George Blake, a former British intelligence officer who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union and passed on some of the most coveted Western secrets to Moscow, has died in Russia. He was 98.
Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, known as SVR, announced his death in a statement Saturday, which gave no details. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences, calling Blake a “brilliant professional” and a man of “remarkable courage.”
As a double agent, Blake exposed a Western plan to eavesdrop on Soviet communications from an underground tunnel to East Berlin. He also exposed 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 the suggestion that 42 of them had lost their lives as a result of his actions.
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Blake has lived in Russia since his daring escape from a British prison in 1966 and was given the rank of Russian intelligence colonel.
Blake was born in the Netherlands and joined the British intelligence service during World War II. He was transferred to Korea when war broke out in 1950 and was held by the communist north. He said he volunteered to work for the Soviet Union after witnessing brutal American bombing raids on North Korea.
In a 2017 statement by Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, Blake stressed that he decided to switch sides after seeing civilians slaughtered by the “ US military machine. ”
“I then realized that such conflicts are deadly dangerous to all of humanity and made the most important decision of my life – to voluntarily and free of charge work with Soviet intelligence to help protect world peace,” Blake said.
In a 2012 interview with Russian government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Blake shared some details of his cloak-and-dagger adventures, including encounters with a Soviet liaison in East Berlin. He said he would take the train to East Berlin once a month, make sure he wasn’t followed, and go by car to a secret apartment where he and his contact would have a conversation, accompanied by a glass of Soviet-made sparkling wine.
A Polish defector exposed Blake in 1961 as a Soviet spy. He was convicted of espionage in Britain and sentenced to 42 years in prison. In October 1966, he bravely escaped with the help of several people he met in custody.
Blake spent two months in hiding with his assistant and was then driven across Europe to East Berlin in a wooden box secured under a car.
His British wife, whom he left with their three children, divorced him and he married a Soviet woman and they had a son. He was honored as a hero, decorated with top medals and given a country house outside Moscow.
In the Soviet Union, Blake liaised with other British double agents. He said he regularly met Donald Maclean and Kim Philby, members of the so-called Cambridge Five, and said he and Maclean were particularly close.
Blake said he had adapted well to life in Russia and joked during a meeting with Russian intelligence officers that he was like a “foreign-made car that adapted well to Russian roads.”
“He has really made an invaluable contribution to ensuring strategic parity and keeping peace,” Putin said in his condolences.
Blake noted in his 2017 statement that Russia has become his “second motherland” and thanked the SVR officers for their friendship and understanding. He said Russian intelligence officers are on a mission to “save the world in a situation where the danger of nuclear war and the resulting self-destruction of humanity have been put back on the agenda by irresponsible politicians.”
Blake added, according to the BBC, “It’s a real battle between good and evil.”
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