Konon Molody, who used the cover name Gordon Lonsdale, in 1961
The Portland spy ring was an espionage group active in the UK between 1953 and 1961. It comprised five people who obtained classified research documents from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, and passed them to the Soviet Union.
Two of the group's members, Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee, were British. They worked at the AUWE and had access to the areas where the research was stored. After they obtained the information it was passed to their handler, Konon Molody—who was acting under the name Gordon Lonsdale. He was a KGB agent acting in the UK under a Canadian passport. Lonsdale would pass the documents in microdot format to Lona and Morris Cohen, two American communists who had moved to the UK using New Zealand passports in the names Helen and Peter Kroger. The Krogers would get the information to Moscow, often by using the cover of an antiquarian book dealer.
The ring was exposed in 1960 following a tip-off from the Polish spy Michael Goleniewski about a mole in the Admiralty. The information he supplied was enough to identify Houghton. Surveillance by MI5—the UK's domestic counter-intelligence service—established the connection between Houghton and Gee, and then between them and Lonsdale and finally the Krogers. All five were arrested in January 1961 and put on trial that March. Sentences for the group ranged from fifteen years (for Houghton and Gee) to twenty years (for the Krogers) to twenty-five years (for Lonsdale).
Lonsdale was released in 1964 in a spy swap for the British businessman Greville Wynne. The Krogers were exchanged in October 1969 as part of a swap with Gerald Brooke, a British national held on largely falsified claims. The last to be freed were Houghton and Gee, who were given early release in May 1970.
The Portlandspyring was an espionage group active in the UK between 1953 and 1961. It comprised five people who obtained classified research documents...
Sylvester and Margaret Tyzack. It is based on the real-life case of the PortlandSpyRing, whose activities prompted "Reds under the bed" scare stories in the...
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War...
Naval SNCO and a spy for the Polish People's Republic and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He was a member of the PortlandSpyRing. Houghton was born...
non-official (illegal) KGB intelligence agent and the mastermind of the PortlandSpyRing, which operated in Britain from the late 1950s until 1961. A person...
lover spy for the Soviet Union. She was a member of the PortlandSpyRing. The daughter of a blacksmith, Ethel Gee lived on the Isle of Portland, England...
the Cambridge SpyRing, but these five members were collectively known as the Cambridge Five. PortlandSpyRing: The PortlandSpyRing operated in England...
commits espionage is called an espionage agent or spy. Any individual or spyring (a cooperating group of spies), in the service of a government, company, criminal...
the spyring. During his time as a Soviet spy, Walker helped the Soviets decipher more than one million encrypted naval messages, organizing a spy operation...
2023) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from...
Ethel's role as an accessory who helped recruit her brother David into the spyring and did clerical tasks such as typing up documents that Julius then passed...
(resident spies), as well as Communists of American origin, to perform espionage activities in the United States, forming various spyrings. Particularly...
colleagues in Russia, as part of a Soviet espionage network known as the PortlandSpyRing which had penetrated Britain's Royal Navy. The original West End production...
performance was rated only "satisfactory". His superiors considered the spies recruited to be of sufficient value, but a remark was made that Ames was...
British Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. p. 49. "The Tragic Death of Thatcher's Spy". 20 February 2023. "Stakeknife: Unmasking the infamous IRA mole". November...
The Culper Ring was a network of spies active during the American Revolutionary War, organized by Major Benjamin Tallmadge and General George Washington...
Lonsdale (Konon Molody, a KGB agent) worked with them as part of the PortlandSpyRing. In the basement of their house, at 45 Cranley Drive, Ruislip, situated...
1995) was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet...
the Sorge SpyRing, New York: McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-050677-9 Whymant, Robert (1996), Stalin's Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring, London:...
Russia". Peace Corps Online. November 27, 1991. Wise, David (1988). The Spy Who Got Away: The Inside Story of the CIA Agent Who Betrayed His Country...
supported by the former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky. Another spyring, the PortlandSpyRing, exposed after a tip-off by Soviet defector Michael Goleniewski...
convincing him that the Russian government wanted to reactivate him as a spy. Pitts offered his services to the Soviets in 1987 while he was assigned...
to the techniques, methods, and technologies used in modern espionage (spying) and generally as part of the activity of intelligence assessment. This...
Most Decorated Cold War Spy and Head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. London: Bantam Press. p. 89. ISBN 9780593075203. "My Spy". Lapham’s Quarterly. 14...
United States on 27 June 2010 as part of the Illegals Program, a Russian spyring. At the time of her arrest, she was accused of espionage on behalf of the...
in the capture of the Portlandspyring; her parents' house was used to surveil Peter and Helen Kroger, two members of the ring. Search started her horticultural...
Global Information