by Amy Knight
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 h
ad 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.
