Francia Yakovlevna Mitinen, originally Frances Metianen,Michael Connor, "The Spy from Parramatta High", ''Quadrant'' (magazine), 2017
(January 14) Access: February 24, 2020. and also known, erroneously, as "Francia Yakilnilna Mitynen" (born 31 January 1914) was an

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n-born

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

"illegal" spy for Soviet

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...

(GRU) in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

during the 1940s and 1950s. The main alias used by Mitinen in the US was Edna Margaret Patterson. Her codenames, in Soviet intelligence circles included "Салли" "Sally", and "Австралийка" "''Avstraliyka''", which (literally translated) is the feminine form of "(The) Australian". US counterintelligence services, however, usually translated the latter name as "The Australian Woman". Mitinen was born at 85½ Morehead Street, Redfern, an inner suburb of

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, on 31 January 1914, according to a 2017 article by Australian historian and journalist Michael Connor. Her full name when her birth was registered was Frances Metianen, and her émigré Russian parents' names also appear in Australian records in the anglicised forms of James and Julie Metianen. Their older children, both of whom had been born before or shortly after the family arrived in Sydney, were known in Australia as Victor and Leonore (or Lena). James Metianen reportedly worked as a fitter at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops. During the 1920s, the family apparently lived in the Parramatta area, where Frances attended Parramatta High School and the Metianen children took part in local sports teams, including Frances' brother Victor, who was frequently mentioned in newspaper reports regarding amateur

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

matches. James Metianen was involved in pro-Soviet and communist political activities, as were Victor Metianen and his English-born wife Coral (née Sutcliffe). The entire family apparently moved to the Soviet Union during the 1930s. However, some members of the Mitinen family were imprisoned on political grounds, such as Victor and Coral Mitinen. (According to Connor, Victor Mitinen died in a

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

during the early 1940s, while Coral Mitinen was released, later visited relatives in England and died at

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...

in 1966.) Before or during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Francia Mitinen was recruited by the naval branch of the GRU. She entered the United States at

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in August 1943,Robert Louis Benson, NSA Historical Monograph
(1996) under the name of Edna Margaret Patterson (and a cover story that included growing up in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

). As a result of the

Venona The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later absorbed by the National Security Agency), which ran from February 1, 1943, until Octob ...

signals interception and decryption project, US counterintelligence services became aware of some of the activities of "Sally" or the "Australian Woman", if not her cover name and whereabouts. Mitinen was apparently last mentioned in Venona intercepts during 1956. It is generally believed that she left the US (or disappeared) at around that time. Nothing is known of her subsequent activities.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitinen, Francia Yakovlevna 1914 births Possibly living people Soviet spies against the United States Venona project GRU officers Australian emigrants to the Soviet Union People from Sydney People educated at Parramatta High School