We now know … a little bit more: Canada’s Cold War defectors

The Cold War began, at least in part, with a Soviet defector seeking refuge in Canada. ¹ Igor Gouzenko’s decision to swap his allegiance, trading East for West—and the documents that came with him—revealed active Soviet espionage in Canada and elsewhere. ² Gouzenko’s defection might have been the first—and most famous—of Canada’s Cold War, but it was hardly the last. Recently opened in response to Access to Information Act requests filed by the Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project, other records cast brighter light on this aspect of Canada’s intelligence history. Files on individual defectors remain closed, but piecing together recently opened material makes it possible to sketch the contours of Canadian policy regarding defectors in the early Cold War. ³

We now know how many defected to Canada from 1945 to 1962, and from where. We also know how many defectors to other countries, including (but not limited to) the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), were ultimately settled in Canada in those same years. ⁴

Canada developed its system for obtaining intelligence from defectors as a “defence against help,” making sure that allied intelligence officers did not conduct such work on Canadian soil. ⁵ But the most important driver of Canada’s defector policy was to ensure that the Government of Canada had intelligence to trade with their larger, more productive intelligence allies. Canadian diplomats identified potential defectors abroad, and when those from Communist countries did defect, these individuals were interrogated for intelligence information. ⁶ That information was then passed to Canada’s main intelligence allies, the UK and the US, and later, Australia. Foreign allied intelligence services helped develop many of the questions that Canadian interrogators (or interviewers) put to defectors. While the Government of Canada has always been a net recipient of intelligence in allied relationships, Canada’s defector policy allowed Canadian officials one opportunity to give, rather than take, intelligence information.

What follows is a patchwork, likely incomplete given the records that are still inaccessible, of how the Government of Canada managed defections—and those who defected. It outlines what we know, not from extrapolation or off-the-record newspaper stories, but from open archival records. It offers a survey of what open archival records reveal about this particularly shadowy subject and hints at how much more there is left to be discovered. Some of these avenues for future research, though not all, will require the release of further material, whether under the Access to Information Act or a broader declassification framework from the Government of Canada.

1945–1952

Between 1945 and 1950, about twenty-five members of Soviet Bloc missions defected in Canada. ⁷ Another five, it appears, defected in 1951 and 1952. ⁸ But defections directly to Canada were hardly the only path for defectors from the Soviet Union and its allied states to arrive in Canada. In 1947, Canada reached an informal agreement with the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) to “accept as immigrants a few defectors every year.” ⁹ Alongside the SIS, the Department of External Affairs (DEA) developed a “scheme” to instruct “our European Missions to handle Soviet defectors, who may present themselves at our Legations or Embassies.” These arrangements, “worked out in consultation” with the British, established a plan by which after the “initial contact with our Missions, defectors are handed over to [sanitized] for subsequent interrogation and possible use as [sanitized.]” Redactions obscure the details slightly, but it can be reasonably inferred that the SIS would interrogate these defectors and possibly use them as double agents or agents-in-place. ¹⁰

This arrangement suited Canadian interests. The DEA, as one department official pointed out in 1949, had no desire to “undertake espionage operations abroad.” But the department did wish to “assist intelligence operations,” and defectors offered one method. At least one Soviet defector, for instance, was evacuated through the Canadian Mission in Berlin in the 1940s. In return for “what might be called our administrative assistance,” the UK “[was] prepared to send us a good deal of political intelligence from secret sources, some of which is extremely valuable.” ¹¹

Within a few years, Canadian officials began to think of defectors not only as an area in which they could assist allied intelligence services, but as a source of intelligence in their own right. In the spring of 1950, the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) ¹² received a paper from its British counterpart, [UK] JIC (49) 107 (Final), of February 21, 1950, concerning Russian and satellite defectors and refugees. The Canadian Director of Military Intelligence, Colonel Knight, was convinced that “from the Canadian standpoint, consideration should now be given to the possibility of exploiting defectors as a source of intelligence.” ¹³ The JIC agreed that the Joint Intelligence Staff should draft a paper studying “the value, from the Canadian standpoint, of Russian and satellite defectors as a source of intelligence.” In 1950, the Joint Intelligence Staff drafted a paper, “Defectors” (enumerated as CSC 14(50)), received comments on it, and began preparing a second draft. ¹⁴

