Britain Suspected Soviet Spy Since ’45

Britain revealed Monday that it had suspected for half a century that “traitor granny” Melita Norwood was a Soviet spy, but it had never interviewed her because it didn’t want to jeopardize other investigations.

Home Secretary Jack Straw, under pressure to reveal the facts about Norwood and a second Soviet spy unmasked by defector Vasili Mitrokhin, said he had first learned of her activities in December 1998.

In a statement, Straw said Norwood, an 87-year-old grandmother at the center of Britain’s spy scandal, had been given clearance in 1945 to do secret work despite concerns about her Communist associations.

But four years later there were “new concerns” and she lost her access to secrets about the development of Britain’s atomic bomb in 1949. She was vetted in 1951 and again in 1962, but was refused clearance.

In 1965, an investigation concluded that she had been a spy in the 1940s but came up with no usable evidence.