How the Cold War Began

by Amy Knight

  Rose's espionage was not detected by the RCMP until Gouzenko came along. RCMP officers had been conducting surveillance on Rose for years before his arrest, but their focus was on his domestic political radicalism and his efforts to stir up discontent among urban working classes. The fact that Rose was meeting with officials from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa on a regular basis from 1942 onward apparently either went unnoticed or gave little cause for concern at RCMP headquarters. After all, the Soviets were allies and Canada was preoccupied with the Nazi threat.

  The FBI had also failed to notice Rose, although he maintained close contact with Soviet agents in America, including Mikhailov, and, according to Elizabeth Bentley, made several visits to New York. In March 1946, when the news of the Canadian spy case was dominating the press, Bentley's memory was triggered and she elaborated further about Rose to the FBI: “She distinctly recalls rose had seven or eight names of Canadian governmental employees for whom he desired [Jacob] golos to arrange contacts, presumably in Canada. It was learned [that] Informant [Bentley] saw this list of names, but recalled none of them except that the name of eric adams, also a subject in the current Canadian case, may have been included.”16

  According to Bentley, Rose had spent ten days in New York, much of the time in private conversations with Golos, who reimbursed Rose for his expenses with money from the Russians. His wife accompanied Rose, but his girlfriend – a young Jewish woman with horn-rimmed glasses who spoke with a Canadian accent – was there at the same time. She wore a Canadian Army uniform. Thinking that this might be Freda Linton, Rose's mistress and courier, the FBI showed Bentley a photograph of Linton, but Bentley could not identify her as being the person she had met. She went on to tell the FBI that in the early part of 1944, “several young Canadians of both sexes in uniform contacted her in New York and simply mentioned [that] fred rose had suggested that they look her up.”17

  Although the FBI had been playing down the relationship between the Gouzenko and Bentley cases, Hoover's deputy, Mickey Ladd, thought Bentley's new testimony suggested strong connections. In a long memorandum to Hoover giving the details of Bentley's testimony, Ladd concluded:

  The above-noted contacts between Fred Rose, Jacob Golos and the informant Gregory [Bentley] are believed of considerable significance in view of the light they throw on the apparent organizational connections between the subjects of the Silvermaster case [which arose out of Bentley's accusations against American government officials connected with Nathan Silvermaster] and the subjects of the Guzenko [sic] case. . . . This information, of course, raises the definite possibility that at least at one time there was such a direct organizational connection between Fred Rose and Jacob Golos, between the Soviet espionage parallels involved in the Corby case in Canada and the Soviet espionage parallels involved in the Silvermaster case in the United States.18

  There was another espionage thread leading from Canada to the United States. A Soviet GRU agent named Arthur Adams who had been operating in New York since 1938 had previously lived in Toronto and had obtained a false Canadian passport there through Sam Carr's network. In contrast to the Rose case, the FBI had known about Adams for some time, and he had been under constant surveillance since he was observed in 1944 obtaining material from a physicist at a Chicago research laboratory. It is difficult to say how much information on atomic matters Adams passed on to the GRU before he fled the United States in early 1946. (He died in Moscow in 1970 and was buried with honors in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery.) Adams met with at least one or two scientists who were connected with the Manhattan Project, and a Russian source claims that he gave materials on atomic research (along with a sample of pure uranium) to the GRU. According to this source, in early 1944 Adams described in detail to the GRU the destructive powers of the atomic bomb, explaining that it was intended for Japan, but “there is no guarantee that our allies would not try to pressure us, once they have such a weapon at their disposal.”19