Defectors did not wait for papers to be written or adopted, however. The government continued to manage defections on an ad hoc basis, much of it handled by “Section 2” of the Defence Liaison Division of the DEA. It was D-2, as the Section referred to itself then, which was responsible for “preliminary work on deciding whether a defector should be admitted to Canada and his interrogation on arrival.” They worked closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Polices (RCMP), and then the Consular Division handled the relationship with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. ¹⁵

From 1947 to 1952, the RCMP and DEA “consulted each other regularly” on issues related to refugees from the Soviet Bloc, including those who defected in Canada or “who defected elsewhere and whom Allied Intelligence Services asked to have settled in Canada.” This second group, according to a short historical overview written in the 1960s, “may have included” defectors who had “been used in offensive intelligence operations,” as well as defectors who had tried to defect to Canadian missions but were directed to the British. ¹⁶

The British continued to ask the Canadians to settle defectors, and Canada received “about three a year from the United Kingdom.” ¹⁷ The informal arrangement with the SIS was formalized in 1951, with a letter from the DEA to the British High Commissioner in Ottawa. The agreement, approved by the prime minister, the secretary of state for External Affairs, and the minister of Citizenship and Immigration, insisted that Canada would examine the merits of each case. Before Canada would admit an ex-agent, it required “details of the use made of the individual in offensive intelligence work and a guarantee of their political reliability.” ¹⁸ The British were obligated to provide “the cost of passage and such other financial assistance,” as appropriate. In 1951, it was expected that the annual number of defectors might grow, from “about three” to six. That growth never occurred. Records suggest that the number of defectors admitted to Canada from the UK actually declined after 1955. ¹⁹

Nonetheless, the Canadian government embraced this arrangement. It would, as one official put it, “enable us to contribute in this way to the general Western intelligence effort from which we obtain much more than we put in.” This same desire to “contribute” likely led Canada to accept defectors from other allies. One partially redacted document indicates that, by 1962, Canada had accepted “fewer than a dozen individuals” from the US. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) provided financial support or sponsorship for these individuals, at least until they became “self-supporting.” ²⁰

At some point starting in 1950 or 1951, likely following the JIC’s discussion of the intelligence value of defectors, “immigrants, defectors, etc., from the Red Bloc” were “interrogated” as a source of intelligence. As of July 1952, this effort was “on hold” after a “promising trial period.” Just why it was “on hold” is unclear. ²¹ But trends in 1952, including the growing number of defectors and the costs of settling those defectors who were coming to Canada from “other sources”—that is, from allied intelligence services ²² —spurred plans for a system to extract intelligence from defectors. The JIC acknowledged that the “trial period” of interrogations had “revealed the value” of these interviews “as a source of intelligence,” and that “the source is one of the very few ways in which Canada can obtain original intelligence, it is most desirable that the source be explored.” The JIC further called for an “interim organization” to be established, including “a special pool of trained interrogators.” This “interim organization” was to include a coordinator, three interrogators, and one stenographer, all under the administrative control of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), with “functional control” remaining with the JIC. ²³ These plans led to those for a “Co-ordinator of Intelligence Interrogation,” to operate on a trial basis. ²⁴ Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent thought that “interrogation” implied coercion, and so interrogation was replaced by the word “interview” in the Canadian lexicon. ²⁵ In April 1953, an Order-in-Council approved an “Interview Organization;” housed in the JIB—this organization interviewed defectors as well as immigrants from Communist states and Canadians who travelled behind the Iron Curtain. ²⁶

