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May 19, 2006
I Spy... A Cold War Bar
I'm home. Last time I got back and talked about how well the trip went, Erika and Beav rode me a bit for revealing a swelled head. I certainly wouldn't want to offend their sensibilities again (or yours, for that matter), so I won't go into the details of the trip other than to say that it went very well.
But I did have a fun little non-work-related adventure... After the conference ended on Wednesday night, I found myself at a "speakers' party" in Chelsea, for those of us who'd been on stage during the day. The house where the party was held had a fascinating little bit of Cold War history inside. In the middle of the living room of this otherwise highly dignified, graceful English home sits a bar straight out of the Austin Powers movies -- garishly loud animal print countertop, delightfully early 60s kitschy. In such a lovely home, the bar stands out like, well, a frilled mod shirt and crushed velvet suit.
As it turns out and as the host explained, the home was once owned by Greville Wynne. Wynne was a master handler for MI-6 during the height of the Cold War, controlling several Soviet double agents -- none more famous or influential than Oleg Penkovsky, who has been called the most effective and important Soviet spy who worked with the West in the entire Cold War. Having studied Cold War history in undregrad, I knew that Penkovsky was the source for some of President Kennedy's confidence during the Cuban Missile Crisis; it was Penkovsky who revealed to the West that the Soviets' nuclear arsenal was far smaller than they'd told the world. Penkovsky's information, before and during the crisis, was critical to western understanding in the early 1960s. Turning Penkovsky was one of the west's most important espionage successes. (Unfortunately, a double agent eventually turned Penkovsky in as the crisis peaked, and he was executed by the Soviet government in 1963.)
So the story with the bar? Wynne and Penkovksy often held their meetings in Wynne's home; Penkovsky telling his superiors that he was meeting with British businessmen who liked to drink and often talking too much (thus being potential sources of information worth Soviet awareness), and Wynne telling MI-6 that the Russian only talked when hammered. In reality, while they were working, it was also just two friends who wanted to drink together. And they hatched on a plan...
Wynne told his bosses that getting Penkovksy drunk in public was indiscreet and could risk the entire operation; he needed a private place to ply the Russian with booze. Penkovsky told his superiors that British businessmen who might be open to either wittingly or unwittingly giving up crucial information would not likely consort with a Russian in public; he needed help to get a private sanctuary in which he might get the fops hammered and conduct his espionage in a safer environment. Wynne got MI-6 to cough up 500 pounds (in 1960, that's what, about four or five grand now?) to build the bar inside his home; Penkovsky got the GRU/KGB to cough up 300 pounds to help Wynne build a bar in his home. So, these two masters of the spy game were able to con Cold War intelligence services into building them, in today's numbers, a $6000/$7000+ fully stocked bar, which they primarily used for their own amusement.
Since the bar was acquired/built right around 1960/1, they made it as "modern" and fashionable as possible. Fortunately for us all, fashion has progressed since then, and what must have at one point seemed quite the hip, happening home bar now looks and feels every bit the cultural relic that it is. But because of its historical value, and because -- as the home's current owner puts it, "it's so awfully kitschy that it's almost wonderful" -- the current owners have left the bar intact as it originally stood.
And it was at that very bar -- the same one at which Oleg Penkovsky delivered so much information that helped the West and eventually cost him his life, and the same one that hosted its own small chapter of the Cold War -- that I found myself having martinis on Wednesday night. And I couldn't help but silently raise a glass to Wynne and Penkovsky... for their sacrifices and effort, for the roles that they played in history -- and for the spirit of chicanery that allowed them to build a cheesy bar at the expense of MI-6 and the KGB.
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Comments
I spy a Mudge with jet lag.
Posted by: Jill at May 19, 2006 04:20 PM
Haha... You said "swelling head."
Posted by: Erika at May 21, 2006 03:14 PM
Great yarn mudge.... while the rest of the crew seems to think you've gone off the deep end this is a great story.
Posted by: usefulguy at May 22, 2006 02:25 PM
Thanks, UG.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at May 22, 2006 08:29 PM
