How the Cold War Began

by Amy Knight

  Relations also broke down completely between Gouzenko and George McClellan. Having replaced Rivett-Carnac as head of the RCMP Special Branch in 1947, McClellan was one of those in the force who was pushing for Gouzenko to be moved out West. He was frustrated with Gouzenko's constant breaches of security and his continued complaints about his guards, whom Gouzenko viewed with intense suspicion. After Gouzenko got wind of McClellan's intentions, he immediately assumed McClellan was, like Leopold, a Soviet spy.45 Henceforth, he blamed all his troubles with the RCMP on McClellan. As Gouzenko said some years later when asked what caused his relationship with the RCMP to deteriorate, “I don't blame it . . . on the guards, RCMP constable or sergeant, but . . . it was due to [the] influence, due to [the] direct influence from this high-ranking officer.”46

  By late 1953, after Gouzenko gave his famous interview to the Chicago Tribune, he was getting a lot of bad press in Canada. On October 30, the Toronto Daily Star had a front-page story alleging that Gouzenko had squandered one hundred thousand dollars in “high living” and was “giving his guardians a headache.” According to the Star, one of his RCMP guardians expressed the view that Gouzenko was anxious to talk to the Americans because he was low on money, and “for money [he] will say just about anything, whether fact or not.” For its part, the Star went on, the Canadian government was opposed to the Americans’ interviewing Gouzenko. They were never sure what he would say. Some of his utterances in interviews were “highly speculative” and “just chatter.” (Gouzenko later sued the newspaper for libel and the Star agreed to settle, paying him four thousand dollars and printing a front-page apology.)47 In fact, Gouzenko was not completely penniless; he had by this time received an advance on royalties for his novel, which was about to appear. Although some sources claimed he was paid for the interview with Jenner and McCarran, Gouzenko had more to gain from the boost the publicity would give his book.

  No wonder the Canadian government looked upon the visit from senators Jenner and McCarran with apprehension. Gouzenko had become a liability, drawing continued attention to himself by speaking to journalists and asking people for money. And he kept dredging up the espionage issue when the Liberal leadership was attempting to relegate it to the past. No matter what he told the press, Gouzenko had no more secrets to reveal. The Jenner Committee would be grasping at straws, encouraging Gouzenko to come up with any bit of information that would keep the anti-communist campaign going. Unless Gouzenko started to invent facts, the committee's efforts would be for naught.

  As we know from what Gouzenko said about Arthur Steinberg, this is pretty much what happened during Gouzenko's testimony to SISS on January 4, 1954, at Montebello, Quebec. The Canadians, with the chief justice of the Supreme Court, J.C. McRuer, presiding, refused to allow the American counsel, Jay Sourwine, to pursue his own line of questioning. McRuer would not allow “hearsay” questions, for example, or questions involving Canadians. The committee was to direct itself solely to issues relating to the internal security of the United States. In addition to Steinberg, Alger Hiss was a key item on the agenda, with Sourwine going over with Gouzenko the familiar ground of the State Department spy in 1945. Gouzenko could add nothing new. In fact, he backtracked on what he had said earlier, in an article for Coronet Magazine:

  Q: Do you remember also stating that the information which you aided in getting to the politburo included reports of confidential American foreign policy decisions received a matter of hours after they were arrived at?

  A: I think not a matter of hours: I don't remember saying that. You mean United States or do you also include Canada? The reference was to United States, no I think that wouldn't be correct . . . this appearance in Coronet Magazine; if you remember, it was as told by Gouzenko; it was authorship different from me, and I wouldn't recommend basing anything on this article.48

  Sourwine led Gouzenko back again and again to Hiss:

  Q: Have you ever identified Hiss as the Secretary of Stettinius of whom you spoke?

  A: He was later identified as the one of whom Koulakoff [Gouzenko's colleague] spoke . . .

  Q: Did you either before or after you broke know anything specific about any other Soviet agents in the American State Department?

