Red agent evaded MI5

Snip from The Times

By Michael Evans



A SOVIET spy codenamed Sonya, who for ten years ran some of Moscow’s top agents in Britain from a house near Oxford, slipped out of the country under the nose of MI5, declassified intelligence files reveal.

Sonya — real name Ursula Beurton — was the controller of Melita Norwood, the “granny spy” whose work for the Russians during 40 years as a secretary in Britain’s secret atomic weapons programme was exposed in 1999.

No mention is made of Mrs Norwood, now 92, in the Sonya files released yesterday by the National Archives.

However, David Burke, an intelligence historian, who has known Mrs Norwood since 1997 and is writing a book about her, revealed that after her exposure as a Russian spy, she received a postcard from her former controller which said: “Sonya salutes you.”

More:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1117704,00.html