Gervase Cowell 4th August 1926 — 2nd May 2000

MBE

Gervase Cowell was the M16 officer who ran Oleg Penkovsky, the Soviet agent whose information during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 prevented a pre-emptive American nuclear strike against Moscow.

During the time that Cowell ran him, Penkovsky photographed thousands of top secret Soviet, documents using a Minox mini-camera supplied by the British.

By far the most important intelligence concerned Russian plans to base medium-range ballistic missiles at San Cristobal in Cuba. This broke Khrushchev's pledge to President Kennedy that Soviet military aid to Cuba would be purely defensive and sparked the crisis.

The US Navy blockaded Cuba in order to prevent the missiles arriving and the subsequent stand-off between Moscow and Washington brought the world close to nuclear holocaust. It was only further intelligence handed to Cowell by Penkovsky which brought the crisis to an end.

The hawks in Washington had argued that the Soviets had numerical supremacy in missiles and had told Kennedy that he had no choice but to launch a pre-emptive strike if Khrushchev refused to back down But Penkovsky's documents revealed that the missile gap was actually greatly to America's advantage.

But the KGB was already on to Penkovsky and on October22 1962, with the crisis at 'its height,' he was arrested. He confessed almost immediately.

From that point on, Khrushchev was aware that Kennedy knew the true extent of Soviet missile capability. A week later, the Soviet ships turned round and the world stepped back from the brink of oblivion.

Greville Wynne, the British businessman who had acted as MI6's go-between with Penkovsky, was also arrested and Cowell was declared persona non grata. Learning of his expulsion while playing tennis with his wife on the ambassador's court, he insisted on finishing the match before leaving for home.

Gervase Cowell was born at Sale, Cheshire, on August 4 1926, the son of an engineer with Metropolitan Vickers.

He was educated by Jesuits at St Bede's College, Manchester, and volunteered for the RAF in 1944. He initially underwent Japanese language training before switching to Russian.

Having obtained a first class interpretership in Russian, Cowell worked for GCHQ until 1948, when he went up to St Catherine's College, Cambridge, where he took a First in Russian and French. He was a keen rugby player and his room-mate was the Welsh fly-half Glyn Davies.

Cowell joined the Secret Intelligence Service - MI6 - in 1951 and went to Germany to work in the Control Commission. It was wound up in 1952 and Cowell spent the next six years at MI6's office in London.

His next posting was to Jordan, where he spent two years working under diplomatic cover as a Second Secretary in the embassy in Amman. British troops bad withdrawn from Jordan the previous year and it was during Cowell's time there that the West Bank refugee camps first became the focus for attacks by Palestinian fedayeen against Israel.

After a brief period back in London, Cowell was sent to Moscow, where he became the forward case officer for Penkovsky. After his expulsion, Cowell served in Bonn during the mid-1960s, Paris during the early 1970s, and Tel Aviv from 1978 to 1981.

He retired from MI6 in 1981, but returned four years later to do research in the Service's archive. Then in 1988 he became the Foreign Office's adviser on the wartime work of SOE. He was the first holder of the post who had not himself been a member of SOE and, at a time when its operations were increasingly revealed to public scrutiny, and sometimes subjected to criticism, he worked hard to make certain the truth prevailed.

On his retirement in 1996, Cowell became chairman of the historical sub-committee of the Special Forces Club, continuing to ensure that the bravery of SOE was remembered.

After being appointed MBE in the last New Year's honours list, he was asked by the Queen what this latest role involved. "I help the old to remember and the young to understand," he replied.

Cowell was an accomplished artist, with a style which ranged from expressionism to the abstract. During his M16 career abroad, he had exhibitions in Amman, Paris and Jerusalem.

He was also responsible for designing a plaque for Westminster Abbey to commemorate the work of SOE and another, at the site of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, to the women SOE agents murdered there.

He also translated Russian authors, including Yuri Nagibin's The Chase, Vladimir Tendryakov's Three, Seven, Ace, and Red and Black, the first of two short stories by Ivan Valeriy published in English as The Bluebottle.
A slight and softly spoken man, Cowell often appeared reserved, but this masked a lively sense of humour and an iron resolve.

He married, in 1954, Pamela Alger and they had two sons and two daughters.