Her codenames, in Soviet intelligence circles included "Салли" "Sally", and "Австралийка" "Avstraliyka", which (literally translated) is the feminine form of "(The) Australian".
Mitinen was born at 85½ Morehead Street, Redfern, an inner suburb of Sydney, on 31 January 1914, according to a 2017 article by Australian historian and journalist Michael Connor.
In 1919, he was convicted of "selling a newspaper without a government licence" and fined A£5 – the publication concerned was reportedly sold to raise funds for a "Bolshevik" organisation based in Brisbane.
She entered the United States at San Francisco in August 1943,[4][5][2] under the name of Edna Margaret Patterson (and a cover story that included growing up in Seattle).
[2] US counterintelligence services, as a result of the Venona signals interception and decryption project, became aware of some of the activities of "Sally" or the "Australian Woman", if not her cover name and whereabouts.