A former London policeman was named as a one-time Soviet agent yesterday, just a day after documents revealed that a British great-grandmother peddled secrets to KGB intelligence for four decades.
According to The Sunday Times newspaper, ex-Scotland Yard policeman John Symonds has admitted his role as an "ambassador" for the Soviets between 1972 and 1980.
Symonds fled Britain in 1969 after allegations of corruption and was allegedly recruited by the Russians. He is said to have carried out undercover missions for eight years. Symonds came back to Britain in 1980 and served two years in prison on corruption charges before settling abroad.
In a BBC report, Symonds was described as a "Romeo agent" who was assigned the task of seducing women attached to British embassies. "I was taught to be a better lover," he told the BBC.
The Sunday Independent said the documents which exposed Symonds, and 87-year-old great-grandmother Melita Norwood Saturday as one of the ex-Soviet Union's top agents, were likely to reveal more names in the coming weeks.
Norwood worked for the KGB from the 1940s, passing key information to the Russians on British nuclear technology.
A lifelong communist, she lives in south London and has never been prosecuted for her activities. British intelligence is said to have known about the spies since 1992 but took no action.
She now putters around her English garden and spends her days making jam.
"I never expected it to be hanging over me at the end of my life," she told The Times. "I had really forgotten all about this. I had put it aside for years."
The paper, who photographed her out shopping, dubbed the grey-haired 87-year-old "The spy who came in from the co-op" who sat at her kitchen table drinking tea out of a Che Guevara mug.
Ironically, a poster demanding an end to the arms race is prominently displayed in the front window of her simple three-bedroom house.
Piled high on the kitchen sideboard are pamphlets calling for an end to the American blockade of Cuba.
Both Symonds and Norwood were mentioned in the "Mitrokhin archive," a collection of documents smuggled to Britain by the Russian dissident Vasili Mitrokhin in 1992. The material amounts to several years' worth of KGB files.
Following strong protest from the conservative opposition, Home Secretary Jack Straw has ordered British MI5 intelligence to prepare a full report into her case. The Home Office has denied that a decision has been taken not to prosecute Norwood because of her age.
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