  A: No, I did not.

  Q: Did you have any knowledge of activities on behalf of the Soviet Union of one Harry White or Harry Dexter White of the United States Treasury Department?

  A: No.49

  What a disappointment, especially after Gouzenko had told the Tribune just a couple of months earlier that spies were lurking everywhere in North America and that he thought his testimony would be “worthwhile.” The committee then listened patiently to Gouzenko as he gave them his advice on how to attract defectors. He had never gotten over the fact that the RCMP had failed to recruit any of his embassy colleagues after he defected. Gouzenko emphasized that it would not be enough just to grant them asylum. They had to be assured of a “good life.” Material benefits, he said, should go hand in hand with an offer of citizenship and protection:

  Q: By “material” you mean the offer of money, a pension, an annuity or something like that?

  A: I would say an annuity at best.

  Q: You did not break for the sake of any promise of annuity or pension?

  A: No. In fact I didn't know anything of what was ahead of me, but I knew there would be difficulties. In fact my proposal is actually not just jumping to conclusions. It is more or less on the basis of the experience of myself which I lived through all those years, which leads me to understand how another person would feel . . . [an annuity] would make it possible for him to live a much simpler and more normal life, and make it possible for him to really enjoy the life of the society to which he gives service.

  Q: Assuming in addition to immunity he was also guaranteed physical protection and security, do you still feel that it would be an added inducement, a necessary added inducement in order to get these people to come, to offer them money as well?

  A: I will say he would believe in the sincerity of all the other parts of the proposal . . . a practical man will say they grant you more or less a good life, so he can leave and he knows the difficulties ahead of him. There is nothing wrong with that grant. I do not want to bring up this case, but suppose you build a monument to some spiritual thing or to an important man. You collect money to build that monument. What is wrong with that grant? There is nothing wrong with that. It is good money . . .

  Q: I am wondering, and I want your opinion, whether it might not actually defeat the purpose if there was an offer of money. Do you think Soviet agents generally can be lured away from their Soviet allegiance by offers of money?

  A: Yes. . . . If you say “Here is a man. Come on; we will buy you,” of course it hurts him. He will say, “Here, they are just trying to buy me.” But when you say about the citizenship and about protection, and you say an annuity or a grant passed by parliament in the way of securing his position, you are helping him adjust himself to society.50

  This part of Gouzenko's testimony raised awkward questions for the committee. On the surface, Gouzenko was simply giving them friendly advice about how to persuade Soviet spies to defect. But he was also revealing something about his own motivations. Some eight years earlier, he had claimed that he defected out of ideological and moral convictions: he had wanted to expose the Soviet Union for what it was, a tyranny bent on destroying the West. He had not defected for a better life, he had said, but to serve as an example of the moral courage of Soviet citizens suffering under the yoke of Stalinist oppression. Now, in front of the committee, he was claiming that a defector should get money in exchange for his information. Yes, he said, there was the altruistic motivation, but that was not enough. Defectors, like him, deserved a lifetime payment for what they did.

  Gouzenko's assertion that life in a democracy like Canada or the United States was not a sufficient enticement for a potential Soviet defector might have disquieted senators Jenner and McCarran, if they had been
the type of men who were open to reflection. They had been pursuing former U.S. government officials like Hiss, White, and many of their leftist and communist associates as if they were dangerous criminals. White was dead, Hiss was safely tucked away in prison, and most of the others had left government service, but Jenner's committee continued to devote tremendous time and resources to proving their guilt. These men and women had been, for the most part, talented and hard-working civil servants. More important, if they had passed information to the Soviets, they had done so not for money, but because of their ideological convictions. Yet here was Gouzenko saying money was an essential component of an offer to defectors.