1953–1968

Prior to the creation of the Interview Organization, St. Laurent and ministers of “the relevant departments”—presumably Lester Pearson, secretary of state for External Affairs; Stuart Garson, minister of Justice (the portfolio responsible for the RCMP); and Walter Harris, minister of Citizenship and Immigration—had approved a policy “for determining the acceptability of defectors.” The prime minister’s role signifies the sensitivity of the matter; so, too, does the fact that the JIC was not consulted on the formulation of the policy. Because of the “domestic or international difficulties” that might arise from “admission of a defector into Canada,” a new interdepartmental committee was formed to “consider defector cases” with representatives from the DEA, the RCMP, and Citizenship and Immigration. ²⁷

This interdepartmental committee got to work on “general defector policy” and individual cases in 1953. In a 7 January 1953 meeting, the committee agreed to a set of “certain principles” regarding support of defectors, including that, “No genuine defector, particularly one who has defected in Canada, should suffer because of lack of funds.” Curiously, the committee agreed that “anyone who has defected” should be in “reasonable circumstances” in order to encourage other potential defectors. (How others would know previous defectors were financially supported remains curious from a practical and security perspective.) Thus, a defector was to “be maintained” at a certain standard of living until “he can become self-supporting” and was “willing to accept reasonable offers for employment made to him.” The committee also concluded that any defector sponsored by another country should be paid by that country. For those who defected in or to Canada, the RCMP would administer an annual grant of C$10,000 to provide assistance. ²⁸ (An “ex-Czech Consul-General Montreal” received a total of C$5,000 from August 1952–1957. An unidentified defector received “about” C$100 in 1953. Another from the Soviet Union had, by August 1961, received C$5,000 “so far.” ²⁹ ) By April 1953, the committee was formalized as the “Interdepartmental Committee on Defectors,” chaired by the deputy head of Section Two of the Defence Liaison Division—now styled DL(2)—with representation from the RCMP’s Security and Intelligence Directorate and the Admissions Division of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. DL(2) provided an officer who served as a secretary to the committee. ³⁰ Meetings took place as needed, usually when a Soviet Bloc citizen requested “political asylum.” ³¹ From the end of 1952 to 1962, the committee met 31 times. ³²

The Committee on Defectors would debate whether Canada had an “interest” in the defector “as a source of information of value to the intelligence community.” If the committee established a “substantial intelligence interest,” it accepted “responsibility for making representations” on how to handle the case. Records indicate that it was usually easy to establish, without a committee meeting, whether a defector was of intelligence interest. If there was no intelligence interest, the case was handled by Immigration “with not special or urgent treatment, and no possibility of special financial support.” (Later, the JIB was invited to send a representative to the committee who could provide insight into the “intelligence value of defectors and to co-ordinate debriefing of defectors.”) ³³

In 1955, the committee approved formal definitions of defectors so it could “distinguish between defectors who may be or have been of intelligence value and those who are not.” It operated with three definitions, two of them adapted from the UK. A Soviet defector was “[a]ny Soviet citizen who seeks asylum from any Canadian authority and who resettlement is recommended by any Department represented on the Joint Intelligence Committee,” while a Satellite defector was defined as any “citizen of a satellite country who is considered by the JIC to be of considerable intelligence value and whom it is desirable to resettle in Canada so that his knowledge can be exploited.” Though not formally defined in the available records, in the early 1950s, “Satellite” typically referred to Central and Eastern European socialist states allied with the Soviet Union. This would expand in the early 1960s to include Asian countries. ³⁴

The committee used a third definition—“Any Soviet or satellite citizens who seeks asylum in Canada and whose resettlement is recommended by the appropriate Canadian authorities”—for CIA-sponsored defectors arriving via the US. This framing made it possible for Canada to settle “ex-agents of the CIA” who the US asked the Government of Canada to accept “in the interests of their personal safety.” With these three definitions, the Government of Canada could “assess each case on its own merits.” The combination allowed Canada to “take in” those who defected in Canada or at Canadian missions abroad, along with those whom “Britain or the United States sponsor,” and who “would particularly like to settle in Canada.” ³⁵

Between 1950 and 1962, seventy-one defectors settled in Canada. This number refers only to “heads of family,” not the total number of people settled in Canada as a result. Of these, eighteen defected to Canada, five to Canadian missions. Of the thirteen who defected in Canada, only one came from the Soviet Union. The vast majority came via Canadian allies. Forty defectors came from the UK; thirteen from the US (although seven of these were treated as regular immigrants); and small numbers from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Denmark. ³⁶ As yet, there is no information available about those who did not arrive from the US or the UK. Since there were so few, we might presume these were the result of ad hoc arrangements.

