Former British intelligence officer who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union, George Blake, said that Russian spies now have a "difficult and critical mission" to save the world, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service announced today. Blake, who has lived in Russia since escaping from a British prison in 1966, said that Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service must "save the world in a situation where irresponsible politicians have put the danger of nuclear war and the resulting self-destruction of humanity into the program." "It is a true battle between age and evil," the 95-year-old former spy said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies. Blake said that terrorism "has left bloody traces in many parts of the world". The head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, congratulated Blake on his birthday, saying that he is a role model for employees of that service. As a double agent, Blake handed over some of Britain's most closely guarded secrets to the Soviet Union, including Western plans to eavesdrop on Soviet communications from an underground tunnel in East Berlin. Blake was betrayed by a Polish defector in 1961, after which the British man was sentenced to 42 years in prison, but in October 1966 he managed to escape with the help of several people he met behind bars. Blekj spent two months hidden with his assistant, and then he was transported across Europe to East Berlin in a wooden crate hooked under a car. Blake said in a 2012 interview with a Russian state-run daily that he had adapted well to life in Russia.
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