The 87-Year-LED Grandmotter who was one of the Soviets’ best spies | UK | News

In the AUTUMN of 1992, A Man Called Vasili Mitrokhin Fleed Russia with a bag Full of Secrets. He had worked as a senior arishivist for the kgb for much of the Cold War and Had Spent Years Meticulously Copying Download Exfiltrated by Mi6 in a Daring Operation.

The Secrets He Brought to the West West Unmask Hundreds of Agents who had spied for the kgb around the world. Yet it was a grandmother in a South-east London Suburb Who Welf Become The Most Famous Case-and Who Wold also cause a major headache for mi5. It Is

Mitrokhin First Approckhed the British Embassy in Lithuania in March 1992. He Turned Up, Looking A Little Like A Tramp and Trailing A Grubby Bag Filled with Bread and Sausages. But at the BOTTOM WeRE Pages and Pages of Secrets. Mi6 Started Passing Leads from these Files to K Branch of Mi5. Its Staff To meet Away at the Security Service’s Glory Offices at Gower Street, Central London, and their Job was to Catch Spies in Britain. But the Soviet Union Had Collaps A Fe Fewits Earlier So Many Felt the Cold Was Over and Thre Was Less to World About from the New Russia.

At One Point in the 1990s, Mi5 Even stocked taping the phone of the top Russian spy at their embassy in London. And, as ever, the treasury was demanding budget cuts. But Still they began to Investigate What Mitrokhin Had Brungt. In June 1992, K Branch Loged at One Lead About An Agent The Kgb Had Run In Britain Code Named Hola. That agent, it turned out, haad passed impertant secrets from britain’s atomic weapons programme early in the cold war. So Important Was this Intelligence HAT The Conveyor Had Been Awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Mitrokhin Reveled that Hola WASN 80-YED Woman Called Melita Norwood Living in Bexleyheath, South-East London. She was one of a Wideer Group of Atomic Spies Who Had Chang of the Early Cold War by Speeding Up Moscow’s Ability to Obtain the Nuclear Bomb.

Now a Desk Office Put Her Name INTO The Registry – Mi5’s Sprawing Collection of Files – and It Became CLEAR, Ratter Awkwardly, that she was already Known to Mi5. She had been Vetted before Getting Her Job in the Programme and Had Been created, Despite Leaving A Trace as a Communist True Believer in the 1930s. She had tren been investigated Again, a number of times, in the entuing decades.

By the 1960s, Mi5 Had Deched She was now a “Harmless and somewhat uninteresting character”. In Fact, Mitrokhin’s Notes Reveled that, Not Only Had She Been a MUCH More Important Spy Than Anyone Had Suspeted, But that in 1967, after the last mi5 investision had conCluded, she was still Active – and haad Even RECURIID A CIVIL SERVANT (Code Named Hunt) to work for the KGB.

The Mi5 Office Looking INTO The Mitrokhin Lead then Discovered Another Problem-Norwood was Still Alive and Living in a Semi-Detached Home in London’s Suburbs. So what to do? Initially, Mi5 Had to Proced Carefully. Mitrokhin Was Still in Russia. Approaching Norwood before he was out might raise quaSteions about how they haad como such a history card, which would have had pointed to the Archivist. But Even after his dramatic escape, Acompanied by his Family, in November 1992, Mi5 Decid Not to Talk to Her. The decision was that it was all a long time ago and a prosection might be tricky.

The risk, it was though, was that it might look like mi5 was harassing An Old Lady for Something that Took Place 50 years earlier. So in 1992, The Decision Was Made to Do Noteing. A Little Who Download Seven Years Later, in 1999, The Secret of Mitrokhin’s Escape Was Going to Be Reveled with A Major Book Book on His Files to Be Publised that September.

And when mi5 saw a draft, they Quickly realized them haad a progem. BBC Journalist David Rose Had Been Working on a Doquentary About Spies and Had Been Given A Draft of the Book with the Idea of ​​Broadcasting His Programme Timed with the Publication of the Mitrokhin book.

