Chapter 9
“ELLI,” PHILBY, AND THE DEATH OF A DIPLOMAT

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

Friedrich Nietzsche

While the Americans back in the autumn of 1945 had seized on Gouzenko's references to a spy in the State Department, no one at MI5 or MI6 had shown much interest in what he had to say about a possible mole in their midst, code-named “Elli.” It would be almost twenty years before the British Services would launch an exhaustive investigation to discover who Elli was, an investigation that not only proved fruitless, but also did a great deal of damage to the reputation and morale of MI5 and MI6.

Gouzenko's information about “Elli” was first conveyed during his interview with MI5's Roger Hollis (with the RCMP present), who visited Gouzenko shortly after the defection. According to the report from the British Security Coordination, written in mid- September 1945, presumably after Hollis's visit,

Corby states that while he was in the Central Code Section [in Moscow] in 1942 or 1943, he heard about a Soviet agent in England, allegedly a member of the British Intelligence Service. This agent, who was of Russian descent, had reported that the British had a very important agent of their own in the Soviet Union, who was apparently being run by someone in Moscow. The latter refused to disclose his agent's identity even to his headquarters in London. When this message arrived it was received by a Lt. Col. Polakova who, in view of its importance, immediately got in touch with Stalin himself by telephone.¹

This was a potentially explosive revelation. Gouzenko claimed that a member of the British Intelligence Service (MI6) was secretly working for the Soviets. Moreover, this mole had informed his handlers about an agent in the Soviet Union who was being run by someone from British Intelligence in Moscow. Why did Roger Hollis seem to treat these allegations so lightly? When he heard the information about Elli, Hollis was concentrating on catching British atomic spy Alan Nunn May. The May case was MI5's most urgent priority, and Hollis devoted all his time and energy to it. And, according to MI5 officer Peter Wright, author of the bestselling book Spycatcher, Hollis doubted that Elli really existed: “Hollis judged Gouzenko to be confused about the structure of British Intelligence. Gouzenko was wrong, and the matter was buried. This was a mistaken judgment.”²

Nonetheless, Hollis duly reported Gouzenko's allegations about Elli, which was why they appeared in the bsc report, passed to MI5 and MI6 as well as to the RCMP. He also had a second meeting with Gouzenko in November 1945, of which there is no declassified record beyond its having taken place, and suggested having Gouzenko brought to England for questioning. One of MI5's leading experts on communism, Captain Guy Liddell, looked into the Elli matter and sent a telegram to Ottawa regarding a possible identification that proved negative.³ But, as with Hollis, Liddell's main preoccupation was Nunn May.

Gouzenko elaborated on the mysterious Elli in an interview with the RCMP in late October 1945. According to handwritten notes summarizing the interview, Gouzenko said it was “possible he or she is identical with the agent with a Russian background who Kulakoff [Kulakov, Gouzenko's successor, who had recently come from Moscow] spoke [of] – there could be 2 agents concerned in this matter. Corby [Gouzenko] handled telegrams submitted by Elli . . . Elli could not give the name of the [British] agent in Moscow because of security reasons. Elli [was] already working as an agent when Corby took up his duties in Moscow in May 1942 and was still working when Kulakoff arrived in Canada in May 1945. Kulakov said agent with a Russian connection held a high position. Corby from decoding messages said Elli had access to exclusive info.”⁴

There was, of course, at least one Soviet agent in British intelligence at this time, Kim Philby. Could this have been the individual Gouzenko was referring to? Probably not. Philby worked for the NKVD, not for the GRU, where Gouzenko was employed. It would be highly unusual for an NKVD message to be channeled to the GRU, even during wartime when the two agencies were often gathering the same types of information. Also, Gouzenko said that the agent in question was of Russian descent or background, which did not describe Philby.⁵ Nonetheless, although Philby knew that Gouzenko worked for the GRU, it did not stop him from worrying that Gouzenko was referring to him. Indeed, he was so agitated by Gouzenko's defection that his NKVD handler, as we have seen, had to “calm him down.”⁶

In speaking to Senator Jenner's subcommittee in January 1954, Gouzenko broached the subject of the British spy again. (The two-word name of the agency to which Gouzenko said Elli belonged is unfortunately blacked out in the released testimony.) Gouzenko explained, “I thought it would be of interest to the American authorities because I understand that sometimes they do their work in cooperation with the British authorities.”

Jay Sourwine, the subcommittee's counsel, was snappily dismissive:

Q: Was he in connection with the United States? Was he in a place to dispose of United States secrets? What is the United States connection with him?

A: Like I said in my previous statements, I thought in dealing with your particular case you would be in a better position to evaluate the importance or non-importance of that matter because you knew better than I if there is any connection whatever.

Q: Can you identify this agent?

A: It was by cover name, and anyway I gave all this information to the Royal Commission and I believe it was probably passed over to the FBI.

Q: Have you any reason to believe the Royal Commission has not made that available to the United States?

A: No, I have not. On the contrary, I think it is in the files of the FBI.

Q: What is the purpose in telling us, then?⁷

This was a rather curious reaction. Sourwine could not have been ignorant of the fact that two important British spies, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, had fled to Moscow in 1951, and Philby, who was close to both of them, was under a cloud of suspicion. By 1954 it was well known in the U.S. government that all three had been in a position to compromise American secrets. Burgess had been employed at the Foreign Office and served as first secretary to the embassy in Washington, D.C., before he defected. Maclean had been a diplomat in Washington (with access to information that even Congress did not know) from 1944 to 1948. Before leaving Washington he had been head of the American Department of the Foreign Office. And Philby had been Britain's intelligence liaison officer in Washington from 1949 to 1951. Given the close alliance between the governments of Britain and the United States and the cooperative arrangements between their security services, a Soviet spy in Britain was of potentially enormous importance for the Americans.

This of course must have been Gouzenko's reasoning when he mentioned Elli to the subcommittee. He did not realize that SISS was not involved in the realities of counterespionage; its overriding domestic political agenda focused entirely on finding communists in the United States and exposing potential ones. Even the FBI, which was responsible for counterespionage and had received Gouzenko's information about Elli several years before, had not given it much attention. This, the FBI seems to have reasoned, was Britain's problem.

