MURDER BY SLANDER?

A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE E.H. NORMAN CASE

by

CM. ANN ROGERS

.A., The University of British Columbia, 1986

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THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

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©, ." C.M.Ann Rogers, 1988 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced

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Department of Political Science

The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3

Date August, 1988

DE-6f 3/811 ii

Abstract

On 4 April, 1957 Egerton Herbert Norman, Canada's Ambassador to Egypt, committed suicide in Cairo. Norman's death was a direct result of sustained American allegations that he was threat to western security.

The controversy surrounding his suicide was rekindled in 1986 with the publication of two biographies of Norman. James Barros contends in No Sense of Evil that Norman should have been removed from his high position in Canada's Department of External Affairs because he constituted a security risk. Barros hypothesises about the possibility of a DEA cover-up of Norman's Marxist past (Norman had briefly been a member of the British Communist Party when he was a student at Cambridge) and indeed suggests that Minister of

External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson might have been Moscow's ultimate xmole' who, by defending Norman, was protecting his espionage ring.

In Innocence is Not Enough, author Roger Bowen takes issue with such interpretations of Norman's life, scholarship and career. Although Norman had been a Communist, Bowen concludes that no evidence exists to suggest that he was disloyal to Canada.

Norman was caught up in a maelstrom of anti-communist hysteria which caused him to be unjustifiably vilified and harassed by the agents of McCarthyism in an era of Cold War paranoia.

Instead of choosing a side in the current debate, I have sought to widen it by approaching the story of Norman as a case iii

study in Canadian foreign policy. An examination of Canadian internal security policies in the postwar era, Canada's relationship with the United States and Great Britain, and of

Norman himself reveals that the issue at hand is far too complex to be amenable to easy analysis. This thesis was written with the

achievement of a more objective analysis as its primary goal. -"iv

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Canada in the Postwar Context: The Search for Internal Security

(i) Canada in the Postwar World 14 (ii) The Internal Security Dimension 23

Norman's Ideology: Armchair Marxist or Party Stalwart? 37

(i) A Flirtation with Communism 40 (ii) 1940: Joining External 49 (iii) Norman in Cold War Japan 55 (iv) 1950: Norman's First Recall 64 (v) 1951: The Noose Tightens 70 (vi) 1952: The Second Recall 79

Final Days 89

(i) Postwar Canadian-American Relations 89 (ii) 1957: The Charges Revived 94 (iii) Suicide: The Canadian Reaction 100

Conclusion 107

(i) The Government's Response 107 (ii) Internal Security After Norman: The Role of the RCMP 113 (iii) Towards Further Research 116

Bibliography 124

Appendix 128 V

Freedom is an easily spoken word,

but facts are stubborn things

John Cornford 1

Introduction

On 4 April 1957, Egerton Herbert Norman threw himself from the ninth floor apartment of the Swedish ambassador in Cairo. The suicide of a Canadian diplomat may not at first glance be the most obvious place to begin an analysis of Canadian foreign policy formulation, but in the following pages I intend to demonstrate that the events leading up to the suicide of Norman can provide a valuable case study through which to test some theoretical approaches to international relations in general, and Canadian-

American relations in particular. The Herbert Norman case, when placed in the broader context of Canadian-American relations during the Cold War, not only challenges the dominant perceptions governing current approaches to the study of Canadian foreign policy, but also reveals inconsistencies and contradictions in the manner in which Canada has pursued its autonomy vis-a-vis the north atlantic triangle, particularly the United States. Finally, it allows us better to assess the opportunities and constraints which affect the policy making environment.

Born in Japan in 1909 to Methodist missionaries from Ontario,

E.H. Norman spent his formative years growing up in a Canadian family while steeped in the culture and language of rural Japan.

At sixteen he came to Canada, completed his schooling, and then attended the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Harvard, where he became an exceptional scholar in the field of Japanese history.

During his years at university he became politicized, developing

such a deep and enduring interest in Marxism and communism that he 2 even joined the Communist Party briefly. In 1940, having received his Ph.D, he joined Canada's Department of External Affairs and served as an officer there until the time of his death. It is fairly evident that after he joined DEA, his more Marxian ideals dissipated, and as he matured he could more accurately be characterised as a left-leaning liberal rather than a Marxist.

Nevertheless, authorities in the United States, their political attitudes dictated by Cold War paranoia, were unwilling to accept the formerly Marxist Norman as a trustworthy servant of the

Canadian government: they regarded him as a threat to international security. Despite repeated affirmations of Norman's loyalty, the Canadian government was never able to stem the tides of gossip and suspicion. From 1940 to 1957, harassment and pressures from anti-communist forces in the United States pursued

Norman, who at last, in desperation, took his own life.

This then, is the skeleton of the Herbert Norman story.

Using it as a case study in Canadian foreign policy formulation, the objectives of this thesis are threefold: firstly, to redress the inadequacy of the present discourse on the subject by expanding the parameters of a debate which has so far been confined to strongly ideological and personal accounts presented most notably by James Barros and Roger Bowen; secondly, to assess the usefulness of some of the various theoretical approaches to the study of Canadian foreign policy by applying them to this case; and finally, to use the case to make some useful generalisations about the internal and external variables which 3 affect the formulation of Canadian foreign policy.1

The decision to use the case study mode of analysis was dictated by the first research objective. In 1986, two exhaustive and very different accounts of Norman's life and death were published.2 In No Sense of Evil, author James Barros articulated the more conservative side of the debate. He contended that

Norman's Marxist/communist proclivities and associations made him unsuitable for employment in the service of External Affairs.

Evidence that threw Norman's loyalty into doubt was never explained to the satisfaction of the RCMP, the more right wing elements of the American Congress, British intelligence and even some members of External Affairs. External's continued defence of

Norman smacked of a ^whitewash', particulary in light of the allegations about Lester Pearson, Norman's major protector and himself a victim of allegations of disloyalty. Barros concludes that the continued employment of Norman in high-ranking positions, where he had access to much top secret information and exerted no small influence on the formulation of Canadian foreign policy, was irresponsible. By doing so, External Affairs placed western

1A central theme of this thesis is the development of Canadian internal security policy in the immediate postwar era, which may not be considered ^foreign policy' per se. However, because its necessity was dictated by the prevailing conditions of the cold war, and its formulation by the requirements of western (rather than simply Canadian) security, for the purposes of this thesis I think it is appropriate to designate it as a foreign policy, rather than a domestic, issue.

2The major works are James Barros, No Sense of Evil: Espionage, the Case of Herbert Norman (Toronto: Deneau, 1986) and Roger Bowen, Innocence is not Enough: the Life and Death of Herbert Norman (Vancouver: Douglas & Maclntyre, 1986). 4 security in jeopardy.

Roger Bowen, on the other hand, has contributed a major biography of Norman in his book, Innocence_is Not Enough, in which he argues that Norman was completely innocent of the charges of disloyalty levelled against him. In this account, anti-communist witchhunters who failed to understand the nature and depth of

Norman's ideological biases conducted an unjust and unjustified campaign against him, mistaking ideology for disloyalty. In this version of the Norman drama, the Senate Internal Security

Subcommittee (SISS) was the chief, although by no means the only, villain: not only did the SISS scapegoat an innocent man, but it made a mockery of Canada's right to determine its own internal security policy, to assess the loyalty of its own servants and to assert its own interests vis-a-vis the United States. Bowen's story, then, is based on a liberal interpretation which would posit the right of the individual over the right of the state, and the sovereignty of the state over the perceived obligations of international security. His book goes far beyond this, however.

It is a comprehensive biography assessing Norman's scholarship, his contributions to Canadian diplomacy, his religious and personal beliefs, and so on.

There are other students of the Norman case who have contributed to the literature available, but none have thus far truly stepped outside of the basic ideological parameters of Cold 5

War thinking.3 The debate, couched as it is in right and left- wing views, and the concomitant desire of the debating parties to prove the validity of their respective positions, can therefore, I contend, benefit from a more dispassionate discussion. Thus far, the works available have been basically biographical. By placing

Norman in the greater field of foreign policy, and by adopting a less personal approach to the evidence, I hope to arrive at a more objective view of the case. For this reason, I have adopted the methodology of the case study to provide some analytical rigour currently lacking in the debate. A few remarks of clarification are in order.

Arend Lijphart developed a useful typology of the different purposes and kinds of the theoretical case study.4 These types can be summarised as follows: the hypothesis-generating study in which vague hypotheses are refined to form a basis for the establishment of a theoretical framework; the interpretative

study, in which the application of a theory is employed in order to gain a better understanding of the subject; the theory-testing or hypothesis-testing study, in which an already established theoretical proposition is applied to the case in order to examine

3In addition to the book cited, Bowen has also edited E.H. Norman: His Life and Scholarship (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1984). Charles Taylor wrote an earlier and much briefer biography of Norman in Six Journeys: A Canadian Pattern (Toronto: Anansi, 1977). Norman's story also appeared frequently in biographies and magazine and newspaper articles.

4Arend Lijphart, "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method," American Political Science Review 65 (1971): 682-693. Thanks to P.S. Robinson for drawing my attention to this article. 6 the validity of the approach; and finally, the deviant case, in which an example is examined in order to uncover variables to explain its deviation from the previously considered cases which have led to the establishment of a theory as a * control.' These typologies, of course, are not mutually exclusive. The principles guiding this study of Norman will be the interpretive and the deviant typologies. I do not intend to prove the value or usefulness of any specific model, but rather to utilise these analytical tools in order to achieve a more systematic understanding of the evidence at hand.

In order to fulfil the second research objective, within the framework of the case study I will loosely apply two of the three theoretical perspectives developed by Dewitt and Kirton to explain varying approaches to Canadian foreign policy.5 By identifying how the Norman case adheres to and deviates from the theoretical perspectives of liberal internationalism and peripheral dependence, we will arrive at a clearer understanding of the variables which effect the formulation of Canadian foreign policy.

In the study of American foreign policy making, innumerable analytical models have been developed to provide a more systematic way of assessing empirical data. In Canada, studies have been far less systematic, as writers have been governed more by generalised paradigms than by highly developed schemes, although this tendency is changing. Before discussing the tenets of the Dewitt and

5David D. Dewitt and John J. Kirton, Canada as a Principal- Power: A Study in Foreign Policy and International Relations (Toronto: Wiley, 1983). 7

Kirton approach, it is worthwhile to briefly address some of the other available approaches and why they were not appropriate for this study.

Michael Hawes has set out five general approaches to the study of Canadian foreign policy in a concise but valuable monograph.6 Besides the two theoretical perspectives employed in this thesis--the still dominant liberal-internationalist perspective, which has been challenged by the economic- nationalist/peripheral-dependence perspective—there are more recent attempts to formalise the study of Canadian foreign policy study. For example, studies using a federalist or a parliamentary influence approach have entered the field, and the realist approach, long popular in the United States, is also becoming a more common way to explain trends in Canadian foreign policy. The federalist and parliamentary approaches are too narrow to adequately encompass the number of variables relevant to the

Norman case, while the realist approach is more useful in explaining developments in post-Pearsonian diplomacy.

Nye and Keohane's work concerning international interdependence has been applied to Canadian-American relations with some success.7 The tenets of complex interdependence—an absence of military force, a lack of hierarchy among issues, and

6Michael K. Hawes, Principal Power, Middle Power,, or Satellite? Competing Perspectives in the Study of Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: York UP, 1984).

7Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, 1977). 8 the presence of multiple channels of contact—have provided an encouraging basis for further study. However, as is demonstrated by the Norman case, its analytical worth is somewhat superficial.

According to Nye and Keohane, with the Norman case, Canada *won' a diplomatic battle against the United States. They arrive at this conclusion by identifying the conflict between the two states as one in which Canada protested the Senate subcommittee's misuse of confidential information that led to suicide of a Canadian official. The US government then acceded to the Canadian request for guarantees against further misuse.8 By identifying the issue this way, Nye and Keohane are able to argue that there is a mutuality of dependence between the US and Canada that allows

Canada to have sufficient leverage to assert its own objectives successfully in many cases. However, in this formulation, the fact that the Canadian government failed to receive any meaningful recognition of its interests despite the efforts conducted by

External Affairs over the preceding seven years, and that even after Norman's suicide the SISS was unrepentant and the US government indifferent, would seem to throw Nye and Keohane's conclusions into question. At issue was the right of the Canadian government to determine its own security policy without interference from another state. As we shall see, Americans did not concede this right even after Norman's death. I would therefore contend that Canada xlost' this case against the US, in that it failed to win recognition of Canadian sovereignty in

8Nye and Keohane, Power 185. 9 internal security matters.