  The FBI was eager to arrest Adams, but they lacked evidence. For FBI officer Robert Lamphere this was frustrating: “Our agents followed Adams around the clock. . . . The man knew he was being tailed, and wasn't going to renew his contacts. Wasn't that a waste of manpower?”20 The FBI was also reportedly told by the State Department to hold off on arresting Adams because they did not want to damage relations with the Soviets, so J. Edgar Hoover again resorted to his tactic of using the media to pressure the Truman administration. In early December 1945, the New York Journal American published a sensational story, out of the blue, about a Russian atom spy called “Alfred Adamson” who had entered the U.S. from Canada in 1938. He was “a small, gnome-like man. . . . He has a furtive walk, a pair of deep-set piercing eyes and a nervous habit of always looking over his shoulder.” The story, while not entirely accurate, correctly related the basic facts of Adams's efforts to get atomic secrets: “A year ago Adamson is known to have passed information and what is believed to be atomic bomb plans to a member of the Russian Consulate here. The Soviet official, whose name is known to this newspaper, left for Moscow two weeks after his contact with Adamson. His plane flew direct to the Kremlin. The diplomatic pouch he carried, under international law, was immune from search or seizure.”21

  Noting that the spy “has had access to some of the most carefully- watched secrets in American military history,” the Journal blamed the State Department for the fact that he was still at large: “The arrest of Adamson cannot be made without the sanction of the State Department, which must rule on the seizure of agents working for a foreign power. Proof of the activities of this Kremlin vassal was given to the State Department two years ago, and since that time the FBI has been in constant communication with officials of the State Department regarding his operations. Yet Adamson and his confederates are still not under arrest.” As observed in a message to MI6, the piece was inspired by the FBI: “This story comes . . . most opportunely when [the] FBI are preparing Speed [Bentley] case for consideration of State.”22

  Hoover and the FBI were well aware of the power of the press. So too were the RCMP and the Canadian government. They had high stakes in Fred Rose's pre-trial hearing, held in Montreal on March 22. It was the first public hearing in the Gouzenko case, and they pulled out all the stops. A message from Ottawa to MI6 noted, “You may possibly be surprised at the amount of material which will be used, but the reason for this is that the Montreal Courts are unpredictable and Crown [the prosecution] is anxious to ensure that the strongest possible case is made against rose immediately while the going is good.”23

  The heavily guarded star witness was Igor Gouzenko, making his first public appearance immaculately dressed in a single-breasted light gray suit. Gouzenko had been alarmed at the possibility of appearing in public, and the RCMP had requested that the court hear his testimony in camera, but to no avail. The prosecution wanted to take full advantage of Gouzenko's debut as a witness.24 To protect his secret identity, photographers were barred from the courtroom and sketches were not permitted, but a reporter from the Montreal Star provided this description:

  Against a background of six alert Mounties in a crowded and dramatically hushed courtroom today, Igor Gouzenko . . . told his story of espionage in Canada. . . . Fair skinned, with dark brown hair, and intelligent but slightly stolid features, he obviously had had a recent haircut. . . . His hair was parted to the side and his hands, with fists half clenched, rested on the top of the witness box.25

  According to a reporter for Time magazine, “The first impression I had of him when he came into the witness stand was his size.

  He seemed to me a very short person. . . . The other thing I noticed about him was his cocky manner. . . . He threw his shoulders back and barked out his answers. He also managed to convey a slight contempt for everybody who was quizzing him.”26

  Gouzenko's testimony, in which he named Fred Rose and Sam Carr as recruiters for the GRU, and also discussed the other accused spies, held the courtroom spellbound. The prosecutor, anxious t
o establish Gouzenko's credibility as a witness, had prepared himself well and asked Gouzenko all the right questions. (He had obviously studied Gouzenko's secret testimony before the Royal Commission, which the counsel for the defense was not able to see.) When asked why he decided to seek asylum in Canada, Gouzenko failed to mention that he had been called back early to Russia because he was in trouble and instead gave his well-rehearsed speech about his love for Canadian democracy. He made his decision, he said, because he wanted to let the Canadian people know the Russians were spying on them in preparation for a future war. According to the Montreal Gazette, “Gouzenko spoke for a solid twenty-five minutes detailing the differences between Canadian democracy and Soviet life. No orator, he spoke slowly, picking his phrases . . . the crowd hung on every word. Counsel did not interrupt him, and they were dramatic minutes to everyone in this room.”27