Speaking to the Jenner subcommittee, Gouzenko claimed he had written three pages about Elli sometime earlier, but he did not say for whom. Although the cover name was a female one, Gouzenko said, it might have been a man. He went on, “There was identification, a further clue . . . this particular one [referring to Elli] . . . had a Russian background. This may mean that he was on a commission in Moscow previously or maybe it could be that some of his relations had a Russian background, or maybe he was engaged previously on Russian questions. But from the telegram it was clear, and I also described in the detail the circumstances under which this telegram came to my attention.”⁸

It was not until 1963, the year Kim Philby defected to Moscow, that the issue of Elli and a possible British mole aroused the interest of the British security and intelligence services. Philby, who had retired from MI6 soon after Burgess and Maclean disappeared and was working in Beirut, had long been assumed to have been a spy, but no one could prove it. His defection was prompted by an interview with an MI6 officer who accused him of spying. The fact that Philby's first comment when he saw the officer at his door was “I rather thought it would be you” led members of MI5 and MI6 to assume he had been warned about the visit ahead of time and that the warning must have come from yet another spy in one of their agencies. As a result, a joint MI5–MI6 committee called Fluency was formed in 1964 to investigate penetrations of British intelligence. It was chaired by Peter Wright, who later would describe the mole hunt in Spycatcher.⁹

The Fluency Committee soon turned to Gouzenko's allegations about Elli. But by this time the story had inexplicably changed. Instead of Elli being a spy in British intelligence, MI6, Wright saw information suggesting Gouzenko said that Elli was a spy in “five of mi,” which he later changed to MI5. Wright contacted the RCMP to request an interview with Gouzenko, but was told that this was not a good idea. The RCMP claimed that Gouzenko was an alcoholic (which was not true) and was always after money (which was). An interview, the RCMP said, would make these problems worse and inevitably be leaked to the press by Gouzenko.¹⁰

Wright says he then asked the RCMP for notes of its debriefing of Gouzenko, only to be told they had been destroyed.¹¹ But the notes, quoted above, were in the records of the RCMP. Was the RCMP being deliberately uncooperative, or did Wright not press very hard? If Wright had seen the notes of Gouzenko's RCMP debriefing he would have known that Gouzenko made no mention of MI5 to the RCMP. Moreover, Gouzenko's statements confirmed that Elli was from MI6 because Elli was privy to information about a British secret agent in Moscow. MI5, a counterintelligence agency, did not recruit agents in the Soviet Union, as MI6 was designated to do.

It also appears that the Fluency Committee did not consult the bsc report of September 1945, which quotes Gouzenko as referring to an agent in British Intelligence. Perhaps they did but were still in doubt about which agency Gouzenko was referring to. The committee decided to interview Peter Dwyer, who, it will be recalled, was one of the authors of the bsc report and had been sending messages to MI6 headquarters from Ottawa after the defection outlining Gouzenko's information. Dwyer had returned to Washington as MI6 liaison there, but in late 1949 relinquished his post (to none other than Philby) and moved to Ottawa to work on security matters for the Canadian government. At some point during the Fluency investigation, Maurice Oldfield, Philby's replacement in MI6, appeared on Dwyer's doorstep in Ottawa with the rest of the “mole-hunters” and interviewed Dwyer for two days. The interviews, which left Dwyer “exhausted and irritated with security intelligence and its bottomless well of suspicion,” apparently yielded no firm answers to the question of who Elli was.¹²

With Wright insisting that Elli was from MI5, the suspicions in Britain fell on Roger Hollis, director of MI5 since 1956. Hollis's accusers apparently did not know that Gouzenko had described Elli initially as being of Russian descent or having some connection with Russia, which would have ruled out not only Hollis but also most others in MI5. By the time he retired in 1965, Hollis had faced several GRUeling interrogations, none of which exonerated him. Even Hollis's former colleague, Sir Dick White, who became head of MI6 when Hollis succeeded him at MI5, considered it entirely possible that Hollis was Elli. When he paid a visit to J. Edgar Hoover in 1966, White felt compelled to tell the FBI chief that “various allegations have been made against Roger Hollis and an investigation is under way.”¹³

The FBI's Robert Lamphere wrote in his memoirs that he also thought Hollis was a spy and assumed that Hollis had tipped the Soviets off about the American success in deciphering their coded messages (the Venona project): “To me, there now remains little doubt that it was Hollis who provided the earliest information to the KGB that the FBI was reading their 1944–45 cables. Philby probably added to that knowledge after his arrival in the United States, but the prime culprit in this affair was Hollis.” Significantly, Lamphere based his assumptions partly on what he thought Gouzenko had said, that “he told his interviewers that there was a top Russian spy inside MI-5.”¹⁴

Nonetheless, not everyone agreed with this view. The identity, or even existence, of Elli remained a subject of deep controversy in MI5. It hung over the service like a black cloud. Fluency ceased its work after Hollis retired, but in the autumn of 1972, right around the time that Hollis died, the Elli investigation was reopened. MI5 asked again to interview Gouzenko, and this time the RCMP not only acquiesced, it also provided MI5's interviewer, Patrick Stewart, with the notes of the initial debriefing of Gouzenko. Stewart, accompanied by several Mounties, met Gouzenko at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. He showed Gouzenko a copy of the bsc report and the notes from his interview with the RCMP shortly thereafter, both of which had Gouzenko saying Elli was working in British Intelligence, MI6, not counterintelligence, MI5. Gouzenko went into a fury and threw the papers across the room. He claimed that he had not said what was written in the bsc report, that someone had falsified his statements. As for the notes of the RCMP interview, which were in the handwriting of the translator, Mervyn Black, Gouzenko said they had been forged. He demanded, to no avail, that he be allowed to take the notes home so he could compare them with his copies of Black's handwriting.¹⁵

Why was Gouzenko so upset? He had been dismayed when the MI5 officer who had interviewed him in September 1945 did not seem interested in Elli. Gouzenko had planned to give him more details, but the man left after just a few minutes. For years afterward, Gouzenko wondered why no one had acted on his information and followed up on the Elli case. Apparently, he convinced himself that it was a cover-up and that Elli worked for MI5. Later, when he realized that the MI5 officer who had interviewed him in 1945 was Roger Hollis, and that Hollis was suspected of being a mole, Gouzenko became certain that Hollis had deliberately misrepresented his statements to hide the fact that he was Elli. But the records spoke for themselves. Unless Gouzenko had given the wrong information in his interviews after his defection, Hollis, as a member of MI5, could not have been Elli.¹⁶

Robert Lamphere may have been receptive to the theory that Hollis was Elli because MI5 had so many failures in its counterintelligence efforts against the Soviets. Not only did MI5 overlook Alan Nunn May until Gouzenko defected with proof that he was Soviet agent, the service, as noted earlier, also failed to investigate Klaus Fuchs, who had been working at a top secret nuclear facility in Britain since 1946. FBI officials first suspected Fuchs of espionage on behalf of the NKVD in 1949, when as part of the Venona project they deciphered a 1944 telegram to Moscow from the NKVD in New York. The telegram gave details about the Manhattan Project summarized in a top secret paper written by Fuchs for the Americans. Working with MI6 liaison Peter Dwyer, Lamphere soon concluded, after looking at the background of those who had access to the paper, that Fuchs had passed the information to the Soviets. The FBI reported the discovery to MI5, where it was received with great consternation. In late 1949, MI5's William Skardon, who had interviewed Alan Nunn May three years earlier, questioned Fuchs and got him to confess.