The use of Dewitt and Kirton's theoretical perspectives of liberal internationalism and peripheral dependence and their accompanying *model' enable us to approach the third objective of this thesis. The model is basically an attempt to systematically assess the appropriateness of the theoretical perspectives which commonly govern the study of Canadian foreign policy.9 They have broken down each paradigm into a series of internal and external variables which effect the policy process. The ^salience' of each variable-—i.e., the extent of its influence on policy—is graded to be xhigh,' xmoderate,' or xlow.'

The liberal internationalist approach posits that in the postwar era Canada emerged as a middle-ranked power in the international order. In foreign policy, a premium was placed upon the achievement of international peace through the use of international organisations such as the United Nations, collective security arrangements such as the North Atlantic Treaty

Association (NATO), and the need for active and responsible participation in the international theatre. The postwar era is characterised as *the golden age' of Canadian diplomacy which achieved its apogee with Pearson's receipt of the Nobel Prize for

Peace in 1957 for his skilful handling of the Suez Crisis.

Foreign policy making was influenced ^moderately' by external actors such as the United States and Great Britain as well as multilateral organisations such as NATO. Other middle-ranked

9Please see Appendix I. 10 former colonies also became important influences. Domestically, societal determinants were considered to be of moderate importance, with Parliament, the media and the political parties exerting some influence.,-.'Of the governmental determinants, the

Department of External Affairs was the predominant decision-making body, while the Prime Minister's office contribution was modest.

Canada's unprecedented postwar stature in the international arena, that is, its greater autonomy, assertiveness and ability to manoeuvre in the international context, is widely accepted.

Many of the foreign.policy studies of the postwar period reflect this view of Canada as a liberal internationalist middle power.

However, this perspective has been effectively challenged by the more Marxian perspective of peripheral dependence.

According to the Dewitt and Kirton model, in the postwar period there are definite undercurrents of peripheral dependence which suggest that Canada was not as autonomous and independent as it liked to pretend. This revisionist perspective would posit that Canada was not a middle-ranked power at all. Instead, Canada is perceived as a small, penetrated state subservient to the interests and demands of the United States.

In this perspective, then, external determinants are deemed to have the greatest impact on Canadian foreign policy formulation. The interests of the United States (which replaced the UK as the major, influence upon Canada) acted as the single most important influence while the Department of External Affairs and the Prime Minister are seen as being of little salience. These * models' or ideal types that have been developed by

Dewitt and Kirton have been employed selectively in the following analysis. For example, because economic interests are not directly pertinent to the issue, it therefore follows that business groups, etc., are of little relevance as societal determinants. Similarly, the provinces had very little impact on what was a policy area of direct concern only to a small and discrete section of society. Therefore, I have taken some liberties in using only the determinants germane to the analysis.

Moreover, there are some limitations in these two perspectives, as might be expected, although any such inadequacies are easily overcome by augmenting the basic broad analytical frameworks with more precise methods. Two immediately identifiable problems require comment. Firstly, because this is a model of the determinants effecting Canadian foreign policy, it does not provide a measure of the importance of different American political/governmental actors to the Canadian process

(specifically, the influences of the American Congress, the State

Department, and the American security organisation). Secondly, it does not provide a subset to explain the relevance of groups such as the RCMP, which played a large role in the Norman case, particularly in its transnational exchanges of security information with other intelligence networks. However, the use of these perspectives is intended to be suggestive rather than definitive. They are useful only insofar as they allow us to encompass the very wide area of issues, structures and processes 12 that make up the Norman case.

The story of E.H. Norman operates on a wide variety of institutional levels, all of which are linked to the field of

Canadian foreign policy to varying degrees. In the following pages I intend to address some of the complexities involved in

Canadian and American efforts to reconcile Norman's ideological beliefs with the requirements of domestic and international security. There was a direct conflict between how American and

Canadian policy-makers approached the problems of internal security which for Canada reached its climax with Norman's dramatic suicide. There was also conflict within the Canadian elite itself as to how best to serve the needs of state security.

Norman's plight was directly related to the political and structural exigencies of the Cold War era, but over time we can see the historical and moral dimensions of his case. Through a juxtaposition of the liberal internationalist and the peripheral dependence perspectives, we can isolate the external and internal constraints which acted upon the formulation of Canadian policy.

The following pages, then, will address this case study as follows. It will selectively apply the foreign policy determinants of liberal internationalism and peripheral dependence to the historical developments of the Norman case beginning with the post World War II development of Canadian internal security policy. From there it will trace Norman's career, and will include an effort to demonstrate that his Marxist beliefs and associations were far more enduring that his liberal chroniclers would have us believe, though not as insidious as his detractors

have claimed. It will also examine the chronology of the case built up against Norman including the evidence that accumulated

and how such evidence was interpreted and used. Finally it will

examine the Canadian and American responses to Norman's death. Of

particular note is the Canadian government's attempts to convince

the United States of the existence of a problem in the area of

transnational security. It will also address those constraints

imposed on the Canadian government specifically by a federal

election campaign shortly after the suicide.

From this case we will be able to identify the analytical

value of the peripheral dependence approach to an era hitherto

dominated by a perspective of Pearsonian liberalism. More

importantly, it will allow us to cast the Norman story in the

light of a more objective analysis. 14

Canada in the Postwar Context: The Search for Internal Security

Canada in the Postwar World

In the aftermath of World War II the emergence of a bipolar world with the Soviet Union as the head of the communist bloc and the United States as the leader of the *free world' resulted in a dramatic re-ordering of the international balance of power. Canada emerged into this changed global regime with an unprecedented amount of power and prestige: the period 1947-1957 has often been called Canada's xgolden age' of diplomacy. Its emergence as a ranking power on the world stage was facilitated by both the changed nature of the postwar international system, and by the new importance accorded foreign affairs by the combined efforts of St.

Laurent and Pearson.

Canadian foreign policy of the period was ardently liberal internationalist in its intent, although perhaps not always in its execution. By juxtaposing the two theoretical approaches of liberal internationalism and peripheral dependence, we can see how successful postwar diplomacy was. Although in this chapter I will generally refute the revisionist version of Canada's Cold War history, I will argue that the peripheral dependence approach is valuable in explaining certain aspects of postwar policy formulation. Canada emerged after the war with an attitude to the

Soviet threat that differed significantly from those of the United

States and the United Kingdom, but certainly in the formulation of

Canada's internal security policy, the attitudes of these other actors played a large role. Canadian policy-makers had a very distinctive policy

preference in the internal security area, reflective of a more

moderate approach to the communist threat in general, which they

were able to assert to an extent: but the Gouzenko case, which

anticipates the problems of the Norman case, demonstrates that the

Americans, and to a lesser extent, the British, were able to

influence Canadian policy when they saw fit. Despite its new

international status, for Canada there very clearly remained "the

deeply embedded residue of [its] wartime and prewar

experience."10 Its colonial links with the United Kingdom, and

its transfer to the satellite orbit of the United States continued

to deeply influence the formulation of Canadian foreign policy.

Canada's performance during the war enabled it to assert its

independence vis-a-vis Britain to an extent not previously

possible, and its increased economic capabilities allowed it to

become a ranking power in the new global hierarchy. In his 1947

Gray Lecture, Canada's first fulltime foreign minister, Louis St.

Laurent, announced a reorientation of foreign policy which would

reflect Canada's new stature.11 The prewar policy of isolationism was repudiated, and the clarion call of liberal internationalism, which was to become, writes Holmes, "almost a religion in the

decade after the Second World War" sounded.12 Canada's postwar

10Dewitt and Kirton, Principal Power 49.

11Dewitt and Kirton, Principal Power 57.

12Quoted in Kim Richard Nossal, The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1985) 58. intention was to take up a

policy of international collaboration and cooperation...best calculated to serve not only the immediate national interests of Canada, but also [its] overriding interest in the establishment of an international order which will prevent the outbreak of another world war.13

It has been said of the British Commonwealth that World War

II "weakened the trunk and strengthened the branches."14 Canada's greater autonomy was made possible in large part by the postwar decline of Great Britain, which had hitherto been the dominant force shaping Canadian external policy, as a major western power.

In order to be recognised as something other than a mere appendage of the Empire, Canada had made a massive contribution to two world wars, promised further large contributions to the task of postwar reconstruction, and exerted a great deal of diplomatic persuasion.

Even then recognition of Canada as something more than a colony was only grudgingly granted. Nevertheless, operating in tandem with other medium-size powers like Australia and India, Canada was able to attain a place as a middle-ranked power in the international hierarchy, with concomitant power and status.

But the vacuum created by Britain's decline as a chief external determinant on Canadian policy formulation was quickly filled by the United States, which arguably simply replaced

Britain in this capacity and sentenced Canada to continued satellite status. I say arguably because the intensity of the

13Holmes citing House of Commons, Debates (17 Mar 1944) in his book, The Shaping of Peace: Canada and the Search for World Order 1943-1957. 2 vols. (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1979) 1: 62.

14Holmes, Peace 1: 141. American influence has been hotly debated among adherents of the peripheral dependence and liberal internationalist schools. For revisionists, Canada did not emerge as a middle power at all, but rather, "in circular fashion...had gone from colony to nation to colony by the end of the Second World War."15

The United States, as the preeminent economic and military power in the western bloc, was locked into a battle for global hegemony with the Soviet Union, a battle that was to be fought more with ideologies than with guns and tanks. To this end, the

United States began to export its Cold War perceptions abroad, and inevitably, American Cold War thinking began to permeate the

Canadian consciousness. Although the United States did indeed become the chief external determinant on Canadian foreign policy, it would be a mistake to assume that Canada assimilated the

American point of view wholesale. In fact, an examination of the divergence of attitudes towards the Cold War in Canada and the US very clearly demonstrates the independence of the Canadian stance.

Canadian revisionist historians have followed the peripheral dependence line by arguing that the American export of the communist threat was particularly successful in Canada owing to

"the Canadian dependence on American intelligence sources, given the omnipresence of American news sources and wire services, and

Nossal, Politics, 13. 18

given the shared value system of Canada and the United States."16

John Warnock, for example, has argued that the US successfully

convinced the leaders of the western states that the Soviet Union

could and would use military means to spread communism throughout

the world. It was this threat perception which supposedly

provided the impetus for the setting up of military alliances.

Canadians, he wrote, "accepted the anti-Soviet hysteria put forth by the United States [and] Canada became a junior partner in the world-wide anti-communist crusade."17 However, initiatives like

the UN and the Marshall Plan, and indeed, the inclusion of non- military cooperation in the NATO treaty suggest that western

nations were not intending to suppress the Soviet Union through purely military means. Moreover, the Canadian commitment to

principles of functionalism, mediation through the UN, and

international economic and social linkages are indicative of its

strongly liberal internationalist approach to the postwar world.

"There were Canadian hawks and American doves," wrote John Holmes,

"but on the whole the Canadian attitude toward Soviet policy and

Soviet intentions was less categorical. There were more doubts."18

16J. L. Granatstein and R. D. Cuff, "Looking Back at the Cold War, 1945-54," Canadian Forum. (Jul/Aug 1972): 10.

17See, for example, John Warnock, Partner to Behemoth: The Military Policy of a Satellite Canada (Toronto: New Press, 1970) 17.

18John W. Holmes, Life with Uncle: The Canadian-American Relationship (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1981) 31. Don Page and Don Munton have also posited that the view of

Canadian policy-makers towards the Soviet Union was less strident than the American one: the consensus among the Canadian governing elite was that Soviet policy was motivated by more conservative concerns such as historical imperialism, tempered by caution and realism, and was not inherently militarily aggressive. Ideology was considered to be a secondary factor. Assessing a number of government documents of the Cold War period, Page and Munton concluded that Canada did not simply fall into line behind the

Americans, but rather exhibited "a strikingly wary and prescient assessment of the emerging problems with postwar American policy and of the danger of American expansionism."19

This more moderate approach can be explained by the contrasting historical developments of the two states which have dictated the internal determinants affecting policy formulation.

There are, of course, many similarities and values which are shared by Canada and the United States, but there are also pronounced differences. Despite the powerful influence exerted on the Canadian state by American Cold War thinking, the obvious divergence of the Canadian approach was more indicative of its legacy of British colonialism.