The definitions were updated and consolidated in 1958. The revised definition made clear that the committee would consider defectors who had “considerable intelligence value” to Canada, “[o]r as a means of cooperation with a friendly intelligence service.” By 1962, the definition included specific geographical details, referring to “the USSR, the Chinese People’s Republic, or satellites of those countries.” ³⁷

In 1962, the Interdepartmental Committee on Defectors wrote a memorandum to the JIB’s successor, the Intelligence Policy Committee, suggesting that it was time to move from ad hoc organization to written Terms of Reference. The proposed terms included representation (the DEA would remain in the Chair, and the balance of the committee would include the Immigration Branch, the JIB, and the RCMP); the updated, unified definition of “defector;” and a list of the committee’s functions. The functions included consideration of all individual cases of defection to Canada (in Canada or abroad); requests from allied intelligence authorities; and policy recommendations on handling defectors. ³⁸

By 1964, the committee itself met “at very infrequent intervals and then only when questions of policy or a particularly difficult case is involved.” The policies that guided the committee were, one member reported, “smooth running,” and allowed the administration of—much of it by the committee’s secretary—a “fairly steady stream of defectors coming into Canada (the majority of them Cubans).” ³⁹

Thus, Canadian policies enabled the country to act as a good ally, taking in defectors from elsewhere. But Canada also established defectors as a source of intelligence, and allied intelligence services shared information about defectors that they interviewed and helped develop interview questions. And so, at home and abroad, Canadian officials were on the lookout for defectors. The RCMP urged Canadian officials across departments to report social contacts with Soviet Bloc officials, a practice known as “social relations reporting.” The checklist of “Information Needed on Soviet and Satellite Officials” included “[a]ny indication of possible defection of this Official or his wife.” ⁴⁰ When, in 1955, the RCMP studied the implications of allowing more Soviet diplomats into Canada, it noted that this would increase the RCMP’s counter-espionage tasks, which included “development of Soviet and Satellite personnel for defection purposes.” ⁴¹

Canadian officials seemed to believe that defection might serve as a mechanism to protect Canada from atomic attack. In one striking JIC document from April 1954, the Canadian JIC received and discussed a British paper, JIC(53)85 (Final), on the clandestine use of atomic weapons by the USSR. ⁴² Members of the Canadian JIC believed that the issue was so important that the Canadians should themselves prepare a similar paper. However, although the Canadian JIC agreed that any Soviet effort to sneak a nuclear device into Canada would be easy, they believed it would also be risky: they assumed that the agent undertaking the operation might defect before setting off the explosion. ⁴³ Nonetheless, the Canadian JIC went on to approve a series of papers on “The Clandestine Introduction of Nuclear Weapons into Canada” and repeated their suggestion that the Soviet Union “could never be entirely sure that […] one of the agents would not balk at an act of treachery of such proportions and would defect.” ⁴⁴ If the Soviet Union were to wage “clandestine biological warfare,” in 1954, the JIC expected, the campaign would run a risk of detection via defectors. ⁴⁵

Coordination between allied services was crucial because defectors sometimes shopped around allied missions before defecting. In August 1958, a Polish diplomat, Jerzy Bryn called at the office of Colonel N.H. Ross, the Canadian Service attaché at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. Bryn, the Polish member of the International Control and Supervisory Commission, asked that Ross meet him later that day at the Imperial Hotel. He would not say what the meeting was about. The meeting in the hotel bar was uneventful; Bryn asked for contact information for another Canadian officer visiting Tokyo from Saigon. A few days later, Bryn defected to the US.

