General
George Blake, Cold War spy who betrayed Britain, dies at 98
George Blake, whose secret work for the Soviet Union humiliated British intelligence when it was discovered at the height of the Cold War, has died in Russia at the age of 98.
Key points:
- George Blake was arrested in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years jail before escaping in 1966
- He spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union and then Russia
- He worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1944 but began passing information to Moscow from 1955
He was the last in a line of spies who exposed the identities of hundreds of Western agents across Eastern Europe in the 1950s, some of whom were executed as a result of his treason.
Blake’s case was among the most notorious of the Cold War, alongside those of a separate ring of British double…
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