In the United States, foreign policy issues frequently play crucial roles in the making and breaking of governments, whereas in Canada civil society is notoriously disinterested in foreign

19Don Page & Don Munton, "Canadian Images of the Cold War 1946-7," International Journal (Summer 1977): 599. 20 affairs and security questions.20 American society psychologically links its domestic well-being with the preservation of American interests abroad and thus identified strongly with a perceived Soviet threat. Hence the events that occurred in the early phase of the Cold War—the 1948 Czech coup, the loss of China a year later, and the Korean War—whipped up support for an anti-communist witchhunt in the United States. But widespread support for the McCarthyism was indicative of an

American proclivity for populism which had no real corollary in

Canada. A 1952 opinion poll indicated that sixty percent of the

American population approved of the actions taken by the various loyalty boards and congressional committees, although only twenty percent supported McCarthy himself.21

In Canadian society, identification with the communist threat as it was posed by these distant crises was less apparent.22 The

2UThe deviance of these attitudes is attributable in part to the political evolutions of the two nations. William Christian and Colin Campbell suggest that Canada's deeply entrenched legacy of British liberalism goes far to explain the apathy of its society. Liberalism places its emphasis on the individual, nationalism on the collective polity. Canadians tend to support nationalist goals only when it appears that such support will enhance and promote individual as well as national liberty. See Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada (Toronto: McGraw, 1974) chapter 6.

21Paul Michael Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Spectre (Cambridge MA: MIT P, 1967) 242.

22The country was somewhat at odds with the executive over the execution of the Korean crisis. Publicly, the debate concerned the UN sanctioned police action—Canadians felt that the government was not doing enough. However, the Canadian foreign policy initiative also hinged upon efforts to constrain the American desire to turn the Korean crisis into an all-out war against Communism. This will be discussed in depth in later chapters. legendary Canadian indifference to foreign policy issues was, and

remains, in large part due to the government's success in keeping

foreign policy-making off the public agenda. Political disasters

like the 1917 Conscription Crisis that tore the country apart did much to convince successive generations of policy-makers of the potential divisiveness of foreign policy issues. They have discovered that a societal disinterest in foreign policy works to their great advantage, and have therefore tried to avoid public debate and controversy, a practice that bears testimony to the priority accorded political survival over national participation.

Although in his Gray Lecture St. Laurent called for a broadening of the debate over Canadian foreign policy, in reality, channels for participation in the policy-making process remained relatively narrow: in fact, due to the combined efforts of St.

Laurent and Pearson to forge both a new sensibility of Canadian statecraft (the media at the time dubbed St. Laurent's efforts in this respect a ^crusade') and an expanded and professional diplomatic service, DEA probably enjoyed a greater degree of autonomy than ever before.

Kim Richard Nossal has concluded that, although the Canadian state is constrained considerably by external determinants because of its relative lack of capabilities vis-a-vis greater powers, in

its domestic environment it enjoys a relatively greater amount of autonomy. There are many interest groups actively trying to

influence foreign policy formulation, but their influence is very limited: at best, "societal actors shape the state's external behaviour at a more general level, by influencing the environment in which those decisions are taken."23 Therefore, although

Canadian society may have established the general parameters for government action, the state itself had considerable capacity for independent action.

John Porter established in his pioneer work The Vertical

Mosaic that despite its cultural, ethnic and regional diversity,

Canada is in reality governed by a small, fairly homogeneous elite which has been able to achieve a consensus on such basic ground rules as the tacit agreement to keep foreign policy formulation off the public agenda.24 Not surprisingly, public concerns about

Canadian foreign policy are generally issue-oriented and confined to a discrete regional, cultural, or ethnic group.

Therefore, according to the theoretical perspectives provided by Dewitt and Kirton, in the postwar period the liberal internationalist perspective would appear generally to hold true.

External and societal determinants were of moderate importance, while of the governmental determinants, the Department of External

Affairs achieved a rating of *high' salience over the Prime

Minister's office and other domestic departments. However, if we apply these ideal types to the formulation of an actual policy—

23Kim Richard Nossal, The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1985) 38.

24John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Class and Social Power in Canada. (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1965) chapter XIII. that is, to the development of Canadian internal security policy— we can see that in this particular case the liberal internationalist typology does not provide a very accurate description of the influences effecting its formulation. It also calls into question the importance of the media, which in the liberal internationalist model is rated of *low' salience, compared to its ^moderate' salience in the peripheral dependence perspective. In essence, by applying the peripheral dependence model in this case we will see that despite the autonomy of the

Canadian state which is suggested by the orthodox liberal internationalist approach, when the United States chose to assert its policy preferences, it could effectively do so.

The Internal Security Dimension

We have seen that Canadians did not identify with a perceived

Soviet threat as it existed in the international theatre.

However, the 1945 defection of Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko served to bring the Cold War *home.' The revelations by Gouzenko that a Soviet espionage network was operating within Canada was something that all Canadians felt: "To find themselves spied upon, to learn that some of their fellow citizens had become agents of an unfriendly foreign power, was a shock to Canadians— but a unifying shock," wrote Blair Fraser.25 Almost overnight,

25Blair Fraser, The Search for Identity: Canada, 1945-1967 (New York: Doubleday, 1967) 44. The Gouzenko affair is often cited as the genesis of anti-communism in Canada. However, James Littleton has argued that Canada's antipathy to communism dates back to 1917 when the government sent troops and some of the RCMP the Cold War, which had seemed to be some abstract ideological struggle taking place abroad and not of any immediate consequence to Canadians, was in their very midst: and the government was forced to acknowledge the fact that communism posed a threat domestically as well as externally.

Ironically, the Canadian government suppressed from the electorate the information that Gouzenko had furnished, and it was only through the leakage of this information from a US government official that the affair became public. Initially, Prime Minister

MacKenzie King had refused to take public action against the spies identified by Gouzenko for fear of harming Canada's relations with the Soviet Union. Both the British and the Americans pressured

King to arrest the spies, but Britain confined its efforts to the appropriate government channels.26 However, a US government source, impatient with King's reluctance to reveal the presence of a Soviet espionage network, leaked the story to a New York Herald Tribune columnist. Soon the story that the Canadian government was concealing a defector who could expose massive espionage rings was splashed across the front pages. King was thus embarrassed into dealing with Canada's internal security to Russia to intervene in the civil war. See his book Target Nation: Canada and the Western Intelligence Network (Toronto: CBC Enterprises/Lester, 1986) 15.

26Lawrence Martin reports that King's reluctance was in large part due to his advanced age, and was relieved when President Truman advised him that Canada and the US should work together on the matter. The British were more eager to take a hard line against the Soviets and called for arrests and public disclosures. See The Presidents and the Prime Ministers (Toronto: Doubleday, 1982) 152. requirements.2'

This use of the media is demonstrative of its potential

importance to the Canadian government's policy-making process, yet also illumines the influence of the United States. As we will see

later, it was this same tactic—the use of publicity to force the

Canadian government into action—that American critics of Norman employed when Canada was not complying with perceived American security interests.

With the Gouzenko revelations, the Canadian government was virtually forced to look into the matter of internal security.

Although witchhunts of the type that later became popular in the

US were advocated by some of the more right wing elements of

Canadian society, the government response was characteristically moderate: it convened a commission to look into Canadian security and vetting procedures.

The advent of the Cold War had brought concerns about

internal security to the fore in many western countries. Before the Second World War, security vetting of civil servants had been a rather informal affair. A potential for disloyalty was usually associated with specific ethnic or religious affiliations, and not with a particular ideological bent. For example, in Britain

(which provided an example for the Canadian model), Peter Wright,

former assistant director of MI5, noted that when he joined this

intelligence branch in the 1950s he underwent but the most cursory

27See Littleton, Target, pp 17-18, and John English, "Revisionism Revisited: A Response," Canadian Forum (Dec 1972): 16. of vetting procedures: a routine police check was followed by a personal interview which included a Masonic handshake and a few questions about his past voting inclinations and sexual preferences.28 It was the discovery of espionage networks that dictated the necessity of a more formalised system of security screening of government servants. In Canada in 1946 the

Taschereau-Kellock Commission was convened to investigate the matter.

The commission recommended that a more systematic approach to the practice of internal security was required if the infiltration of people likely to commit acts of espionage into government positions was to be prevented.29 Difficulty lay in establishing procedures which would address the problem of weeding out potentially disloyal subjects without impinging upon the liberal democratic values of each citizen. "Characteristic of the Cold

War era was the widespread acceptance of the notion that entire classes of citizens might form potential fifth columns of disloyalty and subversion on behalf on the Soviet Union," wrote

Reginald Whitaker.30 And so, in Canada, as in the United States and Great Britain, ideology became the yardstick by which

28Peter Wright, Spycatcher (London: Stoddart, 1987) 30-1.

29Royal Commission on Espionage 1946, quoted in Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Freedom and Security Under the Law (Aug 1981) 718.

30The following argument is derived from Reginald Whitaker, "Origins of the Canadian Government's Internal Security System 1946-1952," Canadian Historical Review LXV:2 (2 Jun 1984): 154- 183. The quote appears on 154. potential disloyalty was measured. This yardstick, however, was

inherently flawed in that it would prove virtually impossible to quantify ideological bias in a meaningful way, or to successfully

link ideological bias with disloyalty. Whitaker continues:

One of the characteristics of the security programs set in motion in this period is a conflation of espionage (passing secrets to a foreign power) and subversion (an internal threat to order).... The United States in the so-called McCarthy era went furthest in defining a broad range of ideas as subversive, thus disloyal. But to some degree, this tendency was a by-product of the Cold War in all Western nations. The fact that there was Soviet espionage, and that espionage networks recruited from citizens of pro-Soviet left-wing ideological persuasion, only made the dilemma of liberal democracies more acute.31

From the recommendations of the Taschereau-Kellock Commission

in 1946 a Security Panel was officially set up. It was an

interdepartmental body consisting of permanent representatives

from External Affairs, the RCMP, and the Department of National

Defence. In contrast to the US, which chose to be very public in

its efforts to purge subversive elements, Canadian policy-makers

followed the British example and were low key in their search for communist infiltrators. Here again, Canada's distinctive British heritage, with its long entrenched traditions of parliamentarism and liberalism, influenced the Canadian approach. The American heritage, comprised of a more pronounced isolationist impulse, an

endemic suspicion of centralised government power (which was realised through its diffusion of authority in different

executive/legislative branches), and its violent swings in perceptions of national security, was expressed in its more

31Whitaker, "Origins" 155. 28 populist approach to the tenets of internal security.32 in

Canada, the security-intelligence mandate was kept within the confines of the state apparatus.

A 1948 cabinet directive on the subject discussed Canada's aversion to US methods, stating that "the establishment of precise and rigid standards for determining the xloyalty' of government employees, along the lines adopted by the United States, is open to serious objection on grounds of principle..."33 To this end, the regulations guiding the Security Panel reaffirmed formally what had up until that point been standard practice anyway—the sole responsibility for determining the desirability of any given employee was left to the discretion of the individual department.

There were both advantages and disadvantages to this approach. On the one hand, who better to judge the suitability of a present or potential employee than the department directly involved? But on the other hand, it made the decision-making process a subjective business indeed, further complicated by the fact that individual departments were simply not qualified to evaluate or interpret security information provided to them by the

RCMP. Moreover, this system left the RCMP in charge of assembling

32Henry Howe Ransom, "Secret Intelligence in the United States, 1947-1982: The CIA's Search for Legitimacy," in Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, eds., The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century. (London: MacMillan, 1984) 199.

33CD #4 (5 Mar 1948) quoted in J.L. Granatstein, A Man of Influence: Norman A. Robertson and Canadian Statecraft 1929-1968 (Toronto: Deneau, 1981) 272. and providing security information, not in itself a bad thing, but not necessarily the best thing given the nature of

interdepartmental rivalries. Certainly in the Norman case DEA and the RCMP did not always see eye to eye on what constituted a

security risk, DEA being of a rather more liberal ideological persuasion while the RCMP exhibited "an inclination to view the world through a prism of almost universal suspicion.1,34

The Security Panel did issue very clear criteria upon which the departments were to base their judgments. In any case where there were doubts about the loyalty of a given individual, the case was to be resolved in favour of the state. This principle, and its direct application to communists, was reaffirmed and more narrowly defined in successive cabinet directives. It is worth quoting one such directive at length because it is obvious that by such rigid criteria Herbert Norman's continued employability by

External Affairs would certainly have been disallowed. For example, the 1952 directive read:

...a person who is a member of the Communist Party, or who by his words or actions shows himself to believe in Marxism- Leninism or any other ideology which advocates the overthrow of governments by force should not be permitted to enter the public service. Such persons discovered within the public service must not be allowed access to classified information, and their continued employment by the government may not be desireable. There is always serious doubt as to the loyalty of a person who was previously a member of the Communist Party or who at one time by his words or actions showed himself to believe in [such an] ideology... Where a reasonable doubt remains and where national security is involved, that doubt

Littleton, Target 177. must not be resolved in favour of the individual.-54

There is much evidence to suggest that External Affairs, and certainly Lester Pearson, knew of Norman's communist sympathies.