  Rose's attorney, J.L. Cohen, did not cross-examine Gouzenko. Cohen, described by one observer as “a chubby man who smoked cigars and wore his hat square on the top of his head,” was a brilliant and flamboyant Toronto lawyer who was known for his sympathy toward underdogs.28 This was the first time he had seen Gouzenko, and he was unfamiliar with much of the evidence the prosecution produced at the hearing, so he had presumably decided to postpone his cross-examination until Rose's trial. But in his closing remarks, Cohen voiced skepticism about Gouzenko's motives for wanting to stay in Canada: “A telegram comes . . . asking Colonel Zabotin to send him back to Moscow. Gouzenko would not like this, and I don't blame [him]. Here he is living in Ottawa, and living well, certainly very well as compared with the way of life in Russia and in Moscow in 1944. . . . His overwhelming admiration of our way of life and his abhorrence for the way of life he was brought up in came to the front at the time he was to be replaced . . .”29

  Cohen also observed that, according to documents, Zabotin did not bother to notify Moscow of Rose's reelection to the Canadian Parliament in June 1945 until fully a month after the election: “I would hate to believe that if Debouz [Rose] was so important to the schemes of Soviet Russia, they would not have known prior to the 12th of July that their recruiting agent in Canada was re-elected.”30 Cohen, of course, was unfamiliar with the ways of the GRU's residency in Ottawa, where Zabotin and his staff were not always on the ball.

  Carefully rehearsed as Gouzenko was, he and his handlers made blunders. Gouzenko named five detainees who had not yet completed testimony before the Royal Commission and who had not been formerly charged, possibly prejudicing their right to a fair hearing. And he mentioned two other individuals as being agents, when in fact they were not. A telegram to MI6 noted, “this could therefore throw doubt on [the] reliability of [the] rest of Corby's evidence in the hands of [a] good defence lawyer.” The Canadian Department of External Affairs, anxious to avoid a deep rift in relations with the Soviet Union, was also unhappy about Gouzenko's hyperbolic prediction that the Soviets were preparing for a third world war.31 But as one Canadian writer pointed out, part of his job in testifying for the prosecution was to establish a climate of fear: “When you look at the trial transcripts you get an idea of the role of Gouzenko. . . . ‘third world war was going to be staged by the Russians against the west.’ . . . ‘secret cells impregnated by communist agents’ – in other words, terrifying rhetoric. And he would always give the whole set-up at the Soviet Embassy with all these scary-sounding foreign names and code names. That was the ritual at both these trials [of Rose and Boyer].”32

  When asked by the prosecutor about the identities of those mentioned by code name in GRU documents, Gouzenko also named Arthur Steinberg, “a person in the United States,” and discussed the telegram that supposedly incriminated him, which was presented in evidence at the hearing. And he mentioned Ignacy Witczak, who had entered the United States from Canada using a false Canadian passport, but by this time had fled abroad. The FBI had Steinberg under intensive surveillance, keeping his case under wraps while they gathered evidence. And the Witczak case was an embarrassment that the bureau did not want publicized. As a message to MI6 observed, “Mention of Arthur STEINBERG and WITCZAK without prior warning to FBI or USA government would again seem most injudicious.”33 Gouzenko's testimony prompted a hasty memorandum to Hoover from his deputy Mickey Ladd: “Gouzenko named by name and cover name practically all of the Soviet agents who have figured in the above case . . . also several of the figures involved in the United States, including Ignacy Witczak and Arthur Gerald Steinberg, both of whom, as you will of course recall, have been the subjects of extensive Bureau investigations.” Ladd went on to note hopefully that, although the Canadian press had mentioned Steinberg, thus far the American press had not, although there were several U.S. correspondents covering the trial in Montreal.34

  In fact, Gouzenko's reference to Steinberg was reported in several American newspapers, which raised speculation in the United States as to why he had not been arrested.35 The problem, as usual for the FBI, was that they had no evidence against Dr. Steinberg. A garbled telegram from Zabotin to his bosses mentioning Steinberg as a possible recruit and Gouzenko's hearsay statements that he remembered other telegrams about him would never hold up in court. Hoover was well aware of this, and thus would have much preferred that the Canadians had kept both Steinberg and Witczak out of the picture.

