by Amy Knight
74. WMK Diary, September 7, 1945.
75. “Soviet Espionage in Canada,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Intelligence Branch, Ottawa, November 1945, p. 1.
76. LAC, RG 33/62, vol. 1, p. 526. Rivett-Carnac presented a totally different (and false) picture in his memoirs. According to Rivett-Carnac: “his [Gouzenko's] manner was composed as he took his place in the hard-bottomed chair. His eyes flickered to Leopold for a moment and then came back to mine. . . . He told us his story, how he'd left the Soviet Embassy two evenings before; that he knew that there were a number of spies operating against the interests of Canada. . . . It was breathtaking to hear him.” Rivett-Carnac, Pursuit in the Wilderness, p. 311. He was clearly covering up Gouzenko's crazed state as part of an effort to protect the defector's image.
77. LAC, RG 13, A-2, vol. 2121, file 150262. The existence of this secret Order-in-Council, which was never acted upon, has never been acknowledged by the Canadian government.
Chapter 2: A MAN CALLED CORBY
1. Transcript of interviews by Svetlana Chervonnaya with Lt. Gen. Vitalii Pavlov, Moscow, Nov. 14 and 19, 1997; Sept. 29, 2001.
2. Mil'shtein, “Pobeg Guzenko.”
3. LAC, RG 25, vol. 2620, file 50242-40, vol. 1.
4. Ibid.
5. J.L. Granatstein, The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins, 1935–1947 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 92-95. Also see J.L. Granatstein, A Man of Influence: Norman A. Robertson and Canadian Statecraft, 1929–68 (Toronto: Deneau Publishers, 1981).
6. The Guy Liddell Diaries, Volume I: 1939–1942, ed. by Nigel West (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 268.
7. Granatstein, A Man of Influence, p. 174.
8. NAC, RG 13, series A2, vol. 2119, file 149685.
9. CSIS files, RCMP 45 D-1226–45 J-1226. The date of the RCMP's letters to the provincial departments and to Hoover was September 15, 1945.
10. I.A. Aggeeva, “Kanada i nachalo kholodnoi voiny: Delo Guzenko v sovetsko-kanadskikh otnosheniiakh,” p. 8, citing Zarubin's secret diary: Dnevnik Zarubina G.N. Sekretno, AVP RF, fond 99, Opis 17, papka 7.
11. Venona decrypt, no. 46a, September 17, 1945, Moscow to London: www.nsa.gov/docs/venona.
12. Genrikh Borovik, The Philby Files: The Secret Life of the Master Spy-KGB Archives Revealed (New York: Little, Brown and Company: 1994), p. 239.
13. S.J. Hamrick, Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 143.
14. Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds: Soviet Post-War Defectors (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), pp. 48-56.
15. Pavlov, Operatsiia “sneg,” p. 75. Zarubin had the same family name as Georgii Zarubin, Soviet ambassador to Canada, but they were not related.
16. Weisbord, The Strangest Dream, p. 141.
17. Lunan, Making of a Spy, p. 153.
18. Ibid., p. 155.
19. Sawatsky Papers, 85-26, box 1, interview with Mrs. Gouzenko, March 12, 1981.
20. Ibid.
21. Sawatsky, Gouzenko, pp. 50-57.
22. Steve Hewitt, “Royal Canadian Mounted Spy: The Secret Life of John Leopold/Jack Esselwein,” Intelligence and National Security, vol. 15, no. 1, Spring 2000.
23. LAC, MG 26, vol. 329, file 3495, memorandum from W.J. Turnbull, July 6, 1942. According to Leopold's obituary in the Ottawa Citizen: “He regarded life with eternal good cheer except when communism was mentioned. On that he was deadly serious. It was a menace to which he dedicated his life.” As cited in Hewitt, p. 159. When Leopold was promoted to head the intelligence branch of the RCMP Criminal Investigation Division, Rivett-Carnac was made chief of that division, still supervising the Gouzenko case.
24. Sawatsky, Gouzenko, pp. 52-62.
25. Stafford, Camp X, pp. 264-267; British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940–1945, Introduction by Nigel West (New York: Fromm International, 1999), pp. 423-425.
26. Sawatsky, Gouzenko, p. 60.
27. Ibid., p. 62.
28. CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) Gouzenko file, 000116.
29. C.W. Harvison, The Horsemen (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967), p. 149.
30. Rivett-Carnac, Pursuit in the Wilderness, p. 307.
31. J.L. Granatstein and David Stafford, Spy Wars: Espionage and Canada from Gouzenko to Glasnost (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), p. 58; Stafford, Camp X, p. 260. As MI5's Guy Liddell expressed it during a visit to Ottawa in 1942, “The RCMP are very well equipped to deal with Communism, but not very well equipped to deal with counterespionage. They are essentially a police force employing police methods.” The Guy Liddell Diaries, p. 267.