Henry Ferns claims that External was well aware that Norman was a

xred,' but was quite willing nevertheless to employ him because he was one of Canada's few skilled Japanologists.35 There is little debate among those of a more liberal bias that External's continued support of Norman was probably well-founded, but even so the problems with this discretionary approach to security are obvious. External Affairs had a difficult time convincing the

Americans, the British, and even the RCMP that Norman was trustworthy. The evidence available to External, and the actions taken, will be discussed in subsequent chapters. Of more immediate consequence is the structural flaws of Canada's new vetting procedures.

Norman's longevity in External Affairs owed itself entirely to the subjective nature of the programme, as conservative critics have pointed out. James Barros has written that "the fact that

Egerton Herbert Norman had a charmed career in External Affairs becomes more understandable if juxtaposed with what we may moderately call Lester B. Pearson's inordinate protection of him."36 Certainly if it had been up to the RCMP, Norman would

34Quoted in Whitaker, "Security," 182-3.

35Henry Ferns, Readings from Right to Left: One Man's Political History (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1983) 214.

36Barros, Evil 158. have been removed as a security risk. They, too, felt that Norman was being unduly protected, as even the more liberally-inclined students of the case will admit. John Sawatsky wrote that in the minds of the RCMP

In [Norman's] case External Affairs kept an officer with access to sensitive information who had been a committed Communist stalwart. The established policy during that period was to remove such people from sensitive areas... Most other people in the same circumstances would have been dismissed. But Norman was a friend of External Affairs Minister Pearson...and he was given the benefit of the doubt others would not have received.37

Whitaker, too, corroborates this impression, writing that

"one cannot help wondering whether those less prominent [than

Norman], without defenders in the elite, did not suffer many unremarked injustices. Not everyone who appeared on an RCMP pink slip happened to be personally known to the chairman of the

Security Panel."38

Pearson also came under fire for his protection of Norman because allegations that he was also a Soviet mole were abounding in the early 1950s. In 1951, American *spy queen' Elizabeth

Bentley testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that Pearson was "a source of secret information" who was communicating to her via her agent, Hazen Sise. In reality, one of Pearson's staff members was leaking information, not merely acting as a conduit between Bentley and Pearson. However, the rumours about Pearson persisted in anti-communist circles in

37John Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service (Toronto: Doubleday, 1980) 148.

38Whitaker, "Security," 178. Washington, and even today a suspicion that Norman was sacrificed in order to save Pearson exists.39

Despite the immense power of the individual departments to conduct their own security vetting procedures, the RCMP did maintain a fair amount of leverage. "The very fact that it was the RCMP who decided what constituted xfact' and how the facts fitted together already placed considerable power over the careers of civil servants in their hands," noted Whitaker, adding that because civilians were reluctant to participate in the evaluation of RCMP reports, the RCMP invariably wound up making the evaluations and recommendations to the departments concerned.40

In the early stages of Canada's internal security programme, the RCMP occupied a rather hapless position. Charged with carrying out security investigations and evaluations on behalf of the entire civil service, like the nascent British intelligence organisation, the Canadian force was hopelessly understaffed and underfunded. Hunting down security risks often involved investigating the private lives and moral characters of individuals. Alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, large debtors, individuals engaged in extra-marital affairs or who frequented prostitutes were all considered targets for blackmail by enemy recruiters. The RCMP took an especially dim view of homosexuals

39See Barros, Evil. 106, and George Ignatieff, The Makings of a Peacemonger: the Memoirs of George Ignatieff (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1985) 119. The American right's attitudes towards Pearson will be discussed in a later chapter.

40Whitaker, "Security" 183. and had an entire investigative unit devoted to ferreting them out. In the 1950s the department's policy was to fire all homosexuals, regardless of whether they constituted potential security risks.41

Naturally, such investigations were not wildly popular with the Canadian electorate, and loathe to appear to be supporting the undermining of civil liberties, the government preferred to disassociate itself from RCMP activities altogether when possible.

Of course the RCMP was not by any means beyond reproach. Its methods were often questionable, and decidedly tactless, but given the limited resources available to it, its performance is at least understandable, if not necessarily laudable in this situation.42

Secretary of the Security Panel Arnold Heeney wrote to Norman

Robertson in 1951 that the Panel's difficulty was "to strike a happy medium between the dangers of unrestricted witchhunting on the one hand, and a too casual approach to the security problem on the other."43 Canada did succeed in striking a balance—

Whitaker calls it *restricted witchhunting'—but the programme was not without its costs. In the Norman case its inadequacies were readily apparent. The RCMP failed dismally in its efforts to carry out adequate vetting of him. It not only failed to identify links between Norman and Israel Halperin, who was accused of carrying out espionage following the Gouzenko disclosures, but

41Sawatsky, Men 124.

42See, for example, Littleton, Target, 168.

43Heeney is quoted in Bowen, Innocence 213. 34 managed to send out an inaccurate report concerning Norman to the

FBI, which found itself in "the hands of the Senate subcommittee.

Furthermore, much of theevidence against Norman was gathered by

American intelligence services, and it was the Americans who pointed out the importance of Canadian information to the RCMP.

The failures of the RCMP did little to instill confidence in the American and British governments about Canada's ability to handle its own internal security, especially as they were entangled with the greater problems of western security in a time of . growing , paranoia. The exposure of Alger Hiss, Guy Burgess,

Donald Maclean and numerous other Soviet agents that gained notoriety in this period proved again and again than western security procedures were failing, and governments were as quick to place the blame on other countries, as upon their own security

service. Moreover, the ideological preferences of the different states complicated the.,,necessity of achieving a consensus on v security requirements. Thus both Britain and the United States regarded Canada as being somewhat *soft' on communism, although only the most vehemently anti-communist sections of the United

States felt compelled to interfere directly in Canadian procedures.

The postwar domination of the western intelligence network by

•the United-States meant"that they wielded an inordinate amount of influence ..internationally, and the failure of Canada to successfully assert its own preferences in this issue area was to

some degree inevitable. When the Americans did not achieve satisfaction (i.e., Canadian acquiescence) through conventional means, they simply employed more unscrupulous tactics, such as the embarrassing publicity used in the Gouzenko case, to force

Canadian compliance. Perhaps with a more systematic and reliable internal security system, Canada would have been able to carry out its responsibilities in this area more effectively, and thus assuage the fears of the American and British governments.

However, as it stood, Canadian policy-makers' relative lenience in the area of internal security, the unconvincing performance of the

RCMP in its bid to conduct effective security operations, and the discretionary nature of the vetting process all contributed to the

United States' and Great Britain's scepticism toward the Canadian ability to handle its own security needs, never mind the greater needs the nascent western alliance system. Thus, proclamations to the contrary, Canada's middle-power status was, in this respect at least, illusory, depending as it did upon American and British sufferance rather than upon any Canadian ability to assert its own policy preferences through political leverage in the international arena. In the formulation of internal security policy, a strong case can be made for the not-readily apparent constraints imposed by Canada's status vis-a-vis the United States. Canada had a distinctive set of policy preferences derived from a more moderate approach to the Soviet threat, a political culture that left foreign policy issues up to the discretion of the elite, and an elite predisposed to a more flexible approach to the parameters of acceptable ideological orientations within its ranks. However, its assertion of these principles was in reality severely constrained by the more right wing ideological parameters adopted in the United States. 37

Norman's Ideology; Armchair Marxist or Party Stalwart?

Having thus established the context in which Norman's story takes place, we can now turn to the task of applying the internal security policies formulated to his specific case. Norman's defenders, including Norman himself, have long tried to argue the notion that his ideological convictions were superficial ones, and that his conversion to communism was but a xyouthful indiscretion' committed when he was a naive young university student. Because this case hinges on the question of whether his previous communist associations precluded him from being a * loyal' government servant it is necessary to trace the evolution, duration, and depth of commitment, of Norman's ideological convictions. From the ideological perspectives of some of the key actors, like the US

Congress, Norman's suitability for government employment was open to serious question. Although I have no biographical pretensions for this thesis, some fairly detailed remarks addressing his induction into communist thinking are necessary.

My first research objective was to expand the ideological parameters of the Norman debate beyond those articulated by Roger

Bowen and James Barros. To recap briefly, Bowen's argument was that although Norman was a communist, he was innocent of any charges of disloyalty against the Canadian government, whereas

Barros has argued that he was guilty precisely because he was a communist. In a way, although Barros' argument is less convincing, he has at least begun with a more concrete hypothesis by contending that Norman was a Marxist, and therefore guilty of 38 disloyalty. We have seen in the preceding chapter that this equation was perceived to be true even in the eyes of the Canadian policy-makers which cleared him, and institutionalised in Canadian law. Therefore, to make a case against the Canadian government

(specifically, the Department of External Affairs), all Barros need do is prove that Norman was indeed a Marxist, and then argue that by the criteria set by the Canadian government, he should have been dismissed. To an extent, Barros achieves this. The fact that his arguments are not ultimately convincing, however, suggests that this is a case of far greater complexity.

Bowen, on the other hand, argues that Norman was *guilty' of communism, but * innocent' of disloyalty. He was victimised unjustly for his communist beliefs, mainly by the American congressional subcommittee, which wrongly equated communism with disloyalty. Although certainly more academically balanced than

Barros' work, Bowen still falls into the trap of over• simplification by vilifying virtually everyone of a more conservative ideological bent who was suspicious about Norman. It is not surprising, however, that Bowen's perspective is the more universally accepted one. Canadians seem to relish the opportunity to pillory Americans, and the suicide of Norman is a splendid examples of Americans illegitimately intervening in

Canadian affairs, blatantly disregarding Canadian wishes and ultimately being directly responsible for the death of a valued

Canadian servant.

Thus far, an ideological debate over Norman's presumed guilt or innocence has proved to be a useful way of generalising about an empirically complex case. Yet the debate should range beyond the parameters of rightist and leftist interpretations insofar as this is possible in an issue grounded in competing ideological perspectives. One way to extend the debate is to put it in the context of Canadian foreign policy, which I have done through the use of Dewitt and Kirton's theoretical perspectives. Another is to move away from the tiresome arguments about whether adherence to communism constitutes an intrinsically disloyal act and judge governmental policies in terms of their historical context. The setting of the Norman case in the years of Cold War paranoia, when there were indeed xreds' who were committing acts of espionage on behalf of the Soviet state to be found in sensitive government positions, and when western governments felt that Soviet-directed communism posed a threat to western society and values goes far to explain why distinctions between Marxism-Leninism as a tool of intellectual inquiry, and communism as a blueprint for the overthrow of capitalist society would have been academic ones indeed. The questions posed by Norman's accusers (some of who were rabidly anti-communist witchhunters, others who were simply doing their jobs) were not necessarily fair or just or appropriate, but they were derived from what were apparently legitimate fears.

Norman's evolution from Communist Party member to * armchair

Marxist' did not easily fit into the frameworks developed by western governments to assess an individual's loyalty. To its 40 credit, by not adhering rigidly to its own criteria, External

Affairs did xsave' at least one loyal citizen from being scapegoated for his ideological beliefs. But the fact that a state has to disregard its own policies in order that justice be carried out raises serious doubts about such policies. Therefore, another way to expand the debate is to analyse the etiology of government policy.

It is apparent then that there are many points of entry with which one can analyse Norman as a case study without resorting to the limitations of the present discourse. For analytical purposes, this chapter will begin with a reconstruction of Norman's politicization, which will differ from other attempts chiefly in that it will not be found necessary to make rationalisations or apologies for the fact that Norman was, indeed, a communist. From there I will move into the intricacies and interpretations of the evidence which were built into a case against Norman, and led up to his suicide. This will be necessarily descriptive rather than analytical, but will provide the necessary background to later allow me to draw some conclusions as per the intent of the research objectives concerning Canadian foreign policy.

A Flirtation with Communism

Although Norman's active participation in the Communist Party was confined to a relatively short period of time, his so-called xflirtation' with Marxism extended far beyond his university days, and he carried his interest in it, deeply altered by time and circumstance but apparent nevertheless, to his death. The genesis of his ideological belief began properly upon his entrance to the

University of Toronto in 1929, although he had begun reading Marx while recovering from tuberculosis in a Calgary sanitorium at the age of sixteen. Initially he pursued this interest in Marxism with little apparent depth or commitment: as late as the spring of 1933 Bowen says he could only be characterised as an xarmchair radical.' But at university, his transformation was dramatic:

Bowen notes that "in the space of a mere seven years, between 1927 and 1934, Herbert Norman changed from being a Christian to a

Christian-Socialist aligned with the CCF, to a Trotskyist, and finally to a Stalinist."44 This dramatic political evolution parallels Norman's changing political environment at three different universities.