  Gouzenko was a tireless and effective witness in the Rose hearing, but in the view of one observer the prosecutors let him go too far in their zeal to nail Rose: “The Crown Counsel in Montreal allowed Corby to go much further than was intended or expected. . . . [The] general opinion at the moment seems to be that [the] desirability of establishing [a] strong case against rose in Quebec Courts would not justify irrelevant lengths to which Counsel has gone.”36

  It was probably not necessary for the prosecution to bring up the names of Steinberg and Witczak in order to strengthen the case against Rose. But the RCMP, which was guiding the prosecution, may have had other motives for doing so, since they and the Canadian government would have preferred not to go it alone in publicly prosecuting spies. While the British had finally taken the requisite legal action against Alan Nunn May, the Americans were still doing and saying nothing in public. U.S. secretary of state James Byrnes had denied there were any spies in the United States who were connected to the Canadian case, and the FBI, when repeatedly asked by the press about the implications for the United States, had “no comment.” It is probably no accident that on March 28 the FBI learned from a member of the American press that, according to a high RCMP official, “the case in Canada is amateurish compared to what exists in the United States and he cannot understand why we do not crack down.” Hoover was “very much disturbed.”37

  Had the Canadians understood the complex role that the FBI played in the American political system, and the tensions among the FBI, the White House, the State Department, and Congress, they might not have expected so much. Hoover's cryptic messages to RCMP commissioner Wood in the autumn of 1945, explaining that his agency faced legal constraints the Canadians did not, apparently failed to make clear to the Canadians that the FBI could not, for a very long time, proceed with arrests. On the other hand, Hoover never told the Canadians the truth – that they would have to go it alone. Instead, he had pushed them into it.

  Raymond Boyer's testimony at the Rose pre-trial hearing added to the spy fever. His explanation that he had willingly handed over the secret of the RDX explosive to Rose because “he was anxious to do what he could to have the Soviet Union obtain the process officially from Canada” reinforced the image of Communist Party members as clandestine agents of Moscow in North America. This statement coincided with news from Seattle that a Soviet military officer, Lt. Redin, had been arrested on suspicions of spying. Although the FBI refused to comment on any connection that Redin might have with the Canadian case, Congressman John Wood, the chairman of huac, gave a different impression. His immediate reaction was that his committee should confer with the Canadians “on any ‘interlocking activitie
s’ between reported attempts to obtain American bomb secrets and alleged Soviet espionage in Canada.” An article in the Christian Science Monitor cited the Redin arrest as “the first official acknowledgement here that a Moscow spy ring may have been operating in the United States as well as Canada.” The article went on to observe that “new concern has developed among congressmen and government officials over the security of American secrets. President Truman's assurance that the nation's security is airtight against foreign spies is being questioned.”38

  HUAC's decision to intervene in the Canadian case was unwelcome news for both the FBI and the State Department. On March 29, Ladd informed Hoover that their liaison with the RCMP, Glen Bethel, had called asking for instructions as to what to do if members of HUAC showed up in Ottawa. Hoover's response: “He must make no comment and of course should not accompany any representative of the Committee.”39 The State Department concurred. American ambassador to Canada Ray Atherton told Bethel he had written to Washington strongly recommending that no one from HUAC be permitted to come to Canada to inquire into the Gouzenko case. Any such trip, Atherton said, “would be neither wise nor proper.”40 HUAC continued to pursue the matter. In June 1946, Congressman Wood asked U.S. secretary of state Byrnes to send a letter to the Canadian government formally requesting an interview with Gouzenko. Apparently Byrnes did not cooperate, because HUAC was never invited to Ottawa.41

  By March 1946, Hoover was reaping what he had sown. He had wanted the publicity from the Canadian spy case to raise the alarm about espionage in his country and strengthen public support for his anti-Communist agenda. But he did not like the press claiming there was a huge network of spies in the United States busily collecting atomic secrets under the nose of a helpless FBI. And he certainly did not need HUAC racing up to Canada to interfere in the Gouzenko case. Whatever connections the case had with the United States, Hoover did not want them addressed, at least for the moment.