WIFE OF FORMER BRITISH AGENT SAYS SHE WORKED FOR SOVIETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302430016-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: July 19, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302430016-4
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
19 July 1983
Wife of former British agent says
she worked for Soviets
LONDON [UPI)-The wife of a former
member of Britain's intelligence network MI-5
admitted she was a Soviet agent supervised by
the same spy controller as defectors Guy
Burgess and Donald MacLean, the Daily
Telegraph reported Monday. . _
The newspaper report was the second in two
days -linking Jenifer Hart, a retired history
i professor at Oxford University, with Soviet
;penetration of the British political establish.
ment and securitvservices since the 1930s.
Twenty-four hours earlier, The Sunday
'Times said Mrs. Hart, believed to be in her
late 60s or early 70s, made the disclosure in-a
British Broadcasting Corp. television docu-
mentary scheduled for nationwide screening
later this month.
Both newspapers said she denied actually,
passing secrets to the Soviet Union.
THE REPORTS said It was still unclear
whether her husband, a senior MI-5 official
during World War II, knew of her recruitment
by the Soviets at Oxford in the late 193(x.
Her husband, Prof. Herbert Hart,.an interna-
tionally respected law authority whom she -
married in 1941, worked alongside Anthony
.Blunt in MI-5.
Blunt was publicly unmasked in 1979 as a
longtime Smiet agent and stripped of his
knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, whom he had
served as art adviser.
The reports said Mrs. Hart was unavailable
for comment at her home in Oxford and that
her husband, former principal of Oxford's
Braenose College who marks his 76th birthday
Monday, refused to talk to the press.
THE DAILY Telegraph said Mrs. Hart told
the BBC she was recruited as a secret member
of the British Communist Party in the 1930s
with instructions to remain an undercover
"sleeper" until her services were called for.
She reportedly said she was inducted s by
Bernard Floud, later a Labor Party member
of Parliament. Floud committed suicide in 1967
after a routine security screening when he .was
norainated to a minor government post.
Airs. Hart eventually joined the- Home-I
fice. where she worked in a section keeps '
tabs on the British Communist Part), as well
as overseeing telephone tapping andmail in-
terception,the reports said.
Both reports said she claimed that at 'ore
time she shared the same Moscow controller
with Burgess and MacLean, British diplomats
Who fed
arrest o Moscow in 1951 on the brink-of
arras traitors.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302430016-4