BBC - Nuclear Secrets Set One (2007) Part 1 The Spy From Moscow
At present the total nuclear arsenal of the world is no less than 27,000 nuclear warheads. Nine countries in the world (probably) have nuclear weapons and a dozen more have access to the resources and technology needed to produce such a weapon. Nuclear Secrets is a series of spy thrillers exploring the key turning-points in the race for nuclear supremacy. Despite being an ally during World War II, the Soviet Union launched an all-out espionage effort to uncover the military and defense secrets of the United States and Britain in the 1940s. As the top-secret plan to build the bomb, called the Manhattan Project, took shape in the United States, the Soviet spy ring got wind of it before the FBI knew of the secret program's existence. The Atomic Spy Ring was established by the Soviet Union during World War II and included some of the best known names in the world of espionage. Barely four years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the Soviet Union detonated its own at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan in August 1949, much sooner that expected. The race to build the hydrogen bomb took the world to the edge of apocalypse. It set off a real-life action thriller to control the most powerful force on the planet. This prestigious BBC series using dramatized reconstructions and CIA and KGB archives reveals the true story of the race for nuclear power, from the creation of the A-bomb to the present day market in military secrets across the world.
Part 1 The Spy From Moscow
Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky was one of the highest-ranking Soviet officials ever to spy for the West, and he risked his life providing an unparalleled amount of information to MI6 and the CIA. At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy could turn to technical evidence unknown to the rest of the world provided by “Agent Hero” – Penkovsky's codename. One of the most effective spies in MI6's history, Penkovsky soon realised the KGB were on his tail. With unprecedented access to KGB archives, the film shows the surveillance footage taken by the KGB as they trailed Penkovsky across Moscow in meetings with his British handlers – Janet Chisholm, a British diplomat's wife, and Greville Wynne, a British businessman. Declassified CIA transcripts reveal that as America was being targeted, so was Penkovsky. His dramatic story and tragic end is highly revealing of KGB operations at the height of the Cold War.
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