Janet Chisholm

Who was Janet Chisholm?

Janet Chisholm, born Janet Anne Deane, was a British MI6 agent during the Cold War.

She was born in Kasauli, India and educated in Berkshire studying Russian and French. After school, she worked in London before joining the Allied Control Commission and moving to West Germany. There she met her future husband, Ruari Chisholm, and began working for British Intelligence.

Her husband was a spy who headed the MI6 station in Moscow but worked under the guise of a visa officer. When Oleg Penkovsky offered Soviet military secrets to MI6 she became the go-between. To all outward appearances, Janet was an ordinary mother of three children. She would meet Penkovsky in a local park and he would offer what appeared to be sweets, but were actually disguised documents containing military secrets about the Soviet nuclear weapons arsenal.

Their cover was eventually blown by another British agent, George Blake, who had defected to the Soviet side. Penkovsky was quickly arrested and executed and the Chisholms were deported. Controversy surrounds Penkovsky's death, with many believing that MI6 put him in danger after Blake confessed all to the Soviet officials.