Chapter 3
“PRIMROSE,” MISS CORBY, AND THE POLITICS OF ESPIONAGE

Soviet Espionage was Siberia time: the enemy just went on and on; when you got rid of one spy, another would take his place. How would you get satisfaction?

Robert Lamphere, The FBI-KGB War

On Saturday, September 29, 1945, Mackenzie King flew to Washington, D.C., with his able lieutenant Norman Robertson to visit U.S. president Truman. Once that was done, he would leave from New York for London. Characteristically, King had dithered about the trip to Washington from the beginning, and had it not been for the prodding of Robertson, he would not have gone at all. King could be a prima donna. Told that President Truman would be leaving for Missouri on the day he planned to arrive in Washington, King churlishly refused the White House's suggestion that he come a day early. Truman had to postpone his trip to accommodate him. Still, King balked at the idea of flying, apparently because it depended on the weather, but also considered it too expensive to go by train. In the end, he did fly, but he was miffed at the Americans. He complained to his diary, “In conversation with Atherton [Ray Atherton, the American ambassador to Canada] toward the last, in his way of speaking, one might have thought that the going to Washington was rather something for which I was asking rather than something which I felt was in part acceptance of the President's invitation and in part obligation which Canada owed to an ally.”¹

In preparation for the visit, Truman had received a background report from the State Department, which included a biographical sketch of King, national leader of the Liberal Party since 1919 and prime minister of Canada, on and off, since 1921: “As a speaker and writer he is lacking the essential gifts of clarity, force or ease. On the floor of the House he is a past master at evasion in answering questions but in rough and tumble debate he scores many more points than he loses. He is primarily a student. He is a bachelor and devotes a large part of his leisure to reading and abstract thinking.” The sketch went on to note that King's three main goals were to ensure Canada's recognition as an independent nation, bound to the Commonwealth only by loyalty to the Crown, to support Great Britain, because this was in Canada's best interests, and to promote a closer relationship between Canada and the United States. As for the agenda of discussion between the prime minister and the U.S. president, the State Department made no mention of Soviet espionage. Rather, the focus of the talks was to be a proposal for Canada to start a program of military integration with the United States.²

King's agenda was different. During the three-hour plane trip he spent the time rereading the contents of a green folder containing, according to King, “a copy of the statement prepared by our police of the statements of information secured from an examination of corby and other sources.”³ This was probably the report he had studied a few days earlier, written by the British Security Coordination.

King and Robertson were met at the airport by the Canadian ambassador to Washington, Lester (or “Mike”) Pearson, who later reported (tongue-in-cheek) back to Ottawa: “We went to particular pains to see that the Prime Minister's visit was a pleasant one and for that purpose kept off a storm until ten minutes after their arrival; arranged to have the temperature drop from 92 to 68 within three hours of their arrival, and had the clocks put back that night one hour so that Mr. King would be able to get some additional sleep. I don't really see how hospitality could go further!”⁴

Pearson, an Oxford graduate and a former history professor at the University of Toronto, had a bright future in front of him. In three years, after being elected a member of the Canadian Parliament, he would become minister of external affairs, in 1958 he would become leader of the Liberal Party, and in 1963 prime minister of Canada. Pearson would also achieve international prominence when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1956 for his role in resolving the Suez crisis. What led to this success? In the words of his biographer, “He saw his opportunity and devoted himself wholly to grasping it. He was, in fact, extraordinarily ambitious, able to work twelve-hour days year after year, to deny himself pleasures he savoured, to mingle with and even flatter those he loathed.” Pearson was exceptionally witty and had a powerful charm, but he was also shrewd and decisive. These qualities would be put to a severe test later, when the Gouzenko case had some unpleasant and difficult repercussions for him.⁵

After King had gone to bed, Pearson and Robertson paid a visit to U.S. undersecretary of state Dean Acheson and “went over the whole ground with him far into the night,” including the impact that the Gouzenko case would have on efforts at international, civilian control of the bomb, which was of special interest to Acheson and Truman.⁶ Pearson had faced an uphill struggle since coming to Washington in 1943. His job, first as assistant Canadian ambassador and then as ambassador, was to “educate the Americans about the sovereignty of Canada” and disabuse them of the idea that Canada was still part of the British Empire. According to Pearson's biographer, Acheson, whose mother was a Canadian and the heiress to a whiskey fortune, tended, ironically, to look down on Canadians, or at least on the idea of Canadian statesmanship, and “he suffered Canadian fools badly.” A graduate of Yale and Harvard law schools, Acheson, “with his beautiful, chalk-stripe English flannel suits, his striking carriage, his bristling guardsman's mustache,” cut a formidable figure. Someone wondered how he and Truman, a humble product of Missouri, could possibly get along, but they got along famously. After Truman named Acheson secretary of state in 1949, he said Acheson was “doing a whale of a job” and was his “top brain man” in the cabinet. Pearson evidently had his reservations about Acheson, but as an adept and convivial diplomat, Pearson managed to get on well with him, as did the more retiring Robertson. In fact, Pearson and Acheson had something in common. Both would eventually be called upon to publicly defend protégés who were accused of spying in connection with the Gouzenko case.⁷

Acheson conveyed the information about the spy case to Truman the next morning before King arrived to see him. King, who studied the contents of the green folder again before going to the White House, was seemingly unaware of his subordinates’ meeting with Acheson the night before and thought that what he had to say would surprise Truman.⁸

According to King's diary, the president “extended a cordial welcome.” After they had covered the rather mundane complications of King's plans for his visit, King launched into a discussion of the espionage case. He apparently went into considerable detail, starting his narration with the story of Gouzenko's defection. Truman then pressed for information on American spies: “He said 2 or 3 times that he was particularly interested in anything I could tell him of what had happened in the U.S. or would give evidence of espionage there. I then said perhaps it would be best were I to read from the report I had with me.”