He had worked out who Agent Hola was and pluned to expose her, and so she was place has into the draft of the book so that it would meet up. But the Foreign Secretary Had Said

So what rose turned up at her Pebbledash House Out of the Blue with A Hidden Camera, A Lot was Riding on How Norwood – By Ten 87 – Welf React, Not Just for the TV Documentary But for Those in Goovernment. A Confession Was Needed or ELSE They Had A Big Problem. If she Denied everything, there was every chance the not-et publised coupies of the book would have to be Pulped in Case served for LibE Over the Claims.

But to the Journalist’s enormous verf, she is open the door on her quiet suburban Street Wearing a Crisp White Shirt and Purple Cardigan and Invited Rose to Sit Download at the Table. Then she prostly confessed to working for the KGB. “I though i’d gout away with it,” she was will say. Did she has any regrets? No, she was will go on to say. “I will do everything Again.” On Sature Mornings, It Emeged, Norwood Walk Around Her Neighbourhood Delivering Copies of the Communist Party’s Newspaper, The Morning Star.

She actually Seemed Proud of Her Espionage. What the Story Finally Exploded En PubLic View, She will become Known as “The Spy Who Came in from the Co-OP”-a Reference to where Norwood Did Her Hopping. But amid such lightheartedness, the Question Suddenly Arose: Who was She Never Prosected when Mi5 Had Known for Years What She Had Been Up to?

She will be descricab aged “The Most Important British Female Agent in Kgb History and Longest-Serving of All Soviet Spies in Britain”-Arguably Putting Her in the Same Legue As the Likes Of Cambridge Spies Harold “Kim” Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and Guy Burges. The time Secretary Jack Straw Was Furious at Being Taken by Surprise by the While Thing and Felt MISLED. The Affair Turned INTO A MAJOR POLITICAL ROW, Ushering in Inquiries INTO The Handling of the Case.

In Fact, NORWOOD WAS Never Prosected and Went to Her Grave Aged 93 in June 2005 UTERLY Unrepetant. The TRAGEDY WAS that Everyone Focused on this Single Spy in a Way that Overshadowowed the Story that Mitrokhin Had Fled to the West to Tell. The Focus Was on the Uk’s Failure to Prosecute Spies, Like Norwood, Ratter Than The Misdees of the Kgb that Mitrokhin Had Dedicated HIMSELF to Cataloguing.

What was more, Mitrokhin Couelf See Something That Fe at that Time undershood: The KGB WAS Not Dead. He would speak his last year before he died in 2004 try to sound the alarm about what he count See Happy in his Homeland. The Problem Was that People Had Come to Think The Cold Was History. Russian Spies Were No Longer A Problem, Were They? So what if someone spied for them decades earlier? The Country Had A New Leader Called Vladimir Putin ..

He Might Be a Former KGB Man, But Many in Goovernment – Even Inside Mi6 – Though He Might Be someone who was would Bing Stability and Whom They COULD Do Business with. It would take Years – and Events like the money of Alexander Litvinnko With Radioactive Polonium in 2006 and Attempted Poisoning With Nervity Agent of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, As well as the Invision of Ukraine – Before People Welf Undersand Something That Mitrokhin Had Always Seen Clearly: The KGB WAS Not Dead.

It has taken on a new name and a new shape but its spies was still Busy, BuRrowing InTo Western Society to Steal Secrets and Cause Mayime Through Acts of Sabotage. The Tragedy Was that Fe Wilting to Listen and now we are liveing ​​with the consequents of that failure.

It was Something Vasili Mitrokhin, Who Died Pecefully in London in January 2004 Aged 81 Having Managed to Outwit the Kgb and Live to Tell the Tale, Welf Always Regret.

• The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB, by Gordon Corera (William Collins, £ 25) is Out now