50 • BEURTON, URSULA
When Bettaney was arrested at his home in September 1983, as he
was preparing to fly to Vienna with another sample of MI5’s secrets
to hand over to the Soviets, he was unaware that his offers to Gouk
had been compromised by the rezident’s deputy,Oleg Gordievsky,
who had reported his approach to hisSecret Intelligence Service
handler, prompting amolehunt conducted byEliza Manningham-
Buller.
In April 1984 Bettaney was sentenced to 23 years’ imprisonment;
he served his sentence in isolation at Coldingley Prison until he was
released in 1996. ASecurity Commissionreport into the case was
severely critical of thedirector-general of the Security Service, Sir
John Jones, who claimed that MI5 was handicapped because it had
nowhere to send problem employees like Bettaney. Somewhat disin-
genuously, in order to protect Gordievsky, the commission claimed
that the would-be spy had been exposed by the vigilance of his col-
leagues.BEURTON, URSULA.Known by her married name Ursula Beurton,
her nom de guerre Ruth Werner, and herGRUcode namesonia,
Beurton was an exceptionally successful case officer, running many
spies, among themMelita Norwoodand Klaus Fuchs.
She was born in 1907 into a family in Berlin that became well
known for its commitment to radical socialism. Beurton’s father
moved to England to take up an academic appointment in Oxford in
1933 as the Nazis took power. Her sister, Birgitte, was recruited as
an agent by the Soviet GRU and her brother, Jurgen, was to lead the
KPD in exile. Beurton worked in a bookshop selling ‘‘progressive
literature’’ and briefly visited New York to do relief work among the
homeless. In 1929 she married an architect, Rolf Hamburger, and
they set up a home together in Shanghai, where she fell under the
influence of the Soviet agents Richard Sorge and Agnes Smedley.
Already committed to the Communist cause, Ursula was recruited
into the GRU by Sorge although at that early stage she was uncertain
of the exact nature of the organization. ‘‘Only two years later did I
know that it operated under the intelligence department of the Red
Army General Staff. It made no difference to me. I knew that my
activities served the comrades of the country in which I lived.’’
In February 1931 their son Micha was born, but this event did not