32. See LAC, MG 26, vol. 329, file 3495; FBI Gouzenko File (foipa no. 0944835-001), memorandum from Tamm to the Director, September 10, 1945; memorandum from Ladd to Tamm, September 10, 1945; Lamphere, FBI–KGB War, p. 67.
33. CSIS Gouzenko, 000067, letter dated September 13, 1945; FBI Gouzenko memorandum Ladd to Director, November 2, 1945.
34. Lamphere, The FBI–KGB War, p. 127; Kim Philby, My Silent War (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 160; and Kristmanson, Plateaus of Freedom, p. 101. Also see LAC, RG 32, acc. 85-86/096, box 39, Peter Michael Dwyer.
35. Stafford, Camp X, pp. 262-265; Peter Wright, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (London: Stoddart Publishing Co., 1987), p. 345. On MI5's concerns about messages going through sis (MI6), see TNA, KV 2/1425, telegrams dated September 20 and 22, 1945. The FBI was also receiving at least some of the reports from New York.
36. The classic, but half fictional biography of Stephenson is: William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret War (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1976). More accurate is H. Montgomery Hyde, The Quiet Canadian: The Secret Service Story of Sir William Stephenson (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1962). Also see Timothy Naftali, “Intrepid's Last Deception: Documenting the Career of Sir William Stephenson,” Intelligence and National Security, vol. 8, July 1993, 70-99; and http://william-stephenson.biography.ms.
37. The Guy Liddell Diaries, pp. 248-249.
38. Ibid; and TNA, KV 2/1419, letter from the director of British Government Code and Cipher School, dated September 21, 1945; Lamphere, FBI–KGB War, pp. 80-81.
39. Stafford, Camp X, pp. 262-265.
40. Bower, The Perfect English Spy, pp. 54-55.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., p. 80; TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram from Macdonald to Cadogan.
43. Brook-Shepherd, The Stormbirds, p. 30.
44. Bower, The Perfect English Spy, p. 80.
45. Granatstein and Stafford, Spy Wars, pp. 59-68. On Gouzenko's unhappiness over Hollis's reports, interview with Gouzenko's daughter, Evelyn Wilson, Toronto, December 12, 2002. On the suggestion of bringing Gouzenko to England, see TNA Gouzenko file, KV 2/1420, note accompanying first revision of report on Corby case. On his second meeting, KV 2/1423, telegram no. 762, dated May 23, 1946. No report is available on what happened at the meeting.
46. R. MacGregor Dawson, William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Political Biography, vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), p. 3.
47. “Preventative Medicine.”
48. WMK Diary, September 23, 1945.
49. For a description of Menzies, see Kerns, A Death in Washington, p. 247.
50. FBI Gouzenko, 100-342972-27.
51. FBI Gouzenko, 100-342972-32, memorandum dated September 13, 1945, to Tamm, Ladd, and Tolson.
52. CSIS Gouzenko, C293177, September 23, 1945.
53. FBI Gouzenko, 100-342972-51, memorandum from Ladd to Hoover, October 29, 1945; 100-342972-130, Ladd to Hoover, May 27, 1947.
54. Harry S. Truman Library, Papers of Harry S. Truman. President's Secretary's files. “Soviet Espionage Activities,” October 19, 1945.
55. FBI, foipa no. 0944835-001, the date and much of the report is blacked out.
56. Rivett-Carnac, Pursuit in the Wilderness, p. 315.
57. Harvison, The Ho
rsemen, p. 150.
58. CSIS Gouzenko, 000132, letter dated October 11, 1945.
59. CSIS Gouzenko, 000332, letter dated November 11, 1945.
60. LAC, RG 25, vol. 2620, N-1, interview with Gusenko [sic], Memo I, n.d.
61. Ibid.
62. “Soviet Espionage in Canada,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Intelligence Branch, November 1945.
63. CSIS Gouzenko, 000126, letter from McClellan, dated October 10, 1945.
64. CSIS Gouzenko, 000332, letter dated November 2, 1945; Sawatsky, Gouzenko, p. 64.
65. Rivett-Carnac, Pursuit in the Wilderness, p. 317. Rivett-Carnac notes that “my wife began to have serious doubts about my behavior. I could of course tell her nothing.” In fact, his wife knew about the defector, passing the information on to her friend Ruth Fordyce, in the autumn of 1945. Interview with Ms. Fordyce, November 2001.