While studying classics at Victoria College, University of

Toronto, Norman exhibited a fairly superficial interest in

Marxism. However, significantly, during his undergraduate years there he did become acquainted with students who would later be tagged as *red' during the Cold War years. Most notable among them was Israel Halperin.

After completing his bachelor's degree in Canada, Norman accepted a scholarship to study history at Trinity College,

Cambridge. It was not long after his arrival at Trinity that he became more deeply indoctrinated into the Communist Party.

Cambridge in the 1930s was something of a hotbed of political

44Bowen, Innocence 38. radicalism.4i> Economic depression, high unemployment, the rise of

rightist ideologies such as fascism and nazism, these currents all contributed to the mobilisation of students in British universities. Cambridge gave rise to a number of seminal figures

in the western communist movement, and also to some notorious

Soviet agents. Many of Norman's peers took their ideals to the battlefields of Spain during the civil war. John Cornford, a

*Trinity hero' who was Norman's closest friend and mentor, and responsible for inducting him into the Communist Party, died there. Among Norman's other peers were Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby,

Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, a veritable *who's who' of Soviet espionage. All four were recruited by Soviet *talent spotters' while at Cambridge.

That Norman became swept up in the Cambridge communist movements is no great surprise. He arrived at Trinity as a comparatively poor, undistinguished scholarship student from the colonies, and as such was very much an outsider: his entrance

into university society was made possible by claiming an

ideological affinity with the Marxist set. Soon after his arrival he wrote to his family that "it seems if one has read Strachey's

Coming Struggle for Power and speaks highly of it, then you are

45There are a number of fascinating discussions on Cambridge politics in the 1930s. See, for example, Victor Kiernan, "Herbert Norman's Cambridge" in Bowen, E.H. Norman 27-46; Robert Cecil, "The Cambridge Comintern" in Andrew and Dilks, Missing 169-198; Philip Toynbee, "Journal of a Naive Revolutionary" in Philip Toynbee, ed., The Distant Drum: Reflections on the Spanish Civil War (New York: McKay, 1976) 144-184; and T.E.B. Howarth, Cambridge Between Two Wars (London: Collins, 1978) chapter 6. granted a sesame into their company."46 The appeal of communist company was obvious enough:

Revolt against parental authority? Of course. The pleasures and inner security provided by belonging to a semi-secret society? Not a doubt of it. The pure romanticism of red flags and clenched fists? Who could deny it?47

Contrary to what Norman would tell his accusers some fifteen years later, there is little doubt that he joined the British

Communist Party. He was assigned the task of organising Asian

students on behalf of the Party, a duty he was well-suited for being a colonial himself, and already something of an Asianist.

Although he participated actively in party activities, it is unlikely that the Soviet talent spotters who recruited Cambridge

Marxists would have been interested in him as a potential spy. By all accounts, he was a peripheral figure in the Cambridge movement, and as Bowen explains, not likely to be considered a useful candidate for espionage activities for a number of reasons:

Norman's modest colonial background...disqualified him for any serious consideration for membership in the Apostles [an elite communist cell from which Burgess et.al. were recruited], and his short, two year stay at Cambridge minimised his chances of being targeted as a potential mole to the Soviets.48

Furthermore, Norman seemed to be headed for a career in academe

rather than in government service, a career choice that would have

been of limited usefulness to the Soviets.49

46Bowen, Innocence 58.

47Toynbee, "Journal" 146.

48Bowen, Innocence 61.

49Ferns, Readings 221. During this period, communist doctrine was dictated by the

Komintern, which in turn was controlled by Moscow. Hence the ideology followed by Norman and his colleagues was, at this juncture, staunchly Stalinist. Polemical battles between the right and left raged, and it was not until the smoke cleared years later that the full extent of the atrocities committed under

Stalin's regime became apparent. In the 1930s, with nazism and fascism on the rise abroad and acute economic and social problems at home, even the communism of Stalin's Russia was seen as a legitimate blueprint for social change. As Toynbee, a victim of the same ideological affliction at Oxford would recall regretfully, "in our hunger for an earthly paradise we grossly deceived ourselves about Stalin's Russian and foolishly accepted the harsh and cynical methods of our party."50 Blind acceptance of the Party methodology was encouraged. Toynbee continues that a typical admonishment from a Party superior was "are we going to indulge ourselves in bourgeois intellectual doubts, comrade, or are we going to get on with the job?"51

Norman returned to Canada in 1935. He turned down an offer to work as a language officer in External Affairs in favour of a teaching post in classics at Upper Canada College. He also began graduate work at the University of Toronto. However, his tenure as a teaching master was short-lived. A former university companion, Alexander Heakes, had recommended Norman for the

50Toynbee, "Journal" 147.

51Toynbee, "Journal" 178. position but had warned headmaster Terence MacDermot of Norman's political sympathies. MacDermot hired him regardless, but cautioned him against carrying his politics into the classroom.

Apparently Norman felt that the warning did not extend to the breakfast room: he related to his companion Henry Ferns that on 7

March 1936—the day Hitler's troops entered the Rhineland—he delivered an anti-fascist rant that cost him his job. The story may be apocryphal. Barros counters that at the time a left-wing teaching master was a fairly typical specimen, and that Norman's remarks would not have been regarded as amiss. On the official record the reason cited for Norman's dismissal was "solely due to his inability to maintain discipline."52 However, Ferns maintains that "as far as Herbert was concerned, he was completely convinced that he had been unjustly deprived of his livelihood by political prejudice."53 If Fern's story is correct, then it must have been apparent to Norman early in his career that his chosen ideological orientation could become an liability.

Following his dismissal, Norman went to Harvard to continue his graduate studies. His political activism certainly had not waned since leaving Cambridge, for upon his arrival at Harvard in

1936 he soon was involved in a number of activities that were demonstrative of his enduring interest in active communism:

He involved himself in collecting money and goods to be sent to the anti-Franco Spanish rebels; he helped organize a Canadian affiliate of the American Friends of the Chinese

52Barros, Evil 13.

53Ferns, Readings 207. 46

People, an organization supporting Mao's forces; he joined a Marxist study group...; and he aided Phillip Jaffe, who in the mid-forties was indicted for communist spy activities during the time he headed Amerasia, a magazine openly sympathetic to what are now known as *national liberation movements.'54

Norman's ideological biases were equally obvious in his scholastic pursuits.55 His Ph.D thesis, completed in 1939 and subsequently published by the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR)

under the title Japan's Emergence as a Modern Statef was at the time regarded as a unique and seminal study of the roots of contemporary Japanese politics. It utilised related Japanese- language texts on the topic, and employed analytical tools derived from Marxian and socialist thought. From Japan's Emergence through his works completed in 1949, Norman's scholarship exhibited "a striking left-leaning anti-authoritarian message that was embellished by an iconoclastic radical tone and analysis" writes Bowen.56 John Whitney Hall adds that in Norman's work one can see that he "had a passionate dedication to the cause of human rights and democratic society. History, to him, was necessarily

54Roger Bowen, "Cold War, McCarthyism and Murder by Slander: E.H. Norman's Death in Perspective," in Bowen, Norman 52.

55On Norman's academic achievements see the series of essays in Bowen, Norman 81-122; and John W. Dower, "E. H. Norman and the Uses of History" in John W. Dower, ed. Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E. H. Norman (New York: Pantheon, 1975) 3-103. A more critical appraisal is provided by George Akita, "An Examination of E. H. Norman's Scholarship" Journal of Japanese Studies 3:2 (Summer 1977) 375-419.

Bowen, "Cold War" 52. political and his writing necessarily polemical."b'

Norman's scholarship was indicative of his political

sympathies, but for External Affairs at least, this did not necessarily cast aspersions upon his loyalty. While employed by

the department, all of Norman's articles and books were cleared by

External before their publication. Therefore, it must have been

fairly obvious to the department where Norman's political

sympathies lay, which would suggest they were capable of making a distinction between academic tone and political performance.58

Norman's enemies in the United States saw things differently, however, mainly because his academic work was published by the

IPR. The IPR became the focal point of Joseph McCarthy's 1950s attacks on communism.59 To Norman's detriment, his works were highly praised by Owen Lattimore, one of the alleged xevil geniuses' of the IPR and editor of Pacific Affairs, a liberal academic journal to which Norman contributed. Lattimore became

McCarthy's first case in his efforts to prove that communists had

infiltrated the American State Department. McCarthy alleged that

Lattimore was the xboss' of Alger Hiss and stated with

57John Whitney Hall, "E. H. Norman on Tokugawa Japan" Journal of Japanese Studies 3:2 (Summer 1977) 373.

58Ironically, Bowen first makes the point that DEA cleared Norman's work, but then later argues those members of the department set the task of investigating Norman's past were not of sufficient intelligence to understand the nuances of his * intellectual' marxism. See Bowen, Innocence 250 versus 265-67.

59See, for example, Lattimore's recounting of the ordeal in his book Ordeal by Slander (Boston: Little, 1950). The sources cited in the bibliography of this thesis concerning McCarthyism also contain accounts of the attacks on Lattimore and the IPR. 48 characteristic hyperbole, "I believe you can ask almost any schoolchild who the architect of our Far Eastern policy is and he will say *Owen Lattimore.'1160 Of course Lattimore was not nearly as influential as that, but his political biases were somewhat unfortunate in Cold War America. He had, for example, been vilified by the McCarthyites for saying of the 1938 Moscow trials

"they sound like democracy to me."61 But this discussion is to anticipate somewhat: the IPR was not under direct attack until

1950, and Norman had made numerous enemies previous to that. It is worthwhile to underline that it was Norman's associations with the IPR, rather than the ideological orientation of his scholarship, that was to be used against him by the McCarthyites.

Whether or not his writings were xsubversive' was of little interest to his enemies: it was Norman's relationship with a suspect organisation, rather than his academic work, that was used to indict him.

1940: Joining External

In the spring of 1940, having received his Ph.D from Harvard,

Norman accepted a post with External Affairs and was soon en route to Japan to work as a language officer. Bowen describes him at this point of his life as a "warm and sensitive Stalinist" on the threshold of a transition from an active communist to a career

60David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Free Press, 1983) 136.

610shinsky, Conspiracy 137. 49 diplomat who must now reconcile his past communist ideals with his new duty to serve the capitalist state.62 It is almost certain that at this point Norman severed his ties with the Communist

Party insofar as by no longer attending meetings and performing party tasks he could no longer be,considered an active member. If a line must be drawn between Norman's active and inactive participation, then it is here, when he left for Japan. But his interest in communism never waned, it merely changed course, although the distinction between Marxism and communism was not merely an academic one: future events would prove it vital.

Unfortunately, neither Norman nor his accusers were able to effectively separate the two concepts: as Ferns remarks,

Herbert seems never to have made any effort to separate communism as a political activity from Marxism as a body of ideas, but had he done so he would not have been so vulnerable to...the counsellors of the US Senate. As it was they could make him look like a liar by telescoping Communism and Marxism, and mixing up activity in 1936 with activity in 1946 or 1956.63

Yet Norman was apparently aware of the risks inherent in his subscription to the communist ideology. After his dismissal from

Upper Canada College, Norman had entered External. When the

Communist Party of Canada was banned in 1939, Norman was afraid of being * found out' and dismissed: Ferns recalled that Norman confessed that both he and his longtime friend Charles Holmes, who was employed by the Civil Service Commission, were afraid they

Bowen, Innocence 77.

Ferns, Readings 213. 50 would be fired if their past associations became known.64 He also claims that Norman was a faithful reader of the US Communist Party

journal New Masses during the period of their acquaintance (1944-

1945), and that he did not begin to disassociate from his more

*questionable' acquaintances until 1945. By this time it must be remembered that Norman was thirty-six years old—the notion that his was simply an innocent and youthful flirtation with a dangerously romantic ideology is patently untrue. This is not to suggest that there is the least evidence of disloyalty on his part if one defines disloyalty as engaging in acts of espionage at the behest of a party line. There is every evidence, rather, that

Norman was loyal only to his own humanitarian principles, albeit these principles were derived from Marxian thought. Norman had become an armchair Marxist, but this, in conjunction with his dubious past associations with those who were guilty of both

Marxism and espionage, and his errors in judgement while serving as , an External Affairs officer, were more than enough to incriminate him in the perceptions of anti-communist xCold

Warriors.'

Norman's first years as a diplomatic officer in Japan [1940-

1942] were relatively uneventful. He quickly proved to be a competent and respected member of the Canadian legation in Tokyo, and it was not until after the war, when he returned to serve under the aegis of the American Occupation forces, that his ideological views would begin to cause him problems. During the

64Ferns, Readings 207. 51 occupation, which took place in the context of the evolving Cold

War, political biases were hardened into.ideological stances that drew a harsh line between left and right. Before the war, Norman had found it easy to freely associate with communist and leftists in Japan, but the acquaintances he made there were to become grave liabilities in the new Japan of the Occupation.

