Chapter 5
COLD WAR JUSTICE

For one brief moment, the communist trials would place Canada at the center of world politics. For the Western public, this was the moment when the Cold War began.

Merrily Weisbord, The Strangest Dream

While the RCMP interrogated suspects at the Rockcliffe Barracks, the Royal Commission, whose hearings were held in secret, was questioning Gouzenko. He was filling in the blanks – which were many – that appeared in the evidence he had produced. The commissioners, judges Taschereau and Kellock, were trying to establish the real identities behind the code names in the Russian documents and to explain the many anomalies that had cropped up. This was no easy task. As observed in a top secret message from Ottawa to MI6, “Corby's documents have to be interpreted with the greatest care and reservation.”¹ The commissioners were also encouraging Gouzenko to provide additional verbal testimony that might help them establish the guilt of the detainees.

Gouzenko, who testified for several days, was a model witness. Whatever mental torment he had suffered at Camp X, he pulled himself together for his appearances before the commission. He understood what the commissioners were after, and, within certain bounds, was anxious to please them. On February 14, the day before the detentions, a message to MI6 read: “Corby is making [an] excellent impression on the judges.”² Although an interpreter was present, most of the time Gouzenko answered questions in his still imperfect English. He was methodical and understated, impressing the commissioners with his knowledge and his unhesitating responses. The commissioners and their counsels were full of appreciation. The young man who had been for more than two years the linchpin of the GRU communications network was, now that he had seen the light of democracy, an object of admiration and respect. He was on their side in a struggle against the insidious and dangerous phenomenon of communist sympathizers among their own citizens. They hung on his words, depending on him to help them wade through the morass of espionage language.

The RCMP still feared the Soviets would attempt to abduct or assassinate their charge, so Gouzenko was housed in the Justice building on Wellington Street during the period of his testimony, leaving Anna on her own at Camp X with the children. Confined thus, he was living and breathing the process of the Royal Commission. Given these pressures, it is even more remarkable that he held together so well. But his questioners were disposed in his favor, and he knew that his future in Canada depended on his performance before the commission. His earlier testimonies for the RCMP, which had dragged on laboriously and caused his frustrated interrogators to threaten to send him back to Russia, were far behind him.

The cases against the suspects, based on Gouzenko and his documents, were far from straightforward. A case in point was the evidence against Fred Poland, a young journalist from Montreal who was swept up in the RCMP's net because of some pages from Colonel Zabotin's notebook. The scribbled Russian notes had puzzled investigators. At first the name Zabotin jotted down appeared to be “Holland,” but then someone looked at it again and decided it was Polland.

The brief description by Zabotin did not fit Fred Poland.³ The individual concerned was said to be working in Toronto as part of the intelligence branch of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and in the process of being transferred to Ottawa. Squadron Leader Poland had been stationed with the rcaf in Ottawa since the spring of 1942, over a year before Zabotin arrived in Canada, and was transferred to the Wartime Information Board in early 1944. What was the highly secret information Zabotin recorded as received from “Holland/Polland”? A map of training schools in the area, marked “for official use only.” When pressed for more information about Fred Poland, Gouzenko said he remembered seeing a 1943 telegram from Zabotin to the GRU in Moscow suggesting that Poland was such a good worker that he should be handed over to the NKVD. Given the rivalry between the GRU and the NKVD, and the fact that Zabotin's notes indicated only a vague knowledge of this agent, Gouzenko's recollection was probably wrong.⁴

Not surprisingly, there had been considerable hesitation about including Poland in the February 15 roundup. The day before, Commissioner Taschereau had asked Counsel Williams, “As to Poland; the witness mentioned Polland, with two ‘l's’ but he did not identify that cover name of Polland as being the person mentioned in your application [for arrest].” Williams replied confidently, “The evidence will be placed before you to show that a man named F.W. Poland occupied the position indicated in the note of Colonel Zabotin at the time.” “That he works in Toronto in the Intelligence Branch?” Taschereau asked. “Yes,” was the response. Commissioner Kellock chimed in: “You say ‘at that time.’ What time?” Williams assured the commissioners (wrongly) that Poland had worked in Toronto “during the whole period of 1943” and also that he would have further evidence to show his guilt; namely, that Poland shared an Ottawa apartment with Gordon Lunan.⁵

A telegram to London on February 18 (apparently from Dwyer) made a reference to the weak case against Poland: “there is [a] possibility that poland, against whom evidence was anyway light, may prove to be only very slightly involved. He is at present writing [a] statement on activities of LUNAN, with whom he shares an apartment. He will be better assessed after serious interrogation.” (Presumably, “serious interrogation” meant the RCMP would be employing more extreme forms of pressure.) Yet on February 20, the message about Poland was the same: “Interrogator is not prepared to give any opinion yet, but there must continue to be very considerable doubt as to POLAND'S implication [in spying].”⁶

Despite the RCMP's Gestapo-like tactics, Poland confessed to nothing. He was brought to trial on recommendation of the Royal Commission and acquitted. Edward Mazerall, on the other hand, a twenty-nine-year-old electrical engineer employed by the Canadian National Research Council, confessed early on and implicated Lunan, who had been his contact. On February 18, the following telegram was sent to MI6: “MAZERALL has written guarded confession, admitted to working for LUNAN and quoted his own cover name ‘bagley.’ He has minimized importance of how much information he gave. He has implicated no one else and only mentioned lunan with reluctance. Fred rose first approached him. He is an impracticable idealist.” Two days later, the RCMP was able to report, “Mazerall's nerves and memory are improving simultaneously. He has recalled considerable details of [the] communist cell to which he belonged . . .”⁷

While the Canadian press was making free use of the word treason (an offense which could bring the death penalty), the fact remained that, while the spying had occurred, Russia was a friend, not an enemy. It was difficult to prove that persons passing information to a friendly nation were doing serious harm. Thus it made more sense for the Canadian authorities to charge the suspects under the Official Secrets Act, which was modeled after a similar law in Britain and was open to sweeping interpretation by the courts.

