Background
Molodyi, Konon was born in 1923.
Molodyi, Konon was born in 1923.
Pupil of star spy Rudolf Abel during World War II.
Sent to Britain to organize a spy network, 1955. Settled in Britain under the name of Gordon Lonsdale, selling bubble-gum machines and other mechanical devices. Produced a car burglar alarm and received a gold medal for the best British entry at the Brussels Trade Fair, 1960.
Together with Peter and Helen Kroger (Morris and Lorna Cohen), organized a sophisticated intelligence-gathering and transmitting centre, spying on NATO bases. Arrested, January 1961, sentenced to 25 years in prison. Exchanged for Greville Wynne, the British contact man for Oleg Pen’kovskii, 1964.
While his memoirs, glorifying Soviet espionage work abroad, were being published in Komsomolskaia Pravda, suddenly died, allegedly while picking mushrooms in a forest near Moscow.