King read aloud from the green folder about the Russian espionage system, about “Primrose” (Alan Nunn May), and others. Then, as he wrote in his diary, “also the statement that an assistant secretary of the Secretary of State's Department was supposed to be implicated.” Truman did not seem surprised. (He not only had been briefed by Acheson, but had also received the two FBI reports, the second of which had similarly “promoted” the spy to an assistant secretary.) As King recalled, “Acheson then said that they had thought the report [in the green folder] had reference to an assistant to an asst. secretary. I said of course I knew nothing but what was in the statement as recorded there.”⁹ As noted earlier, someone had inserted the words “assistant to” followed by a question mark in the bsc report. If King was in fact reading from this document he may have left these words out.

Whatever the case, Acheson realized that the wording was no minor nuance. Getting right the question of whether the spy was an assistant to an Assistant Secretary or an assistant to Stettinius was essential both to knowing where to begin a search and determining how deeply compromised the American policy-making apparatus might be.

The claims emanating from Canada about a State Department spy so bothered Acheson that he requested a conference on “developments in the Canadian case” with FBI chief Hoover, who came to Acheson's office on October 9. Acheson asked Hoover if he had any information on the Soviet agent “who was one of the assistants in the State Department,” thus avoiding specific terminology. According to an FBI memorandum, “The Director told Acheson we had not been able to definitely establish the identity of this man. He [Acheson] inquired as to whether the Director had any suspects. The Director said we had one party in mind as a possible suspect, though there was no direct evidence to sustain this suspicion. He [Acheson] inquired as to who this was and the Director told him Alger Hiss, but the Director did not feel it was the time to make any accusation in this matter as there was no direct proof of the same. . . . Acheson stated the Secretary of State was greatly concerned about the matter and it was desired that every effort be made to ascertain definitely the identity of the person referred to.”¹⁰ This was troubling news for Acheson. Alger Hiss was a friend and a protégé, whom he admired and trusted. Alger shared with him the same deep commitment to internationalism and the United Nations. Alger's brother Donald had worked directly under Acheson at the State Department a few years earlier and was now a member of Acheson's former law firm. If Alger Hiss really was a spy, it would have immense repercussions for the State Department and for Acheson personally.

The focus of attention in the Gouzenko case, however, remained Alan Nunn May and his possible arrest. Before King had left Ottawa, Alexander Cadogan, British undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, sent telegrams to both Ottawa and Washington saying that British authorities expected to arrest May soon and proposing that the Canadians and the Americans make arrests in the spy case as well. The British were clearly nervous about acting on their own. King and Robertson considered immediate arrests a bad idea, in part because they had been told there was not sufficient evidence in many of the Canadian cases. Even the RCMP now agreed that more time was needed. And King was still leaning toward simply discussing the matter quietly with the Soviets. In Washington, Robertson had conveyed their views to Acheson, who was in complete agreement. And in his meeting with King, Truman repeated the view more than once “that nothing should be done without agreement between the 3 [allies] and above all nothing should be done which might result in premature action in any direction.” So anxious was Truman that the Gouzenko case not come out in the open that he had Acheson give a message to the British ambassador to the United States, Lord Halifax, in which he urged the British not to arrest May unless it was absolutely necessary for the sake of security.¹¹

A key reason for Truman's and Acheson's concern about publicizing the case was their belief that it would interfere with efforts to reach an international agreement on the atomic bomb. Truman was trying to get Congress to agree to the transfer of authority over the bomb from the War Department to a civilian commission under the president. He and Acheson were convinced that, since the secret of the bomb could not and should not be indefinitely maintained, it was important to have all nations, including the Soviet Union, participate in a treaty that would ensure open exchanges of atomic information and peaceful use of scientific knowledge. These views were expressed forcefully by Walter Lippmann in theWashington Post just a few days after King and Robertson's visit. Lester Pearson, for one, noticed the similarity of Lippmann's views with what Acheson had said to him and Robertson. He sent the Lippmann article to a colleague in Ottawa, noting, “Dean [Acheson] discussed this matter with Norman and me last Saturday night in almost exactly the same terms as this article. I suppose that he and others are using Walter Lippmann's column as a trial balloon in this matter.”¹²

After his meeting with Truman, Mackenzie King went to the British Embassy to pay a call on Lord Halifax, who, in reference to his political cunning, Churchill called the “Holy Fox.” Although he had been an admirer of Hitler and a strong advocate of Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward the Nazis, Halifax was retained in the government when Churchill took power in 1940 because Churchill wanted continuity. Halifax, who wore a prosthesis as he had been born with a withered left arm with no hand, managed to offend King by seating him in such a way that the sun shone directly into his eyes: “It seemed to me to be a poor type of practice for a man like Halifax to adopt. It is I know a way that some people of the Mussolini type and others take. They must watch the countenance of the men they are talking to and have their own in the dark.” To make matters worse, Halifax suggested, apropos the Gouzenko case, that Truman and British prime minister Clement Attlee “should work out the matter between them.” King was incensed: “I at once interjected I thought it should be worked out with Canada as well. That the 3 of us were equally interested and added that perhaps we were in the most serious position of all as information was coming from Canada.”¹³

King and Norman Robertson traveled that same afternoon in a private railway car to New York, where they would board the Queen Mary for England the next day. They stayed at the Harvard Club, which not only had cachet, but was also less expensive than a hotel. King was always pinching pennies. (In Ottawa, he reportedly treated Robertson more as an assistant than as the man in charge of Canada's foreign affairs, causing him to spend much of his valuable time “worrying about such items as the cost of linen or the newest stenographer's salary.”) Much to the disappointment of a group of men King invited to the Harvard Club that night, he brought them into the bar and then suggested that they all have a lemonade. As his private secretary observed, “It was not just King's wartime teetotalism that dictated his choice of drinks that night: it was also his parsimony. He was a shameless miser and would resort to almost any device to avoid any charge, however minor, to his expense account, or worst of all, to him personally.”¹⁴

