British Investigate Why 40-Year Spy Wasn't Prosecuted

LONDON - A Cabinet minister today met the head of Britain's MI5 intelligence agency to determine why a former secretary, now 87, gave Britain's atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and was never prosecuted.

Home Secretary Jack Straw met Stephen Lander as the government came under increasing pressure to prosecute Melita Norwood.

Straw made no immediate comment after the meeting.

Even Norwood's daughter, expressing astonishment at the 40-year spying career of her mother, said she should be questioned - but not prosecuted.

"She has very clear views on issues. I am surprised she took it this far, but I understand why she did it," Anita Ferguson, 56, said in a British Broadcasting Corp. television interview. ". . . I do believe she should be investigated. She should be questioned by police."

Norwood herself, in her modest house in Bexley Heath, a suburban sprawl southwest of London, is totally unrepentant, The Times of London reported. She laughed at all the fuss.

"Oh dear, this is all so different from my quiet little life," The Times quoted her as saying. "I thought I'd got away with it."

Norwood and another British spy - John Symonds, 64, a former London policeman - were unmasked in a new book based on KGB archives smuggled out of the Soviet Union by Vasili Mitrokhin.

Mitrokhin, who was an archivist for the Soviet intelligence service, defected to the West in 1992.

On Saturday, The Times of London began serializing "The Mitrokhin Archive," the book by Cambridge academic Christopher Andrew, thus introducing Norwood and other information on Soviet espionage activities to the world.

The Times reported today that the book reveals that caches of booby-trapped weapons hidden by Soviet agents for possible sabotage attacks are concealed all over North America, Europe, Israel and Japan, and are now unstable.

A key question is how long MI5 knew about Norwood and Symonds - and more spies are expected to be identified - after Mitrokhin defected, whether MI5 concealed the information from government ministers, and who decided not to prosecute.

Norwood, a former secretary at British Non-Ferrous Metal Research Association, which helped develop the atomic bomb, began spying in 1937 and continued until her retirement in 1972, the book said.

Mitrokhin, 77, is living in Britain under a false name with round-the-clock protection, The Times said today.

Symonds says in a BBC documentary to be broadcast Sept. 19 - excerpts were screened yesterday - that the Soviets trained him as a "Romeo agent" who seduced women working at Western embassies into revealing secret information.

"It was very pleasant. I was taught by . . . two extremely beautiful girls," he said.