Revised in 1939, the law stipulated that the onus was not on the court to prove guilt, but on the defendant to prove his or her innocence. In addition, the definition of guilt was so broad that any contact with an agent of a foreign state could be interpreted as a crime. Thus, for example, section 3(2) read, “It shall not be necessary to show that the accused person was guilty of any particular act . . . he may be convicted if, from the circumstances of the case, or his conduct or his known character as proved, it appears that his purpose was a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State.” And section 4(a) stipulated that “a person shall, unless he proves to the contrary, be deemed to have been in communication with an agent of a foreign power if he has either within or without Canada visited the address of an agent of a foreign power or consorted or associated with such agent or . . . the name or address of, or any information regarding such an agent, has been found in his possession. . . .”⁸

This law was later to prove embarrassing to Norman Robertson, who had been in contact with mp Fred Rose on numerous occasions over the years and even entertained him at his home in the exclusive Rockcliffe section of Ottawa. Rose furnished Robertson information during the war about Fascist and Nazi activities in Canada, information that Robertson passed on to the RCMP. And Rose also discussed with Robertson government policies toward the Communist Party. In October 1946, during the trial of one of the accused spies, the fact that Rose had been invited to Robertson's house came up and was mentioned in the papers. Robertson, who was by then Canadian High Commissioner to London, was mortified, and sent a long letter explaining his position to Lester Pearson, who had recently been appointed Canadian Minister of External Affairs.⁹

In fact, Robertson was well acquainted with others among the suspects. Fred Poland was associate secretary of the Ottawa branch of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, to which many of Ottawa's leading civil servants, including Robertson, belonged. Robertson had also had close links with the Wartime Information Board, where both Poland and Gordon Lunan had held senior positions. As Robertson's biographer observed, “The spy net stretched widely, and Ottawa was still a small enough town that Robertson must have felt very uneasy as he contemplated the list of suspects.”¹⁰ For Robertson – with his prominence, and his record of loyal service to the Canadian government – his contacts with alleged spies amounted to nothing more than a political embarrassment. But for the thirteen scientists and civil servants languishing at Rockcliffe Barracks, association with the ubiquitous Rose and other communists was crucial evidence of guilt.

In addition to Emma Woikin, three other suspects – Kathleen Willsher, Gordon Lunan, and Edward Mazerall – appeared before the Royal Commission on February 22, 1946. Kathleen Willsher, who had been working in the office of British High Commissioner Malcolm MacDonald, had confessed early on to the RCMP, telling them she had meant only to help the cause of the Canadian Communist Party, not the Soviets. Willsher was a cooperative witness before the commission, in large part because she, too, thought she might be executed if she did not confess. “Yes,” she said, “I know I can be shot quite easily, if necessary.”¹¹

Educated at the London School of Economics and fluent in several languages, Willsher had come to Canada in 1930 and within a few years joined the Canadian Communist Party. Like Woikin, Willsher was attracted to the party because it offered her a useful cause, as well as social contacts. According to her testimony to the Royal Commission, she conveyed general information verbally to the party because she was told that it would help in persuading the Allies to open a second front in the war against Germany. Nothing very specific, she insisted, and no written documents. Although the commissioners claimed that the transcripts of RCMP interrogations were not available to them, their lawyer made free use of them. Thus, while questioning Willsher he consulted the RCMP transcript to correct and clarify her statements.¹²

Remarkably, the only documentary evidence against Willsher provided by Gouzenko turned out to be letters that she never saw and could not have crossed her desk at the British High Commission. When Zabotin received the letters he mistakenly attributed them to Willsher in his long list of Canadian documents sent to Moscow. Although the Royal Commission acknowledged this, they had the admission from Willsher about passing on verbal information, which was enough for them. She pleaded guilty to violating the Official Secrets Act at her subsequent trial and was sentenced to three years in prison. Had Willsher been allowed to have a lawyer after being arrested by the RCMP, she doubtless would never have been convicted.¹³

As Gouzenko reluctantly acknowledged to the commission, the mailing list he stole from the embassy was not typed by Zabotin but by the wife of the embassy driver, who did secretarial work for the GRU. Also, it was dated January 1944, while the items listed as having been sent to Moscow were from well after that date. Yet for the RCMP and the Royal Commission this document was one of the major pieces of evidence against the spy suspects. Thus, according to the mailing list, an individual code-named “Ernst” passed along a lot of information about the dispatch of munitions to England during the period of November to December 1944. Gouzenko said that Ernst was Eric Adams, an employee of the Bank of Canada, who Willsher acknowledged as a contact. But in late 1944 Adams was working for the Canadian Industrial Development Bank, examining credit applications from Canadian factories. And in some scribbled notes stolen by Gouzenko, Zabotin described Ernst as a Jew who worked as a coordinator in a “united committee of military production of the U.S. and Canada.”¹⁴

Adams was not Jewish and was not involved with any joint military committee either at the Canadian Industrial Development Bank or the Bank of Canada. This did not stop the commission from asking the RCMP to detain Adams. The fact that Adams was flirting with communism and had visited the Soviet Union with his wife some years before clinched it for the Royal Commission, which pronounced him a spy. Adams had withstood the efforts of the RCMP to get him to talk and insisted on his innocence to the Royal Commission, but the commissioners did not believe him. Once Adams got to trial, his lawyer grilled Gouzenko, who persisted in claiming that Ernst was a Jew who worked in coordinating American and Canadian war industries. Gouzenko recalled having seen a GRU dossier on Ernst (which he never mentioned to the Royal Commission) confirming that his name was Eric Adams, but he then said he never opened the file. The court acquitted Adams.¹⁵

As one legal expert later pointed out, the commission's failure to inform those being questioned that they could refuse to answer on grounds of possible self-incrimination might have been less reprehensible if the commission had stuck to its mandate of merely gathering information. But the commission far overstepped its bounds: “the commissioners felt it their duty not only to report misconduct, but, in effect, either to perform the function of the grand jury or magistrate or to provide briefs for counsel who would conduct the prosecutions for the Crown.”¹⁶ The Ottawa Civil Liberties Association came to the same conclusion: “If the Commission was to usurp the functions of a court and bring in findings of guilt, it has no right to depart from the established rules of evidence binding on all courts.”¹⁷ The fact that the two commissioners were members of the highest court in the country and their counsel, E.K. Williams, was head of the Canadian Bar Association made their disregard for legal rights especially shocking.