While King and Robertson were en route to England, a heated debate was taking place via top secret telegrams between London and Ottawa. British High Commissioner MacDonald, under pressure from the Canadians, cabled the Foreign Office voicing reservations about May's arrest on or after October 7: “On what grounds and with what purpose would you expect to be able to take action against him? If provisional legal advice referred to above is correct there would be no evidence in Canada on which he could be prosecuted and convicted under Canadian law. Do your legal advisers take a different view as regards English law? . . . So far as your end is concerned, action against primrose would presumably not . . . involve immediate complications with staff of Soviet Embassy in London. But here the situation is different.”¹⁵

After consulting with the Foreign Office, Roger Hollis wrote a response, which was approved by “C” (Menzies). In essence, the reply was that the Russians would interpret any action less than arrest “as weakness and the effect of this would be to worsen and not to improve relations.” As for the legal issues, Hollis threw the ball back in the Canadians’ court, giving them reasons why they should make arrests in their country: “Even if you have at present no evidence on which the agents in Canada could be brought into the Court, have you considered whether the products of the questioning of the agents in Canada will not produce material which will allow you to bring the agents to trial possibly in part as a result of some of the agents turning King's evidence?”¹⁶

As Hollis and his colleagues in MI5 knew, short of catching May red-handed in an act of espionage when he met his Soviet contact, they had no grounds to justify an arrest. The documents produced by Gouzenko referred to him by his Soviet code name Alek, and the only evidence that Alek was May was Gouzenko's testimony, which would not hold up in a court of law. The Canadians, on the other hand, could detain the suspects in their country under a special Order-in-Council issued secretly in early October under the War Measures Act, which remained in force although the war was over. This order allowed police to arrest suspects and hold them for questioning without the normal legal evidence required. Moreover, the suspects did not have a legal right to counsel, which provided an excellent opportunity for skilled interrogators to elicit confessions. Hollis and his colleagues probably hoped that some of the Canadian suspects would incriminate May under questioning. May, having been a member of the Canadian Association of Scientific Workers (CASCW), indeed knew some of the suspects. Raymond Boyer was president of CASCW, and two others, Edward Mazerall and David Shugar, were active in the association. But, unbeknownst to Hollis, May's secret contacts with the GRU were a separate matter. He had been approached by Zabotin's team just months before the defection and solely on the basis of his previous associations with the Russians while in England.

The British were particularly anxious to arrest May because they feared he might defect to the Soviet Union, thereby presenting them with a humiliating counterintelligence failure and discrediting them in American eyes. Prime Minister Attlee wanted to persuade the Americans to give the British a larger share of their atomic secrets, as access to commercial atomic energy would help boost Britain's economic recovery. But if the British were allowing their scientists to get away with passing secrets to the Soviet Union, their membership in the club of nuclear powers would be short-lived.¹⁷

The Canadians had fewer concerns in this regard because their suspected agents were not high-profile atomic spies and were much less likely to seek haven (or be accepted) in the Soviet Union. They wanted more time to carry out surveillance and gather sufficient evidence before the Gouzenko case was blown publicly. And despite the powers of the Order-in-Council, the Canadians were worried about the legal aspects of prosecution. On October 6 (the day the order was issued in Canada, apparently in anticipation of May's arrest), Hume Wrong, acting head of External Affairs, sent a telegram to Norman Robertson, who was due to arrive in England on the Queen Mary the next day. Wrong noted that the Canadian Department of Justice took the view that, except in three or four cases, “there are grave doubts as to whether prosecution would result in convictions by reason of necessity for complying with the strict rules of evidence.”¹⁸ Indeed, RCMP commissioner Wood (whose agency was under the Justice Department) conveyed his hesitation about immediate arrests to both Hollis and Hoover.¹⁹

On October 7, 1945, King and Robertson were met at Southampton by Roger Hollis, who, as MI5's officer responsible for communist subversion, was under a lot of pressure. The first thing Hollis did was to show King a copy of an October 1 telegram to Alexander Cadogan from Lord Halifax in Washington. The telegram read as follows, “Acheson has now spoken to the President who said that if immediate and imperative reasons of security required an arrest [of May] he would naturally not stand in the way. But if, as he hoped, these imperative reasons were not present he would greatly prefer that action should be deferred pending further consideration and discussion. Acheson told me that the President felt this very strongly.” According to King's diary, Hollis said, “the Foreign Office wished to know if I would give approval to an arrest being made tonight.” King replied that he agreed with Truman and would not stand in the way of an arrest if the conditions Truman mentioned existed. Hollis hurried off to London with the message.²⁰ Little did Hollis know, however, that Kim Philby had already reported to Moscow that MI5 planned to set a trap for May. Late that night a disappointed Hollis sent a telegram to Ottawa: “Rendezvous October 7th not . . . attended by either PRIMROSE or contact. No repeat no immediate action therefore called for on your part.”²¹

May's failure to appear at the rendezvous did not stop the British, both intelligence officers and politicians, from hoping he would meet his Soviet contact on one of the next alternative dates, October 17 or 27. Contingency plans continued to be discussed in daily telegrams between London and Ottawa. And the topic of arrests in the Gouzenko case came up repeatedly while King and Robertson were in London during the month of October. Attlee and his foreign minister Ernest Bevin went back and forth on the issue. At Chequers, where King visited Clement Attlee on the evening of the seventh, Attlee “said he was in entire agreement, namely, that as much information should be secured both in the U.S. and here before the case would be opened up to the public. Attlee also agreed that an approach should be made in the first instance to the Russians themselves.”²²

