gordievsky's
early missions for mi6

Involved smuggling top-secret microfilm documents
From the soviet embassy and passing them

To his british handlers
in a classic brush pass.

They were switched to an mi6 officer Who took
it to a room nearby and during half an hour

Copied the films and had it back to gordievsky
Who brought it back to the embassy.

The microfilm gordievsky provided
Likely held the names and details

Of soviet agents
located in the nordics.

What's more, they detailed the inner
workings Of the kgb's station in copenhagen.

Betraying these
secrets to the british,

Gordievsky had become
a traitor to the ussr.

There was no going back.

I think he must have been
walking on glass at the feeling.

It was so brave, so courageous.

If he was sweating,
I'd understand him.

He must really had
cripples in the stomach.

But bravery is to control
your fear, not to be fearless.

Gordievsky knew the risks
For him and his family.

In moscow, interrogated,
probably tortured,

And then in the end,
sentenced to death and shot.

I'm sure.

For four years, gordievsky continued To provide
top-secret russian intelligence to the british.

But by 1978, his posting in
denmark would come to an end.

Mi6 were about to lose one
of their greatest assets.

For gordievsky, the glory days of his
diplomatic posting To the west were over.

It would be four years before he
re-awakened As a british spy.

Oleg gordievsky had
been posted back to moscow,

A kgb man tied to the grim
soviet system he now despised.

Throughout, the british authorities Had
kept their distance To ensure his safety.

He was desk-bound, handling
classified documents

On soviet agents operating
across western europe.

It was tantalizing information For
the british intelligence service.

But instead they decided
to play the long game.

By putting a long-term bet on gordievsky, So
we all practice self-denial and we won't make

Any attempt to
contact him at all.

In June 1982, Their
patience finally paid off,

Because gordievsky was being
posted to the one place

Where he could do the most
damage to the kgb, london.

He might well have been sent to
anywhere, He might have gone to sweden

Or to germany or
all sorts of things.

But we just were lucky,
we got a bullseye there.

Before leaving, he met with his old friend
And fellow operative, mikhail lyubimov,

For personal advice on what
to expect from the british.

He was completely
unprepared, and he consulted me.

I recommended him to
read "somerset maugham"

Or things like that.

Of course, it sounds now very funny, But
partly I am responsible for his education

As a british agent.

In his four long years in moscow, Gordievsky
hadn't forgotten his trade-craft,

And he followed procedure to reignite his contacts
With british intelligence almost immediately.

There was a number which
would always be manned

And which would have, at the
very least, a message on it.

He could re-establish contact.

Mi6 set up meetings In a
safe house in west london.

In a rare interview recorded
in 2007, oleg gordievsky

Revealed how his british
handlers ran the encounters.

I met my british
contacts once a month.

It was in bayswater, A small
flat was rented by the service.

The meeting lasted
50 minutes only.

Because unlike in copenhagen when sometimes I was
sitting for three hours without any difficulty.

Here I was able to
use only lunchtime.

Once again, as a political intelligence
officer For the kgb, gordievsky proved

To be an invaluable mi6 asset.

The soviets were trying
to recruit agents within the uk

And within other countries, and they succeeded
In some cases, of course going back to the 1930s

When they recruited a lot of british agents On
the basis of membership of the communist party.

Now his information sent shock waves Through
the british intelligence community.

The list of names he'd provided
of alleged soviet agents

Contained some of the country's leading
politicians And trades union officials.

The list of names he passed
across To british intelligence

Clearly showed that the russians were very, very
interested In penetrating british establishment,

And we know that a number
of different british figures

Were involved in this, including
someone like michael foot.

Though only made public some years
later, Gordievsky's allegations against

The leader of the opposition, And
prominent trades union leaders,

Including jack
jones and ron brown,

Led to deep concern about the extent
To which the british establishment

Had been penetrated by the kgb.

Gordievsky's information led to police
warnings, Interrogations, and expulsions,

Thwarting much of the
damage to the west

That these alleged agents of
influence could have inflicted.

Gordievsky was at the heart of the kgb And
therefore had access to soviet agents

Operating in our
country and more widely.

But secondly, he understood
what was going on,

He understood the context of
soviet policy at the time.

I think he was quite canny about knowing
What files to look for and what information

Would be of interest to the uk.

The british intelligence services Were
all too aware of the precarious position

In which they were placing
oleg gordievsky as a mole.

Gordievsky was
enormously important.

There was nothing more secret in the
uk Than his existence and who he was.

And ministers did not know who he was, The
prime minister did not know who he was,

And that was of course was for his protection
And the protection of an invaluable source.

Yet supporting a secret agent Was a
delicate balancing act for the british.

Repeatedly, they had to give him benign
Or bogus intelligence he could take back

To his kgb bosses to
maintain his cover.

