Biography
Little is known of GRU Navy lieutenant Vladimir Aleksandrovich Skripkin, whose disappearance in July 1946 merged with other counterintelligence mysteries, such as Gouzenko’s “Elli,” to form the foundation of a British mole hunt that lasted into the 1960s.
According to Brook-Shepherd, Skripkin was an English-speaking GRU officer assigned to Tokyo in early 1946 as part of the Soviet military mission to Japan. His clandestine GRU mission was to conduct intelligence operations against the Western powers.
Skripkin approached the British embassy in Tokyo on 9 May 1946 tentatively offering to cooperate with British intelligence. Eight days later while attending a meeting with U.S. occupation forces he admitted he had become “sick and tired” of the Stalinist regime and was waiting for his wife to arrive in Japan so he could defect. He visited the British Embassy again on 19 June complaining that his wife had been denied authorization to join him in Japan, and that he was recalled to the Soviet Union, scheduled to leave the next morning. He gave the British his Moscow address hoping that they could help get him and his wife out of the Soviet Union in the future.[i] Naval intelligence officers at the British Embassy sent reports after both the May and June encounters notifying London of Skripkin’s offer.
Skripkin transferred back to Moscow in June 1946, only to be arrested and executed. Unaware of his fate and after hearing nothing more from him, the British assumed that he had simply changed his mind. But suspicions eventually arose that the Soviets had received notification of Skripkin’s offer to defect from inside the British government.
New information about Skripkin’s fate emerged in 1953, when KGB officer Yuriy Aleksandrovich Rastvorov defected in Japan. Rastvorov reported that he had known Skripkin personally, and that two MGB officers posing as SIS officers had approached him in a false flag operation when he returned to Moscow. Skripkin gave himself away to the false SIS officers and was arrested. Anatoliy Mikhailovich Golitsyn provided further information after his defection in 1961, claiming to have been involved in the case when he was a junior counterintelligence officer. Golitsyn correctly described the content of the two messages British Naval intelligence had sent to London.[ii]
Brook-Shepherd assesses that Kim Philby was the leak within the British government that led to Skripkin’s arrest. But Peter Wright claims that Philby never saw the Skripkin reports, and asserts that Roger Hollis, who handled the reports, had ordered that they be stored in a file without action.[iii] As late as 1967, Wright continued to actively investigate this theory, compiling data from Volkov, Gouzenko, Golitsyn, and Polish intelligence defector Michael Goleniewski, which Wright believed all pointed to Hollis.[iv] However, MI5 never conclusively identified the leaker.
The only information Skripkin managed to provided was his personal background sufficient to assess his access to information of value, and his motivation for defecting, which consisted of him being “sick and tired” of the Stalin regime.
According to Brook-Shepherd, Skripkin was an English-speaking GRU officer assigned to Tokyo in early 1946 as part of the Soviet military mission to Japan. His clandestine GRU mission was to conduct intelligence operations against the Western powers.
Skripkin approached the British embassy in Tokyo on 9 May 1946 tentatively offering to cooperate with British intelligence. Eight days later while attending a meeting with U.S. occupation forces he admitted he had become “sick and tired” of the Stalinist regime and was waiting for his wife to arrive in Japan so he could defect. He visited the British Embassy again on 19 June complaining that his wife had been denied authorization to join him in Japan, and that he was recalled to the Soviet Union, scheduled to leave the next morning. He gave the British his Moscow address hoping that they could help get him and his wife out of the Soviet Union in the future.[i] Naval intelligence officers at the British Embassy sent reports after both the May and June encounters notifying London of Skripkin’s offer.
Skripkin transferred back to Moscow in June 1946, only to be arrested and executed. Unaware of his fate and after hearing nothing more from him, the British assumed that he had simply changed his mind. But suspicions eventually arose that the Soviets had received notification of Skripkin’s offer to defect from inside the British government.
New information about Skripkin’s fate emerged in 1953, when KGB officer Yuriy Aleksandrovich Rastvorov defected in Japan. Rastvorov reported that he had known Skripkin personally, and that two MGB officers posing as SIS officers had approached him in a false flag operation when he returned to Moscow. Skripkin gave himself away to the false SIS officers and was arrested. Anatoliy Mikhailovich Golitsyn provided further information after his defection in 1961, claiming to have been involved in the case when he was a junior counterintelligence officer. Golitsyn correctly described the content of the two messages British Naval intelligence had sent to London.[ii]
Brook-Shepherd assesses that Kim Philby was the leak within the British government that led to Skripkin’s arrest. But Peter Wright claims that Philby never saw the Skripkin reports, and asserts that Roger Hollis, who handled the reports, had ordered that they be stored in a file without action.[iii] As late as 1967, Wright continued to actively investigate this theory, compiling data from Volkov, Gouzenko, Golitsyn, and Polish intelligence defector Michael Goleniewski, which Wright believed all pointed to Hollis.[iv] However, MI5 never conclusively identified the leaker.
The only information Skripkin managed to provided was his personal background sufficient to assess his access to information of value, and his motivation for defecting, which consisted of him being “sick and tired” of the Stalin regime.
Notes
- [i] Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds: Soviet Post-War Defectors (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), pp. 60-61.
- [ii] Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds, p. 61.
- [iii] Peter Wright, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), pp. 286-287.
- [iv] Wright, Spycatcher, p. 278.