Given that the burden of proof in Official Secrets Act cases was shifted onto the defendant, and that the rules of evidence were so broad, it was almost impossible for the accused to mount an effective defense, especially without a lawyer. Adams, Woikin, Lunan, and several other defendants had lawyers only once their cases came to trial. By this time they had already been pronounced guilty of violating the Official Secrets Act by the Royal Commission, which questioned them on the basis of earlier interrogations by the police (where they had incriminated themselves).

Although Gordon Lunan was highly intelligent, articulate, and assertive, he was naive about legal matters, something that in retrospect he acknowledged: “The Canada Evidence Act extends protection against self-incrimination to witnesses provided they do not perjure themselves. A common thief knows all about this – but not, alas, an educated well-read thirty-year-old whose only brush with the law had been the odd traffic ticket.” But, he allowed, “of course, some inner-voice whispered that such protection surely must exist.”¹⁸

For whatever reason (perhaps simply a sense of guilt or resignation in the face of what he saw as overwhelming evidence against him) that “inner-voice” had still not made itself heard when Lunan appeared before the Royal Commission after confessing to the RCMP. Still without counsel, Lunan readily gave the Royal Commission details on his activities as a contact between the Soviet GRU and their Canadian sources. When he appeared before the Royal Commission for a second time, he noticed that RCMP inspectors Harvison and Anthony were working in the same building, on the floor below, available to the commissioners and their lawyers for advice. As Lunan recalled, “The RCMP had played the cue ball by supplying the commissioners with a script in the form of a transcript of the police interrogation. The job was to get it into the Commission record virtually unchanged. . . . When my testimony seemed to diverge from what the commissioners had been led to expect, they would adjourn briefly for the off-the-record consultation with the RCMP and Justice Department officials. What they were in fact doing was preparing a masterly prosecution brief for use in court proceedings to follow, and who better able to do it than two of the most distinguished jurists of the day.”¹⁹

The Order-in-Council authorizing the detentions referred to the “communication of information to agents of a foreign power to the prejudice of the public safety or interests of Canada and friendly powers.” And the act creating the Royal Commission stipulated that it was to determine whether the passing of information was “inimical to the safety and interests of Canada.”

But in fact the commissioners’ criterion for guilt was not whether the passing of such information harmed Canada, nor even whether a suspect had passed information at all. Eric Adams, for example, was not “Ernst,” but his library was full of communist books. Fred Poland may or may not have been the individual referred to by Zabotin in his barely legible notes – and in any case all that Polland, or Holland, gave to the Soviets was a 1943 map not even classified as confidential – but Poland had communist leanings and his roommate in Ottawa was none other than Gordon Lunan. In the eyes of the commissioners, both Adams and Poland were guilty.

Along with Roger Hollis at MI5 and Kim Philby at MI6, Mackenzie King was following the spy case closely. Daily, he received and read many pages of evidence from the RCMP and the Royal Commission on Espionage, including all of Gouzenko's testimony. As time wore on, with most of the suspects still being held for interrogation without access to lawyers or contact with their families and without having been formally charged, the press became critical of the judicial procedures. The Ottawa Journal, for example, commented, “We do not treat murderers that way.” In a letter to Secretary of State Byrnes at the end of February, the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Ottawa observed that “if the most serious charges are not subsequently made against at least some of those detained, the Government will be open to severe criticism, parliamentary and otherwise.”²⁰

King grew increasingly anxious. He knew he would face attacks from the opposition in Parliament. He was particularly upset when he woke up on February 27 and saw on the front page of the Globe and Mail a story about the wife of one of the detainees (later identified as David Shugar), who had returned from a trip to discover her husband gone and their home ransacked. “I was amazed,” she was quoted as saying in the article, “to find that the letters we had written each other while my husband was away two years in the services, and my childhood diaries had been taken away.” She reported that “for three days my husband was refused information as to the authorization under which he was held” and that she still did not know whether he was being held as a witness or a suspect. What particularly upset King was the reference to a letter the woman had sent to him protesting the fact that her husband was being held incommunicado. “I have received no acknowledgement,” she said.²¹

King was beside himself, all the more so since he had not slept well and he felt he was coming down with one of his frequent colds: “I was much annoyed and distressed to find that no answer had gone to the woman who had written to me about her husband being confined. I had given it to Robertson four days ago and had asked since if a reply had been sent. I wanted it answered immediately.” Robertson, it seems, did not share King's concerns about the legality of the RCMP sweep and the public reaction. When an irate King telephoned him that morning, he merely expressed surprise that the letter had not been answered.