In 1941 Norman first met John Emmerson, an officer in the

American embassy who would later play an important role in

Norman's McCarthyite drama in addition to starring in his own.

Drawn to Norman "because of our mutual interests in Japanese history and politics," Emmerson was soon meeting frequently with

Norman, adding that at the Canadian embassy he found "a retreat where the atmosphere was conducive to frank talks with our

Japanese friends."65 These friends were frequently important members in the Japanese communist movement, Marxist intellectuals, and others, both domestic and foreign, who were of decidedly leftist slants. For example, Emmerson writes of meeting Ushiba

Tomohiko, who was purported to be involved in the wartime spy ring run by Richard Sorge, at a dinner party at the Normans'.

Undoubtedly such guests would have been rather less welcome at

American headquarters.

When the war broke out, Norman was interned with other

Canadian diplomatic officers until 1942, when a prisoner exchange

65John K. Emmerson, The Japanese Thread: A Life in the US Foreign Service (Holt, 1978) 100. was arranged with the Japanese. b En route to Canada, Norman's ship stopped briefly in Mozambique: on the quay he ran into Tsuru

Shigeto, a close friend from his Harvard days. Tsuru was a renowned Marxist economist, had belonged to the same study group as Norman, and had provided much valuable assistance to Norman on his thesis. Tsuru was being repatriated to Japan. On the quay he told Norman that he had left some papers in his Cambridge,

Massachusetts apartment which he wanted Norman to have.

Several months later, Norman made the journey to Cambridge to secure the papers. Although conflicting accounts of the visit exist, it seems that he had some difficulty gaining access to

Tsuru's apartment. He contacted the building's janitor, explained his mission, and said he would return the following day after his credentials had been checked. The janitor notified the authorities, and when Norman arrived the next day, he found two

FBI agents waiting for him. The confrontation was not a friendly one. One agent apparently accused him of being an *alien' and had to be convinced that Canada, too, was an ally of the United States and at war with Japan. The report filed by the FBI read:

Norman first claimed to be on an official mission for the Canadian government to obtain the books of Tsuru for the use of the Canadian government in a special investigation. He indicated that he held diplomatic immunity. Norman stated he was on a highly confidential mission and could not divulge the details of the mission.... Later on, during the conversation, Norman changed his story and indicated that he did have a personal interest in the possessions of the subject and that he was not actually on a special mission for

66For accounts of the so-called *Tsuru Affair,' see Bowen, "Cold War" 54-5 and Innocence 229-233; Barros, Evil 27-32; and Ferns, Readings 218-220. 53

the Canadian government.67

The papers, which had been promptly confiscated by the FBI before

Norman's arrival, consisted of a collection of books on Japanese history, some communist propaganda materials and correspondence,

Senate reports on munitions hearings, etc.. Norman's interest in the resources was probably purely academic, although it is possible, as Bowen has speculated, that Norman was trying to recover materials which might have led to Tsuru's imprisonment if they had somehow fallen into the hands of the Japanese wartime authorities.'68

Caveators have quite rightly raised objections about Norman's behaviour in this incident, but such objections are comparatively minor when one considers that this was to become a major piece of

FBI evidence against him. It is true, for example, that his encounter with Tsuru should have been reported to the FBI officers who debriefed the disembarking diplomats and officials when they reached port. Barros argues that Tsuru was, "after all, a subject of...a country at war with Canada," and cites a precedent that in a similar situation, Pearson consciously avoided speaking to a

German official he knew.69 This should, however, be taken only as a criticism of Norman's form, not his substance: Tsuru was a

Marxist and much -more likely to pose a threat to his own

67FBT file #100-346993-2 (16 Oct 1946) quoted in Bowen, "Cold War" 54.

€8Bowen, "Cold War" 55.

69Barros, Evil 28. government than to those of the west. Norman probably viewed the encounter as nothing more than a chance meeting with an old university friend.

A second, more serious objection is that he misrepresented himself to the American authorities and thereby abused his position as a member of the Canadian civil service. Taken as an isolated incident, this could be dismissed as poor judgement, but hardly indicative of his disloyalty. However, when combined with other examples of Norman's deceits and misrepresentations throughout his career, this episode becomes a weapon which conservative students of the case use to attack Norman's character, and thus open the floodgates of moral criticism.

Lapses of moral judgement, however frequent, do not necessarily lead to treason, of course. The fact that Norman initiated contact with the American authorities (he gave his credentials to the building's janitor so he could be checked by the local security service) would suggest that there was nothing conspiratorial about his visit to Cambridge. Furthermore, the papers he hoped to secure "were of no particular value from a security viewpoint."

However, the FBI would gloss over these xdetails' in its attempts to imply that Norman's mission was more sinister than it actually was.70

At the time, however, the incident was unremarked. Norman spent the war in Ottawa and returned to Tokyo after the defeat of

Bowen, Innocence 230-231. Japan. /J- He was quickly recruited by the American military

authorities to work with the Supreme Commander for the Allied

Powers for the Occupation and Control of Japan (SCAP) under

MacArthur. Norman's job was to interrogate and classify thousands of Japanese political and military figures, intellectuals and businessmen. Taylor points out the irony that "in the last few months of 1945 we have the extraordinary spectacle of Norman, a

Canadian diplomat of decidedly radical tendencies, serving as effective head of the US army's Counter-intelligence Corps in

Japan."72 He worked under General Eliot Thorpe, and later under

General Courtney Whitney in the G-l administration branch. One of his colleagues was John Emmerson.

Norman in Cold War Japan

The development of the American Occupation of Japan mirrors

the increasingly conservative nature of the American political

community. In its initial stages, the American intention was to

democratise Japan by introducing a constitution and reform programmes that would purge the indigenous political process of

the oligarchic and militaristic elements that had led Japan into war. But by 1947-48, the thrust of Truman's emerging containment

policies was being felt. As Taylor explains, the early reforms,

such as MacArthur's release of thousands of political prisoners,

71Accounts of Norman's foreign service years are found in Bowen, Innocence chapter 6 and his essay "Cold War" 53-62; and in Taylor, Journeys 123-134.

72Taylor, Journeys 126. had succeeded in creating a left wing movement of some influence.

But Japan's new position in American Cold War strategy was to act

as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. The strength of such

leftist movements was thus seen as a direct threat to American

containment policy.

Over time, the reform-orientated Occupation policy became

more conservative as earlier democratic measures were abandoned or weakened.73 Within SCAP, a conflict emerged between the advocates

of this 'reverse course' and the proponents of a more liberal

Occupation policy. The liberals subscribed to a xhard peace' line

that demanded the militaristic and imperialistic forces that had

led Japan into war be punished and/or excluded from the

governmental and policy-making processes in postwar Japan. Soft

peace advocates, on the other hand, felt that the previous ruling

elite should be given free reign to crush the nascent communist movements. The conflict, interestingly enough, split along

departmental lines: G-l became associated with the hard peace

line, and G-2, another counter-intelligence branch under one

Charles A. Willoughby, advocated the firm application of American

containment policy to Japan.

What resulted was essentially a factional struggle within

SCAP headquarters, instigated mainly by Willoughby, who had

personal as well as ideological reasons to be antagonistic towards

G-l. He had served with both Whitney and Thorpe during

MacArthur's campaign in the Phillipines, and had axes to grind

73See Taylor, Journeys 130 and Bowen, Innocence 178. with both men. Feuding between the *Bataan boys' continued when they all found themselves in MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters, with

Willoughby usually losing out: "In Tokyo, Willoughby tried to rest the main role in military government away from Whitney and failed. Earlier, [in Manilla] he had tried to get counter• intelligence way from...Thorpe...and had failed there too."74

In addition to his personal antipathy towards some of his colleagues, Willoughby was also ferociously anti-communist (he once toasted Franco as "the second greatest general in the world" after MacArthur75). In his biography of MacArthur, Willoughby contended that the web of intrigue surrounding the Sorge spy ring was perhaps just the tip of the iceberg of communist infiltration, and complained bitterly about subversion in SCAP:

leftists and fellow travellers were hired in the States and unloaded on the civil sections of general headquarters...MacArthur had no choice of selection or refusal. Derogatory reports eventually reached Tokyo from various security agencies in Washington. Then began a time consuming local process to get rid of these people, often made abortive by xLoyalty Boards' that failed to function...the leftist infiltration was in full swing.76

It was perhaps inevitable that Willoughby's conservative gaze would fall upon Norman, who was damned in Willoughby's eyes for a number of reasons. He was a foreigner who fraternised with both

local and foreign leftists, including associates of the IPR,

74Frank Kluckhohn, "Heidelberg to Madrid—The Story of General Willoughby" The Reporter 7:4 (19 Aug 1952): 29.

75Kluckhohn, "Willoughby" 25.

76Charles A. Willoughby with John Chamberlain, MacArthur 1941-1951 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954) 323. 58

American 'China hands" and Marxist intellectuals; he was an influential hard peace advocate who was highly esteemed by

MacArthur; and he was sometimes critical of MacArthur's staff, a virtual heresy in Willoughby's eyes. For Willoughby, "Norman was one of those, if not the central figure, in a pro-communist group of Far Eastern experts who had some immeasurable impact on policy• making and implementation during the early stages of the

Occupation."77

In October 1946, Willoughby initiated a security investigation against Norman.: He quickly hit upon Norman's and

Emmerson's participation in the release of some Japanese political prisoners the previous year as a clear indication of Norman's dangerous pro-communist sympathies.

Defenders of Norman and Emmerson have stressed that the pair were 'only following orders' when they participated in the

Fuchu Prison releases, and in the strict sense of the meaning, this is certainly true. However, it does distort the fact that the impetus for the implementation of the order in this case came from Emmerson, enthusiastically assisted by Norman. There are a number of conflicting accounts of the incident, including one given by Norman to his Canadian interrogators in 1952. Probably the most accurate one comes from Emmerson himself.78

77Bowen, Innocence 178.

78Norman's account, given while he was under the strain of interrogation, was extremely vague, and put the numbers of prisoners released significantly higher. Emmerson's account, however, seemed fairly precise and given its context, perhaps the more accurate of the two. In a letter to the author (Feb 1988), 59

Emmerson recounts that on 4 October 1945, SCAP issued a civil rights directive which abrogated the prewar restrictions on freedom of assembly, religion, speech, etc., and ordered the release of prisoners who had been charged under these laws. A

Newsweek correspondent who knew Emmerson told him that there were several communists in Fuchu Prison that might be of interest to

SCAP headquarters. Emmerson contacted Norman, then acting as

Canada's External Affairs representative and also chief of the

Research and Analysis section in SCAP's counter-intelligence office. "Herb was enthusiastic," Emmerson recalls, and so, having cleared it with headquarters, the pair set out for Fuchu Prison the following day. There, among sixteen political prisoners they found twelve communists, including Tokuda Kyuichi and Shiga

Yoshio, who were to become leading figures in Japan's postwar communist party. A preliminary interrogation was conducted at the prison, and then, because Norman and Emmerson felt that some of the prisoners might well be influential in Japan's future political life, three or four were taken down to SCAP headquarters. Conservative critics claimed that the treatment accorded these communists (who were, they would have us believe, paraded through the streets and feted by these representatives of the Occupation) conferred unnecessary legitimacy upon the nascent

Japanese left. For example, in 1951 Eugene Dooman, a soft peace advocate with SCAP who resigned in 1945 in disgust over its too

Bowen said he believes the discrepancies between them are due simply to failing memories, a reasonable enough explanation. See Bowen, Innocence 172-175 versus Emmerson, Thread 256-260. 60

lenient policies, testified before the SISS that the official attention accorded these Japanese communists enhanced public

regard for the party to such an extent that '100 000' new members were recruited.79

While Willoughby was busy investigating Norman's activities

in Tokyo, in Washington the FBI was burrowing into the Soviet

espionage networks disclosed by Igor Gouzenko.80 Israel Halperin had been identified by Gouzenko as a Soviet agent and now the FBI was investigating the names that appeared in his address book.

Norman's name appeared seven times, once bracketed with Tsuru's name. The FBI made some perfunctory enquiries about him at

Harvard and succeeded in establishing a connection between Tsuru,

Norman, Halperin, and another Canadian who had attended around the same time, Lorie Tarshis. All four were tenuously linked to a

Marxist study group, but failing to turn up anything significant beyond that, Norman's file was again closed. Incidentally, until

Willoughby made enquiries of the FBI, the account of the 1942

Tsuru Affair was never forwarded to the FBI's Washington headquarters.