The sis were able to
supply him with information

Which wasn't really very
classified, but made him look

As though he had access
to credible information

And therefore was a, well,
high-performing kgb agent.

So successful was this deception, In
March 1983, gordievsky was promoted

To the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the
kgb And deputy head of its london station.

But by this time, the cia was
taking a particular interest

In the high-grade intelligence
coming out of london.

The president of the united
states, Ronald reagan.

In the u.S., president ronald reagan Had been
elected on a strong anti-communist agenda

And was ratcheting
up his rhetoric.

Thank you.

On March the 8th, 1983, He made his most
provocative speech of the cold war.

To ignore the facts of history
And the aggressive impulses

Of an evil empire, to simply call the arms
race A giant misunderstanding, is folly.

It means the betrayal of our past,
The squandering of our freedom.

David major was national security advisor
To the reagan administration at the time.

The political relationship between the west And
the russians in the early '80s was very cold.

There was a great distrust
between the two countries.

The leader of the soviet union, Yuri andropov,
a career spy who'd never visited the west,

Was convinced reagan was secretly preparing To
mount a nuclear attack on the soviet union.

In his previous role as kgb
chief, andropov's spy networks

In britain and america had been unable to provide
Any hard detail on the west's true intentions.

So andropov initiated operation ryan, The
largest spy operation launched by the soviets

In peacetime against the west.

They were telling their
intelligence services

To go out and collect as much evidence that
they had That we were going to have war.

Like how much blood is being donated, And
when the lights are out in the military,

And how much pizzas they ordered, Things that
are all indications of possibly, you know,

Confrontation, people
working late hours.

And some of the indicators That they were searching
Were perfectly absurd, one I always remember

Is counting how many
lights were switched on

In the ministry of defense
after 10:00 p.M. At night.

Now, there were a lot, and the reason there were
a lot Was not anything to do with nuclear war.

It's 'cause the cleaners
were in cleaning the offices.

However absurd,
the intelligence gathered

By agents of operation ryan
fueled andropov's suspicion.

I think he was frankly paranoid.

Whether he was medically paranoid
Or just paranoid in the sense

That one tosses the term
about, I don't know.

President reagan and margaret thatcher were using
Very strong rhetoric against the soviet union.

That enhanced his paranoia.

By September
1983, andropov was convinced

The americans were about to
trigger a nuclear first strike.

The russians became convinced that we were
going To nuke them with a bolt from the blue.

Andropov persuaded a lot
of his politburo colleagues

That this really was a
serious risk and a danger.

Then, in early November 1983, To
compound the growing tension,

President reagan authorized
a vast nato war game,

Able archer, a scripted
rehearsal for armageddon.

So, just as soviet listening
posts readied themselves

To detect the early signs of a nuclear
attack, Nato began to simulate one.

The way military works is you have What looks
like an exercise and it turns into a real attack.

And so they thought
that's what's happening.

They thought we were
preparing for war.

So we were really teetering A
bit on the brink at this stage.

In direct response
to able archer, the soviets

Placed hundreds of ss-20 mobile ballistic missiles,
Each with 45 times the power of hiroshima,

On heightened alert.

In the baltic, the northern
fleet prepared to attack.

Submarines and nuclear bombers
Armed with icbms were mobilized.

From the kgb's station
in central london,

Gordievsky witnesses the
ramping up of tensions.

Then, he makes a move that many
believe helps pull the world

Back from the brink of
nuclear annihilation.

By early November 1983, The
soviet leadership was convinced

They were just days away
from all-out nuclear war.

In london, fearing the deadly repercussions
Of an increasingly paranoid moscow,

And at great personal risk,

Oleg gordievsky took
decisive action.

To pass key intelligence
regarding the extent of hysteria

In the soviet leadership
to his british handlers.

I spoke about
everything which I experienced.

You simply don't understand the
mentality Of the old russian leaders.

You are playing with fire.

I knew it was a dramatic moment.

I knew moscow was nervous.

To pass these documents across
Was living on a knife edge.

He was risking death every single time
He took a document out of the office.

Every time he communicated with british
intelligence Meant that he was risking his life.

Mi6 passed gordievsky's information To
british prime minister, margaret thatcher.

Thatcher made use of her special relationship
With president reagan to relay the information

Directly to the heart of the
american command structure.

Prime minister margaret thatcher used it Very,
very effectively with president reagan.

She managed to
persuade him absolutely

On the basis of gordievsky's
intelligence that his speeches

Were simply inflaming tensions with the russians,
It was feeding into their sense of paranoia.

Thatcher convinced reagan
To tone down his rhetoric.

And through back-channels,
american diplomats were able

To provide reassurance to
their soviet counterparts.