66. TNA KV 2/1420, “Note Accompanying First Revision of Report on Corby Case,” September 25, 1945.
67. WMK Diary, private memorandum, September 10, 1945.
68. CSIS Gouzenko, 000068, letter from RCMP commissioner Wood, dated September 15, 1945. Sawatsky Papers, 84-38, box 1, file 5, interview with Cecil Bayfield, July 3, (no year given). Bayfield erroneously gives the date of the flight as October 6.
69. RC Report, pp. 453-454.
70. TNA, KV 2/1419, unsigned report (presumably from British intelligence), dated September 24, 1945.
71. TNA, KV 2/1421, telegram from Capt. G. Liddell.
72. WMK Diary, September 24, 1945.
73. WMK Diary, September 25 and 26, 1945.
74. CSIS Gouzenko, 000094, letter dated September 27, 1945.
Chapter 3: “PRIMROSE,” MISS CORBY, AND THE POLITICS OF ESPIONAGE
1. WMK Diary, dictated on October 1, 1945.
2. Harry S. Truman Library, Papers of Harry S. Truman. President's Secretary's Files.
3. WMK Diary, October 1, 1945.
4. LAC, RG 25, 2620, Box 2620, N-1 (temp), letter from Pearson to Hume Wrong, dated October 1, 1945.
5. See John English, Shadow of Heaven: The Life of Lester Pearson, Volume One: 1987–1948 (London: Vintage, 1990), p. 269.
6. See note 12 below.
7. English, Shadow of Heaven, pp. 282-283; David McCullough, Truman (New York: Touchstone, 1992), pp. 751-754.
8. Letter from Pearson to Wrong, October 1, 1945.
9. WMK Diary, October 1, 1945.
10. FBI Hiss file, 101-2668, sec. 02-284.
11. WMK Diary, October 1, 1945.
12. LAC, MG 26, J1, vol. 389, p. 349871.
13. WMK Diary, October 1, 1945.
14. English, Shadow of Heaven, p. 244; Gordon Robertson, Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 51.
15. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram dated October 1, 1945.
16. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram dated October 2, 1945.
17. See Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada, p. 41.
18. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram dated October 6, 1945.
19. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram, dated October 10, 1945; CSIS Gouzenko 000099, letter dated October 3, 1945; and CSIS Gouzenko 000110, telegram dated October 5, 1945. Hoover's response to Wood was that the FBI had no legal grounds for arrests of spy suspects in the United States either. CSIS Gouzenko 000122, telegram dated October 9, 1945.
20. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram, dated October 1, 1945; WMK Diary entry for October 7, 1945.
21. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram, October 7, 1945; Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 239.
22. WMK Diary, October 7, 1945.
23. WMK Diary, October 11, 1945; Also see, for “C”'s efforts to pressure Bevin and Attlee and Attlee's response, Kristmanson, Plateaus of Freedom, pp. 153-154.
24. TNA, KV 2/1425, letter to Prime Minister Attlee from Ernest Bevin, October 27, 1945.
25. WMK Diary, October 26, 1945.
26. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram dated October 19, 1945.
27. Ibid.
28. Robert J. Lamphere and Tom Shachtman, The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent's Story (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 35.
29. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram to Hollis, dated October 31, 1945.
30. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram from Hollis, dated November 2, 1945.
31. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegram dated November 7, 1945.
32. LAC, RG 25, box 2620, N-1 (temp), for a copy of the draft agreement.
33. Ibid.
34. CSIS Gouzenko file, no. 000122; list of reports, transcript 000008.
35. TNA, KV 2/1425, telegrams dated November 14–21, 1945; FBI Gouzenko file, 100-342972-86, memorandum from Hoover to Tolson, Ladd, Tamm, and Carson, November 30, 1945.
36. See Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada, p. 47; and Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 157.
37. Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions: 1945 (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1955), p. 477.
38. Harry S. Truman Library, Papers of Harry S. Truman. President's Secretary's Files.
39. Ibid.
40. FBI Bentley file, 134-435-174, letter to FBI Director from sac, Los Angeles, dated July 28, 1955. There are two recent biographies of Bentley: Kathryn S. Olmstead, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) and Lauren Kessler, Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley: the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
41. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402-8. In checking Bentley's information out further, the FBI learned that Belfrage “had a very unsavoury reputation, that he was reputedly assigned the responsibility, while working for the British Security Coordination in New York City, of handling ‘FBI and London reports.’” (Memorandum from Ladd to Hoover, November 26, 1945.) In late November the FBI furnished Stephenson with the additional information on Belfrage that it had collected.