But “C” was pressuring Attlee and Bevin, arguing that all the suspects in the Gouzenko case should be arrested without delay, or “the scent will get very cold.” “C” and his colleagues were astounded by King's idea of persuading the Soviet government to “turn over a new leaf” and give up espionage. When King and Attlee met on October 11, Attlee had done a complete flip-flop regarding the May case. He said he thought May should be detained immediately and tried to convince King that inquiries should begin at once in Canada. King persuaded him otherwise. The next day Attlee reversed himself yet again, sending Bevin a message that he agreed with King and that “it would be inadvisable to break it [the case] prematurely.”²³

In the end, when it was clear that May was not going to be caught in the act of meeting a Soviet agent, the leaders decided to postpone the entire Gouzenko matter until the upcoming mid-November conference among Attlee, King, and Truman in Washington. But Bevin had reservations: “This will of course mean that primrose will remain free for the present. We know that he has contact with one top scientist working for the Government on atomic research . . . I feel myself that we are dealing too tenderly with these people and I would prefer that a term should be put to their activities as soon as possible.”²⁴

King was clearly enjoying his new role as a leading statesman, on a par with the likes of Attlee and Truman. Troubling as it was for Canada, the Gouzenko case had made him the center of attention. He even received an invitation to lunch with Winston and Clementine Churchill at their new home at Hyde Park Gate. He was delighted. Mrs. Churchill he found particularly charming, and recorded every detail of the visit in his diary.²⁵ After lunch Churchill, who had been voted out of office in July 1945, revealed how much his attitude toward the Soviet Union had changed since the heady days of Yalta. As King noted, Churchill spoke forcefully of his distrust of the Russians: “He stressed very strongly what realists they were. He called them ‘realist lizards,’ all belonging to the crocodile family. He said they would be as pleasant with you as they could be, although prepared to destroy you.” Then King took the liberty of telling Churchill about the Gouzenko case, after getting Churchill's assurances that he would keep what was said in strict confidence. Like Truman, Churchill did not seem surprised and was ready with advice: “He thought it would be as well to delay action until a careful plan had been worked out but that it should not be allowed to go by default. He felt it was right to talk to the [Soviet] ambassador but to leave it there would be a mistake. The world ought to know where there was espionage and that the Russians would not mind that; they had been exposed time and again.” This seemed like an all-out effort to dissuade King from trying to settle the Gouzenko case with quiet diplomacy.

As King was leaving, Churchill added flattery: “He said to me, in reference to the [recent Canadian] elections, other men are as children in the leadership of the party as compared to yourself. You have shown understanding and capacity to lead that other men have not got, or words to this effect. He used the expression that he hoped that God would bless me. No words could have been kinder than his as we parted. It was the sweetest side of his nature throughout – a really beautiful side.”

His meeting with Churchill was like a tonic. The rejuvenated King vowed to himself that he would return from England “ready to enter on a larger sphere of work than ever – a sphere of work which will identify me with this new age of atomic energy and world peace.” But despite Churchill's efforts, King continued doggedly to follow his own stubborn instincts regarding the espionage case.

Back home, there were worries about what the Soviets were up to in Canada. In mid-October a message from Ottawa to London, presumably from MI6's Peter Dwyer, reported that a waiter known as “Nick the Greek” at Ottawa's Connaught Restaurant, passing himself off as a British intelligence agent, had asked an RCMP plainclothesman if he knew anything about a Russian Embassy employee who disappeared with papers. According to Dwyer, “this is probably an NKVD fishing expedition.” Dwyer, who was surely fed up with the endless debate over what to do with the spy suspects, voiced his approval for the strategy of MI5: “I endorse the views set out by Hollis . . . namely that delay will increase chances of Russians getting in first with a trumped up charge and of agents over here perfecting their cover stories and destroying any incriminating evidence which they may still have in their possession. Corby, in conversation a few days ago, also mentioned that Russians might take initiative and would already have started to take steps to cover up over here.”²⁶

Dwyer also reported that the Soviet agent Ignacy Witczak, who was identified in the Gouzenko case and had been residing in California on a false Canadian passport, was on the run. “A study of Witczak's correspondence with his wife during past month leaves no doubt that a general warning was issued to Canadian and United States networks shortly after Corby's disappearance. . . . He shook F.B.I. surveillance in a Turkish Bath in New York and has now, by lucky chance, been picked up again in Chicago where he is still making every effort to shake surveillance. For all we know he may be making for Seattle where there are Russian ships.” Under ordinary circumstances, the report noted, the FBI might arrest Witczak on criminal charges, but “they feel unable to take any action involving a member of grant's [Zabotin's] network since instructions are that no action be taken which might precipitate matters.”²⁷

For the FBI, the Witczak case had been a tremendous exercise in frustration. Witczak was quite a “big fish” in counterintelligence terms. He was a bona fide GRU agent with a fake Canadian identity, and was, the FBI assumed, setting up GRU networks on the West Coast not far from the Manhattan Project. Scores of FBI agents were detailed to follow the movements of Witczak, who traveled from Los Angeles to New York with the FBI hot on his trail. FBI agent Robert Lamphere, stationed with the New York espionage squad at the time, recalled spending a “long and uncomfortable night” outside Pennsylvania Station looking for Witczak, but it was his colleagues at the coach terminal who spotted the GRU agent as he was getting on a bus: “He was a smallish man with glasses, and immediately panicked and started to run away. While the other agents kept up with him, one man got a message to the field office, and then to headquarters, describing the situation and asking for permission to bring in ‘Witczak’ for questioning. Headquarters notified the RCMP, which asked that we not bring him in, lest we somehow jeopardize the cases that were just then being developed for prosecution out of the Gouzenko defection.”²⁸ In fact, Lamphere was misinformed: it was Hoover who told the RCMP that the FBI did not have enough evidence to arrest Witczak. But the end result was the same. After a few months of continued FBI surveillance Witczak disappeared completely.