Fuchs was arrested on February 2, 1950, and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.¹⁷

The FBI and MI5 had an additional shock when they learned of the defection of Maclean and Burgess in 1951, made worse because it was clear that Philby was probably a spy as well. It was bad enough to contemplate the secrets that had been compromised by Maclean and Burgess. The implications of Philby's treachery were even graver. Lamphere and his colleagues had shared highly sensitive information with him. Philby had even learned about the top secret Venona project, which was known to only a select group in the American intelligence community. The realization that such information, especially information concerning deciphered Soviet messages, had been passed on to the Soviets was devastating. In Lamphere's words, “I sat at my desk and tried to recollect precisely how much Philby had been told about the FBI's counterintelligence operations, and how much he might have deduced from conversations with Peter Dwyer. . . . What about the techniques we were perfecting, the direction and training of our agents, our relations with the British, the French and the Canadian intelligence services? Philby had been in a position to know so much!”¹⁸ Peter Dwyer must have been equally disturbed when he heard Philby was probably a spy. It meant the Soviets had had access to all the information in the secret messages about the Gouzenko case that he had sent in 1945 and 1946 to MI6 and MI5.

Philby would also have been in a position to inform the Soviets that Fuchs was under suspicion, because he was in Washington in late 1949, at the very time Dwyer and Lamphere were closing in on Fuchs. But, as was the case earlier when he found out that Nunn May was about to be interrogated by British authorities, Philby apparently thought he would risk exposing himself if he passed on the information to Moscow. In fact, he even helped in the Fuchs investigation. According to a Russian biographer of Philby who interviewed him after he defected, “It is possible that Philby's arrival in Washington and his participation in the search for the leak of secret information from Los Alamos [the Manhattan Project] hastened the discovery of Klaus Fuchs. Kim did not clarify the situation during our conversations.”¹⁹

One additional piece of evidence the FBI had added to their case against Fuchs was the fact that his name appeared in Israel Halperin's address book. Although the information from Fuchs was going to the NKVD, not to the GRU, which was alleged to have recruited Halperin, the FBI still considered the address-book entry significant. On October 21, 1949, Hoover sent a letter to the Atomic Energy Commission, apprising the committee of his agency's findings on Fuchs. To reinforce the FBI's case, Hoover mentioned the entry in Halperin's address book and went on to observe, “With respect to Israel Halperin, documents abstracted from the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa, Canada, by Igor Gouzenko, Soviet Code Clerk who defected to the Canadian authorities on September 5, 1945, supported by the testimony of Gouzenko himself, established that Halperin was a member of the Soviet Military Intelligence espionage network operating in Canada during the period 1942–1943.” The charges against Halperin were dismissed, Hoover went on, because the prosecution did not have independent evidence, “a condition precedent to the admissibility of Soviet documents.”²⁰

Hoover was distorting the facts. It was true that the prosecution required “independent evidence” beyond Gouzenko's documents and statements in order to prosecute the Canadian spy suspects. Such evidence consisted mainly of confessions of the suspects or statements implicating them by others, such as Lunan. In Halperin's case, the evidence showed that, while he flirted with communism and the idea of helping out the Soviets, he had refused to furnish written information or convey secrets to Gordon Lunan. Lunan's testimony had confirmed this. In short, not only was there no independent evidence of Halperin's guilt, the Gouzenko documents themselves did not incriminate him.

Despite the fact that Halperin had been cleared by the courts, the FBI considered his address book (which is still classified as secret) as a key piece of evidence against possible spies. It included the names of 163 individuals living in the United States, all of whom the FBI attempted to identify and investigate. Many of these individuals, such as John Blewett, Halperin's roommate at Princeton, were listed in the address book for obviously personal, not political reasons. But that did not deter the FBI. As one historian observed, “It is as if Halperin's address book was a carrier of a virus, infecting all who came in contact with it.”²¹

One of those who would be “infected” by the Halperin address book was Canadian diplomat E. Herbert Norman. Norman had known Halperin ever since they roomed across the hall from each other as undergraduates at the University of Toronto in the early 1930s. Unfortunately for Norman, the Halperin connection was just one of several circumstances that would make him the object of allegations by spy-hunters in Washington. The allegations would turn out to be false, but they haunted him throughout his career and the damage they caused was very real. The Norman case would become a topic of intense controversy in Canada, arousing the passions of both sides in the debate over the West's response to Soviet espionage, just as the Hiss case polarized Americans for years. But Norman's story was more about the McCarthy era in the United States than it was about Canada, because the source of his torment was the FBI and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

Born in 1909 in Japan, where his parents were Canadian Methodist missionaries, Herbert Norman was strongly influenced by his religious upbringing and his family's belief in the importance of public service. Introspective and intellectually curious, Norman was an excellent student who had the makings of a scholar early on. His innate desire to learn was stimulated by his home environment, where he was surrounded by books, and also by numerous trips abroad. By the time he was a young teenager, Norman had visited several countries in Asia and the Middle East. He learned to speak Japanese, which was no small achievement for a young person raised in an English-speaking family.²²

Norman left Japan in 1929 to study at the University of Toronto, where he completed his undergraduate degree four years later. In 1933, Norman went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, for two years of postgraduate studies in history. Like many bright young men of his generation, Norman was attracted to communism at Cambridge. It was a natural reaction to the Great Depression and the rise of fascism, especially for someone who was raised with a strong social conscience. Norman did more than just discuss Marxism as a philosophy in small study groups at Cambridge. He became, by his own acknowledgment, committed to the political ideology of communism, and, judging from a letter he wrote to his brother a few years later, may have actually joined the party in 1934. In Norman's case, however, the activities that party membership entailed amounted to little more than participation in a hunger march and attempts to recruit some Indian students to the party. By all accounts, Norman was on the periphery of the communist movement at Cambridge, not part of the inner group of communists that included Burgess, Maclean, and Philby.²³

After returning to Canada in 1935, Norman briefly joined the communist-dominated Canadian Friends of the Chinese People before leaving for Harvard with his new bride, Irene, to pursue a doctorate degree in Japanese history. At Harvard, where he was supported by a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, he continued to take an academic interest in Marxism and was a member of the left-wing League Against War and Fascism. But his work toward his doctorate, which included courses in both Japanese and Chinese languages, took precedence over all else. Norman was sensitive, earnest, and idealistic, but he was also ambitious.²⁴