King was uncharacteristically adamant with Robertson: “I said I thought it was wrong that those who are suspected should be detained indefinitely and that some way should be found to shorten the enquiry and give them the full rights of protection which the law allows them. . . . I said at the beginning unless this part was carefully handled we would create a worse situation than the one we were trying to remedy. People will not stand for individual liberty being curtailed or men being detained and denied counsel and fair trial before being kept in prison. The whole proceedings are far too much like those of Russia itself.”²²

That afternoon, King met with Justice Minister St. Laurent and Royal Commission lawyers E.K. Williams and Gerald Fauteux. By this time he had calmed down and was persuaded to be patient. Within two days, Williams and Fauteux assured him, at least five or six would have admitted their guilt. (The point being that lawyers and family should be kept away in the meantime.) King did manage to have the commissioners step up the timing of their public report on the hearings, which he felt was essential to legitimize the detentions in the eyes of the Canadian people. As Stephen Holmes, the second-in-command at the British High Commission, made clear in a March 2 telegram to London, King and his ministers wanted a speedy report to offset the “formidable charges of interference with civil liberties.”²³

On March 4, the commission released its first interim report, timed to coincide with the completion of testimony by Woikin, Lunan, Mazerall, and Willsher and with their immediate arraignment.²⁴ The brief report focused attention on a long list of demands that Moscow headquarters had given the GRU residency in Ottawa, including requests for information on the atomic bomb. While noting that the four accused had violated the Official Secrets Act, the report avoided the question of how much of that information the GRU actually obtained, and also whether Canada's interests were harmed. The issue of national security was mentioned only in regard to Mazerall. The commission noted that the two confidential reports on radar that Mazerall gave to the Soviets through Lunan were shortly thereafter presented at a conference (where the Russians, incidentally, were present) and that this “should be considered as an extenuating circumstance in Mazerall's favour.” (Mazerall would nonetheless be sentenced to four years in prison on charges of conspiracy to violate the Official Secrets Act.) As for the question of lawyers, the report claimed that “an opportunity was given to have counsel, but none desired to be represented by counsel or to adduce any evidence in addition to his or her own testimony.” In fact the offer of counsel was not given to any of them until after they had testified before the commission, at which point it was useless.

In Washington, Canadian ambassador Lester Pearson received an advance copy of the report late on March 2, and was so unimpressed, as he said in a letter to Norman Robertson the next day, that he hoped it would be held back and revised: “I must say that several re-readings of it do not weaken my opinion that it is not . . . a very impressive document, combining unevenly the sensational and the inconsequential and leaving the reader without any clear impression whether there is any real connection between the tasks laid down for the Soviet intelligence people in Canada and the information which the four persons mentioned were able to supply.”²⁵

Pearson went over the report with both Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of State James Byrnes on March 3. Acheson also found the report wanting. And Byrnes suggested to Pearson that they withhold the report entirely, despite the fact that, as Pearson explained, it was being issued to quell criticism in Canada about violations of civil liberties. Byrnes had given what was for him a harsh speech on relations with the Soviet Union a couple of days earlier in New York, and he had seen the draft of a strongly anti- Soviet speech Winston Churchill planned to give in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5. He feared it would appear to the Russians that the three governments had deliberately organized these events to coincide. As Pearson reported, “It almost looked as if the three things were stages in a planned campaign.”²⁶

Pearson had also seen a copy of Churchill's speech. Before meeting Byrnes, he had paid a visit to Churchill, who was in Washington, about to depart the next day for Missouri with President Truman. Because Churchill would be making several references to Canada in his speech he had asked Mackenzie King to come down to Washington to meet with him. King was unable to make the trip, so he sent Pearson in his place. When Pearson arrived at the British Embassy, “the great man was still in bed, propped up with pillows, looking pink and white, as always, with a big cigar in his mouth, also as always, and reading a book.” Pearson went into another room to read what Churchill planned to say – “very strong stuff indeed, with some magnificent passages and others that will arouse very considerable controversy.”²⁷ It was his now famous “Iron Curtain” speech.

Mackenzie King called Churchill later that afternoon to convey Pearson's positive reaction. “When talking with Churchill, I mentioned that we would be having a pretty strong statement coming out from the Commissioners tomorrow. He said to me: ‘Oh you are so completely right’ or words to that effect. . . . That if a similar course had been adopted when Britain learned that Germany was rearming this last war might never have taken place. . . . He went on to repeat: ‘Do not hold back anything – go ahead. Keep firm to the position you have taken. I am sure that it is the only thing that will save the situation as it has been developing. It is the same tactics all over again.’ Churchill could not have been more emphatic or stronger than he was.”²⁸

Churchill in fact had not yet read the Canadian report, but he knew what was in it and was no doubt pleased that it reinforced what he planned to say in Fulton. Churchill's Fulton speech set the tone for a new era in East-West relations, making it clear that the wartime alliance was no longer viable because the Russians wanted “the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.” An “iron curtain” had descended across Europe, Churchill said, necessitating a Western alliance to resist the Russians and sustain peace and democracy. He also stressed that it would be “wrong and imprudent” to entrust the secret knowledge of the bomb to a world organization.

Mackenzie King, who seems to have lost interest in the idea of international control of the bomb, thought the speech was wonderful and telephoned Churchill right afterward to say so. He wrote in his diary that “He [Churchill] and the President were together. He was obviously both relieved and greatly pleased that I had rung him up. I told him what I thought about his speech, being all circumstances considered, the most courageous made by any man at any time, having regard to what it signifies at the moment and for the future. . . . He thanked me very warmly, said it was so kind to let him know.” Churchill asked King if he would mind letting Prime Minister Attlee know how he felt about the speech, and he readily agreed to do so.²⁹

King was ecstatic. That evening, he committed to his diary the words of praise he believed he had heard from Churchill: “What he [Churchill] did say most emphatically was something to this effect: ‘I have followed your career over so many years and have been impressed so deeply with it, with your political wisdom and sound judgment that I value very deeply your approval of what I have said.’”³⁰ King was particularly delighted because President Truman had overheard Churchill's words. What good luck! It likely did not occur to him that Churchill's motives were not entirely pure. Churchill had gone out on a limb by delivering such a strong anti- Soviet message. He probably anticipated some criticism back in England, where Prime Minister Attlee was even urged from the backbenches of the Parliament to dissociate himself from Churchill's harsh words.³¹ It might be useful if he could say the speech had some strong supporters.