The intelligence provided by mi6's prized asset,
Oleg gordievsky, had helped pull the world back

From the brink of nuclear war.

A spy had kept the peace.

Only one other time that happened
Was the cuban missile crisis,

We came that close
to nuclear warfare.

But the americans couldn't know Who was
behind the sudden cooling of tensions,

Because gordievsky was a
closely guarded secret.

When we got the information It
was from some mysterious source.

So the question was, who
could have provided that?

British intelligence had devised a strategy
To protect their source from exposure,

Even from their allies.

It was very much concealed.

It wasn't all attributed
to a single agent.

It was presented as if it was drawn
From our intelligence resources

With the implication that
it might well have been

Several different agents
bringing it altogether.

This was all because we
wanted to protect gordievsky.

But given the depth of the intel, The cia were
increasingly unhappy To be drip-fed information

On a need-to-know basis.

They wanted access
to the source.

The information he provided Became much more
specific And although even then he was never named

Or identified to the americans,
I think it was pretty clear

That it was coming from one
extremely well-placed agent.

That the cia would seek out the source
Would set off a chain of events

That would prove to be
devastating to oleg gordievsky.

The man the americans put in charge Of
tracing the source was the cia's chief

Of soviet counterintelligence,
aldrich ames.

Through a process of elimination, Ames
realized the source must have been

A high-ranking kgb
man, in london.

He settled upon recently
promoted oleg gordievsky.

But the americans had
made a grave error.

What the cia couldn't know Is
that ames himself was a kgb spy.

You tell me what the odds might
be, It's a lightning strike.

Milton bearden was deputy chief Of the
cia's soviet and east european division.

Ames decided to dump

All of the assets
working for the cia.

Maybe he wanted to close
those operations out

Because he feared that
somehow they might contribute

To his compromise, so he
thought, I'll kill them off.

Aldrich ames passed across A
carrier bag full of secrets.

And amongst those secrets was The
identity of oleg gordievsky.

On Friday 17th of may, gordievsky received
A summons from kgb headquarters in moscow.

He was to return to
the ussr immediately.

Gordievsky has been given the pretense
Of returning to moscow for a promotion.

And that raised the
alarm bells in his mind.

He couldn't be certain If
his cover had been blown.

But to disobey a direct order would be
tantamount To a confession of guilt.

Never underestimate the strain
Under which any agent operates.

Consequences, certainly in the soviet
system, Would have been death.

Well, of course,
he would be shot.

No problem.

Gordievsky felt he had no option But
to return home to face the kgb.

Almost immediately, he was
taken to a kgb safe house.

Their plan, to confront him with their
growing suspicions Of his true loyalties.

Gordievsky was drugged.

He was interrogated.

He was accused of
being an mi6 spy.

Yet somehow, he must have found The mental
strength to resist the russian drugs.

At no point did he own
up to being an mi6 spy.

So, the kgb changed tactics.

They decided to play
cat and mouse game with me.

And I was put under
house arrest only.

What would have been very, very clear to gordievsky,
Was that time had run out, now was the time

To get in touch with his mi6 handlers And
finally get out of the soviet union.

The question now was when and how
To initiate operation pimlico,

The first ever plan devised by british intelligence
To exfiltrate an agent from the soviet union.

In '77, we made the
first plan of escape.

I visualized the situation when I would be Under
strong suspicion, and not yet properly arrested,

And I will have time to
carry out an escape attempt.

But by June 1985, Mi6 had lost
all contact with their source.

Gordievsky had simply vanished.

They had no option but to wait
for him To make the next move.

And that was only if
he was still alive.

Before triggering the pre-arranged escape plan,
There was someone gordievsky wanted to see,

His old friend mikhail lyubimov.

But lyubimov barely recognized
the man at his door.

It was another gordievsky
Whom I never saw before.

He was in a very chaotic
state, trembling hands.

Oleg, who never drank more than one or two
glasses, He was like this, a whole bottle,

A big bottle, about one liter.

I was his friend, his colleague.

Of course I didn't suspect
that he was mi6 man.

These would be the last moments Oleg
gordievsky would spend with his old friend.

The time had now come to flee
the soviet union for good.

Oleg gordievsky was now under Constant
surveillance by his fellow kgb agents.

Using russian spy-craft known
as proverka or dry cleaning,

He tried to shake-off
his kgb watch team.

To stay alive, he needed to
get out of the country, fast.

And that meant setting in motion operation
pimlico, His mi6 extraction plan.

I went to the appointed place,
At exactly 7:00 o'clock,

Under the lamp
post near the road.

From there, gordievsky gave A
seemingly innocuous signal,

Exposing a british
supermarket carrier bag.

A safeway bag, a plastic bag in my hands, For
six minutes, to be noticed by the british.