In 1939, shortly before he was awarded his doctorate, Norman accepted a position at the Canadian Department of External Affairs. His knowledge of Japan, his wide-ranging intellectual talents, and his diligence made him a valuable asset for the Canadian diplomatic corps. He was posted the next year to Tokyo, where he remained until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. By this time he had grown out of his infatuation with communism, but his political affiliations back in the thirties had nevertheless permanently shaped his identity. Had he been able to foresee the intense anti-communist campaign that would emerge in North America after the war, Norman might have been more circumspect in his activities as a student and more cautious about his relationships with communists and socialists. As he admitted much later, “I talked quite recklessly in those years and in a way I was very carefree and did not weigh my words.” A chance encounter in 1936 with a young Canadian named Pat Walsh, an RCMP undercover agent, would come back to haunt him. Four years later, Walsh denounced him secretly to the RCMP as a communist.²⁵

Norman's doctoral thesis, “Japan's Emergence as a Modern State,” which he defended successfully at Harvard in 1940, became a highly acclaimed book that earned him a reputation as a leading scholar in Japanese history. With the publication of two more books and several articles, Norman came to be regarded as one of the greatest living Western experts on Japanese culture, history, and language. As Norman's biographer pointed out, however, his expertise in Far Eastern affairs and his scholarly reputation would actually become a drawback for him as a diplomat in the post-war years, when anti-intellectuals who were suspicious of Asia specialists came to dominate the political agenda in Washington.²⁶

Most conservative Republicans were so-called Asia-Firsters, who, during World War II, had urged the U.S. government to focus more on the threat posed by Japan in the Pacific. They were critical of what they saw as the State Department's bias toward Europe and its failure to make a stronger commitment to shoring up Nationalist China against the communists. And they blamed the policy failures squarely on the Asia specialists. The big question, from this perspective, became “who lost China” to the communists in 1949. This would be a burning issue in Washington during the early part of the 1950s. The fact that Norman was a Canadian diplomat did not shield him from the American red hunters. As his biographer expressed it, “Expertise in Asian affairs became even criminal, sometimes treasonable, in the eyes of McCarthyites who sought to attribute a failed foreign policy to the misdeeds, misperceptions, wrong-headed analyses and seditiously leftist views of the experts . . . Herbert's academic specialization became in itself ‘evidence’ of possible wrong-doing when linked with his many professional associations, personal and institutional, that quite naturally followed from expertise in the field.”²⁷

In terms of guilt by association, Norman appeared highly culpable. Not only had he roomed across the hall from Halperin at the University of Toronto, he had later been friendly with him at Harvard, where both were in a Marxist-oriented study group. Furthermore, Norman's thesis had been published by the Institute of Pacific Relations (ipr), a respected think tank in New York that attracted the most prestigious scholars and policy experts on the Far East. Norman had been a research associate at the ipr for a year, and he continued his contacts there well after he received his doctorate, attending ipr conferences and contributing to its publications. This was hardly surprising, given Norman's area of expertise. The problem for Norman was that the institute was widely considered to be a communist front organization. His association with the ipr was soon to become a black mark on his career, especially when in 1951–52 Senator McCarran's SISS held eighteen months of hearings into possible communist subversion by the institute.

After working in Ottawa during the war years, Norman returned to Japan late in the summer of 1945 as head of the Canadian Liaison Mission in Tokyo. As such, he was seconded to the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps, which was attached to the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur. Norman's responsibility was to oversee the interrogation of Japanese political prisoners held during the war and to supervise their release from prison. In the process, Norman attracted the attention of the head of American counterintelligence in Japan, Major General Charles Willoughby, a rabid anti-communist.

On the orders of Willoughby's predecessor, General Elliot Thorpe, Norman and a young State Department officer named John Emmerson had organized the release of a group of political prisoners that included two communists. They had been in prison for eighteen years. When he heard they were to be released, Willoughby was outraged. He launched an investigation of Norman and Emmerson as part of his campaign against “leftists and fellow-travelers.” Willoughby soon came to view Norman as a key figure in the group of Far East experts who influenced policy during the Occupation and who opposed Willoughby's advocacy of a so-called soft peace, which gave free rein to the right-wing elements that had dominated Japan before World War II. What made Norman especially suspect in Willoughby's eyes was his association with the ipr and the American Asian experts connected with it. Willoughby, whose imagination seemingly knew no bounds, would eventually reach the conclusion that Norman was an espionage agent.²⁸

Despite Willoughby's suspicions, others at the American Supreme Command thought exceedingly well of Norman. General Thorpe wrote a letter to Prime Minister King in praise of him: “I should like to express to you my personal appreciation of Dr. Norman's services. His profound knowledge of Japan, his brilliant intellectual attainments and his willingness to give of his utmost to our work has made his contribution to the success of the Occupation one of great value. During his tour of duty with us, Dr. Norman has won the respect and admiration of all who have been associated with him.”²⁹

After returning home in January 1946, Norman served briefly as first secretary of the Canadian legation in Washington. He then went back to Japan in the summer of 1946 again as head of Canada's liaison mission to General Douglas MacArthur's Supreme Command, remaining this time until 1950. MacArthur had a great deal of discretion in making policy decisions about post-war Japan. Washington had not given the Supreme Command specific instructions on negotiating a peace settlement, or determining the fate of former Japanese officials, and MacArthur apparently sought Norman's advice on numerous occasions. He was impressed by him.³⁰

But Willoughby's secret investigation of Norman and his allegations that he was a communist spy outweighed all the positive evidence of Norman's accomplishments. Eventually it rekindled the FBI's interest in him, which dated back to the autumn of 1942, when Norman had attempted to retrieve the books and papers of a left-wing Japanese economist, Shigeto Tsuru, whom he had known while studying at Harvard. Tsuru had been repatriated to Japan, leaving his library behind in Cambridge, and the FBI had assumed custody of it. According to the FBI report, Norman approached one of its agents in Boston and said that he was acting on behalf of the Canadian government, which had an interest in obtaining Tsuru's collection of books and papers. He reportedly admitted to FBI agents subsequently that the mission was more a personal one. The incident caused the FBI to open a file on Norman, but then they closed it in 1947. ³¹

The FBI file on Norman remained closed until shortly after Norman's name cropped up enigmatically at hearings, held by Senator Millard Tydings in April 1950, to investigate allegations from Senator Joseph McCarthy about disloyalty among State Department employees who were Far East experts. For those on the right of the American political spectrum, the defeat of the Chinese nationalists, compounded by the outbreak of the war in Korea in 1950, was a result of subversion by communists. McCarthy, who brandished the names of over two hundred State Department employees allegedly working for the communists, and Senator Pat McCarran were the most strident adherents of this theory.

