Double agent dies in Russia, betrayed West

George Blake, a former British intelligence officer who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union and passed some of the most coveted Western secrets to Moscow, has died in Russia. He was 98.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service announced his death Saturday. President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences, hailing Blake as a man of “remarkable courage.”

As a double agent, Blake exposed a Western plan to eavesdrop on Soviet communications from an underground tunnel into East Berlin.

Blake also unmasked scores of British agents in Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe, some of whom were executed.

Born in the Netherlands, Blake joined British intelligence during World War II. He was posted to Korea when the war there erupted in 1950 and was detained by the Communist North.

Blake said he volunteered to work for the Soviet Union after witnessing relentless U. S. bombing of North Korea.

Blake had lived in Russia since his daring escape from a British prison in 1966 and was given the rank of Russian intelligence colonel.

His British wife, whom he left behind along with their three children, divorced him, and he married a Soviet woman and they had a son. He was feted as a hero, decorated with top medals, and given a country house outside Moscow.

In the Soviet Union, Blake maintained contacts with other British double agents. He said he met regularly with Donald Maclean and Kim Philby, members of the socalled Cambridge Five.