by Amy Knight
On the evening of March 18, four days before the Rose hearing in Montreal, Mackenzie King had given his long-awaited explanation of the spy case to a hushed House of Commons, its galleries packed with onlookers. Far to the left of King sat Fred Rose, who had been released from custody on bail. He took his place quietly and listened without apparent emotion. King's complicated tale lasted for almost an hour and a half, but his audience hung on his every word. As the Winnipeg Tribune described it, “Calm in voice and gesture – he might have been talking academically about a change in the tariff – Mr. King last night told the most dramatic story ever unfolded in the House of Commons.”42
In fact, King had found the speech, which he gave without notes, a terrible ordeal: “I was horrified to find that I was excessively tired. I could feel the whole weight of my body from my neck down and also the drawing of my throat from fatigue which made it very difficult for me to raise my voice and speak out clearly. . . . What distressed me even more in speaking was that I saw clearly my mind would get just a little clouded at times, from weariness. I was not quite sure I was using the right words and not feeling sure of the points which I wanted to develop.”43
But King soldiered on, persuading the House of Commons that his government had made the right decisions in what he said was “the most serious situation that has arisen at any time in Canada.” The Canadian government had moved so cautiously, King explained, because it realized how far-reaching the repercussions might be. He gave a detailed description of Gouzenko's defection and the steps his government had taken in the following months, revealing that he had even considered visiting Stalin personally to get an explanation of the Soviet spying activities in Canada. King ended with a declaration of faith in the friendship between Russia and Canada. Stalin, he suggested, might not even have known about his country's espionage efforts in Canada: “What I know, or have learned of Mr. Stalin from those who have been closely associated with him in the war, causes me to believe that he would not countenance action of this kind on the part of officials of his country. I believe that when these facts are known to him and to others in positions of full responsibility, we shall find that a change will come that will make a vast difference indeed.”44
King plainly still indulged in fantasies about Stalin. Had he any inkling of how the Soviet leader operated, he would have realized how unrealistic his image of him was. Stalin, to use a modern term, “micro-managed” everything, trusted no one, and allowed for little, if any, individual initiative in his huge government and party apparatus. Inherently suspicious of the security and intelligence services, he followed closely everything they did (with the help of legions of informers). Indeed, although many Soviet citizens wanted to believe that Stalin had not approved of the purges of 1936–38, when the NKVD murdered millions of innocent citizens, the NKVD had been following Stalin's direct orders. He even went over transcripts of the interrogations of some of his former party colleagues. Although Stalin distrusted his intelligence services and was often reluctant to believe their reports, he kept well abreast of their espionage operations abroad.
Mackenzie King, understandably, knew little of Kremlin politics, which were shrouded in mystery for the West. King's world was one of sensible, well-meaning politicians who felt a duty to work for the public good. Anxious to include Stalin in this vision, King talked himself into the possibilities of personal diplomacy. He believed that if he could only meet with Stalin, somehow he could make him see the light, and the Russians would again become friends with the West. The day after his speech, King noted in his diary that he asked the Czech ambassador to Canada, Frantisek Pavlasek, if he would please give Czech president Eduard Benesh a message for Stalin, “letting Stalin know the kind of man I am and what I stand for in my lifelong efforts to improve conditions of the masses and in the way of international friendship. Pavlasek said he would be delighted to do that and would send word this afternoon. I know Benes [sic] is a great friend of Stalin's and I know what Benes feels about myself. I had in mind that a meeting with Stalin is almost sure to come sooner or later. I had this in mind in what I said Monday night.”45
Four days later, after Stalin had made a public statement in favor of world peace and the United Nations, King mused, “I am wondering very much if that utterance of his at this time is not the result of what I said in the House on Monday; with what I know of Stalin, I thought he was a man who would not countenance what had been done here. . . . Also I am wondering if Dr. Pavlasek did not cable Benes [sic] on Monday as he said he would, and Benes since cabled Stalin as to the type of man I am . . .”46
King did not let matters rest there. He decided to send a personal message through Benesh to Soviet foreign minister Viachislav Molotov, known in Western diplomatic circles as “Mr. No,” because of his cold manner and his iron-fisted methods. The message, now in the Russian archives, read as follows:
The measures taken against spies in Canada were not and are not directed against the Soviet Union and Generalissimo Stalin, as the hostile press has asserted to the Soviet Union. It is necessary to have recourse to the internal considerations of the Canadian government to understand these measures. I would be very obligated to you if you would explain this affair to Generalissimo Stalin, as my friend, who from personal ties knows my character and can confirm that I am very interested in maintaining cordiality and friendship with the Soviet Union. I am also certain that the spying operations were conducted without the authority of Ambassador Zarubin, towards whom I have the greatest respect.47
Stalin did not respond to King's gestures of friendship. Quite the opposite. Through diplomatic channels, the Soviets let the Canadians know how much the bad publicity displeased them. And while they had been willing to acknowledge that Zabotin and his GRU group had been gathering information illicitly, they were incensed that Gouzenko had referred to Pavlov and his subordinates as NKVD spies. A note of protest from the Soviets in Ottawa, released to the press on April 4, stated: “The Soviet Embassy deems it its duty to declare that the slanderous statements of the criminal [Gouzenko] as well as the reports in the Canadian newspapers based on these statements regarding the mentioned diplomatic members of the Soviet Embassy in Canada are completely fictitious and deserve no credit.” To reinforce its claim that Pavlov and his men were diplomats, not spies, the Soviet Embassy sent a brazen note to the Canadian Department of External Affairs in May 1946 notifying them that Pavlov had been promoted from second to first secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa.48
That Moscow voiced indignation over the claims about Pavlov, while at the same time acknowledged publicly that Zabotin and his GRU officers had been spying, might be explained by the simple fact that Gouzenko's documents had not implicated the NKVD. But there were other factors as well, in particular the rivalry between the two intelligence agencies. Although the GRU's job was to collect military intelligence, there was considerable overlap with the intelligence gathering of the NKVD, so the two services often competed for agents, information, and, of course, influence with the Kremlin. The Gouzenko defection was a black mark on the GRU, and the foreign-intelligence body of the NKVD (renamed the MGB in March 1946) was going to make sure it stayed there.