It was inevitable that the search for scapegoats would lead to Herbert Norman. General Thorpe, MacArthur's former chief of intelligence, who had been so complimentary about Norman, was called as a witness at the Tydings hearings. One of the senators asked Thorpe whether he had ever been associated with a “man named E. Herbert Norman” in preparing an intelligence report dealing with Asia. Thorpe cautiously responded that he knew Norman, but could not remember the report, which the senator said was prepared for General Willoughby.³²

The significance of Norman being mentioned at the hearings was not lost on his colleagues. His name was introduced in a context that questioned the loyalty of those involved in Far East policy, and at least one witness to the proceedings drew the conclusion that the question about Norman “had indicated a desire to establish a link with the Canadian espionage enquiry.” External Affairs hurriedly sent a cable to Norman in Tokyo informing him about the testimony and warning him not to comment publicly about it. Norman replied that he was at a loss as to why his name would have been brought up at the hearings.³³

A month later, in May 1950, the FBI reactivated Norman's file, presumably because he was mentioned during Thorpe's SISS testimony. In the process, FBI agents took another look at Halperin's address book. They immediately noticed that it contained several references to Norman. In early September, the FBI contacted the RCMP, mentioned the address book, as well as the 1942 encounter between Norman and the FBI when Norman tried to obtain the contents of Tsuru's library, and asked the RCMP for their information on Herbert Norman. The news about Halperin's address book was an embarrassment for the RCMP, as it admitted sometime later: “We cannot feel too satisfied over the fact that Norman's name was not picked out of the Halperin notebook earlier. . . . The only thing that can be said in explaining the failure to process the Halperin diary names sooner is the bulk involved. . . . The Halperin notebook was one of the many Royal Commission exhibits, which totaled 601 and filled 12 filing drawers. Index-carding of all the individuals mentioned was not finally completed until November 1951.”³⁴

The RCMP hastily put together a report, dated October 17, 1950, and sent it off to the FBI.³⁵ It would seal Norman's fate, because it gave the FBI information that could be used to suggest he was a Soviet spy. In addition to the address book, the RCMP referred to three other pieces of evidence that raised questions about Norman's loyalty. First, that Norman's name had also appeared in the address book of Frank Park, a suspected member of the Canadian Communist Party, the LPP, and a well-known figure in Ottawa. Second, that one of the RCMP's undercover agents in Toronto (Pat Walsh) had reported in February 1940 that a Professor Herbert Norman, who had taught at McMaster University in Canada, was a member of the Communist Party. (It was noted, however, that Norman had never been a member of the faculty at McMaster.)

The third piece of evidence, which would be cited again and again to demonstrate Norman's guilt, was Gouzenko's testimony to the Canadian Royal Commission back in 1946 about a man named Norman. In the full record of the testimony before the commission, which remained classified until 1982, Gouzenko had actually made two references to a “Norman,” but in both cases he was talking about a man named Norman Freed, who lived in Toronto and was possibly working for the NKVD in 1944. Gouzenko recalled that the GRU in Moscow had asked Zabotin if he knew a man named Norman. Zabotin surmised that the person in question was Freed, who was running in municipal elections in Toronto and had been photographed for a Russian newspaper in Canada. Aware that Freed might be working for NKVD rezident Pavlov, Zabotin made inquiries. According to Gouzenko, Pavlov responded, “Don't touch Norman Freed. We work with him.” Zabotin then sent a telegram to Moscow GRU headquarters saying, “The Norman about whom you ask we think is Norman Freed and Neighbors [NKVD] are busy with him.”³⁶

The RCMP report summarized Gouzenko's statements without making it clear that Pavlov and Zabotin were talking about Norman Freed. The RCMP concluded, “It would appear that NORMAN is the surname of a person in whom the Russian Intelligence Service had an interest.” In a subsequent interview with the RCMP, Norman, who was unaware that Gouzenko's testimony had implicated him, openly admitted that he had known both Zabotin and Pavlov. They were all diplomats in Ottawa during the war and attended the same official gatherings and private parties, along with other dignitaries. Norman recalled getting into an argument with Pavlov concerning Russia's views of the two world wars. Asked about Norman many years later, Pavlov remembered him well, adding that Norman had even given him a copy of a paper he had written on Japanese Samurai. “But,” Pavlov added, “I was not recruiting him, and as far as I know he had never been a Soviet agent.”³⁷

Incredibly, the flimsy and largely false evidence in the RCMP report – two address books containing Norman's name, a ten-year-old accusation that Norman (erroneously a “professor” at McMaster University) was a communist in 1936, and a misquoted piece of testimony from Gouzenko – resulted in Norman's immediate recall from Tokyo. Norman faced an awkward interview in Ottawa on October 24, 1950, with Norman Robertson and George Glazebrook, who informed him gravely that Halperin's notebook contained seven different entries with references to him. Norman assured them that he knew Halperin only as a former college friend. He also “categorically” denied that he had ever been a member of the Communist Party. His active interest in Marxism and his contacts with communists, he said, had been limited to the period of his years as an undergraduate student. When Glazebrook asked Norman why he had failed to inform the Department of External Affairs of his acquaintance with Halperin when the latter was publicly implicated in the Gouzenko spy case, Norman responded that he had worried about this problem a great deal, but decided that he himself should not raise the issue. Norman offered to resign from External Affairs, but he was placed on leave instead.³⁸

On December 1, T.M. Guernsey of the RCMP sent a follow-up report to the FBI with the final conclusions of its “intensive investigation” of Norman, which included the interview with him.³⁹ It should have superseded the earlier RCMP report, because it was more thorough and based on a better understanding of the facts. And it exonerated Norman on several key points. Specifically, when Norman asked the FBI for the contents of Tsuru's library, he was not lying when he said he was representing the interests of the Canadian government: “It has been confirmed that NORMAN was, at the time, on special work for the Canadian Government which was of interest also to the United States authorities. The library of Tsuru's would have been a valuable asset for this specific task.” Yes, as Norman admitted, his interest in the library was twofold, both for his diplomatic and his scholarly work. But the collection of books that interested him most was written in Japanese and mainly concerned with Japanese history, not Marxist propaganda.

As for Norman's name appearing in Halperin's address book, the RCMP went to great lengths to show that Norman had no idea that Halperin was a communist and was taken by surprise when he learned of Halperin's involvement in the espionage case. Norman and Halperin had few common interests, the report said, and were never close friends: “We feel satisfied that Norman was quite innocent of Halperin's covert political and espionage activity.” The appearance of Norman's name in Frank Park's address book was also explained in Norman's favor. Questioned about Park, Norman claimed that he knew little about him and his political ideology. The RCMP believed him: “We are of the opinion that NORMAN is sincere in the explanation of his relationship with Park.”

