The West And The World
George Blake, a notorious British double agent who betrayed Cold War secrets and Western spies to the Soviet Union in the Wesst and, after being caught, staged a spectacular escape to live out his life as a K. He was The Kremlin confirmed his death on Saturday but provided no further details. Putin of Russia said in a statement.
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Blake became a dedicated Marxist, disillusioned with the West, and a high British intelligence officer while secretly working for the Soviets. His clandestine life had lasted less than a decade, but cost the lives of many agents and destroyed vital British and American operations in Europe.
Unlike the Cambridge clique, who defected when the authorities closed in, Ths. Blake was caught intried secretly and sentenced to 42 years in prison. Five years later, with inside and The West And The World help, he escaped from the Wormwood Scrubs prison in London and fled to Moscow.
He left behind a wife, three children and an uproar over his getaway, the tatters of a case that encapsulated the intrigues of a perilous nuclear age, with flash points in Korea and Germany, where Blake served. Settling into a new life in Moscow inMr. Blake assumed the identity of Colonel Georgiy Ivanovich Bleyk and was awarded the Order of Lenin and given a pension and an apartment. He divorced his wife, remarried and had a son and grandson, helped train Soviet agents and inon his 85th birthday, received the Order of Friendship from President Putin.
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In a Wesf with NBC News, he voiced Wor,d over the deaths of agents he had exposed, but not over his espionage. He denied being a traitor, insisting that he had never regarded himself as British, though he was the son of a naturalized subject. Indeed, Mr. Blake was a multilingual cosmopolitan to whom international intrigue was a way of life. While Philby, Burgess and Maclean became theoretical Marxists in the s after joining the Apostles, a secret debating The West And The World at Cambridge, Mr. Blake became a committed communist after seeing war in Europe and Asia and serving as a British agent. He was born George Behar in Rotterdam on Nov. He settled in the Netherlands as a businessman. When his father died inGeorge went to Cairo to live with relatives, including a cousin, Henri Curiel, who became an Egyptian Communist leader.
His mother and two sisters escaped to England, but he joined the Dutch resistance, running messages and gathering intelligence for two years. After the war he studied Russian at The West And The World — by then, Philby, Burgess and Maclean had graduated into spy tradecraft — and his teacher, a native of pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg, inspired in him a love of Russian language and culture, a step in his conversion.
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He was then sent to Germany to build a network of British spies in Berlin and Hamburg. Just before the Korean War began inMr. But he was captured by invading North Korean forces. Held for three years in North Korea, he was subjected The West And The World Communist indoctrination. He later denied that this had influenced his conversion, insisting that the American bombing of North Korea had been the prime factor.
Blake said he met with a K. He wanted no pay, and to avoid suspicion he insisted on being given no privileges and released with other captive diplomats. As the Korean War wound down inhe was repatriated to Britain and received as a national hero. Inhe was sent to Berlin to recruit Soviet officers as double agents.
Instead he began passing British and American secrets to the Soviets, including the identities of some spies and details of many Western espionage operations, among them two of the most productive intelligence sources of the Cold War: tunnels in Berlin and Vienna that were used to tap K. Tried in closed court, he was given three consecutive year terms. But inwith outside help from three men he had met in prison, he escaped with a rope ladder thrown over the wall.]
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