by Amy Knight
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 t
he 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 incre
asingly 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