In early April 1946, a leading MGB official in Moscow sent out a lengthy message to residencies abroad, apparently in response to Gouzenko's references to its agents at the Rose hearing. It was a scathing indictment of the GRU residency in Ottawa.49 First, the official noted, because the GRU's work in Ottawa was organized so that each operational employee had detailed knowledge of the operations of other staff members, “personal dossiers on the agent network became common knowledge.” Another problem was that the agent network made extensive use of members of the Communist Party in Canada, who were well known to the Canadian authorities (Fred Rose being a good example). And Gouzenko, thanks to a “decline in vigilance and a disregard for elementary principles of security,” had access to information on the NKVD and to “state secrets of the highest importance.”
The message failed to mention yet another black mark against the GRU, the arrest in Toronto of Zabotin's replacement, Grigorii Popov. In addition to his drunken and disorderly conduct, Popov was discovered to be carrying a concealed weapon. The documents the RCMP found on him convinced them that, like Zabotin, he was a GRU agent. Popov, presumably at Ottawa's request, was recalled to Moscow in March, leaving by ship from Philadelphia. When Popov was en route from Canada to the United States, Dwyer dispatched a top secret cable to London: “I drew FBI's attention to [the] fact that he is almost certainly being recalled in disgrace and they propose to attempt to approach him if occasion offers with view to persuading him to follow in corby's footsteps. I believe they may have some reasonable chance of success since his wife and child are traveling with him and he must be well aware of what awaits him if he returns.” As it turned out, the opportunity to speak alone to Popov did not present itself. Even if it had, Popov would probably have refused. The rest of his family, and that of his wife, were hostages in the Soviet Union.50
As the MGB's message observed, Gouzenko's defection had “caused great damage to our country and has, in particular, very greatly complicated our work in the American countries.” But while the author of this message placed the blame for this catastrophe squarely on the GRU, he could not get around the fact that Pavlov and the NKVD shared responsibility for ensuring security at the embassy in Ottawa. In the final paragraph of his coded message he instructed the MGB residencies to heighten their vigilance drastically:
In the instructions which we are sending you by the next post, rules and regulations are given for ensuring security in the work and for fostering in our comrades the qualities of party vigilance and discipline. You are directed to observe these rules and regulations scrupulously, applying them everywhere in actual practice. Without waiting for the receipt of the instructions, ascertain how matters stand in your RESIDENCY. Take all necessary measures to improve the organization of all agent networks and operational work, paying special attention to tightening security. The work must be organized so that each member of the staff and agent can have no knowledge of our work beyond what directly relates to the task which he is carrying out.51
Gouzenko's defection was a wake-up call to both Soviet intelligence agencies. Their operations were foundering and serious changes were called for. But Beria himself would not preside over these changes. He relinquished his job as NKVD chief in early 1946 to take charge of the Soviet atomic bomb project. In August 1949, Beria would oversee the successful detonation of the first Soviet plutonium bomb. But by the time the Soviets exploded their first hydrogen bomb in August 1953, Beria had been imprisoned by his rivals in the wake of the power struggle that ensued after Stalin's death in March of that year. He was executed in December 1953, on the orders of the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.52
Although Mackenzie King was willing to give Stalin, and even the Soviet ambassador to Canada, the benefit of the doubt about their involvement in espionage, he was not so inclined when it came to the Canadian spy suspects. It never occurred to King, if we are to judge from his diary and his public statements, that any of those detained by the RCMP might have been innocent. (And he continued to focus on the Jewish angle, observing, inaccurately, in his diary that “It is a rather extraordinary thing that most of those caught in this present net are Jews, or have Jewish wives or [are] of Jewish descent.”) King was certainly concerned about the violations of civil liberties by Canadian authorities, but his concerns centered on the image of his Liberal government rather than on the individuals whose rights were being violated. As he lamented in his diary, “It will always be held against us and the Liberal party that we sanctioned anything that meant so much in the way of deprivation of liberty for a number of people. Moreover, as I saw at the start, it has raised an issue in the minds of people even more important than that of espionage and will probably result in several of the persons being freed altogether when they come before the court, or given trifling sentences.”53
King wrote this on March 21, after a week in which he and his government had come under strong criticism in Parliament for their treatment of the spy suspects. The leader of the Opposition, John Bracken, compared the methods employed by the police to those of a totalitarian system. Another speaker said that the Canadian people would never live down the fact that the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens were abrogated in those “black days.” And a former Liberal cabinet minister named Chubby Power delivered a blistering attack on the government, ending with the following: “I cannot wish to turn back the pages of history seven hundred years and repeal the Magna Charta. I cannot by my silence appear to approve even tacitly what I believe to have been a great mistake on the part of the government. If this is to be the funeral of liberalism I do not desire to be even an honorary pall-bearer.”54
Despite the criticism, the RCMP still held five people in custody at Rockcliffe Barracks: Eric Adams, Durnford Smith, Scott Benning, Fred Poland, and Israel Halperin. These were the suspects who had wisely refused to confess to the RCMP and would be the “least cooperative” with the Royal Commission. They were not released until March 29, whereupon they were immediately charged and arrested. The Royal Commission's third interim report was issued on the same day. Of the five, all would be acquitted at trial, except Durnford Smith, one of Lunan's recruits, who was sentenced to five years in prison.