Circumstantial evidence and suspicions were thus accumulating

against Norman during his years in Japan, but there was certainly nothing which concretely established him as a threat to western

security. Aside from Willoughby, whose investigations were

fuelled by his own personal vendettas, security investigators

79Bowen, "Cold War" 56.

80See Bowen, Innocence 202-203 and Barros, Evil 50. found nothing about Norman that was deemed sufficiently worrying to require a more concerted inquiry. This was partly due to the

inadequate communications within and between intelligence networks. There were no systematic channels of communication between the FBI, the RCMP, and American military intelligence, and so, the information accumulating on Norman was never gathered into a single entity, but instead languished in filing cabinets. It perhaps would have remained there if it were not for the

intensification of the anti-communist crusade in the United

States. American witchhunters were able to gain access to and utilise such inconclusive information. They employed it selectively, distorted it and put it into the public domain where it could do great harm by feeding suspicions.

The first public acknowledgement that Norman was politically suspect occurred on 20 April 1950 when his name was raised during the Tydings Senate Committee hearings concerning the loyalty of

Owen Lattimore. Testifying on Lattimore's behalf was Norman's former G-l boss, General Thorpe. During the course of his questioning, Thorpe was asked whether he had prepared intelligence reports concerning Norman while he was in Japan. Thorpe could not recall doing so, and nothing damaging was said. However, the fact that his name was raised at all in such a context alarmed External

Affairs and succeeded in arousing suspicions in a number of quarters.81

81Accounts of the evidence assembled in the 1950 period are discussed at length in Bowen, Innocence. chapter 6 (especially 201-216) and Barros, Evil, chapter 5. Thorpe's testimony is External Affairs questioned Norman on the significance of

Thorpe's statements and advised him not to comment publicly on the matter. With their characteristic predilection for secrecy,

officers in External hoped that it would die quickly and quietly, believing that the mention of Norman was incidental to the trial.

Norman corroborated this, explaining to Arnold Heeney

I am completely at a loss to explain [Senator] Hickenlooper's query. It may possibly be that he had heard some rumours of bad feeling between Thorpe and Willoughby...and hoped in some devious or accidental manner to have this matter aired, hence discrediting Thorpe as a witness...82

Any hopes that Thorpe's testimony would be forgotten were in vain. On 23 May 1950, the FBI reopened Norman's file, and verified his connections with a Marxist study group.

Investigations into Halperin's address book had led to the discovery of Klaus Fuchs, a naturalised British scientist who was

engaged in atom bomb espionage for the Soviets. He was found guilty under the British Official Secrets Act, and with the

success of this operation, British, American and Canadian

investigators were spurred into reviewing their own files on

Halperin's acquaintances.

To its later chagrin, the RCMP failed to establish any

connection between Norman and Halperin—this connection was

reproduced in Bowen, Innocence 208.

82Cable from Norman to Heeney, 2 May 1950. Cited in Bowen, Innocence 208. brought to its attention by the FBI.8-3 It had, however, accumulated some scraps of information on Norman during the preceding decade. RCMP files contained a 1940 report on a person named Norman who was identified as a member of the Canadian

Communist Party and somewhat resembled Herbert Norman. Acting on information provided by an RCMP informant, in 1940 the RCMP had conducted an inconclusive investigation into a Professor Norman who taught at McMaster (Herbert taught at Upper Canada College), who had been a professor at Harvard (Norman had been a graduate student) and who had ties in Hamilton, Ontario (the RCMP checked on families with the surname xNorman' there unsuccessfully; but

Herbert's in laws resided in Hamilton, and one of the addresses listed for him in Halperin's notebook was that of the in laws).

This 1940 investigation was fruitless due to the inaccuracy of the available information, and so the RCMP asked the source to clarify its information and that was the end of that.84

In 19 48 the RCMP established that Herbert Norman was associated with Frank Parks, then an employee of the National

Council for Canadian-Soviet Friendship, a well-known Communist

Party front organisation. Norman's name and phone number appeared on Park's desk pad. Again, at the time, the information seemed to

83Shortly after Norman's death, the RCMP released a report discussing its failures in the case. It stated in part, "...we cannot feel too satisfied over the fact that Norman's name was not picked out of the Halperin notebook earlier," and noted that at the time of the investigations, the preparation of the Taschereau-Kellock report was taking precedence over other security matters. See Bowen, Innocence 209-210.

84Barros, Evil 51-51. be of no particular significance, and the overworked RCMP filed this bit of information away as well.

During the re-review of the Halperin notebook following the discovery of Fuchs, the RCMP found it had another reference to a

'Norman,' this one regarding some inquiries that Moscow military intelligence had made. Moscow had queried an official attached to the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Colonel Zabotin, about whether he had any knowledge of a 'Norman.' He said he did not but made further enquiries of the KGB which is alleged to have responded

"he is ours, don't touch him." This exchange which occurred in

1944, was assumed by the RCMP to have involved Norman Freed or

Norman Veall, who were already known as pro-Soviet sympathizers.

In retrospect they reflected that it seemed odd that Soviet intelligence would conduct enquiries using a Christian name and postulated that the Norman referred to might well be Herbert

Norman, although they concluded that it was impossible to identify the individual involved.85

1950: Norman's First Recall

On 13 September 1950 RCMP Inspector Robert MacNeil reported to George Glazebrook, then in charge of External Affair's internal security, to discuss Norman's file. Following the Fuchs incident, and the establishment of a connection between Norman and Halperin, the RCMP's evidence, however circumstantial or inaccurate, cast some doubts upon Norman's suitability for employment in a

85Barros, Evil 54. sensitive government position. Although he had undergone security vetting by the RCMP and External in 1948, when the procedures

first came into use, the checks were somewhat cursory. Norman was

already an established and fairly senior External officer. Now,

in light of the FBI and G-2 investigations, concerns about Norman were mounting in the United States. The American intelligence

service and the SISS were distrustful of Canadian security

procedures, partly because they felt security agencies should have

the ultimate mandate rather than the state, partly because of the

perceived incompetence of Canadian counter-intelligence

operations, and were inclined to want to step into the breach. In

any case, External Affairs found itself having to move quickly to

pre-empt unwanted (but perhaps not unwarranted) interference into what was undoubtedly a Canadian security matter.

Both the RCMP and External were unsure of how much the FBI

knew about Norman: as far as External was concerned, the FBI's

request for information was prompted solely by its Halperin

investigation. It seems likely, as Bowen suggests, that the FBI

was withholding information from Canada, "possibly in order to

test how forthcoming Canadian security people might be."86 Norman was recalled from Japan to answer to the suspicions that had been

aroused, but DEA was already sceptical about its ability to quiet

American fears, and was afraid that Washington would use its

proven method of publicity to force Norman out of service. Bowen

suggests that Norman's recall was prompted by "a disingenuous FBI

86Bowen, Innocence 214. and a frightened External, which, according to Heeney, worried that Hoover might take xprecipitous action, including, perhaps, publicity.'"87 This would suggest that it was the possibility of a Washington-fomented smear campaign, rather than the possibility that Norman was disloyal, that mobilised the department to take action. If this is true, then it could be that External had no qualms about Norman's loyalty, or, if the evidence could be judged as warranting more serious attention, was simply shoddy in its approach to security.

James Barros has contended that External's handling of the

Norman case reflected "a malaise" within the department that was indicative of its desire "to look into the Norman matter as perfunctorily as possible."88 But although virtually forced by the Americans to conduct an investigation, DEA was at least determined to do the thing properly, as far as its security mandate carried it.

One of the first things the department did was undertake steps through its contacts with the US State Department to keep the suspicions about Norman from the public at least until

Norman's loyalty could be assessed. In addition, Pearson asked

Norman Robertson to keep the RCMP from sending its report to the

American authorities until he had looked at it. Unfortunately, his request came too late: the erroneous 17 October report, which would achieve great salience later, had already been sent. Taylor

87Bowen, Innocence 214.

88Barros, Evil 53. cites this as "a frightening example of how the routine exchange of raw security information had made the Canadian Government the accomplice of the most ruthless elements in Washington."89

Although in this case the information was certainly misused by

American sources, the fact that the report was patently incorrect is also worth emphasising in that it reminds us that Canada was not entirely blameless. This issue cropped up after Norman's death, when the issue of security information exchange was taken up with the American government. Of more immediate concern was the position of External Affairs vis-a-vis the RCMP security service. Once again, the divergence of American and Canadian approaches is demonstrated by the different relationships between the state and its security organisation.

Littleton notes that in the United States, the Cold War provided an occasion for an alliance between right wing politicians and the executive branch's internal security organs which served to legitimise one another.90 In Canada, however, DEA had reservations about the RCMP as an internal security organ, but there was no readily available alternative. Only the RCMP had the personnel and security files necessary to the conduct of counter• intelligence operations. In the Norman case, this lack of confidence was exacerbated by the 17 October report which, writes

Bowen, was unrivalled: "probably no other report about him, whether Canadian or American, proved as influential and ruinous as

89Taylor, Journeys 137.

90Littleton Target 13. 68 this one; its contents haunted him for the remainder of his life." The RCMP did send a corrected report on 1 December, but the Senate persisted in "[keeping] alive a damaging and partly erroneous report that the official representatives of the

Canadian government not only disavowed and overturned, but also requested be disregarded by the Americans."91

Barros contends that External attempted a whitewash of the

Norman affair, and was trying to suppress the damaging RCMP report. Yet the fact that the department might have lacked faith in the RCMP should not be construed as an indication they were unsuspicious of Norman. Granatstein writes that "there seems to be little doubt that Robertson was concerned that Norman may have been subverted," and Bowen remarks that the pre-recall letters which flew between officials in the upper echelons of the department "are careful to avoid presuming guilt, [but] there is obviously an internal debate going on."92 At the time of his recall, External was probably willing to give Norman the benefit of the doubt, but nevertheless, caution was. to be the watchword.

Heeney wrote to Hume Wrong shortly before Norman's return that "at the moment we are assuming nothing, except that it is proper to withdraw him from his responsible and confidential work pending a further examination of the situation."93

91Bowen, Innocence 89. For some background into the DEA/RCMP rivalry, see Granatstein, Influence 274.

92Granatstein, Influence 275; Bowen, Innocence 211.

93Cited in Bowen, Innocence 214. 69

On 24 October 1950 Norman's interrogation began, conducted by-

Norman Robertson and George Glazebrook.94 Apparently shortly before his meeting with External officials, he was interviewed briefly by the RCMP. Although no records of this RCMP meeting exist, an unsigned memorandum in the RCMP files stated that Norman

"admitted to an academic interest in Communism but said he had never been a party member or disloyal to Canada."95

External's interrogation lasted about six weeks.

Significantly, Barros stresses that this was less an interrogation than a "discussion among gentlemen of breeding." By all other accounts, however, the questioning was arduous, and left a lasting mark on Norman, who "was still recounting the nightmare years later..."96 Whatever the case may have been, it is still easy to see why sceptics would take issue with Norman's ultimate security clearance, as it was granted by his colleagues in External and was necessarily subjective.

External not only cleared Norman of any and all suspicions, but demonstrated its confidence in him by awarding him the position of head of the American and Far Eastern Division. The assignment was certainly commensurate with Norman's abilities and

94Barros claims the interrogators were Robertson and Heeney; no written records of .the interrogation exists, but Glazebrook did prepare a memorandum on the first day's questioning. It seems likely, therefore, that Glazebrook rather than Heeney was present. See .accounts in Barros, Evil 58 versus Bowen, Innocence 225.

95RCMP file (29 Jan 1968) cited in Barros, Evil 59.

96Barros, Evil 60; Bowen, "Cold War" 63. experience, and was probably designed to signal to the Americans that Canadian faith in Norman was absolute. On 21 January Norman was awarded S A (Special Assignment) security clearance, a designation above *Top Secret.' The Americans who, as External

Affairs had feared, failed to believe in Norman's innocence, were duly chagrinned. Norman's sensitive appointment, coinciding with the Korean war, must have seemed a stinging slap in the face to those people who, rightly or wrongly, regarded Norman as a serious risk to western security.

1951: The Noose Tightens

In the coming year, hearsay, * evidence' and accusations mounted against Norman, and the congressional subcommittee again forced the Canadian government's hand by using publicity in an effort to smear him. By early 1952 another interrogation of

Norman was necessary, this time by the RCMP, as the Canadian government waged a losing battle to maintain control of its security mandate in the face of mounting opposition from the

United States, Britain, and the conservative Canadian security organisation.