Only subsequently did Ross learn from Guy Choquette, who was serving with the Canadian trade commissioner in Hong Kong, that Bryn had contacted Ross with the intention of defecting. He had apparently been “afraid to broach the subject at the meeting.” Instead, Bryn went to the British in Tokyo who, in turn, directed him to the US embassy where he defected. ⁴⁶ In April 1959, Bryn “redefected” to Poland. Since it was obvious that Bryn had been “less than candid in his associations with U.S. authorities,” the CIA liaison officer in Ottawa, Rolfe Kingsley, asked his hosts for the “true facts” concerning Bryn’s attempt to defect to the Canadians. ⁴⁷

Defectors consistently provided information about Soviet intelligence operations in and against Canada. An RCMP historical study of Soviet illegal networks in Canada suggests that most information about these networks operating in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s came mainly, if not exclusively, from “a variety of defector sources.” ⁴⁸ Information from the 1954 defections of the Russian Committee for State Security (KGB) officer Nikolai Khokhlov (to the US) and Vladimir Petrov (to Australia) convinced the Canadians that the Soviet Union operated networks, or nets, of legal resident and “deep cover” illegal agents who were “committed to a campaign of selective sabotage and terrorist activities even in peacetime” and “‘stay-behind’ nets of agents to function in the event of a war.” ⁴⁹

Other information gained by defectors seemed more mundane but, perhaps in retrospect, more important. Consider this example from a JIB report of an interview with a Czech defector in Canada: in 1962, Canada contributed a small exhibition to the annual Brno Trade Fair. At the exhibit, visitors could receive a small booklet with photographs and information about Canada. The booklet, made in Canada, was published in Czech. Two years later, a defector indicated what a “worthwhile anti-communist propaganda” effort this had been and suggested that the Government of Canada work harder to improve its Czech language skills. Future booklets could then be printed in Czech and English, enabling students to use the material to practise English and giving the booklet a “wider impact.” The defector also suggested that the exhibitors only allow one booklet per person, as “police agents gather up as many as they could to prevent their dissemination.” ⁵⁰

The most fruitful defector, at least as discernible from open records, was an electrochemist, Dr. M.A. Klochko. The former head of the N.S. Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry in Moscow, Klochko defected to Canada in August 1961. He was assigned a case officer, R.L. McGibbon of the JIB, and a scientific case officer, a fellow electrochemist, Dr. E.J. Casey from the Defence Research Board. ⁵¹ McGibbon took to referring to Klochko, at least in correspondence, as “the little man.” ⁵²

After his defection, Klochko set about writing his “background”—a document translated from Russian by the JIB. Copies of the first instalment were sent to the CIA and the UK’s JIB while Klochko got to work on a second. Once the various agencies read “the background,” they could send their “requirements”—questions they wished to be posed to Klochko—to the JIB. McGibbon planned “to go after him on the scientific and nuclear questions first.” After that, he hoped to focus on “the same general type of questions” ⁵³ that were presumably asked of all defectors. The first interview was scheduled to be a verbal interview, with future questions put to the chemist in writing, in the hopes of gaining “fuller and more thought-out answers.” ⁵⁴ However, McGibbon’s plans had to change, it seems, given allied interest in Klochko, his wealth of information, and the challenges of interviewing him.