The story of Witczak strengthened the argument of those favoring immediate and simultaneous arrests of suspects in the Corby case in all three countries. Hollis, of course, was the leading exponent of this view. But once he left for North America in the third week of October, MI5 did a bizarre about-face with regard to Alan Nunn May. On October 31, MI5 sent Hollis a telegram in Ottawa stating that “we are inclining toward the view that whatever type of action is eventually decided upon we here ought not to take simultaneous action against PRIMROSE but ought to leave him alone.” The reasons MI5 gave for this sudden change of heart were that, first, they did not have enough material to offer interrogators a chance of breaking “Primrose.” Second, since he doubtless had been warned by the Russians, this meant that they might have to wait before getting more useful evidence against him. And, finally, “an abortive interrogation of PRIMROSE serves no useful purpose and indeed may induce him to do the very thing we most fear, namely to escape to Russia.”²⁹

Was Philby, who was responsible for the transmission of the telegram, behind this reversal? As chief of counterintelligence for MI6, he was being consulted on the Corby case and receiving all the reports. It is not far-fetched to suggest that, in Hollis's absence, he was able to impress his views upon others more convincingly.

Hollis, not surprisingly, was far from happy. He telegraphed immediately back to MI5, pointing out that the chances of a successful interrogation of “Primrose” would only grow smaller if he were to be alerted by detentions in Canada before his questioning. It was best to interrogate “Primrose” simultaneously with the Canadian suspects. Hollis concluded that “If policy decision is for prosecution I feel that every effort should be made to prosecute primrose who is the worst traitor in network . . . RCMP, while not wishing to influence your decision, would undoubtedly be disappointed if you did not interrogate.”³⁰

The response from MI5 was that they appreciated the force of Hollis's argument but that the risk of an abortive interrogation of “Primrose,” possibly driving him to defect, was so great that the final decision would have to be taken by the prime ministers of Britain and Canada, along with President Truman, at their forthcoming November meeting in Washington.³¹

Hollis traveled to Washington for that occasion, and there was great hope on the part of the British and the Canadians that finally a course of action in the Gouzenko case would be decided upon. Malcolm MacDonald chaired three meetings on the subject, and on November 14 a tentative agreement was produced whereby simultaneous actions in the three countries against the Gouzenko suspects would occur in the week beginning November 26. Agents against whom there was a legal case would be prosecuted, and the Canadians would set up a Royal Commission to report on the full facts of the matter. They would also make a diplomatic protest to the Soviet ambassador in Ottawa and demand the recall of military attaché Zabotin and his colleagues.³²

In fact, although this was purported to be a collective agreement, it appeared that it would be the Canadians who were sticking their necks out. The precise meaning of “action” by the Americans and the British was vague, giving the impression that the Canadians might be the only ones actually carrying out arrests. An annex relating to British action was attached to the draft, pointing out that, unlike the Canadians, the British did not have the emergency powers of the Canadian Order-in-Council, and “Primrose” would have to be questioned without being arrested. He could only be arrested if he confessed to spying. Furthermore, “primrose gives the impression of being a strong and determined character who will not be likely to lose his head and confess to the authorities unless he is confronted with evidence of his activities of a much stronger nature than is at present available. For the above reasons, the authorities are not very sanguine of obtaining a confession from primrose on which it will be possible to bring a charge against him.”³³ This annex was doubtless attached at the request of Hollis's colleagues in MI5, who did not want to take responsibility for a failed outcome with Alan Nunn May.

For their parts, the Americans were not in any position to arrest the spy in the State Department, whose identity, although thought to be Hiss, had yet to be verified. And Hoover had made it clear that the FBI, constrained by a lack of evidence, would be making no arrests of the other individuals (Steinberg, Witczak, and a woman named Freda Linton) connected with the Gouzenko case.³⁴ Furthermore, the FBI was now up to its neck in a new espionage case, that of Elizabeth Bentley, a former Soviet agent who had recently approached the FBI with a story of an extensive spy ring in the United States government. Hoover requested that no action be taken by any of the parties in the Gouzenko case for the next two weeks, pending the FBI's investigation into the Bentley affair. The request infuriated MI5 and the British Foreign Office, which could not understand why action in the Gouzenko case would have any effect on the new FBI case. As the Foreign Office noted, “Meanwhile corby scents are growing rapidly colder since it is already well over two months since first alarm was given.”³⁵

A crucial and more public topic of discussion among the three allied leaders at their meetings on November 11–15 was the related issue of international control of atomic energy. Here, too, there were disappointments, especially for the British and the Canadians and the moderates in the Truman administration, like James Byrnes and Dean Acheson, who wanted to share control of the bomb with the United Nations. Far from a significant step forward, the final accord was a vague and tenuous document that called for the creation of a UN Atomic Energy Commission that would study the question of how to control the bomb. According to the document, “specialised information regarding the practical application of atomic energy” would not be shared until effective safeguards against its military use were established.³⁶ As Truman later recalled, he explained to Attlee and Mackenzie King “that scientists of all countries should be allowed to visit freely with one another and that free inspection of the plans for atomic energy's use in peacetime pursuits should be the policy of every country. But I stressed that this would not necessarily mean that the engineering and production know-how should be made freely available, any more than we would make freely available any of our trade secrets.”³⁷

If King was disappointed, he certainly did not show it to Truman. In contrast to his previous visit, King had this time been invited to stay at the White House. He was evidently thrilled and wrote an effusive thank-you letter to the president:

I cannot begin to express my appreciation of all that this present visit to Washington has meant to my countrymen and myself; and, in particular what I feel about the honour and privilege of being your guest at the White House, and in this most charming of all official residences, for so many days and at so momentous a time. . . . I believe a real service has been rendered mankind by the declaration of the agreement respecting atomic energy announced yesterday; and which, I am sure, is being received with approval in all parts of the world today. Your own many personal expressions of friendship toward myself have touched me deeply. They will ever be gratefully remembered. . . . The hospitality extended, in so many ways and so generously, from the moment of the arrival of members of my staff and myself, has been such as to make impossible any adequate acknowledgement of it. I can only thank you for it, and for all that your friendship means to me, but this I do from the bottom of my heart.³⁸

As a token of his appreciation, King continued, he was enclosing “this somewhat intimate photograph of myself and my old dog Pat.” Truman's reply, a few days later, was much shorter and more muted. He appreciated the chance to become better acquainted, he told the Canadian prime minister, and King's picture would “occupy a place of honor” in his study.³⁹

Although Truman probably considered the Bentley case an unwelcome distraction, it was an unexpected bonanza for the FBI. Elizabeth Bentley, like Gouzenko, was a “walk-in,” a Soviet spy who defected on her own initiative and offered information to the other side. Since 1941, she had acted as a courier between an NKVD agent named Jacob Golos in New York City and his recruits, who were mainly employees of the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. A single woman in her late thirties, Bentley was high-strung, self-obsessed, and had a weakness for alcohol. She approached FBI agents on two occasions (August and October 1945) and hinted at her involvement in espionage. But she had not made a great impression. The FBI agent who spoke with Bentley in mid-October thought that she might be a “psychopath rambling on.” But he wrote up the interview and routed it to an agent in the espionage section of the New York office, who eventually reached Bentley and persuaded her to come in again.⁴⁰

On November 7, 1945, Elizabeth Bentley was interviewed for a third time at FBI offices in New York City. Bentley's thirty-page statement, signed the next day, was vague and disorganized (and betrayed her intense anti-Semitism), but she did mention enough names of possible espionage suspects to motivate her interrogators to send an urgent telegram to FBI headquarters. Hoover, in turn, took Bentley's information so seriously that he contacted William Stephenson in New York on November 9 to inform him that Bentley had said a former member of his staff at the British Security Coordination, a Mr. Cedric Belfrage, was a spy.⁴¹ Given Hoover's dislike for Stephenson, he must have taken some pleasure in passing on this information.

Philby was keeping the Soviets apprised of developments in Washington. On November 18, he sent a message to the NKVD about the Gouzenko case, giving extensive details of the discussions the allies were having and the alternatives they were considering, but he made no mention of Bentley.⁴² The next day MI5 and MI6 received the news that the FBI was requesting a delay in action because of the new Bentley case. Philby duly reported the Bentley defection to the NKVD's London station on November 20. ⁴³

Although Hoover would insist that the Bentley case was entirely separate from the Gouzenko affair, in fact there were several threads that tied them together. In her initial statement on November 8, Bentley had this to say about Fred Rose, the communist member of Parliament in Canada who had been implicated by Gouzenko in spying for the GRU: “Also during this period he [Golos, her lover and NKVD agent] used to get letters from Canada. I think I know now who they were from. Just before Golos died, Fred Rose, who became an mp in Canada, came down and then went back again. He kept sending messages to me asking me to come to see him. [Bentley seems to have fantasized a great deal about men making advances, but Rose was a known womanizer, so her impression might have been correct in this instance.] As I figure it out, I think what Golos was trying to do was to get material from Canada into this country via Fred Rose because the Russians told me they had no organization in Canada. I think this was in 1939.”⁴⁴

Bentley was interviewed almost continuously for the next two and a half weeks, and on November 30, she signed a second, considerably longer, more coherent statement. In her later statement, Bentley altered her recollections about Rose slightly. There was no mention of Rose's visit to New York or messages to her. As for the letters received by Golos, “I subsequently learned that some of the letters that were sent from Canada that I delivered to Golos came from either Tim Buck [head of the Canadian Communist Party] or Fred Rose. I am not certain which one.”⁴⁵

In this same statement Bentley brought up the name of another Canadian who would figure in the Gouzenko case as it unraveled – that of Mr. Hazen Sise, a wealthy and prominent Montreal architect with communist leanings. Sise was not among those mentioned by Gouzenko or in his documents, but in investigating one of the suspects, Israel Halperin, the RCMP found Sise's name in Halperin's address book (which also, incidentally, contained the name of Klaus Fuchs). Bentley recalled that Rose sent one of his contacts, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, to see Golos in New York and suggest that Golos contact Sise, who was residing in Washington while on assignment with the National Film Board. Golos then assigned Bentley to meet with Sise on her periodic visits to the American capital. Sise furnished her with information that was “primarily gossip he had overheard” in the Canadian and British embassies. In early 1944, Bentley was told by her Soviet controller to cut her contacts with Sise, who “was suffering from nervous indigestion” and “consulting a psychiatrist.”⁴⁶ Although the only connection between Sise and the Gouzenko case was an address book, the FBI would later inform its field agents that Sise “has been implicated in both the [Bentley and Corby] cases but most deeply implicated in the Corby Case.”⁴⁷

The other individual linked with both the Bentley and Gouzenko investigations was Alger Hiss. In her initial statement on November 8, Bentley did not even mention Hiss. But during numerous interviews later in the month, the FBI repeatedly asked her about him. She finally came up with something in her November 30 statement about a man called “Eugene” Hiss who worked at the State Department as an assistant to Dean Acheson. (Hiss never worked as an assistant to Acheson, although they knew each other well.)⁴⁸