The RCMP was still of the view that the “Norman” Gouzenko had discussed in his Royal Commission testimony was Herbert Norman. But its considered opinion was that the Russians knew very little about him and had merely intended to cultivate him as a potential source of information rather than engage him in espionage. Finally, the allegation against Norman that had been made by an RCMP undercover agent in 1940 was now entirely discounted: “The information given is one of either mistaken identity or unfounded rumour by an unidentified sub-source. Of the numerous points supplied at the time, the majority have been absolutely determined to be in error. . . . The source does not recall the matter. We have therefore deleted the reference insofar as NORMAN is concerned.”

In sum, the RCMP concluded, “Our investigation, while centered on the information previously supplied you, extended as it progressed. However, there has been no evidence uncovered which would indicate disloyalty on the part of NORMAN. The worst possible conclusion we can arrive at is the very apparent naïveté in his relationship with his fellow man.” As a result, the RCMP was giving Norman a security clearance.

It is possible that the RCMP wrote this report reluctantly, following the advice of the Department of External Affairs. Nonetheless, it was passed on to FBI Ottawa liaison Glen Bethel who forwarded Hoover the five-page, top secret RCMP memorandum exonerating Norman on December 7, 1950. In his covering letter, Bethel observed, “It will be noted that the RCMP have carefully examined all the information that is on record pertaining to Norman.”⁴⁰ Significantly, Bethel also stressed to Hoover that the RCMP requested the FBI not disseminate the report outside the bureau, a stipulation that was apparently omitted on the earlier report.

But Hoover had already sent the first, highly damaging RCMP report to the U.S. Department of the Army. In early November, the report reached Intelligence Headquarters in the U.S. Far East Command in Japan, and Norman's nemesis, General Willoughby, soon got a hold of it. Willoughby used the report, along with FBI materials, to prepare a brief on Norman. He also took the RCMP report with him to Washington when he testified before SISS hearings on the ipr in August 1951 and handed it over to the subcommittee. Because the second RCMP report on Norman, which exonerated him, carried the caveat that it should not be distributed outside the FBI, Hoover never released it to the Department of the Army. Instead, he let the preliminary report stand.⁴¹

Hoover knew full well that the preliminary RCMP report on Norman would reach the hands of SISS investigators if he sent it to the Department of the Army. In the interests of setting the record straight, he could have requested permission from Canadian authorities to pass on the more accurate second report on Norman to the Department of the Army, so that it would also reach SISS. But he chose not to, apparently because he was not persuaded by the RCMP report that Norman was innocent. Hoover wanted to avoid any suspicion that his agency was involved in SISS investigations, so the FBI would not have passed on the RCMP report directly to SISS. But in fact the FBI and McCarran's subcommittee had established a secret liaison. According to McCarran's biographer: “The FBI would act as a kind of private detective agency for SISS, investigating suspects and furnishing leaks, while the committee would launder information for the bureau, publicly pillorying suspected subversives against whom a court case could not be made.”⁴²

Willoughby himself declined to comment on Norman when he testified to SISS, apparently because it would be a breach of diplomacy.But some days later, a Professor Karl Wittfogel appeared before the subcommittee with new allegations. Wittfogel was a German-born professor and an expert on China, who joined the Communist Party in 1920 and fled Germany when the Nazis came to power. At Columbia University he continued his communist activities and reportedly taught young students who were part of an underground “cell.” Wittfogel “saw the light,” however, and when he renounced communism he became the darling of the anticommunists. ⁴³

Wittfogel testified that in 1938 Norman was a member of a communist study group organized by a graduate student at Columbia University named Moses Finkelstein. The testimony had obvious inaccuracies. Wittfogel recalled that Norman was studying at the time in the Japanese Department at Columbia University, when in fact Norman was finishing up a Harvard Ph.D. Second, and more important, both Norman and Finkelstein denied ever having met one another. But, as with other witnesses, once something was said in front of SISS, it stuck.⁴⁴

Meanwhile, the FBI was vigorously pursuing its own investigation of Norman, which included an intensive search for a paper he had allegedly presented in 1937 at one of Tsuru's informal Harvard study groups. According to the voluminous FBI file on Herbert Norman, agents spent days at libraries during the latter part of 1950 and early 1951, fruitlessly trying to find a copy of “American Imperialism,” by Herbert Norman.⁴⁵ Given the title, they reasoned, it would provide documentary evidence of Norman's subversive views. It seems they did not realize that Norman's paper would not reach libraries unless it was published.

Norman's name surfaced once more in the SISS hearings on the ipr. It appeared that in 1936, Norman had been on the provisional organization committee of the pro-communist Canadian Friends of the Chinese People. The RCMP, when it heard, was worried: “While Norman denied all the serious implications [sic] directed against him, it would seem there are far too many from various sources to entirely discount them all.” The RCMP called him in for several interviews in early 1952. Asked if he had ever been a member of the Communist Party, Norman hedged: “In my Cambridge time I came close to it and if I had stayed there another year I might have.” He also admitted that he had a “slight connection” with the League Against War and Fascism in 1936 and that he knew it was a communist organization. In a separate interview, Norman told George Glazebrook, who was responsible for security for External Affairs, that he could accurately have been described as a communist during his second year at Cambridge.⁴⁶

Glazebrook and External Affairs chief Lester Pearson acknowledged that Norman had been vague when he was first questioned about his involvement with communism as a student, but they were not prepared to dismiss him from his foreign-service post simply because of this “blemish” on his past. Interestingly, they bolstered their argument by citing the British example. Glazebrook noted in a memorandum to the RCMP that the British “do not regard communism in a Cambridge undergraduate as necessarily a continuing risk.” Despite the fact that Nunn May, Burgess, Maclean, and Philby had all been communists at Cambridge, neither the British nor the Canadians were prepared to assume that this was an automatic stepping stone to espionage. Shortly thereafter, Pearson told the RCMP that the Department of External Affairs had examined the evidence and reached the conclusion that, although Norman was a believer in the communist doctrine during his time at Cambridge, “he had later changed his opinion” and was “a loyal Canadian and an efficient and trustworthy member of the Department.”⁴⁷

Pearson, to his credit, had formed his own conclusion, based on the evidence available to him, that Norman was a devoted and talented Canadian diplomat, not a spy. But given the mood of Canada's southern neighbor, Pearson's simple decision was a courageous act. Indeed Pearson realized additional allegations against Norman could potentially emerge. The naming of names in Washington had become a frenzy, and Canadians, Pearson and Norman in particular, were on SISS's “hit list.” In June 1953, a reluctant Pearson took the unusual step of appointing Herbert Norman as Canadian High Commissioner to New Zealand, where he would be safely out of the way, but with his diplomatic skills vastly underutilized. For the next three years, things were relatively quiet as far as questions about Norman's loyalty were concerned – so quiet that Pearson felt comfortable moving Norman to a more prominent post.