Well before the release of the interim report and Churchill's speech, tensions had been building in London over the Gouzenko issue. Hollis was becoming irritated at Philby's constant interference. In mid-February, Philby sent Hollis a draft of a paper he prepared on the case for “C” and the service directors of intelligence. Hollis returned the draft, pointing out some “small inaccuracies,” and then added a note to Philby:

I feel that the question of circulating this document from your Office to the Directors of Intelligence is a matter of some embarrassment. The case took place in Canada and has ramifications in this country and in both Canada and here the security responsibility rests on our Office and not on yours. The close cooperation which we have had over this case has, of course, given you just as much information as we have about it and as you know, we have welcomed this. But when it comes to putting out such a paper to the Directors of Intelligence, it may, I am afraid, give the impression that the responsible department is yours and not M.I.5. Would it be possible, in order to avoid this, that you should put out a covering letter when circulating this document, saying that it has been shown to the department responsible for dealing with counter-espionage in the Empire and that M.I.5 agrees that this is an accurate account of the case.³²

Shortly before Hollis wrote to Philby, the May case had taken a new twist. On February 15 – the day of the RCMP roundup in Ottawa – two “very experienced” MI5 interrogators interviewed May. They had already had several meetings with top MI5 officials to devise the proper strategy and had decided they would tell May at the outset that the interview was in connection with an inquiry being conducted by a Canadian Royal Commission. In order to prevent May from refusing to discuss his activities because they were scientific secrets, they asked May's superior, the head of the British Atomic Council, to arrange the meeting and give May instructions to withhold nothing from the investigators.³³

According to a report MI5 sent to Ottawa, May was caught completely off guard: “primrose turned very pale and was clearly greatly distressed. He frequently paused as long as two or three minutes before answering questions and almost always limited his replies to ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The impression given was that the interrogation came as a great shock to him, but that once having pulled himself together and overcome this, he was following the pro-gramme of admitting nothing. . . . It will be seen from the statement that primrose made a blank denial of all connection with the corby case. If therefore, your interrogation in Canada produces any information, which implicates primrose, it will be of great value to us. . . . On the conclusion of the interrogation primrose dined alone at the Regent Palace Hotel and afterwards went to a cinema. He made no contact.”³⁴

Philby, of course, knew about the planned arrests in Canada and MI5's intention to interview May at the same time. But he apparently did not see to it that May was warned, as he had done when May was supposed to meet a Soviet contact some months earlier. Philby probably worried that a warning to May might arouse suspicions among his colleagues that there was a spy in their midst. Moreover, he knew that unless May confessed, the evidence against him was insufficient to justify an arrest. As MI5 had come to realize, although May had been acquainted professionally and socially with some of the other spy suspects, he would not have discussed his connections with the GRU with them. Thus the likelihood that any of those interrogated by the RCMP in Ottawa would incriminate May was small.

Less than a week later, however, in a second interview with May, MI5 got a break. May broke down and made a thorough confession. But he was still at large, mainly because the British did not want to complicate the situation in Canada by arresting May before the commission report appeared. On March 1, Hollis and Philby took part in a high-level meeting at the Foreign Office, chaired by Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Neville Butler. Philby told the group that May's confession had been relayed to the Royal Commission on the condition that it would not be used in the commission's next report (presumably because publication of the confession would prevent it being used as evidence against May). The group agreed that, upon the approval of Prime Minister Attlee, May's arrest would take place on March 6 and that, since the Canadians would publicize their report on the spy case, May's trial would be open to the public.³⁵

Another concern was the former employee at the British High Commission in Ottawa, Kathleen Willsher. The British had tried to persuade the Canadians to treat Willsher separately from the others – and to exclude her name from the first interim Royal Commission report altogether. They were afraid that her case would raise embarrassing questions in Britain about the leakage of their top secret information to the Soviets, especially if it was publicized just as May was arrested. In fact, both MI5 and the Foreign Office were caught off guard when they learned that the Canadians’ report would come out earlier than expected, on March 4 rather than March 6, the day they planned to arrest May. They urged the Canadians to delay, especially when they learned the report's scope was much wider than they expected. But the Canadians proceeded as planned.

Stephen Holmes at the British High Commission in Ottawa telegraphed London on March 2 to say that Canadian authorities were under considerable pressure to release the report and bring at least some of the detainees before the court as soon as possible. “The arrest and charging of Willsher,” Holmes continued, “is of course regarded by Canadian authorities as [the] logical outcome of our request that she be interrogated and detained for that purpose and I am afraid that we are in a very difficult and delicate position for asking for Commission to be pressed to modify their report in any way or alternatively for pressing Canadian government to postpone on her account its publication and intended action against their own first batch.”³⁶ London cabled back to Holmes that, in view of the Canadian attitude, “we withdraw our suggestion that action should be postponed.”³⁷

The Canadians quite clearly did not want to stand alone before the public in the Gouzenko case, and suffer criticism for violating civil liberties, just because they had been the first to take action against the spy suspects. They wanted it known that the Russians were spying against Britain and the United States as well. This is why the report mentioned specifically that the Russians asked about the movement and placement of American troops and the “particulars as to the materials of which the atomic bomb is composed.” The report also said that Willsher “had access to practically all secret documents” in the British High Commissioner's office. The High Commission objected strongly, telegraphing London to say that the “[Royal] Commission's specific reference to Willsher is inaccurate to [the] extent she did not . . . have access to any documents in this office relating to atomic energy.”³⁸

Mackenzie King anticipated a huge reaction to the Royal Commission's first (interim) report, noting in his diary on March 4, “I imagine telegraph wires all over the world will be alive with the information it contains as they have not been in days since the beginning of the last war.” And indeed, the press in North America and Britain gave the report wide play. (This was the first time that the Canadians had openly named the Soviet Union as the country in question.) The commission's report, together with the news of the arrest on March 5 of Dr. Nunn May, whose link with the Canadian story was taken as evident, made banner headlines on the front pages of all the major newspapers. Most press reports sounded a note of extreme alarm about the leakage of secrets to the Russians and sensationalized the story by claiming that the Russians were planning a third world war. But the more cautious New York Times – bearing out Lester Pearson's misgivings – ventured the observation that “much of the information asked for . . . could have been obtained by any military attaché by request” and that “there is no indication in the report that any of this secret information was obtained or communicated.” A writer for The Spectator in London noted, “The righteous horror which was expressed appears to me somewhat exaggerated. It is the duty of service attachés to obtain all the information they can.”³⁹

