Gourt Home::Gourt :: George Blake
George Blake (born Georg Behar, November 11, 1922) is a former British spy who was actually a double agent for the Soviet Union.
Biography
Born in Rotterdam of mixed parentage; his mother was Dutch and his father was an Egyptian who was a naturalized British citizen.. He was born as George Behar to one of the eminent Jewish families of Amsterdam. His father passed away when he was 14 and little Behar was sent to a British school in Cairo as this was the will of his father. While he was living there with his relatives, he spent most of his time with his uncle Henri Curiel who was a prominent member of the Communist Party of Egypt and a KGB agent. When he returned to Amsterdam he was a dedicated communist.
Blake was active in the anti-Nazi Dutch resistance under the nom de guerre of Max de Vries. He escaped to London disguised as a monk when the Gestapo tried to capture him. In England, he changed his name to Blake and eventually began to work for the SOE. After some time, he fell in love with an MI6 secretary named Iris Peake -later she went to work in the service of the Queen- and they decided to marry. Unfortunately the eminent "Peake" family wouldn't give its consent for the marriage as Blake was Jewish. The young girl wasn't able to bear the pressure and their relationship ended. Blake was devastated as a result and decided to take revenge on this "snobbish" English nation which he blamed for the destruction of the love of his life. He went to his uncle and confidant, Henri Curiel, who recruited him for the KGB.
After World War II he was recruited by MI6 and worked on establishing agent networks in Soviet occupied Eastern Europe. He was sent to serve in the Korean War, and was in Seoul when it was overrun by the North Koreans. During three years as a prisoner of the North Koreans, he converted to Marxism - suggested by some as a result of "brainwashing", although he insists his conversion was voluntary. After his release in 1953, he was sent by MI6 to work as a double agent in Berlin, where he was actually a "triple agent"; he betrayed details of hundreds of MI6 agents to the Soviets.
In 1959 he was exposed by Polish defector Michael Goleniewski. In 1961 after an in camera trial, he was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker of Waddington; this sentence was said by newspapers to represent one year for each of the agents killed when he betrayed them, although this claim appears to be an invention. It was the longest sentence ever handed down by a British court, until terrorist Nezar Hindawi was sentenced to 45 years for the attempted bombing of an El Al jet.
However just five years later he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison with the help of Pat Pottle, Michael Randle and Sean Bourke, three members of the Committee of 100 whom he had met in Egypt two years before.
Blake fled to the USSR. He divorced his wife, with whom he had three children, and started a new life. In 1990 he published his autobiography No Other Choice (ISBN 0671741551). The book's British publisher had paid him about £60,000 before the government intervened to stop him profiting from sales.
In an interview with NBC News in 1991, Blake said he regretted the deaths of the agents he had betrayed.
As of 2004, he is still living in Moscow, Russia on a KGB pension, and remains a committed Marxist-Leninist. Blake denied being a traitor, insisting that he had never felt British: "To betray, you first have to belong. I never belonged."
References
- The First Directorate by Oleg Kalugin. St. Martins' Press, 1994.
1922 births | Living people | Double agents | Cold War spies | British spies | Soviet spies
"George Blake"