Edna Patterson

Who is Edna Patterson?

Francia Yakilnilna Mitynen aka Edna Margaret Patterson was a Soviet citizen born in Australia. Mitynen was an illegal officer of the Naval GRU who was smuggled into the United States in August 1943. Mitynen worked under the name Edna Patterson until she left America in 1956.

The Naval GRU assigned the cover names AUSTRALIAN WOMAN and then SALLY to an Illegal to be sent by ship from the Soviet Far East to the U.S. West Coast. Fourteen messages relating to this operation were translated. The first of these, Washington to Moscow, Nos. 2505-2512, 31 December 1942, is one of the longest messages in VENONA — an extraordinary document showing the Naval GRU's inexperience in this sort of activity and the need for assistance from the GRU and/or KGB. The last decrypted message about the case states that SALLY had been landed in San Francisco from a Soviet freighter. The FBI later learned that SALLY had been known in the United States as Edna Patterson, that she had left the United States suddenly in 1956, and that she was a Soviet citizen who had been born in Australia.