Contrary to what King had hoped, the hastily put-together report and the issuance of formal charges against four of the thirteen spy suspects did not stem the tide of domestic criticism against the government for its iron-fisted justice. According to a message to MI6, “In spite of Commission's first interim report, press on question of rights of detainees and civil liberties has not materially decreased, largely as result of agitation of wives and lawyers who have been retained but who are not allowed to see clients who have not been charged.”⁴⁰

A Globe and Mail editorial on March 6 called the commission's justice “a totalitarian procedure” and expressed the view that “All the rules of freedom, the basic liberties of the individual, must, we all know, be subordinate on occasion to the safety of the state. But there is nothing in the acceptance of this which licenses the Government to suspend all the judicial safeguards in order to facilitate police work or make easier the conduct of an official inquiry.”⁴¹ Two days later, M.J. Coldwell, leader of the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, protested the illegal detentions of the spy suspects: “The war was fought to destroy states which made such police activities a general practice. To say that it is necessary to resort to totalitarian methods in order to secure evidence is no valid excuse for abrogating the elementary principles of Canadian justice.”⁴²

With nine suspects still in RCMP custody, the issue of civil liberties continued to plague King. The Royal Commission was proceeding too slowly for the political agenda of the King government. He wrote in his diary on March 12, “St. Laurent and I feel very indignant at the length of time the commissioners are taking in detaining men: also we were both astonished that Kellock [one of the two commissioners] was going to adjourn sittings for some days to keep some engagement with a YMCA meeting.” Parliament was due to reconvene on March 14, and King knew he would face some hard questioning by the opposition for allowing the spy suspects to be held for such a long time without charge. King apparently relayed his views to the Royal Commission, and the postponement was canceled.

On March 15, the commission released its second interim report, giving evidence against four more spy suspects: Raymond Boyer, Harold Gerson, Matt Nightingale, and David Shugar. Professor Boyer was not only one of Canada's leading scientists – as president of the Canadian Association of Scientific Workers, he was also a political activist. Because CASCW advocated unions for technicians, the RCMP had already labeled it a subversive group, and none other than Inspector Harvison had been secretly investigating its activities for the RCMP's Intelligence Branch. The charges against some of CASCW's leading members for giving information to the Soviets was hugely significant to the RCMP. It confirmed the RCMP's idea that CASCW was an arm of the Soviet Communist Party.⁴³

Boyer, who made no secret of his communist leanings (he had contributed substantial sums to the Labour Progressive Party), took the strategy of openly acknowledging to the commissioners that he wanted to help the Russians, apparently assuming that, since his intentions were pure, he would get off easily. He told the commission that he had given Fred Rose the new formula that he had devised (and received acclaim for) for the chemical explosive rdx. Rose then passed the information to the GRU. Boyer went on to say that “Mr. Howe [the Canadian Minister of Munitions and Supply] was willing to give it to the Russians and was not allowed to do so by the Americans. I felt throughout the work that it was unfortunate that . . . there was not closer scientific liaison in connection with such information between the Russian war effort and ours . . . I felt it was of great importance that the scientific war effort on the two fronts should be coordinated.”⁴⁴

Like most of the other defendants, Boyer never accepted payment from the Russians. (Gouzenko added a negative twist to this in his testimony: “The professor was very rich and did not need money.”) There could be no doubt his motives were sincere. According to a message to MI6, “His interrogator Inspector Harvison, who would not be deceived and who has dealt so brilliantly with Lunan and Mazerall, is satisfied that Boyer was motivated by what appeared to him at [the] time to be sincere reasons.” And a later message noted, “Boyer is a highly intelligent man, makes no effort whatever to cover his own [garbled] nor communist activities of his friends. We are inclined to believe he is telling the whole truth.”⁴⁵ Whatever his motivation, Boyer had signed a secrecy oath, which he had knowingly violated. He was later sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

Harold Gerson, a geological engineer and the brother-in-law of another suspect, Scott Benning, also knowingly acted as an agent for the GRU. The RCMP had a document from Gouzenko showing that the GRU had proposed to Moscow that they subsidize a geological engineering consulting office in Ottawa for Gerson, apparently to use as a cover for his acting as an agent for the Russians. According to a report to MI6 on February 27, “Gerson has been re-interrogated by [the] RCMP. This time he was shown photostats of his own handwriting from Corby documents and was severely shaken.” And on the next day, “RCMP interrogator states Gerson has been enquiring how many years imprisonment he would be liable to receive. This indicates further that he is likely to talk soon.”⁴⁶ Of those arrested, Gerson and Gordon Lunan received the harshest sentences – five years.

Matt Nightingale and David Shugar, by contrast, were, from a legal standpoint, highly questionable cases. Nightingale, an engineer for the Bell Telephone Company, was accused of spying for the GRU while he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the war, working on the installation of landline communications. Asked about the case by the Toronto Daily Star, a former fellow officer in the rcaf gave his views of Nightingale: “An extremely fine chap and a gentleman. . . . The idea of a fellow like Matt thinking it out quietly and deciding to make some money out of cutting the throats of his friends and selling his country down the river is simply inconceivable.”⁴⁷ In fact, Nightingale had been attending communist study groups in Montreal for several years. But according to the lawyer he subsequently retained, Nightingale “was just a big farm boy from a Quebec farm. He was married to a girl with great ambitions to become a socialite and because of her took part in meetings with friends of Russia. He was at those meetings all right, but he didn't tell anyone anything.”⁴⁸ The RCMP had picked up Nightingale because his name was found in some notes Gouzenko had stolen allegedly written by GRU colonel Rogov. The notes referred to meetings Rogov had had with Nightingale, but the RCMP had no evidence that any documents or information had been passed to the GRU.