Smith, a thirty-four-year-old English Canadian from Montreal, had just submitted his Ph.D. thesis for a doctorate degree in physics at McGill University. As a result of the accusations against him, McGill authorities suspended him from the university, making his thesis ineligible for consideration. Six of the arrested spies were McGill graduates, and the university was getting unfavorable publicity. (In mid-March, a Quebec newspaper observed, “You send your boy to McGill a Canadian democrat and he graduates an international communist.”)55 McGill's scientists had been active in the war research effort, particularly in the areas of chemical warfare and explosives, as well as in atomic science. In order to expand its postwar research program, the university needed more funding, and thus wanted to limit any damage to its reputation.
Smith, married and the father of two small children, had, as noted, refused to cooperate with the RCMP. According to a report sent to MI6 in February, “Durnford Smith flatly denies any knowledge of affair nor will he admit to recognizing Photostat of his own handwriting. He suggested it was probably a forgery. He is however in bad nervous state and his guard reports that he was physically sick after his first interview. He will probably confess later.” Two days later, the picture was less optimistic: “DURNFORD SMITH has again been exhaustively interrogated. He is acutely apprehensive but every approach produces only denial. In view [of the] evidence against him, it is most likely he will not be further interrogated as it will almost certainly prove profitless.”56
Despite Smith's intransigence, his interrogator, Clifford Harvison, could not help but admire him. Harvison's son later recalled, “One thing my dad couldn't get over during the pre-trial detention was that there never was a night that Durnford Smith didn't sit down and write a delightful children's story for his kids. My dad said how a guy with what was on his mind could write really delightful material like that for his kids really got to him. And he said it told him something about the sort of man he was.”57
Smith was a “difficult witness” when he appeared before the Royal Commission on March 19, demanding that he have a lawyer before testifying. The commissioners tried to insist that, since they were not a court but merely a body of inquiry, there was no need for the “witnesses” to have lawyers. By this time the remaining detainees knew that the others had been arrested following their appearances before the commission, and they realized that their testimony would be used to prosecute them. The following interchange took place between Smith and the commissioners:
Smith: I feel it is not fair to make me testify until I have seen Mr. Aylen [his lawyer].
> Kellock: Mr. Smith, there is not any question of fairness involved. You are here as a witness . . .
Smith: But is it not true that all previous witnesses have been subsequently placed under accusation?
Taschereau: There is no accusation against you.
Smith: But all previous witnesses before the Commission, as far as I know, have been subsequently accused. I cannot rid myself of the feeling–
Taschereau: There is no witness that has been accused when he came here as a witness. When the investigation is finished and we have finished our work we will make a report to the government and the government will deal with you as they deem advisable, but for the moment you are just a witness for the purpose of this investigation . . .
Smith: I have the feeling I am not really a witness.
Taschereau: Oh yes, you are a witness.
Kellock: It does not matter what your feeling is . . . 58
The commission finally relented, and Smith was able to have his lawyer with him. But the lawyer faced an uphill struggle. The commission had papers from Gouzenko to show that Smith, who at the time was working for the National Research Council on matters relating to radar, had had meetings with Gordon Lunan and GRU Colonel Rogov and that he handed over secret or confidential documents, including several from the Library of the National Research Council. Gouzenko also brought out some notes, on radar optics and on the staff of the National Research Council, which were in Smith's handwriting.59 What clinched the case against Smith, however, was the testimony by Lunan to the RCMP and the Royal Commission that he had recruited Smith and that Smith had indeed given materials to the GRU. According to a message to MI6, “He [Lunan] confirms step by step events shown in Corby papers and his testimony makes findings against still recalcitrant Durnforth [sic] SMITH and HALPERIN [a] foregone conclusion.”60