  Gouzenko reiterated his views a few weeks later in a two-part television interview, his first ever, with journalist Drew Pearson, the man who first broke his story. After the stir he had caused with his Tribune interview and his testimony to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Gouzenko was a hot commodity, and Drew Pearson went to a lot of trouble to arrange the interview. There were lawyers involved, so there was doubtless some negotiation over fees. Pearson was impressed by Gouzenko when he met him: “He speaks English quite well, is still young and has a wife with all the vivaciousness of a Russian and some of the beauty of an American. She travels with him wherever he goes.” They talked for two and a half hours in preparation for the actual interview, but when the time came for filming Gouzenko insisted on leaving and said he would return early the next day. He did not show up, apparently because the RCMP threatened that they would withdraw all protection if he allowed himself to be filmed. Gouzenko kept Pearson waiting for eight hours before he finally arrived, with a black pillowcase over his head, to appear before television cameras for the first time. As Pearson recalled later, “It was then I came to understand that the young man who had the courage to ransack the code room of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa was a man who had very definite opinions on almost everything and a stubborn determination to carry them out.”51

  At the beginning of the interview Gouzenko seemed to catch Pearson off guard by asking him an awkward question: “I remember when it was first time I broke the spy ring in Canada, and it was at that time when nobody knew any word about this except you people. You first to know in the American and Canadian press this news.

  Now tell me before interviewing, how you did it?” Pearson replied evasively, “Well, now you're putting me on the spot right off the bat, I am supposed to interview you. But I had an awful hard time doing that because that was a very closely held secret . . . but anyway, let me interview you if you don't mind.”

  After going over the familiar ground of Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and Alan Nunn May, Pearson got Gouzenko on to his favorite topic, luring defectors:

  Pearson: Now should we offer rewards to Russian military men to come our way?

  Gouzenko: This is part of my idea of proposals to bring them on our side, but it is a very important part, and I certainly think it helps.

  Pearson: Or should we try to find these people jobs?

  Gouzenko: Would it be possible for him to find a good job which would use his talent and ability?

  Pearson: Well, it's pretty hard to ask a Russian general to take a job as a janitor. If he's going to help the free world, we have to help him.

  Gouzenko: I am very glad you brought up this point, because there is a very important human element involved. Sometimes a man makes his decision. The question of dignity is involved, and sometimes, like a general, or colonel, military attaché, he will actually be convinced on our side, and he is our friend. Yet he continues his job only because he is afraid he will be humiliated here; he will be put to work as a janitor.52

  Gouzenko, of course, was talking about himself. He had not worked as a janitor, but in a similar category of manual labor. And it was demeaning. After risking his life to provide the West with evidence of Soviet spying, he felt he was owed more than this. Despite all the recent publicity, he knew he could not profit financially from his defector status for much longer. He was not willing, like Elizabeth Bentley, to embellish when asked repeatedly about Soviet spies in North America and to cough up new names to please his questioners. But as a result he had lost his star billing as a defector. Indeed, the interview with SISS in January 1954 was pretty much a swan song for Gouzenko as far as the anti-communists in Washington were concerned.

  After returning to the United States, senators Jenner and McCarran told the press that their interview with Gouzenko was long and productive and “a great deal was accomplished.” But an observant reporter for the Toronto Daily Star noted that, whereas the senators had been “jovial and almost talkative” on their arrival in Canada, they looked glum when they emerged from interviewing Gouzenko. No wonder. When the Canadian minister of justice, Stuart Garson, made the transcript public in April 1954, he emphasized again that the evidence disclosed “very little, if indeed there is any information not already available to the public.” And the New York Times observed, “The testimony consisted mostly of disconnected items of information many of which were given to the Canadian Government in 1945. . . . The eighty-five pages contained no new or startling facts and it did not seem likely that they would contribute to the security situation in the United States.”53 Ironically, the fact that senators Jenner and McCarran had elicited nothing new from their much-publicized meeting with Gouzenko would not stop anti-communists in Washington from claiming that the Canadians were stone-walling and covering up a deeper connection between the Canadian spy case and Americans.

  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