In August 1956, Norman arrived in Cairo as Canadian ambassador to Egypt, just as the Suez crisis was heating up. He threw himself into his new responsibilities, working fourteen-hour days and sending “brilliant” analytical dispatches back to Canada. By October, the Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal was threatening to boil over into war, with Britain, France, and Israel attacking Egypt. Lester Pearson resolved the crisis by getting all sides to agree to allow a un peacekeeping force into the Sinai. Norman was a key player in this remarkable enterprise, managing to persuade President Nasser of Egypt to accept Canadians as part of the un forces on Egyptian soil, despite their association with the British Commonwealth. The Canadian initiative marked the beginning of un peacekeeping efforts for decades to come and earned Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957. In awarding him this honor, the Nobel Committee said he had “saved the world.” Herbert Norman deserved much of the credit.⁴⁸

Whatever Norman's accomplishments, SISS, still chaired by Senator Jenner with counsel Robert Morris running the show, had its own agenda. Senator McCarran had died in late 1954 (being replaced on SISS by Senator James Eastland) and McCarthy had been censured by the Senate. But the McCarthy era was not yet over. As Norman's biographer observed, “Success for peace in the Middle East meant nothing in Cold War Washington. Even as Norman was meeting with Nasser, Senate McCarthyites were reintroducing his name into SISS proceedings. They knew nothing of his efforts in Egypt, nor would they have cared if they had known. He was a one-dimensional man in Washington – he was a communist.”⁴⁹

On March 12, 1957, John Emmerson, the State Department official who had worked with Norman for several months in Japan after the war, was called to testify before SISS. Emmerson and his wife had recently spent an evening with the Normans in Beirut, where Emmerson was stationed. Ever since Emmerson and Norman had carried out General MacArthur's orders to free Japanese prisoners of war, arousing the ire of General Willoughby, Emmerson had been under a shadow, his career at the State Department threatened by accusations that he was Red. In 1952, he had been subjected to a State Department “Loyalty Board” hearing and, perhaps unaware of Norman's own troubles on the communist issue, had requested (and received) from Norman an affidavit in his support.⁵⁰

Emmerson's testimony was favorable to Norman, in that he stated repeatedly that he saw no evidence that Norman was a communist. Although he had testified in executive session, which was secret, the subcommittee released his testimony to the press two days later. This might have been seen as an exoneration of Norman, except that SISS counsel Morris introduced into the testimony Karl Wittfogel's six-year-old allegations about Norman. More importantly, Morris included in the release the “security report” on Norman produced under Willoughby's direction some years back, which contained the RCMP allegations. The Canadians raised a storm of protests, pointing out that the allegations were based on old charges that had been refuted (which was true), but SISS was not to be dissuaded from its campaign against Norman.

Emmerson, who on March 12 had emphasized more than once that he had no doubt about Norman's loyalty, was criticized by a State Department security officer for being “less than forthcoming” in his testimony before the subcommittee.⁵¹ With his career at the State Department on the line, Emmerson requested another appearance before the subcommittee to provide further details about Norman. At a second executive session, on March 21, Emmerson came up with something that SISS could use to inflict further damage. His statement was nuanced and subtle, but once again raised doubts about Norman's political convictions after he had become a diplomat:

I can recall one conversation, which for some reason has stuck in my mind, which I had in the meantime forgotten. We were interviewing a Japanese, and – I cannot remember his name – I believe he was a Socialist . . . he was giving us a history of the Japanese Socialist movement and its various factions and the personalities involved. And I recall at one point in the conversation that Mr. Norman made some statement which appeared to agree with the general thesis which this man was proposing . . . I know that it struck me, because it never occurred to me, in any interview with a member of any political party, to express any view whatsoever concerning what he was saying.⁵²

SISS released Emmerson's testimony publicly on March 28, 1957. Norman apparently did not see either of Emmerson's statements before the committee. But he read enough in the press to know that what was said by his friend and former colleague, whom he himself had defended in 1952, did not bode well.

Making the situation even more difficult for Norman to endure was the fact that, on March 26–27 his old friend Shigeto Tsuru, at the time a visiting professor at Harvard, was called to testify before SISS. Although Tsuru swore he had never been a member of the Communist Party, he did confess to having associated with a large number of people with leftist tendencies during his student days in the United States. Among them was Herbert Norman. Tsuru told Senate investigators that Norman was part of a Marxist study group at Harvard that met several times in the spring of 1937. Tsuru's testimony received little attention in the United States, but it made the headlines in Japan and it is quite likely that Norman heard about it.⁵³

The pressure became too intense for Norman. After being hounded for seven years about his youthful involvement with communism in the 1930s, and facing the prospect of more inquisitions, he finally gave up. On the warm and sunny morning of April 4, 1957, Norman got up early, said good-bye to his wife, and walked from his Cairo residence to a tall building down the street that looked over the Nile. He took the elevator to the top floor, then climbed the stairway to the roof terrace. After removing his coat, his glasses, and his watch, Norman flung himself off the terrace to his death.⁵⁴

The public uproar in Canada following Norman's suicide was evidence of the deep gulf that now divided the Canadians and Americans on the issue of communist subversion. Cries of indignation erupted in the House of Commons and in the Canadian press over the slandering of Norman by the American witch-hunters. Students at the University of Toronto burned effigies of McCarthy, Eastland, and Morris, and Canada's ambassador to Washington handed the State Department a formal note of protest, stating that his government was reexamining its procedures for exchange of security data with the United States. But the red hunters in Washington were unrepentant. On April 11, senators Eastland and Jenner issued a statement saying they had cleared the subcommittee's release of information about Norman with the State Department and that the FBI had corroborated the accuracy of the release. Hoover, who always wanted the FBI to remain in the background, was unhappy: “This injection of the F.B.I. is most undesirable,” he observed to his subordinates.⁵⁵

Not all Canadians were outraged. Pat Walsh, the former RCMP undercover agent whose muddled and later discredited denunciation of Norman in 1940 had helped persuade the FBI that he was a spy, was one Canadian who approved of the American attacks on Norman. On April 6, he wrote a long congratulatory letter to Robert Morris, who, as it turned out, was a friend. Walsh was secretary-treasurer (and perhaps the only member) of a so-called Pan-Canadian Anti-Communist Secretariat. “Needless to say,” Walsh stressed to Morris, “I was not swept away by the emotionalism and outbursts of indignation created by well-meaning but ill-informed persons in high places. I only too vividly recalled the parallel case of Harry Dexter White (an ipr friend of Norman's incidentally) and the almost unanimous defense of Alger Hiss in the early days. . . .” Walsh was wrong about White. He and Norman had never met. And much of the evidence against Norman that he went on to discuss was a distorted rehash of what had already come out publicly. But his words must have been reassuring to Morris nonetheless: “We believe that your subcommittee and the House Un-American Activities Committee has the right to denounce any Canadian Communist whose activities constitute a threat to the internal security of the USA. We are of the opinion that the Canadian public will eventually be grateful to the USA anti-subversive committee.”⁵⁶

