MODIN, YURI• 369
MOBILE RECONNAISSANCE FORCE (MRF).Created in 1971
by Brigadier Frank Kitson, then commanding 39 Brigade in Belfast,
Northern Ireland, following his experiences in the emergencies in
Kenya, Malaya, and Cyprus, the Mobile Reconnaissance Force was
staffed by 40 volunteer soldiers who operated in plain clothes and
collected intelligence about local paramilitaries. Their activities were
supported by ‘‘Freds’’—defectorsfrom the ProvisionalIrish Re-
publican Armywhose knowledge was harnessed to mount sophisti-
cated surveillance operations intended to identify their adversaries
and interdict terrorism. They were provided with secure accommoda-
tion in the married quarters in Palace Barracks, Holywood, and were
deployed in much the same way as the ‘‘counter-gangs’’ had been
during the Mau Mau campaign.
MRF personnel undertook covert surveys of neighborhoods by de-
ploying women soldiers who sold cosmetics door to door, and the
Four Square Laundry offered a cut-price delivery service that en-
abled linen and clothes to be submitted for forensic examination. The
MRF also ran a massage parlor in Belfast.
The MRF was replaced by the 14 Intelligence Company in 1973
when its operations were penetrated and compromised. An under-
cover soldier was ambushed while on patrol in the notoriously repub-
lican Tweinbrook estate, and the codriver of his laundry van, a
woman soldier seconded from the Royal Military Police, narrowly
escaped with her life (and subsequently was decorated). Details of
the MRF’s methodology emerged during the trial in June 1973 of
Sergeant Clive Wright, who was acquitted of attempted murder, lead-
ing to the decision to disband the unit.
MODIN, YURI.A member of theNKVD’s Londonrezidentura, Yuri
Modin arrived in Britain from Paris in June 1947, having briefly vis-
ited at the end of the war as part of a Soviet delegation to a youth
congress. He had joined the NKVD from the naval academy in Len-
ingrad, and as a cadet had participated in the defense of that city. In
December 1943, at the age of 21, he had been assigned to the English
(Third) Department as a translator, one of only seven survivors of the
section that was then headed by Lvovich Koghen. Modin excelled as
a desk officer, processing a mountain of documents from theCam-
bridge Five, and in his spare time was also the NKVD’s skating and
ski champion.