"As an aside, the archival material contains details of the forced repatriation of Cossacks, White Russians and others back to communism and death, with certain British officers paid off in gold bullion. The Foreign Office today claims ignorance of the policy. "

-Peter Worthington, Toronto Sun, September 30, 1999

Canada's Hidden Commie Connections

by Peter Worthington

THE Soviet Union may be dead and gone -- and with it the Cold War which it started and lost -- but reverberations from its espionage service continue, and may even be growing.

The release of a new book, The Mitrokhin Papers: The KGB and the West by Cambridge professor Andrew Christopher, is the tip of an espionage iceberg that has the potential of embarrassing virtually every western country -- especially Canada, which historically has been key to Soviet espionage.

We're told the book is compiled from six trunks of KGB archival material collected over a 10-year period by Vasili Mitrokhin, a bigwig in KGB archives who defected to Britain before the USSR imploded, and somehow smuggled the material out. Until now, the details had been kept secret.

Already we've been bombarded with publicity about the treasonous granny (great-granny, really) Melita Norwood, 87, who betrayed her country since 1949 with impunity, and who declares she has "no regrets." She was a spy for "idealistic reasons" and believed in the "humanity" of communism and Josef Stalin, the 20th century's most efficient butcher.

As an aside, the archival material contains details of the forced repatriation of Cossacks, White Russians and others back to communism and death, with certain British officers paid off in gold bullion. The Foreign Office today claims ignorance of the policy.

As for Canada, there are undoubtedly some uneasy people -- many of whom may be retired with Orders of Canada and prestige -- who have their fingers crossed the Mitrokhin documents don't mention this country. This is a forlorn hope, since during 70 years of Soviet espionage, most big spy cases that broke involved Canada in some way.

No KGB or GRU spy worthy of the name was without the easy-to-get Canadian passport. (Tito, Trotsky's assassin, Lonsdale, Sorge, Col. Abel, etc.) Soviet spies incubated in Canada, for espionage elsewhere. One KGB officer worked as a CBC cameraman.

The other day, what's left of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) officially denied it had ever been funded by Moscow, or was used to recruit spies, or was an arm of Soviet espionage.

Believe that, and you'll believe Granny Norwood was Mary Poppins. Thirty years ago, I was writing from Moscow that the CPC was funded by the Kremlin and aided Soviet espionage. RCMP security had ample evidence, which a succession of governments refused to act on.

We forget the only Canadian ever convicted of being a professional Soviet spy was a Communist member of Parliament -- Fred Rose, exposed by Igor Gouzenko, the cipher clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa who chose freedom in 1945 and unmasked a massive spy ring, one of eight rings he said were operating in Canada.

During the 1970 FLQ crisis, Canada had the distinction of hosting two Communist parties, both paying homage to (and taking orders from) Moscow -- the CPC and the Communist Party of Quebec, which actively worked for Quebec's separation. Ottawa, even then, chose to ignore RCMP warnings.

Significantly, there isn't a single case on record where the Communist Party of Canada ever sided with Ottawa in a policy dispute with Moscow. Its loyalty was to the USSR, not Canada.

In later years, the CPC became a toothless agitator that camouflaged how insidiously Soviet espionage recruited, blackmailed, bribed and coerced Canadians into treason.

In 1978, I was charged under the Official Secrets Act for revealing 16 examples of Canadians corrupted into treason by the KGB. After a year of preliminary hearings, the case was thrown out of court as being politically motivated.

One wonders if the Mitrokhin archives mention Herbert Norman, our ambassador to Cairo who committed suicide in 1956 after then-external affairs Minister Mike Pearson assured the House of Commons that he, Norman, had never been a communist -- when in fact, he had been.

How about Pierre Trudeau's controversial trip to a Moscow economic conference after World War II as head of the Canadian delegation comprised of Communist party members? (Trudeau said he threw snowballs at Stalin's statue... in April!)

What of the KGB "sleeper," activated 20 years after Gouzenko's defection to kill him -- but who defected to the RCMP?

What's in the archives about the KGB's links with the peace movement? Or the CBC? Or the KGB, using Quebec separatism to cause rifts in Canada and upset the U.S.?

How about KGB spies inside the RCMP, one of whom, former KGB Col. Oleg Kalugin, has already been exposed?

Or agents of influence and worse in universities, the churches, civil service, journalism, Parliament?

Some await further revelations with interest -- others with apprehension.