Not surprisingly, SISS also received strong support from the right-wing press in America. In a nationwide radio broadcast on April 7, 1957, conservative journalist George Sokolsky linked Herbert Norman with State Department officials who were responsible for the “failed American policy” in the Far East, including the loss of the Korean War. Some of these same men, he alleged, were then transferred to the Middle East, where they were giving the government equally bad advice on Egypt. “Was it an accident that this transfer took place or are these men deliberately causing the West to lose in its struggle with Soviet Russia? I must regard the suicide of Herbert Norman, the Canadian Ambassador to Egypt, as a frightful act of conscience by one who was engaged in the Far East when permanent historic errors were made there and who was posted in Egypt when permanent historic errors were made there.”⁵⁷

Several weeks later, Robert Morris received a written message about the Norman case from his staff assistant, Bob McManus, who passed on his views as to why Norman had risen to such prominence in the Canadian diplomatic corps. Why, McManus wondered, was Norman protected when, like Soviet spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, “he was doing such blatantly unethical things as he did at Cambridge [Massachusetts] when he tried to take possession of Tsuru's incriminating Communist documents . . . ?” In answer to his own question, McManus said it was because he was part of a team of bright young men – which included Norman Robertson, Lester Pearson, and others – who were “violently anti-American and violently pink.”⁵⁸

Although the FBI was doing its utmost to distance itself from the Norman affair, it closely followed the Canadian reaction to the case. Writing to Hoover, the FBI liaison in Ottawa, Glen Bethel, noted that most Canadians “are pleased to see Canada ‘telling off’ the United States. Canada, with a population one tenth of the United States and a 3,500-mile common border, is affected by the United States in just about every phase of its life, whether it be economic, political, or cultural. Many Canadians, even though the majority are our friends, resent this influence, and this has been increasingly more apparent in recent years as Canada is developing as a more important country in international matters and as a spirit of nationalism and of national pride develops.” Bethel went on to observe, however, that the Conservative Opposition, which would soon be challenging the Liberals in an election, would attack them for having retained Norman in a high position, given the serious charges raised against him.⁵⁹ In other words, despite the efforts of Pearson and his fellow Liberals, the Norman case and the issue of communism would become a political football in Canada, just as it was in the United States.

Lester Pearson had put himself in an awkward situation. His earlier public statements had suggested that Norman had not at any time been a communist, when in fact he had. Also, it soon emerged that much of the “slander” against Norman had emanated originally from the RCMP. Of course Pearson had no way of knowing that the RCMP had passed a report to the FBI, which had in turn disseminated it further. But all of this had occurred under the Liberal government's watch. As for Norman's past, Pearson was forced to respond to the information that was being cited from the RCMP report on Norman. He acknowledged in the House of Commons on April 12 that Norman had “associated with communists in his college years.”⁶⁰

But the charges against Norman in his student days were not, in Pearson's view, the real issue. His own department had already deemed that aspect of Norman's life to be irrelevant. In a letter to the Globe and Mail, Pearson pointed out that the Senate subcommittee's charges against Norman were not only about his former associations as a student, but also included claims that Norman remained a communist and was, as such, disloyal to his government. “This,” Pearson wrote, “remains both the basic injustice in this case and an intolerable and public interference in our affairs by a legislative committee of a foreign country.”⁶¹ Pearson was of course correct, but the problem was he had not made this clear when he first defended Norman publicly in 1951. As the Montreal Gazette pointed out, Pearson's forthright words came too late: “The tragedy is that Mr. Pearson, by giving Dr. Norman this kind of defense in 1951, was not settling the matter; rather, he may have increased the probability that it would again be renewed.”⁶²

In notes written to his family and to the Department of External Affairs before he died, Norman did not say specifically why he decided to take his own life, but he did assert his innocence and express doubts that he would ever be exonerated. Norman had been terribly overworked and was suffering from depression, so there were doubtless several factors behind his suicide. But the timing suggests that, at the very least, the SISS publicity was the last straw.

SISS did not see it that way. An in-house memorandum, probably written by Robert Morris, read, “Just about everybody except Norman is holding us responsible for Norman's death. He never charged us with that. He did not say in his suicide notes, so far as we know, that the Internal Security Subcommittee had anything to do with his suicide. . . . Why should everyone jump to the conclusion that the Internal Security Subcommittee was responsible for the suicide? The Subcommittee has been charged with ‘rehashing old charges.’ Why would a man commit suicide over the rehashing of old charges with respect to which he had been cleared by his government six years earlier, and after the reaffirmation of that government's confidence in him?”⁶³

The unremorseful and defensive tone of this note is hardly surprising. Five years earlier, Senator McCarran had learned of the suicide of Abraham Feller, general counsel at the un, who was caught in the middle of an SISS campaign against communists in his organization. McCarran's response: “If Feller's conscience was clear, he had no reason to suffer from what he expected of our committee.”⁶⁴

But McCarran and his colleagues knew full well that a clear conscience could not put rumors to rest. Once allegations were in the public domain they took on a life of their own. Even Elizabeth Bentley's blatantly false statements about Lester Pearson were repeated enough times that they gained some credibility. It may be true that if Pearson had been more forthcoming when the allegations about Norman began surfacing he would have quelled further accusations. It is hard to say what SISS would have done had the Canadian government said outright in 1951 that, yes, Norman had been a communist but was one no longer and that therefore the matter was closed. The committee members in the U.S. Senate would probably have been satisfied in that case with a ritual public recantation from Norman and asked him to name names, as several of his former associates did. However, this is doubtless a route Norman would have been highly reluctant to take.

In Pearson's defense, Norman did a lot of hedging on the extent of his communist associations during his student days. In fact, it never was clear whether Norman had a formal relationship with the Communist Party or was simply a student member of the pro-communist Socialist Society at Cambridge. For Pearson to have made a definitive statement about Norman in 1951, he would have needed an accurate picture of his involvement with communism, which Norman never gave.

Near the end of his life, Norman reportedly told a colleague that he thought Alger Hiss had been framed, and “that his only mistake had been that he said he didn't know Whittaker Chambers and he couldn't go back on that statement.”⁶⁵ In fact, Hiss did go back on the statement in an indirect way, admitting before the Grand Jury in 1948 that he had known Chambers, but under a different name. Similarly, Norman retreated from his initial statements about his student days and, by the end of his interviews with the RCMP and External Affairs in 1952, had all but confessed that he was a communist at Cambridge. For both Hiss and Norman, their admissions came too late and too reluctantly.