According to Bentley, “Eugene” Hiss had allegedly recruited two or three communists in the U.S. government to work for the Russians. But she seemed not entirely sure of what she was saying. A telegram sent from New York to FBI headquarters on November 16 read as follows: Bentley “was questioned at length concerning this information but admitted that the information concerning Hiss was vague, and because of this was reluctant to make any definitive statements as far as Eugene Hiss's activities were concerned.”⁴⁹

In addition to the Gouzenko and Bentley statements, the FBI, we know, had heard about Hiss from another defector from the Soviet camp, Whittaker Chambers, in two previous interviews (May 1942 and May 1945). All Chambers said in those interviews was that in the mid-thirties Alger Hiss had been a member of an underground group organized by a communist named Harold Ware. These three FBI sources of information on Hiss – Chambers, Gouzenko, and Bentley – were all decidedly vague. Neither Bentley nor Gouzenko was even able to provide his exact name. Yet Hoover, on November 28, requested permission from the U.S. attorney general to conduct technical surveillance on Hiss: “In connection with this Bureau's investigation of Soviet espionage activity, it has been reported that Alger Hiss . . . has been engaged in espionage for the Soviet Secret Intelligence (NKVD). I recommend authorization of a technical surveillance on Hiss to determine the extent of his activities on behalf of the Soviets and for the additional purpose of identifying espionage agents.”⁵⁰

Attorney General Tom Clark sent back a note asking, “Is this man employed at the State Dept. If so, what do we have on him?” Hoover replied with a memorandum citing his evidence briefly. The first section is blacked out in the declassified copies, but it presumably referred to what Gouzenko said, and the next two sections discuss the Chambers and Bentley claims. Chambers was reported as saying Hiss had been a member of an underground espionage group, when in fact Chambers had not even mentioned espionage at this point. And he never brought up the NKVD in regard to Hiss. In fact, all of Hiss's later accusers claimed that Hiss worked not for the NKVD but the GRU, the military intelligence agency to which Gouzenko had belonged. As for Bentley, Hoover neglected to tell the attorney general that her memory on Hiss was so fuzzy she thought his first name was Eugene and that she had told the FBI just days before she could not make any definitive statements about Hiss's activities.⁵¹

When asked to elaborate on Hiss in a third interview in March 1946, Chambers insisted he had lost all contact with him after 1937 and could provide no further details. According to the FBI, Chambers stated that “as a matter of fact he has absolutely no information that would conclusively prove that hiss held a membership card in the Communist Party or that he was an actual dues paying member of the Communist Party even while he [Chambers] was active prior to 1937 [italics added]. He volunteered that he knew that in 1937 hiss was favorably impressed with the Communist movement. . . .”⁵² Hoover did not report this to the attorney general, and the FBI kept up its surveillance of Hiss.

By the time Bentley signed her November 30 statement, after being prodded for days on end by the FBI, she had implicated close to 150 individuals in spying for the Russians, and Hoover had got approval from the attorney general to have several of them put under physical, wiretap, and mail surveillance.⁵³ Aside from Hiss, there were two others singled out for surveillance who had, or would have, a connection to the Gouzenko case. One was Harry Dexter White, a top official in the U.S. Treasury, whose case would eventually make headlines when he was accused publicly of spying. Bentley had much more to say about White than she did about Hiss. Specifically, she alleged that White was part of a Washington, D.C., group led by Nathan Silvermaster that passed government documents through her to the Soviets.

Bentley made it clear, however, in her first statement that she had never seen or met White. As one historian put it, “her direct knowledge of White's alleged role in espionage was, at best, sketchy,” and “most of her allegations and knowledge of personal information about Harry and Anne Terry White [his wife] were based on informal conversations she ‘overheard’ in the Silvermaster household . . . or from secondhand gossip.”⁵⁴ Chambers had never mentioned White in his own interviews with the FBI up to this point, although he would have more to say, and show, later. Secret Soviet telegrams sent in the 1940s that were later decrypted and released by the U.S. National Security Agency in the 1990s – the Venona decrypts – strongly suggest that White was at least an unwitting informant to the Soviets. But at this point the suspicions against White were based solely on flimsy hearsay testimony from Bentley.

The question then arises, how was the FBI able to justify, as early as November 20 (before Bentley had even signed her expanded statement), a round-the-clock surveillance of White that included phone-tapping, mail interception, monitoring of his physical movements, and, by December, recording of his private conversations at home?⁵⁵ Without doubt the attorney general and others who were informed of the Bentley case were strongly influenced by Gouzenko's claims about Soviet espionage in the United States.

Another suspect put under technical surveillance by the FBI in December was Dr. Arthur Steinberg, the American scientist implicated by Gouzenko, who was now living in Alexandria, Virginia.⁵⁶ Hoover had known about Steinberg since September but had told RCMP commissioner Wood in mid-October that the FBI did not have any evidence on which to make an arrest. Why did the FBI not start its surveillance of Steinberg earlier, so as to gather evidence? Presumably they had nothing to offer the attorney general to justify such an intrusive violation of individual privacy. Had anything come up since then? Or had the FBI somehow squeezed in Steinberg's name as part of the group implicated by Bentley, thus giving them an opportunity to go on a fishing expedition?

The FBI's trawling yielded nothing, which was hardly surprising. The Soviets knew all about Bentley's defection and told their agents in the United States to cease their activities.⁵⁷ Two weeks later, on November 27, 1945, Hoover gave the go-ahead for Ottawa to proceed with arrests in the Gouzenko case. The message was passed to Canadian ambassador Lester Pearson by Acheson, who told him that the United States would not be in a position to take action on the “Miss Corby” (Bentley) case in the near future, because the woman's accusations were unsupported by documents.⁵⁸

What Hoover did not realize was that in requesting a brief postponement in the Gouzenko case he had given Mackenzie King cause to rethink the Canadian strategy and revert to his original idea of handling the matter with quiet diplomacy. King became more inclined toward this plan when he learned that no overt action (that is, arrests) would be taken by the Americans in the Bentley case. This meant that, with the British still dithering about what to do with Alan Nunn May, the Canadians would be acting on their own if they arrested spy suspects. King was well aware of the possible pitfalls for the Canadian government alone if they went ahead with arrests.

