Sunday, October 31, 2010

GIDEON

Canadian Security Service code name for a KGB illegal posted to Montreal, posing as a photographer named David Soboloff, who surrendered himself to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in November 1953 because he had fallen in love with the wife of a Canadian soldier and wanted political asylum. He was persuaded to act as a double agent, revealing the identity of his handlers, but when he was recalled to Moscow in October  1955 he failed to hold a rendezvous, as arranged. with his British contacts. He had been betrayed by an RCMP mole, Gilles Brunet, and disappeared for 15 years into Lefortovo prison. In 1990 he walked into the British embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was exfiltrated by Secret Intelligence Service and Canadian Security Intelligence Service personnel to Ottawa, where he was given $1 million compensation and resettled with his Russian wife.