AFTER 31 YEARS, FORMER MOUNTIE PLEADS GUILTY IN SPYING CASE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404410001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 27, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404410001-9 ^
STAT
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BOSTON GLOBE
27 January 1986
After 31 years, former Mountie pleads guilty in spy spying case
By John Bierman
Special to the Globe
TORONTO - At the height of
The Cold War 31 years ago, a Roy-
-tvl Canadian Mounted Police cor-
'=poral, James Morrison, committed
;1% crime that has haunted him
ever since: Short of money, he be-
jFayed a Soviet double agent to the
.:Kremlin for the equivalent of one
,.;year's salary.
The double agent - code-
,,Aamed Gideon and described as
the most Importantspy-turned-lrf-
former netted by the Canadians -
as spirited back to Moscow and
not heard of again.
Last week irra court in Ottawa,
Morrison pleaded guilty to passing
secrets to the Soviets. Now aged 69
and employed as a construction
superintendent in British Colum-
'tiia, Morrison will be sentenced in
May.
, Although Morrison first con-
fessed to his superiors in 1957, he
could not be charged because of a
lack of corroborative evidence. He
never would have been brought to
justice but for his compulsion to
confess. Finally, just over three
years ago, he nailed himself by ad-
mitting his crime on television.
Thinly disguised in a black w ig
and false moustache, he appeared
on the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation's public affairs
program "Fifth Estate" and ad-
mitted that he had sold out Gideon
for $3,500, about what he was
earning at the time as a corporal
in the Mounties.
When the interviewer asked
him if the consequence of his be-
trayal was probably the death of
Gideon at the hands of the KGB,
the Soviet secret police. he replied:
"It would appear to be the stan-
dard procedure."
Gideon's real name apparently
was Breek. He was infiltrated into
Canada shortly after World War II
and assumed the identity of a
Canadian photographer named
David Soboloff, who had emigrat-
ed to Russia some years earlier.
He became enamored of the
Canadian way of life and offered
himself to the Mounties, then Can-
ada's counterintelligence agency.
as a double agent. He supplied
them with the names of Soviet
spies in Canada and the United
States, cipher pads, dates and
times of Soviet spy transmissions
and other valuable information.
Volatile personality
The Soviet agent was a volatile
personality racked by periodic
bouts of self-hatred for having be-
trayed his country. "He'd get on
the floor and cry and kick his feet
like a sad. little child and call us
curious names," a former superin-
tendent. Terence Guernsey, re-
called in court evidence last week.
At this time Morrison was en-
gaged in surveillance duties.
Guernsey said Morrison's col-
leagues knew him as "a flashy in-
dividual" who dressed well,
smoked cigars, drove big cars,
lived generally beyond his salary.
and was "always robbing Peter to
pay Paul.",
Eventually, after one of the
double agent's screaming fits
against his handlers, Morrison
contacted a KGB man attached to
the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa
and sold him the secret of Gideon.
Not long after that. Morrison was
caught for a comparative peccadil-
lo. He had "borrowed" $1,400 in
RCMP funds with which he was
supposed to pay a telephone bill
accrued during a wiretapping op-
eration. As punishment he was
kicked out of counterintelligence
and banished to detachment duty
in a small town on the prairies,
where he spent the rest of his ser-
vice.
When Morrison's trial opened
on Wednesday he pleaded not
guilty. The following day he
changed his plea after Judge
Coulter Osborne of the Ontario Su-
preme Court ruled that the video-
tape of his television interview
was admissible as evidence.
After the four-minute tape had
been shown to the jury, Osborne
said, "Justice has been done."
Outside the court, Morrison's law-
yer, John Nelligan, said: "He was
submitted to a Chinese water tor-
ture for 30 years. We hope the last
drip has fallen."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404410001-9