Like the others, Nightingale was frightened and intimidated. On February 18, three days after his arrest, a report to MI6 noted, “Nightingale is likely to sing shortly as he came through his interview badly and asked for writing materials later.” Nightingale admitted to having met with Rogov, but to nothing more. The view of his interrogators was that “for reasons of their own Russians did not make any serious use of him.” Nonetheless, Nightingale was brought before the Royal Commission. “Commission have been hearing Nightingale for the last day and a half and will have to continue tomorrow,” read another message to London. “He appears an accomplished liar . . . Commission will make final attempt to extract truth.” In the end the commission could only conclude weakly in its second interim report that if Nightingale “did not in fact give to the U.S.S.R. secret and confidential information, he may very well have conspired to furnish such information.” Nightingale was nonetheless committed for trial by the magistrate. He was acquitted the following November.⁴⁹

Dr. David Shugar's case was even more of a problem for the commission, not just because of lack of evidence. His wife had launched a press campaign on his behalf and was embarrassing the RCMP and the commission. Shugar, a young and very talented biochemist and an active union organizer with a reputation for political radicalism, was acquainted with Communist Party official and GRU recruiter Sam Carr. He acknowledged to the RCMP that he had had conversations with Carr about military matters when he was in the navy, but he insisted that the talks were very general and that he never came close to discussing secret information.

Gouzenko had produced nothing to suggest that Shugar had ever been an agent for the GRU. Instead, the RCMP and the Royal Commission presented what was essentially a GRU wish list of what might be ascertained from Shugar should he be recruited, and offered the list as proof that he had actually delivered information to Zabotin and his crew. As late as August 1945, despite various assignments proposed for Shugar by Zabotin and Rogov, his assigned handler, Sam Carr, had not even given the GRU Shugar's full name, address, or telephone number – although the GRU had assigned Shugar, like many other prospective agents, a code name, “Prometheus.” On August 14, the GRU director wrote to Zabotin, “I have advised that until the receipt from Prometheus of information and the establishment of his possibilities in the Navy Department, the contact with him should be maintained by Frank [Carr]. Should it prove that Prometheus is a truly valuable man to us, direct contact may then be established with him.”⁵⁰

Compared with the other detainees at the RCMP barracks, Shugar had been bold and defiant. He declared that the entire proceedings were ridiculous and demanded to see both a lawyer and his wife, to no avail. Eleven days later he went on a hunger strike in protest and abstained from food and water for almost four days. He also wrote a series of appeals to the minister of justice and other officials. Meanwhile his wife had been giving the press details from Shugar's letters to her about his treatment in RCMP custody. Correspondence between Shugar and his wife was cut off, and it was decided to send Shugar before the Royal Commission earlier than planned.⁵¹

On March 9, the following report, probably from Dwyer, was sent to MI6: “shugar was taken [to the Royal Commission] next, largely because activities of his wife and his own hunger strike are sources of embarrassment. . . . [He] refused to reply to question concerning members of Communist study group to which he belonged while at McGill. He persisted when warned that such refusal must be taken as contempt by Commissioners.” The report went on to observe, however, that Shugar would most likely not be committed for contempt, “since this would eliminate any possibility of extracting even partial admission from him which would seem essential to substantiate Corby documents which do not in themselves constitute legal case.” [italics added]⁵²

Shugar confessed to nothing. According to a report from Ottawa on March 11, “He is still sullen and answers have to be dragged out of him. . . .” As a result, the bizarre conclusion of the second interim report was as follows: “Shugar denies having given, or having agreed to give, any secret information, but has no explanation for the existence, in the documents above referred to, of the references to himself. We were not impressed by the demeanour of Shugar, or by his denials, which we do not accept. In our view we think he knows more than he is prepared to disclose. Therefore, there would seem to be no answer on the evidence before us, to a charge of conspiring to communicate secret information to an agent of the U.S.S.R.”⁵³

Shugar later wrote a letter to a member of the Canadian Parliament about the commission's practice of making decisions based on the demeanors of witnesses: “These men have made, in my opinion, a mockery of our courts of law and have placed in danger all those democratic institutions of ours for the preservation of which this past war has been fought.”⁵⁴

At Shugar's preliminary hearing before the court, his lawyer got Gouzenko to admit, under cross-examination, that the GRU never received any information from Shugar and knew nothing about him except that he worked in the navy. The magistrate dropped all charges, but this was not the end of Shugar's nightmarish experience at the hands of the Canadian justice system. Canadian authorities revived the charges on the basis of subsequent testimony from one of Shugar's former bosses that was cited in the Royal Commission's final report. Shugar was charged with conspiracy to violate the Official Secrets Act, tried in December 1946, and acquitted. But he had lost his job with the Canadian government, and when he applied to be reinstated he was refused. Faced with “a solid wall of rejection,” he eventually moved back to his native Poland.⁵⁵

Shugar, who would become a professor at the University of Warsaw, gained a reputation as one of Europe's leading biophysicists. He received numerous citations and awards for his publications and contributions to his field, and at age ninety, in 2005, was still actively engaged in his profession. The experience he endured at the hands of the RCMP and Royal Commission, which he compares to the Star Chamber of Charles i, remains vivid in his memory. Nonetheless, after almost sixty years, it is a topic he is still reluctant to discuss.⁵⁶

The commission excused its civil rights violations by claiming that the spies were so dangerous and their crimes so serious that extreme measures were called for. Yet, the most serious offender in terms of possible damage to national security, Alan Nunn May, was not arrested for two and a half weeks after the Canadian group was taken in. After his arrest the Royal commissioners asked the British if May could come over and testify; they wanted to include his statements in their final report and thereby buttress their case. Hollis responded, “Your anxiety to have either Primrose or his statement available to the Commission for the purposes of their final report and the consequent desirability of concluding trial of Primrose as soon as possible is appreciated. Director of P.P. [public prosecutions] advises that there may be serious legal and practical difficulties in securing the attendance of Primrose in Canada but is consulting the Home Office on this matter.”⁵⁷

