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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MNI who wrote (14409)	9/13/1999 9:42:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17770

Spy Scandal Rocks Britain -- Reuters L O N D O N, Sept. 13 ? Britain today grappled with its worst spy scandal in decades amid predictions that more agents worked with the Romeo policeman and communist granny unmasked as Moscow?s puppets. Details of the scandal read like a second-rate spy novel, with agents trained in love-making by Russian beauties and booby-trapped sabotage kits hidden in Swiss fields. ?We are just beginning a great period of exposure. There?s a lot more to come,? Tom King, chairman of parliament?s security and intelligence committee, told BBC radio. ?Home Secretary Jack Straw has asked ? for a report on these revelations,? a spokesman for the Home [interior] ministry said. Prime Minister Tony Blair?s office said Straw would make a statement today (see story, below). It said Blair knew nothing of the scandal until the revelations by a dissident KGB officer appeared in the Times newspaper. Britain has not seen such a spy scandal since the unmasking of a Cambridge spy ring, dubbed the Magnificent Five by the KGB, a generation ago. More Revelations to Come ?I would not be in the least surprised if there are more than 100 other spies who have still to be publicly exposed,? Russian expert Dr. Martin McCauley told the Sun newspaper. So far the revelations have focussed on two agents: a crooked policeman and an ideological great-grandmother. John Symonds ? a former officer in Scotland Yard?s porn Squad ? allegedly worked for the KGB for more than 10 years and slept with employees of British embassies to extract secrets. ?I was taught how to be a better lover,? Symonds told BBC television. ?I was taught by two extremely beautiful girls.? His unmasking came hard on the heels of former KGB agent Vasili Mitrokhin?s earlier revelation that 87-year-old Melita Norwood had been a top Kremlin spy. Norwood?s daughter Anita Ferguson was astounded to learn of her mother?s secret past. ?It seems out of character really. As she says herself, she doesn?t really approve of spying but her views are very strong and she was able to do it,? Ferguson said. ?She is as she is. And in many ways she?s a good person.? Norwood ? dubbed the Red Granny ? had passed atomic secrets to Moscow for more than 40 years from 1937, helping to give Moscow a vital edge in the arms race. Newspapers urged prosecution of the pair and the opposition Conservatives stepped up pressure for a swift and full inquiry, saying years of treachery could not be swept under the carpet. The revelations stem from classified files that Mitrokhin smuggled out of Moscow in 1992. They are due to appear in ?The Mitrokhin Archive? by Cambridge academic Christopher Andrew. Arms Caches for Saboteurs Andrew said Moscow agents had hidden radios and arms around the world and that plenty of their Cold War relics could still be out there. ?At the beginning of the 1950s, throughout the Cold War, the KGB hid radio caches, it hid arms caches throughout the West,? Andrew said. He said the kits were hidden in all NATO countries and beyond, and typically contained radios for communications in times of crisis or mines and arms for sabotage. ?The very first of these caches has very recently been dug up in Switzerland. It was booby-trapped,? Andrew told BBC radio. He urged Moscow to come clean and reveal which ones were booby-trapped to avoid fresh Cold War casualties. Andrew also said that no spies for the former Soviet Union could rest easy. ?There are thousands, but of course they extend around the world,? he said. ?Absolutely nobody who spied for the Soviet Union in any part of the world between the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and the mid-1980s can be certain that his or her secrets are safe.? Copyright 1999 Reuters.