It was Tuesday.

It meant I would be
picked up on Saturday

The same week at 2:00 o'clock.

Gordievsky must have gone there, And hoping
against hope that the brits would say,

Oh my god, there he
is, he's signaling us.

To acknowledge the signal, An mi6
agent would appear from the crowd,

Eating a pre-agreed
brand of chocolate bar.

Now gordievsky
would have to wait.

In london, the next stage of operation pimlico
Required authorization from the highest level.

They'd had to go all the way to maggie thatcher
To get clearance to pull this exfiltration.

It was down to charles powell, Foreign
policy advisor to prime minister thatcher

At the time, to deliver the news
Her source was ready to come home.

The prime minister was
out of london in balmoral.

And her authorization
was needed.

It was so secret that we couldn't
Communicate it by telephone.

So someone had to go up
and talk to her directly.

I flew up to scotland and
drove to the gates of balmoral,

Had to fight my way past various equerries Who
were discussing really important subjects,

Like whether the queen mother could borrow The
queen's video tape recorder that night or not.

And then I had to see the queen's private secretary
Who was rather insistent that he be informed

Why I had come to see
the prime minister,

And I'm afraid I insisted that
I couldn't possibly tell him,

And we had quite an
altercation about this.

And finally I got to see her.

We did our business within
five minutes or less,

And then it was a question
of getting back to london.

In moscow, for gordievsky the
next step Would mean heartbreak.

Throughout his time spying for the british, He had
shielded his wife and children from the truth.

He knew getting his family involved
now Would simply be too dangerous.

He would have to make his escape Without
telling them where he was going, or why.

I shook off the surveillance.

Caught a train to leningrad, from leningrad
Train, commuter train, and buses

In the direction of
the finish border.

About 30 miles before the border I was
hiding in the woods at an appointed time

Which was 2:00 o'clock.

At the soviet-finnish border, Mi6
officers arrived with a diplomatic car.

The plan was to conceal him in
the trunk of the ford sedan,

And smuggle him over
the border into finland.

As he made his way to the rendezvous,
Gordievsky had no way of knowing

Whether he was walking into
a kgb trap or toward freedom.

In effect, kidnapping a kgb officer And
transporting him across the border

Out of the soviet union,
was a hugely risky plan.

Those mi6 officers would almost certainly
Also have been under observation,

So trying to drive to the finnish
border, Driving across that border,

Trying to persuade the border guards That they
were not the people they were pretending to be

Would have been
fraught with risk.

That day, one of the border guards
Sensed something wasn't right.

The female mi6 operative
had to think fast.

Somehow her chips were enough to
distract the dogs And the moment passed.

Here you go.

Nobody wanted to waste time,
And nobody opened the boot,

And we went through
the five check points.

From the trunk of the vehicle, Gordievsky
wouldn't know if he had made it to freedom

Until he heard the
pre-agreed signal.

The strains of sibelius'
"finlandia suite".

It is a remarkable story, if anyone wants
A really good read of a spy story,

This is better than any fiction.

Gordievsky's defection Was one of the
greatest espionage triumphs Of the cold war.

It was actually one
in the eye for the kgb

And the soviet system that we
had successfully done this.

After all, remember how
they crowed about philby,

burgess,

maclean, And now here at last they got
it back, And they got it back in spades.

A kgb colonel under house arrest and surveillance
In moscow, and then escaping back to the west,

It was never happened before.

Now that mi6's most valued asset was safe,
His intelligence could be freely shared

With britain's allies.

And reagan could reach out to the soviet
union's New head of state, mikhail gorbachev.

With real confidence of the
likelihood Of a new rapprochement.

The americans re-engaged with the russians
In geneva on arms control and so on.

And then all the planets, I think,
Lined up, maggie thatcher's in london,

Ronald reagan's in washington, And together at
this moment, Started pulling on the same rope.

Oleg gordievsky's actions Heralded the
beginning of the end of the cold war.

But to some he remains
a controversial figure.

Of course he is a traitor.

The main motive of gordie to
become a british spy, His vanity.

His vanity, he wanted to
become sort of a moses,

Anti-soviet moses.

Hero or traitor, oleg gordievksy paid A
high personal price for his defection.

It would take another six years
And the fall of the soviet union

Before his family could
flee moscow to join him.

But by then, gordievsky's
marriage was over.

I think that he's
a lonely, poor man.

In 2007, gordievsky was appointed Companion
of the most distinguished order for services

To the security of the
united kingdom by the queen.

It was the same gong given The
fictional cold war hero, james bond.

For sure I can say that
last time I met him was in 2005.

The british celebrated his successful
escape With danish assistance.

I was deeply honored
to be invited.

He was a fine man.