Toward the end of March the British director of public prosecutions flew to Ottawa to discuss how to coordinate the May case with the report. He agreed to allow the commissioners to publish May's statement as long as they waited until his trial was over.⁵⁸

May's trial was a relatively quiet affair, with minimal publicity in the British press. He pled guilty to the charge of violating the British Official Secrets Act but refused to mention any names of those to whom he passed on information. His defense counsel emphasized before the judge that May had passed on information to the Russians at a time when they were allies and that he had acted out of his conviction that the information should be shared with the Russians rather than out of any desire for personal gain. May, in his February 1946 statement to the police, had said that he had given information to the Russians “about a year ago,” which would mean February 1945. His counsel made the point that attitudes toward the Russians were different then: “February 1945 was a time at which the then Prime Minister had not made the statements which he is since reported to have made [a reference to Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech]. At that time the British Army were mostly in Holland, certainly not across the Rhine, and the Russians were in the course of their drive to Berlin. It was customary to refer to them as Allies who were doing at least their fair share in the war.”⁵⁹

In fact, May passed the uranium samples and report on atomic research to the GRU not in February, but in August 1945, after the Americans had used the atomic bomb against Japan. Apparently the prosecutor had not seen the Gouzenko documents or read any of his statements, which MI5 and MI6 had in their possession. Otherwise, he surely would have pointed this out. Another discrepancy arose when the prosecutor mentioned the discovery of May's crime: “No suspicion whatever had arisen that he had been betraying the trust which he had voluntarily undertaken, but toward the end of 1945 or at the beginning of this year after he had been back in this country for some little time information came into the hands of the Military Intelligence authorities of this country which led them to make certain enquiries of him.”⁶⁰ Either the prosecutor did not know or was covering up the fact that British intelligence authorities had been aware of May's involvement with the Russians since the beginning of September 1945.

May's attorney, not surprisingly, tried to downplay the value of the material May passed on to the Russians, claiming that at most May might have enabled the Russians to speed up their atomic research slightly. In fact, May's contribution to Soviet knowledge of the atomic bomb was minimal, if not completely without value. Shortly after the spy case broke, May's superior in Montreal, John Cockcroft, was asked to assess the possible damage that he caused to the allies’ national security, particularly concerning the atomic bomb. In addition to having access to samples of uranium, Cockcroft said, May had knowledge of experiments with isotopes of uranium, which could have helped the Soviets in developing a chemical separation process. May also had knowledge of the design of the experimental plant at Chalk River, but that was not of major importance, and even May's visits to American atomic facilities would not have been all that useful for his reports. Cockcroft also said that May could have given the Russians information of far greater value had he chosen to.⁶¹

Somewhat later, in September 1946, the Americans asked the Canadians to assess for them the military information disclosed as a result of the Gouzenko case. In response, G.J. Mackenzie, president of the National Research Council, came up with a detailed reply. With regard to atomic energy, nothing was disclosed beyond what was already published in the famous Smyth Report issued by the U.S. government on August 12, 1945, and entitled “Atomic Energy for Military Purposes.” Furthermore, noted Mackenzie, “It is possible that a minute quantity of plutonium may have been obtained, but we have no definite knowledge. There has never been at any time any information about the bomb in Canada, and no information could possibly have been obtained from this country.”⁶²

Alan Nunn May was sentenced on May 1, 1946, to ten years’ hard labor. Had he given evidence to MI5 on other Soviet agents, either in Canada or Great Britain, his sentence would probably have been lighter. But May, like Raymond Boyer, had acted out of political conviction, which he presumably held on to.

May was released from prison in 1952, after six years. During his incarceration, his scientific colleagues continued their association with him and saw to it that his research work was published. After his release, May returned to Cambridge and married Hilde Broda, a young doctor. He was blacklisted from university faculties, but he apparently was able to catch up on the field of theoretical physics and to conduct research in a private scientific laboratory. Form 1961 to 1978, he worked as a researcher in solid-state physics in Ghana, where his wife started a new career in medicine. May then moved with his family back to Cambridge, where he lived a very private life. He died in 2003.

Shortly before his death, May taped an extraordinary confession, which a family member relayed to the British press.⁶³ He had never spoken out about his spying before and evidently wanted to set the record straight. He revealed that, in 1942, while conducting his military- related research, he had received a U.S. report stating that the Nazis were about to produce radioactive “dirty bombs” (which turned out to be false). Worried about the consequences for Britain's ally, the Soviet Union, which was under heavy attack by the Nazis, he decided to warn the Soviets through his contacts in the British Communist Party. Henceforth, he was considered a Soviet recruit and was later approached for information on the atomic bomb while he was in Canada. In his words, “It seemed to me that [the Soviets] ought to be informed, so I decided to provide information.”

A simple enough decision, but a fatal one. May's spying did more than ruin his promising career. It contributed to the deepening rift between the Soviets and the West and to the defeat of the movement to internationalize control of atomic secrets. Had it not been for him, the only atomic scientist among the GRU recruits in Canada, the Gouzenko case might never have caused the sensation it did.

With May's sentencing, and the conviction of Kathleen Willsher, who had been in British employ in Ottawa, the formal involvement of the British in the Gouzenko case was pretty much over. But that did not stop MI5 and MI6 from closely following the hearings and trials in Canada. New information and important revelations continued to flow from the testimony by Gouzenko, the defendants, and other witnesses. And there was still the question of the spy Gouzenko had said was in the British secret service. This issue had been shelved at MI5 and MI6 when all the attention turned to Alan Nunn May and the arrests in Canada. But it would eventually resurface.