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Tributes Paid to Glasgow Spy Who Extracted KGB Double Agent in Daring Operation
The former MI6 officer helped expose a Cold War double agent and later became one of the service’s most senior women.
- Baroness Meta Ramsay, a "trailblazer" and "proper spy" once tipped to lead MI6, died on Thursday. She served 22 years in intelligence, rising to become the service's most senior female officer.
- As Helsinki station chief in the 1980s, Ramsay participated in the 1985 extraction of KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky from the Soviet Union, one of the Cold War's most audacious operations.
- Navigating a male-dominated service in the 1970s and 1980s, Ramsay stated, "The most serious problem was the fact I was a woman." She was one of only two women to reach senior MI6 ranks.
- After retiring at 55, Ramsay became foreign policy adviser to Labour leader John Smith, then joined the House of Lords under Prime Minister Tony Blair. She helped steer the 1998 Scotland Act through Parliament.
- Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore described Ramsay as "wise, kind, fun," while Labour leaders commended her as the "epitome of public service" and for supporting women in Parliament.
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Meta Ramsay: the spy who could have been MI6’s first female ‘C’
After a 22-year career in intelligence she became a Labour minister in the Lords, helping to steer Scottish devolution. Meta Ramsay once described the delicate art of recruiting an agent to spy for British intelligence. As, at the time, one of the few women operatives in MI6, she had to be particularly careful, if her potential target was male, that her overtures were not mistaken for romantic advances. “You’re cultivating someone and you haven’…
Coverage Details
Total News Sources10
Leaning Left3Leaning Right1Center5Last UpdatedBias Distribution56% Center
Bias Distribution
- 56% of the sources are Center
56% Center
L 33%
C 56%
11%
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