Early “requirements” were received from the CIA, the US Army, and the JIB in London. Priority topics included “rocket fuels, atomic energy, any Chinese scientific or technical activity, Soviet gold and other metals.” ⁵⁵ As of April 1962, the JIB had received 800 questions for Klochko; more than half came from the US. The rest came from Australian, British, and Canadian agencies. Already, the JIB had produced eleven reports on Klochko, totalling about 215 pages. ⁵⁶ Interview reports were distributed to allies, as were updates on the process. In February 1962, for instance, the JIB put questions to Klochko about Soviet production of nickel, cobalt, and tungsten. The JIB told the chief of the CIA’s Non-Ferrous Metals Branch that the “questions on cobalt were inadvertently left out,” but would be included in the next interview. ⁵⁷

No American, British, or other intelligence officer was in direct contact with Klochko; questions—or “requirements”—went to the JIB and Defence Research Board case officers who conducted the interviews. Officers from the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) did come to Canada, however, to “discuss technical details” with McGibbon and Casey. The interviews were then “recorded on magnetic tapes” and loaned to the CIA/OSI. Specialist officers could listen to these tapes in case they “provided leads” missed during the interviews. ⁵⁸ At Klochko’s request, the taping was abandoned, which made him more comfortable. ⁵⁹

Klochko was “very cooperative and ready to talk,” but the JIB found him “not easy to cross-examine.” He remained “totally unwilling” to provide information about the “political attitudes or activities or loyalties” of his scientific colleagues for fear this might “implicate them with Soviet security authorities” should his interviews ever be leaked. His interviews were also limited by a “very serious health condition” that reduced the length and frequency of his debriefings, presumably made all the worse by an abscess in the roof of his mouth. ⁶⁰ A Soviet dentist “had broken off a piece of his drill” and “never bothered to look for the piece.” It seems that a Canadian dentist found it in late 1961. “It was quite a job to get it out of the little man’s mouth,” McGibbon reported, but the discovery led to improved health and, presumably, easier interviews. ⁶¹

Beyond his interview answers, Klochko passed on other information to the JIB. In 1964, Klochko published Soviet Scientist in China, an account of his 1957 study trip to China. In 1962, he provided a 20-volume advanced draft, in Russian, to the JIB, with sections of interest sidelined in blue pencil. The JIB loaned it to the CIA. ⁶²

While Klochko did not produce “any spectacular new knowledge” of the “very highest priority subject such as missiles and nuclear energy,” he did provide “a tremendous amount of very reliable detail on all the very wide range of subjects which in any way impinge upon electro-chemistry.” ⁶³ The amount of information he provided was staggering when compared with other sources of intelligence. In 1962, Ivor Bowen, the director of the JIB, pointed out the importance of these interviews compared to intelligence collected by the Canadian delegation to the International Control Commission in Indo-China, marine operations, and Service attachés. “All of these sources together,” wrote Bowen, “do not approach the value” of interviews done by the JIB of travellers, immigrants, and defectors. Of this group “the most important source has, of course, been Dr. Klochko.” ⁶⁴

In addition to sending defector interview reports, allied intelligence agencies asked Canadian officials to interview defectors now settled in Canada. In one curious case, a Czechoslovak chemical engineer, Geza Kulla, was in the midst of processing by the Americans at the “Defector Reception Center” when he learned that his Canadian visa was ready. Afraid that his visa might expire, he left the centre. Kingsley, the liaison officer at the US Embassy in Ottawa, hoped the CIA could “submit appropriate ‘requirements’” that the Canadians could put to Kulla. ⁶⁵

By the 1960s, Canada was home to an increasing number of Cuban defectors fleeing after the revolution in Cuba and rise to power of Fidel Castro in 1959. The Americans asked Canadians to look out for specific information they might gain from defectors. Less than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro travelled to the Soviet Union. Kingsley told his JIB contact that his “Headquarters” had “a very strong intelligence interest in any agreements which may have been made” between Cuba and the Soviet Union. Kingsley asked the Canadians to bear this in mind “if any persons should defect in the coming weeks who might possess the desired information.” ⁶⁶ A year later, the Americans asked the JIB to “serve […] requirements” on “appropriate Cuban seaman defectors” regarding a Soviet–Cuban fishing base in Havana Harbour and the status of a formerly Greek merchant ship that had run aground in Cuba and been salvaged by Cubans. ⁶⁷

