WHY IS CANADA SO SOFT ON ESPIONAGE?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440058-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 28, 2011
• Sequence Number: 58
• Publication Date: September 11, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440058-3
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE WASHINGTON TIMES
11 September 1984
Y is Canada so so
For a long time, it had been a
burning question ignored or
indifferently understood for
the most part by Canada's
parliamentarians and government.
The question, however, was well
understood in the private world of
Canada's potent mandarinate, those`
who strode the corridors of power
during the Pierre'ilvdeau decades.
It was a debate about war and
cold war, about Canada's foreign
and domestic policies, about terror
and subversion, a debate over intel-
ligence operations and national
security in a bipolar world. And
always the burning question:
Why is Canada the KGB's happy
hunting ground, why more so than
any other democracy in the NATO
alliance? Why, as Toronto Sun editor
Barbara Amiel puts it, has Canada
become "the soft underbelly" of
Western resistance to communist
espionage? Shouldn't there be a
national debate about this agoniz-
ing problem which affects the secu-
rity interests not only of Canada but
also those of the United States and
other NATO members? After all,
Canada has just had a national elec-
tion, but there was no national
debate over the question of the
KGB in Canada. The question of
civil rights and the KGB violation
of those rights was never men-
tioned in the campaign.
The debate by murmur has been
on espionage?
MMOMBEICHMAN
What has happened since the tre-
mendous Gouzenko disclosures?
According to John D. Harbon, for-
eign affairs analyst for the Thom-
son News Service, "An overstaffed
Soviet Embassy, much too large for
the kind of trade and other rela-
tions we maintain with the U.S.S.R.,
has existed in Ottawa since the
Gouzenko spy scandal of 1945-46"
Some weeks ago in the senate
chamber of York University's Glen-
don campus in'lbronto, a Canadian,
quietly, unassertively and devastat-
ingly, delivered a paper on Soviet
espionage in Canada. He was John
Starnes, the first civilian director-
general of the RCMP security ser-
vice from 1-970-73 and a longtime
Foreign Service officer, now
retired and free at last.
Mr. Starnes was addressing on
the record a small audience of
Canadian and U.S. academic spe-
cialists in military and strategic
studies and a handful of Canadian
civil servants. He spoke from
knowledge, personal experience,
and from a sense of apprehension
about the state of Canada's defenses
against the invisible invader;
invisible, that is, for those who will
not see. He warned his countrymen
about "the never-ending attempt by
the KGB and others to compromise
Canadians through blackmail,
entrapment, and coercion."
"Tb my personal knowledge;' he
said, "there have been literally
scores of such attempts in the past
25 years and probably the numbers
are greater, since it must be
assumed there are some such
attempts which go unreported and
thus are unknown to the
authorities.
"The victims have included offi-
cials, journalists, politicians, diplo-
mats, cypher clerks, businessmen,.
academics, tourists, and sportsmen
ticking away ever since the Igor
Gouzenko affair exploded almost 40
years ago across the North
American sky. The full story of his
relevations still lies buried in Otta-
wa's most secret archives. It has
never really been told. It was Mr.
Gouzenko who put the finger on
Harry Dexter White and Alger
Hiss. Igor Gouzenko, the Soviet
Embassy code clerk, blew the lid on
Soviet espionage in Canada in Sep-
tember 1945 by listing names of
Canadians, with dates and places,
who were spying for Stalin. The
Royal Commission appointed to
irv_?stigate Mr. Gouzenko's revela-
tions declared in its report that Mr.
Gouzenko, who died recently in
Canada, "has rendered great public
service to the people of this country
and thereby has placed Canada in
his debt"
- the KGB'3 tastes are eclectic.
The unsavory methods are
designed to take advantage of the
human frailties of individuals they
consider some day may be of use to
them."
Mr. Starnes: charged that espi-
onage activities by Soviet bloc
agents in Canada included:
? Harassment of ethnic groups
for political and other purposes.
? Creation of agents of influence,
who, consciously or unconsciously,
serve some Soviet purposes.
? Provision of clandestine finan-
cial support for causes and political
groups serving some Soviet inter-
est.
? Provision of ideological and
military instruction for groups and
individuals whose avowed aim is
"the destruction of our institutions
and those of our allies."
In any other democracy, charges
like these by a highly informed gov-
ernment official against a country
like the U.S.$.R. with a proven
record of espionage, disinfor-
mation, subversion, assassination,
and attempted auassiuation, could
lead to an investigation, or at least
a hue and cry - something. But not
in Canada, not from the top leader-
ship of the two major political par-
ties - the Liberals, under John
Turner, and the Progressive Con-
servatives under their new leader
Brian Mulroney.
As for the socialist New Demo-
cratic Party, its policy is: indulge
the Soviets, excoriate the United
States. And Canadian civil liberties
organizations, always on the ready
to protect the right of Canadians
from Big Brother government?
What about KGB activities which
routinely violate these rights?
Silence. Willed amnesia about the
Soviet Union and Cuba is endemic
among Canada's ruling elites.
Would that the United States, per-
manent target of these same elites,
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440058-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440058-3
2
should be as lucky as the Soviet
bloc.
