Bread, Chocolate Turned Briton Into a Traitor, Ex-KGB Officer Says

A former KGB general disclosed Friday how a Soviet agent converted British spy George Blake to the cause of world communism by slipping him bread and chocolate as he languished in a North Korean prison camp.

“I have been convinced ever since that the way to a spy’s heart is through his stomach,” the Soviet agent was quoted as saying.

Blake, last known survivor in a notorious line of British traitors, was uncovered in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years imprisonment.

In 1966, with the help of two British peace activists, Blake escaped from London’s Wormwood Scrubs jail and was smuggled across the Iron Curtain to Moscow, where he has lived ever since, proclaiming his dedication to the Communist ideal.

Lt. Gen. K. A. Grigoriev told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that it all began when a colleague gave Blake extra rations in a prison camp run by North Korean Communists in 1950.

Grigoriev said that the British sent Blake, already an intelligence agent, to Seoul during the Korean War as a vice consul. In June, 1950, Soviet-backed North Korean forces captured the South Korean city, and all Western diplomats were interned in prison camps.

Blake became a treasured Soviet guest after his escape from Britain. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, one of the Soviet Union’s highest decorations, and given a prestigious job at a Moscow foreign affairs institute.

He has since admitted betraying 600 British agents.