The exchange of defector information travelled in both directions, and information from defector interviews conducted by allied services also informed Canadian intelligence reports. These “Intelligence Briefs,” sent to the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, included a notation of the source of the intelligence, and some of it came from defectors, including, for instance, a July 1958 report of a new “submarine chaser” (the “Shark”) being built in East Germany for Warsaw Pact forces. ⁶⁸ In turn, Canadians regularly submitted “requirements” to partner agencies abroad, and the scope of intelligence sought was broad: in 1965, the JIB was busy preparing requirements for two Siberians with smelting experience who had defected in Juneau, Alaska. ⁶⁹ One “Period Intelligence Report,” in particular, came in 1960 from the Canadian Service attaché in Bonn with information provided by Captain Günter Alfons Malikowski, a political officer in an East German motorized infantry division. Malikowski, who defected to West Germany with his wife and children, brought with him propaganda material that had been prepared to accompany “offensive operations against West Germany.” Malikowski said he defected because of this shift in Warsaw Pact units from their preparing for defensive operations to preparing for attack—apparently a common reason for most defections of military officers. The Canadian attaché noted that, while it was always possible that Malikowski was a planted agent, there had been already two attempts to abduct Malikowski since his defection and other evidence that he was a bona fide defector.

1968–?

There is no indication, at least not from the available records, that Canadian policy on defectors changed when the JIB was dismantled in 1968. The DEA gave special attention to how defector interviews would be carried out, quickly concluding that the “interrogation of defectors”—the word “interrogation” had clearly returned to informal usage—could not “simply be transferred to any other government department.” ⁷⁰ The JIB thus became part of the DEA, rechristened as the Special Research Bureau. ⁷¹

Despite the bureaucratic shuffling, the role of defector intelligence and relationships with allied intelligence services continued. In 1975, A.F. Hart, the director general of the DEA’s Bureau of Security and Intelligence Liaison met with Stacy Hulse, the “CIA Representative” in Ottawa, along with his assistant, Joseph C. Bernard. The record of their August 1975 discussion is sanitized but instructive: Hulse formally withdrew a “Headquarters” request for a defector to be admitted to Canada. The men also discussed a “Cambodian Defector Case” that the CIA had learned about from their Hong Kong Office. Hart explained that, while this possible defector had not contacted the Canadian mission in Beijing, he had “made his wishes known through the Agence France Press representative” there. Hart provided more information while Hulse explained that “his headquarters was interested in [sanitized] from the point of view of whether he might be a useful agent in place.” ⁷²

Defector information continued to flow in multiple directions. Information received from defectors to other countries remained an important intelligence source for Canada. In March 1972, the RCMP briefed the Cabinet Committee on Security and Intelligence on “Espionage Activities in Canada.” RCMP officials argued that Castro took “a personal interest in operations directed against Canada,” and that a defector “categorically stated that the Cubans are providing assistance to members of the FLQ [Front de liberation du Québec] in the form of money, material and training.” These assertions were based on defector reports provided by the CIA.

The CIA reports, the DEA knew, were “much less categorical than the RCMP assertion regarding the provision of assistance to the FLQ.” The defector in question had not been to Cuba since February 1971. His information relied “on dated facts.” While it was “probably true that Cuba provided a certain amount of assistance to Quebec terrorists both in Canada and in Cuba up to October 1970,” the DEA believed that this had stopped after Canada’s requests for Cuban assistance in freeing Jasper Cross. The DEA reasoned that “a good deal more precise information must be obtained from the defector” before firm conclusions could be drawn. ⁷³

Canada, for its own part, continued to circulate information from defectors it interviewed. Reports of defector interviews were regularly distributed to the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand; in turn, these governments were free to send in “follow-up” questions. These interviews and reports were meant to provide intelligence information, though not security intelligence. Any security information gleaned from interviews was passed to the RCMP Security Service for action (if any) through the Services' own channels. ⁷⁴