Let me repeat: the Canadian who
is making these charges would be
the equivalent of someone like
Judge William Webster, FBI direc-
tor. If anyone should know the state
of internal security in Canada it
would be John Starnes and he told
it like it is.
"Canadians do not perceive," he
said, "that they are threatened by
foreign espionage activities, inter-
national terrorism or activities of
groups and individuals in Canada
working to subvert the system "
And why the faulty perceptions?
Mr. Starnes replied in a charitable
gesture smothered in euphemism:
"Successive [Canadian] govern-
ments have never learned the knack
of using effectively the information
derived from various intelligence
and security services. In particular
they have often failed to take suffi-
cient account of such information
in the formulation of foreign,
defense, trade, and security poli-
cies."
Note the phrase, "successive
governments" - Liberal and Con-
servative - and their prime minis-
ters, no exceptions. Someday, soon
I hope, Mr. Starnes will answer the
question as to why otherwise clever
Canadian political leaders haven't
learned the "knack" of using intel-
ligence information effectively or
why they have "failed" to use this
information in formulating govern-
ment policy. What's so difficult
about learning the knack?
"Many Canadians apparently'are
unwilling to believe," Mr. Starnes
said, "that anyone would wish to
carry out such unfriendly activities
against them. This is partly
because we tend to think that we are
universally liked and that others
perceive us as we see ourselves -
peace-loving, honest brokers filled
with goodwill towards everyone.
" 'What secrets do we possess
that could possibly interest the
Russians or anyone else?' I recall a
senior and influential Cabinet min-
ister arguing exactly in that vein, I
believe with genuine conviction."
A Cabinet minister who believes
such arrant nonsense would any-
where else but Canada have dis-
qualified himself for public
service.
Perhaps the most devastating
accusation by Mr. Starnes is that
"Soviet bloc intelligence activities
rarely are taken into account at the
official and ministerial level when
policies and strategies are being
formulated for the conduct of our
overall relationships with the
Soviet Union."
In other words, it would be fair to
say that when former Prime Minis-
ter of Canada Pierre Elliott 'Il?u-
deau was busy fashioning a policy
towards the Soviet Union, one
which led him to criticize President
Reagan's policies on arms control
in the face of Soviet superar-
maments, it was quite probable that
Mr. 'Il'udeau was ignoring Soviet
bloc intelligence activities in
Canada, knowledge of which was
available to him. As Mr. Starnes
might say, Mr. Trudeau never got
the "knack"
Mr. Starnes described to his col-
leagues and the academics "a wor-
rying development," namely, the
extent to which the Russians and
"their friends, including the
Cubans, recently have stepped up
their espionage and disinformation
activities throughout the world"
and, even more important, "the
much more aggressive manner in
which they are carrying out these
activities."
(One way of documenting the
extent and increase in Soviet espi-
onage activity are statistics of
expulsions of Soviet officials from
countries outside the bloc. From
1978 to August 1983, 316 Soviet offi-
cials were expelled from 43 coun-
tries. Of the 316 espionage
expellees, a large proportion were
expelled during the first eight
months of 1983. From January to
August 1983, 111 Soviet officials
were expelled from 16 countries, a
116 percent increase over the aver-
age expulsion rate for the years
1978 to 1982.)
For Mr. Starnes, Soviet approval
of "the more aggressive stance
being displayed by the KGB and the
GRU [Soviet military intelligence]
... raises some very serious ques-
tions in terms of our future rela-
tions with the Soviet Union, how we
manage those relations and what it
may reveal about Soviet intentions."
All these relevations and accusa-
tions by The Man Who Knows the
Secrets ought to arouse Canada's
political leadership. It is, however,
a safe bet that Mr. Starnes's expose
will shake Ottawa not at all. It took
15 years of commission hearings,
reports, and parliamentary debates
for the Liberal government at the
last House of Commons session to
enact, over the filibustering pro-
tests of the NDP and the Progres-
sive Conservatives, a law
establishing a new counterespio-
nage service entirely separate
from the RCMP It is called the
Canadian Security Intelligence
Service.
In a democracy, an intelligence
agency without public support or,
at the very least, public tolerance-
and in Canada, two of the three
national parties opposed creation
_of the new agency will_ go
nowhere.
To some extent that is why the
CIA-haslosf a1arge measure of pub-
lic support, not so much because_of
whatitTs doing n_o_w but because of
the idiocies and malfeasances per-
petrated in the past, often with
presidential approval. Canadian
parliamentarians hesitate to get
involved with intelligence issues
because it`s too hot dealing with
KGB activities. _
I asked Mr. Starnes whether he'd
ever briefed members of the House
of Commons about Soviet espi-
onage activities in Canada. Oh, yes,
he had at the members' request
delivered briefings. How did they
go?
"My grandson who's 16 could
have asked better questions than
did the parliamentarians," said Mr.
Starnes.
Arnold Beichinan, a founding
member of the Consortium for the
Study of Intelligence, based in
I4'ashington, D.C., is a visiting
scholar, the Hoover Institution. lie
participated in the Canadian semi-
naronforeign intelligence this sum-
mer in Toronto. It was jointly
sponsored by the Consortium and
the York University Program in i
Strategic Studies in Ontario.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440058-3