In early December, just as the Soviet ambassador to Canada, Georgii Zarubin, of whom King was very fond, was about to leave on holiday for Moscow (in fact Zarubin never returned), King made up his mind to have a talk with him. King wanted to send a message to Stalin through the ambassador about the espionage revealed by Gouzenko and request an end to the Soviets’ illegal activities (accompanied by the expulsion of the Soviets in the Ottawa embassy who were spying). The Canadian individuals involved would not be arrested, but instead would be questioned by means of “departmental enquiries.”⁵⁹

RCMP commissioner Stuart Wood was beside himself when he learned of King's new plan and immediately sent a letter to Minister of Justice St. Laurent expressing his concerns. First, Wood noted, since it would be impossible to conduct departmental inquiries on such short notice, the suspects, warned as a result of King's meeting with Zarubin, could not be taken by surprise. Second, there was no guarantee of success in terms of obtaining additional evidence or confessions. And finally, the inquiries might bring about uncontrollable publicity. Wood concluded that “I cannot state too strongly that the present suggested method of procedure by means of departmental enquiry is fraught with possibilities of the gravest danger to Canadian interests from a variety of angles.”⁶⁰

The British (who had learned of the plan through Malcolm MacDonald) were no less dismayed. MI5 telegraphed the RCMP immediately: “We feel that from a strictly security angle action proposed will yield small results in Canada and will give minimum assistance to security authorities elsewhere. . . . We believe diplomatic protest unaccompanied by prosecution . . . will be taken by Russians as indicative of weakness of evidence on which protest is based.”⁶¹

King's diaries for the crucial period of November to December 1945 have unfortunately disappeared. Given that these are the only months missing out of the many years the diaries cover (1893– 1950), the disappearance is perhaps not a coincidence. The keepers of King's diaries after his death were also close aides to the prime minister, and the entries for November to December may have revealed too much information about the espionage case and also reflected badly on King's judgment.⁶² But the course of events is nonetheless clear from other papers in the Canadian archives.

An eleventh-hour scheme was hatched among King's advisers, with a hurried meeting to discuss King's new plan on December 3, the day before King's scheduled meeting with the Soviet ambassador. Wood, St. Laurent, Norman Robertson, and Hume Wrong were in attendance. At this meeting, according to a report from Wrong, Wood told King that the Americans had just learned grave information about the “Miss Corby” case, involving Soviet penetration among senior officials in the Treasury, the United States Intelligence Services, and the White House. Wood noted that “if the accusations are true, there are most impelling reasons, from the point of view of security, for as prompt United States counter-action as possible” and added that “the revelation to Soviet authorities of our knowledge of the information brought by Corby would hamper the United States investigation and that Mr. Hoover, he was sure, would prefer postponement.” After hearing this, King, who would naturally be reluctant to displease the head of the FBI, decided to await the outcome of the United States’ investigation and not mention anything to the Soviet ambassador.⁶³

Desperate to prevent King's heart-to-heart with the Soviet ambassador, Wood had lied to the prime minister by exaggerating the “Miss Corby” revelations, which did not include (at that point) espionage among senior officials at the White House. And he completely misrepresented the views of the FBI, which had given the Canadians permission to pursue the Gouzenko case just a few days earlier. Wood failed to anticipate that King would in fact stretch out the delay indefinitely, and much later he complained to the U.S. military attaché in Ottawa, “We very nearly missed the boat in the early days of the spy case. The Prime Minister kept it in his desk for 4 months, and when I needled him about it, he wanted to turn it over to the courts. That would have been fatal, as legal procedure would have rendered inadmissible most of the essential evidence.” But, as one Canadian historian pointed out, Wood himself was partly responsible for this dilemma: “The Commissioner's suggestion that King was in charge of the spy case and ‘kept it in his desk’ was misleading. The Gouzenko case was seized upon, manipulated and controlled by turns by diplomats and intelligence agencies in Ottawa, Washington and London.”⁶⁴ At this point, the plans of both Hoover and Wood for the Gouzenko case, namely that the RCMP would round up the Canadian suspects and interrogate them under the emergency law, had backfired.

Although not only diplomats and intelligence officials, but also political leaders from all three countries were preoccupied with what to do about the Gouzenko case for the last three months of 1945, by the end of the year nothing was resolved. The defection remained unpublicized, nothing had been said to the Soviets, and the suspects were still at large. More important, efforts to establish international control over atomic research, under the shadow of the revelations about Soviet espionage, had achieved few results. Liberals in the Truman administration might have seen the espionage case as an additional argument for ending the U.S. nuclear monopoly, on the grounds that the Soviets spied only because they had been excluded from the West's atomic research. But members of the military, including Manhattan Project director General Leslie Groves, who was informed of Gouzenko's allegations within days of his defection (before U.S. secretary of state James Byrnes was informed), doubtless felt differently. Why should the United States share its atomic research with a country that engaged in such deception? The whole idea of international cooperation was based on trust, and the Soviets were clearly untrustworthy. As for the Soviets, they had made it increasingly clear that they were not going to be intimidated by America's nuclear monopoly into making concessions to the West. The fact that they had been caught red-handed in atomic espionage and that, as the NKVD learned from Philby, the allies might try to use this as a bargaining chip while the case was still secret, inclined them even more in this direction. As Byrnes put it, the Russians were “stubborn, obstinate, and they don't scare.”⁶⁵