By 1976, DEA officials were still reporting that the interdepartmental and international cooperation in interviewing defectors remained “extremely close,” including the RCMP Security Service, the DND’s Director General Intelligence and Security (DGIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and British and American allies abroad. And, most important from the Canadian perspective, the intelligence that they gleaned from defectors was welcomed by their allies. While the currently open records do not delineate which specific interview information came from immigrants or defectors, intelligence gained in the 1970s included details on Soviet command and control, that the “GCHQ, NSA and CSE [the signals intelligence agencies of the UK, US, and Canada, respectively], found […] of extreme interest” and “Soviet Sigint collection” that the British and Americans found of “considerable interest.” ⁷⁵

Although the records available to date shed far more light on the first decades of the Cold War, there is no reason to think that Canada’s defector history came to a close in the 1960s. By the 1980s, in the last decade of the Cold War, defections to Canada seem to have possibly increased rather than waned. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times published an article describing how Gander International Airport, Newfoundland—a refuelling stop on the voyage from the USSR to Cuba and back—was an easy and common site for defections from the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Iran. ⁷⁶ A year later, the Toronto Star reported that Montreal’s Mirabel International Airport was such a common site of defection that RCMP officers made themselves accessible, strolling through the transit area whenever Czech Air flights stopped over. ⁷⁷ Was this rash of defectors a fruitful intelligence source? Newspaper stories identified these individuals as “defectors,” but were they defectors in the same sense as defined by the Canadian intelligence community? Here we should be cautious about relying on newspaper sources alone. Only the further declassification of archival records can answer that question definitively.

Conclusion

It is encouraging that the Government of Canada has released all of this information. Yet, it is also curious that Canada has kept this information under wraps for so long. Many of the documents shower the defector policy and the interdepartmental committee with praise (even if, admittedly, some were drafted when considerations of funding were up in the air). This seems like an intelligence success to trumpet.

It is reasonable, perhaps, that the government kept this policy secret for the duration of the Cold War and the immediately following decades. It is also possible that Canada’s allies do not wish it to be public knowledge that Canada was a destination for second-hand defectors. In general, however, the secrecy surrounding defector policy matches the Government of Canada’s efforts to pretend that Canada has no intelligence history. Open archival finding aids at Library and Archives Canada make clear that there are scores of closed archival folders concerning defectors. ⁷⁸ However, it is unlikely that these files will be opened without Access to Information Act requests. These files might be candidates for a new declassification framework designed to ensure that historical information can be released while those small bits of information which must remain closed for privacy and security reasons stay that way.

Lately, some of Canada’s closest intelligence partners, especially the UK, seem to have seized on the recruitment and public affairs benefits of admitting to, even actively sharing, parts of their intelligence history by providing archival access or access to intelligence officers to official, semi-official, or authorized historians. ⁷⁹ Consider, for instance, the remarkable tale of the Soviet intelligence officer Oleg Gordievsky who went by several codenames, including OVATION. Ben Macintyre’s bestselling The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War reveals much of the history of Gordievsky’s spying, the remarkable tale of his defection, and the information he provided in defector interviews (even while pseudonyms are provided for the SIS officers involved). ⁸⁰ Is there a Canadian element to Gordievsky’s defection or post-defection history? Macintyre claims that it was a Czechoslovak defector who settled in Canada, Standa Kaplan, who offered the first suggestion to Western intelligence services that Gordievsky might be turned. ⁸¹ One finding aid at Library and Archives Canada includes a file, “Political Asylum—OVATION,” suggesting that there is more to the story. ⁸²

To truly grapple with the history of Canada’s Cold War requires understanding what the Government of Canada was doing, even if these actions were—understandably—secret. It requires a focus both on the celebrity defectors, such as Gouzenko and Gordievsky, who bookended the Cold War, but also on all those individuals who came in between. A full history of defectors to and in Canada will illuminate how Canadian officials saw their place in the world, both in relation to its Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, but also to its allies in Washington and London. It can shed new light on familiar episodes, revealing details about, say, the relationship between the FLQ and Cuba. There is, it seems, much more to be said about Canada’s place in the history of Cold War defectors, and a significant and large portion of Canadian history, left to be revealed.