‘The Courier’: Two Spies and a Crisis

In July 1960, Soviet military intelligence officer Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky approached two American tourists, Eldon Cox and Henry Cobb, in front of St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. He gave them a handwritten letter and told them to take it immediately to Edward Freers, the deputy chief at the US embassy. The trial of Francis Gary Powers, pilot of the downed American U-2 spy plane, recently shot down near Sverdlovsk, Western Siberia, was to be held in four days and Khrushchev was demanding a formal apology from US President Eisenhower. Penkovsky told the two men he had secret information on the U-2 flight that would help the US.

In Penkovsky’s letter, he wrote:

My Dear Sir!
I request that you pass the following to the appropriate authorities of the United States of America. It is your good friend who is turning to you, a friend who has already become your soldier-warrior for the cause of Truth, for the ideals of a truly free world and of Democracy for Mankind. To…