42. For the text of Philby's message see Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 238-239.
43. A telegram to MI6 sent via New York on November 19 gives details of the Bentley case, which Philby would have seen. See TNA, 2/1425. For the November 20 message, see Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – the Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 104-108. Weinstein and Vassiliev also say that the draft text of Mackenzie King's prepared statement to give publicly at the time of the arrests in Canada was given to Stalin himself from nkgb Chief Vsevold Merkulov. As I have written elsewhere, The Haunted Wood must be used with caution. It is based on summaries and translations by Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, of selected documents in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Archives in Moscow (as part of a financial agreement with the publisher). Because no photocopies of the original documents ever left the Russian archives, it has been impossible for anyone else to check their authenticity or the accuracy of the translations and summaries. Nonetheless, judging from the content, the messages about Philby that the authors cite seem credible.
44. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402-581, vol. 24.
45. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402, vol. 6-220.
46. Ibid.
47. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402, 37, undated memorandum, mainly blacked out.
48. On Donald Hiss and Acheson, see McCullough, Truman, p. 179.
49. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402-26.
50. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402-94.
51. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402-94.
52. Letter to FBI director Hoover, March 28, 1946, FBI Silvermaster 65- 56402-31.
53. See Theoharis, Chasing Spies, pp. 42-43.
54. R. Bruce Craig, Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Case (Lawrence, Kansas: The University of Kansas Press, 2004), p. 69.
55. Craig, Treasonable Doubt, p. 71.
56. FBI Silvermaster, 65-56402-306.
57. Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, pp. 106-107; Pavlov, Operatsiia “sneg,” pp. 73-74.
58. FBI Gouzenko, 100-342972-86; LAC, RG 25
, vol. 2620, N-1.
59. LAC, RG 25, vol. 2620, files 50242-40 and N-1.
60. LAC, RG 25, vol. 2620, King's plan also reached the FBI's representatives in Ottawa, prompting a telephone call to headquarters. FBI Gouzenko, memorandum to Tamm from Ladd, December 3, 1945.
61. TNA, 2/1425-120103, telegram dated December 2, 1945.
62. The diary was dictated by King and then later transcribed. When the volumes were assembled after King's death in 1950, the one for November 10–December 31, 1945, was missing. LAC, MG 26, J17, vol. 9.
63. LAC, RG 25, vol. 2629, N-1.
64. Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada, p. 53.
65. As quoted in Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 156. Groves was informed about Gouzenko's allegations against May around September 14, 1945. The British, not knowing what May had passed on to the Soviets, were worried that Groves would object to his being allowed to fly back to Britain. On September 14, Sir Alexander Cadogan, British undersecretary for foreign affairs, sent a telegram to Lord Halifax, his ambassador to the United States, saying: “Should he [GROVES] raise violent objection could not High Commissioner Canada . . . arrange for plane to be detained 24 hours pending further urgent consideration here?” TNA, KV 2/1425.
Chapter 4: RED STORM CLOUDS
1. Sawatsky, Gouzenko, pp. 65-66.
2. Sawatsky Papers, 84-38, box 1, file 8, interview with George Mackay, November 3, 1983.
3. LAC, RG 13, series a-2, vol. 2121, file 150262, E.K. Williams, “The Corby Case,” December 7, 1945.
4. TNA, KV 2/1421, telegram from New York, dated December 15, 1945.
5. Prokhorov, “Istoriia Allana Meia”; Pavlov, Operatsiia “sneg,” pp. 73-74.
6. Mil'shtein, “Pobeg Guzenko”; “Atomnyi shpionazh,” p. 19.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. “Atomnyi shpionazh”; Vladimir Lota, “Khorosho, chto ne pos-mertno,” Sovershenno sekretno, no. 6, 1999.
10. LAC, MG 26, J4, vol. 390, microfilm no. 1552, C272270; D. Prokhorov and O. Lemekhov, Perebezhchiki: Zaochno rasstreliany (Moscow, 2001) p. 132.
11. Perebezhchiki, p. 131-132; Interview with Evelyn Gouzenko (telephone), February 12, 2002. Interestingly, although Gouzenko says in his book that his father died in the Civil War, shortly after Gouzenko was born, his criminal file cited in Perebezhchiki says that his father, Sergei Davydovich Gouzenko, was living in Kiev before World War II.
