Legendary intelligence agent Gevork Vartanian dies aged 87
Gevork Vartanian, a legendary intelligence agent of Armenian descent, famous for thwarting assassination attempts on Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, died in Moscow on Wednesday at the age of 87, the Voice of Russia reported.
Gevork Vartanian became an intelligence agent at the age of 16 when he headed a special group assigned to identify Nazi spies in Iran.
His group provided security for the three leaders during the Tehran Conference held in November-December 1943 and carried out a successful operation to disrupt an assassination plot against them.
For more than 45 years Vartanian and his wife conducted a large number of intelligence operations in various countries. The couple continued to work for Soviet intelligence till the early 1990s.