The escalating efforts to xget' Norman coincided with the increasing tide of anti-communist hysteria in the United States.

As Littleton has explained, for the previous decade the American right had been losing confidence in their political executive in general and the State Department in particular. "In their view," he wrote, "the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union...the Yalta Agreement, the formation of the United Nations, and the defeat of the Chinese Nationalists added up to an unforgivable series of betrayals.1197 Dissatisfaction was further exacerbated by the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War: efforts to purge those responsible for these Far Eastern policy debacles were stepped up. In 1951 the SISS attacks on the IPR became more vehement. Meanwhile, in

Britain the May 1951 defections of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean sent a chill down the spines of security organisations and fuelled anti-communist paranoia in the west. Fears of internal subversion were in no way limited to a discrete group of congressional witchhunters, but were common to greater or lesser degrees in

Canada, the US, and Britain—states directly involved in the

Norman case—and other western countries such as Australia, which were also involved in the western struggle to 'contain' communism.

Although it was the illegitimate practices of the SISS which led directly to Norman's defamation and suicide, suspicions about him were rife in many quarters, as became apparent when information concerning him began to flow in from a variety of unrelated sources after he had been cleared.

The discovery of Soviet moles in key positions in Britain, especially the spectacular defections of Burgess and Maclean prompted a Canadian citizen to approach the government with a number of allegations concerning Norman's past involvement in communist activities. This man was Alexander Heakes, the former

Victoria College colleague that helped Norman get his job at Upper

97Littleton Target 28. Canada College.yB Upon hearing of Norman's appointment to head the American and Far Eastern Division, he saw fit to approach Paul

Martin, then Minister of Health and Welfare, to voice his concerns about Norman's loyalty and suitability to serve in such a position

(it must be remembered that at this point, American suspicions about Norman were largely unknown outside of government and intelligence circles, and that Heakes was acting independently).

Martin told Heakes that the government was already aware of this, having received similar information from the FBI, and was looking into it. When Heakes later read of the Burgess and Maclean defections, he wrote a letter to Martin, hypothesising that there might well be some connection between the British espionage agents and Norman, all of whom had been active in the 1930s

Cambridge Communist movement. According to Barros, the letter was forwarded to Pearson, who neither responded to it nor took any action. This lack of action was perhaps due more to External's scepticism about Alexander Heakes than its security ^malaise.'

Heakes had previously written letters to the Minister of Internal

Revenue complaining about his income tax. Copies of these letters had been forwarded to Martin, who in turn had forwarded them to

DEA. "The letters are violent to such a degree," George

Glazebrook observed in a memorandum for the file, "that they might easily suggest either a person of unbalanced mind or at least one

98The Heakes incident is discussed primarily by Barros, Evil 69-72. Bowen makes rather less of Heakes' actions, personal correspondence with author, Feb 1988. who could not control his temper.I,yy

The Heakes incident, although minor, is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it neatly contrasts the Canadian and

American attitudes to anti-communism. In the US during this period, his efforts to unveil a suspected communist would have been lauded, as it was ostensibly the duty of every American to diligently protect his country from the communist menace by informing the appropriate authorities if a suspicion existed.

Although Heakes' motives may have been pure, in Canada his actions were greeted with far less enthusiasm. Although there was very likely some concern in External that Heakes might approach the

RCMP, the American authorities, or the media if he did not feel

Canadian officials were treating the case with due vigilance, he was regarded in External as a 'whistleblower' betraying a friend.

'Evidence' such as this gained little currency in External, but it was exactly the sort of thing that more vehement anti-communists in the US would employ to discredit Norman. Secondly, Heakes' action is significant in that he was but one of a wide range of sources that came forward to cast aspersions upon Norman's loyalty. And of course, as more and more information on Norman filtered into External Affairs, it became more difficult to dismiss the doubts being raised.

The Burgess and Maclean defections also led to an intensification of the hunt for communist subversives by Britain's

MI5. The investigation led them to Cambridge, and to the students

"Barros Evil 95. that had been active in the leftist movement there in the 1930s.

They turned up a *compromising' letter authored by one XE. Norman' that had been written during this period, in their 1951 investigation. The letter was turned over to the RCMP, and the

Canadian High Commissioner in London was informed.

At about the same time, in the United States the SISS investigations into the IPR led to the raising of Norman's name again. This time, an Asianist from the east coast testified that

Norman had been a member of a Marxist study group in 1938. When

SISS counsel Robert Morris asked the witness, Karl Wittfogel, "was it obvious that he was communist?" Wittfogel said xyes.' Morris then read a report concerning Norman's associations with the IPR into the record.100 This would have serious ramifications because, as Littleton explains,

In the political atmosphere of 1951, to say that Norman had, thirteen years before, been a member of a ^discussion group of friends,' some of whom might have been Communists, was tantamount to accusing him of the gravest kind of treachery. It also amounted to an accusation that the government of Canada was complicit in the treachery because it employed Norman as a senior diplomat.101

The accusation that Norman was a communist had been made in a public hearing, and immediately hit the front pages. External moved quickly to defend him. At the time, Norman was in New York, serving as Acting Permanent Delegate to the UN: he was promptly sent back to Ottawa by Pearson, who thought that in Ottawa, Norman would be safer from the ravages of the American press corps. The

100Bowen, Innocence 242-243.

101LIttleton Target " 75

Canadian press, in contrast, was indignant over the American publication of such accusations. A story typical of the Canadian reaction protested that

Canada is just as anxious as the United States to keep communists out of key positions...The American people may believe that a public enquiry, with names freely bandied about and reputations freely damaged, is the right method. The fact that Canada does not agree is, perhaps, something Washington neither knows about nor cares a hoot about.102

External Affairs, as an official endorsement of confidence, reaffirmed Norman's position as head of the American and Far

Eastern Division, and issued a public statement denying the allegations:

Mr. Norman was subject to the normal security investigation by the appropriate authorities of the Canadian government according to rules laid down, which apply to all members of External Affairs. Subsequently, reports reached the department which reflected on Mr. Norman's loyalty and alleged previous associations with the Communist Party. The reports were very carefully and fully investigated by the security authorities of the government, and as a result of which Mr. Norman was given a clean bill of health.103

Pearson approached the American State Department and demanded that the SISS stop smearing Canadian officials. He asked that if questions or suspicions about a Canadian public servant arose, they be treated in the proper manner, that is, through diplomatic channel, not in public. The American executive, predictably enough, was loathe to take any responsibility for the excesses of its Congress, a position which became increasingly pronounced

102editorial, "The Smear Comes North" Globe and Mail (11 Aug 1951) A6.

103CP, "Top Canadian at UN Cleared of Red Smear" Globe & Mail (10 Aug 1951) Al. during the Norman case. And the congressional subcommittee, as

though eager to add insult to injury, promptly brought Pearson's

name up in-an executive;session of the hearings a few days later,

during the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley.104

For his part, Norman immediately sent a memorandum to

Glazebrook in which he categorically denied this latest charge.

He admitted knowing Wittfogel but denied having participated in a

Marxist study group with him, protesting emphatically, "he is

definitely telling a lie.1,105 Both Moses Finklestine and William

Canning, who did belong to,Wittfogelf.s study group, independently

corroborated Norman's story, attesting that they could not recall

him ever attending. In the same memo, Norman discussed his

associations with the IPR, pointing but that all his publications

had been cleared by his superiors in External Affairs.

Despite the Canadian government's protests, the SISS

-continued to bring up Norman'.s name in its hearings. It appears

that its attacks upon- him were largely facilitated by General

Willoughby, who fed confidential G-2 and FBI reports to Robert

Morris. The FBI report contained the incorrect information sent

on by the RCMP in its 17 October report, and Wllloughby's G-2

report of 11 April 1951 which attempted to link Norman with the

Sorge spy ring. In subsequent hearings with those who had served

in Japan—Lattimore, , Willoughby, J5ooman and Emmerson—the

104Harold Greer, "Death of a Diplomat" The Nation 184:16 (20 Aug 1957) 340. Littleton provides a more detailed account of the Pearson, smear -in Target 30-31.

105Bowen, Innocence 245. subcommittee invariably brought up Norman's name, despite the fact that

With one exception [presumably Wittfogel's testimony], nothing exists in the public record of the subcommittee of an incriminating nature against Norman other that what had been put there by either Morris or Jenner through their own insinuations and innuendos. Witnesses who failed to provide the right answers to direct questions have found themselves listening to Morris or Jenner read statements into the record.106

In the preceding pages we have seen that the intelligence organisations in Canada, the US and Great Britain were all sharing information about Norman, and forwarding it to the appropriate (or in the case of Willoughby, inappropriate) government officials; allegations were being made publicly in the US; and both the

American and British governments were growing sceptical about

Norman's continued employment in a position requiring high security clearance. In light of the accumulating suspicions, it began to look as though another investigation of Norman was going to be necessary. On 31 August 1951, Heeney sent a memorandum to

Glazebrook which revealed that "Norman's alleged Communist associations was a matter of gossip in upper military-diplomatic circles in Tokyo before Norman's own departure for Canada [in

1951]."107 A week later Glazebrook received a cable from the High

Commissioner in London regarding MI5's discovery of Norman's

'compromising letter.' In early January 1952, the RCMP contacted

Glazebrook with information regarding Norman's activities at the

106Greer, "Death" 3 39.

107Cited in Barros, Evil 72. 78

University of Toronto and at Cambridge—information which was probably supplied by Heakes who approached the RCMP in

December.108 It was obvious that External was going to have to act. There was just too much information coming in from too many different sources. On 18 January 1952 Glazebrook detailed the current state of affairs of the Norman case in a secret memo for

Heeney:

The effect of the new evidence and subsequent conversation with Mr. Norman is, in broad outline, as follows: 1) It shows that at one time he was, in effect, a Communist in opinion. 2) The evidence states that he was an active member of the Party with a particular job. 3) The new evidence introduces new communists who were alleged associates. 4) It extends the period of Communist belief to some undefined point after he left Cambridge for Toronto [in 1939].109

Glazebrook concluded that the problem for External was "to make up our minds whether Norman effectively broke with Communist thinking before he entered the Department," adding that even though Canada still supported him, the US and Britain were reluctant to do so.

Bowen writes that by this time, Norman's position was virtually untenable: "Guilty or innocent, he was 'tainted," and therefore of limited usefulness to External Affairs.110 As the coming years would prove, his reputation and his career were ruined by the actions of the SISS. Despite the dismissal of the

108Tne evidence is summarised in Barros, Evil 73-72 and Bowen, Innocence 253-255.

109Cited in Bowen, Innocence 255.

110Bowen, Innocence 256. 79 charges against him, he would never again enjoy the trust and respect of many of his colleagues in the international arena.

1952: The Second Recall

Norman's second interrogation was conducted jointly by the

RCMP and External Affairs sometime in January 1952. It was not nearly as arduous as the previous one had been—this time the interview is estimated to have lasted an hour—and did little to dispel the doubts which were by now deep seated in the RCMP.

Norman's testimony was vague, weak, and in conflict with his own previous statements. Although ultimately External did not doubt

Norman's loyalty, after this interview they realised that he did very obviously bear the taint of communism, and that they could no longer 'protect' him against American and British suspicions.

External's only option was to remove him from his present controversial position and 'exile' him to a diplomatic posting in

New Zealand.

Bowen has tried to rationalise the falsehoods and contradictions in Norman's testimony by denigrating Norman's

'accusers,' those men who conducted the 1952 interrogation. He attempts to discredit the representatives from the RCMP and DEA by suggesting that they were simply beyond comprehending the subtlety of Norman's intellect. Norman testified that of his belief, he tried to keep an open mind, stating

I didn't wish to become fanatically wedded to any one of these theories. I thought life started getting too complex to just take a theory and superimpose on it and say 'now you get it.' It's a nice lazy way of doing it, I have many 80

intellectual doubts about things.111

Bowen contends that this is indicative of Norman's attempt to explain what was essentially an intellectual dilemma—the difficulty of reconciling intellectual doubt with "the one truth which is the national truth" which the state is supposed to be the repository of, and Norman, as a public servant, the guardian.112

Be this as it may, Norman still lied to his interrogators. He denied being a communist, consciously associating with communists, carrying out Party tasks and attending Marxist study groups.113

Bowen has attempted to shift the nature of the debate about Norman away from the requirements of national and internal security in favour of an academic debate about the security establishment's ability to detect intellectual nuances. Norman "must have wondered" he contends, "about the sort of sheltered life that his antagonists had lived, about how little history they seemed to know, about how hateful they must be toward a historical force of which they seemed completely ignorant." In reference to Norman's line of testimony he asks rhetorically, "is he trying to educate his interrogators about the workings of the mind of an intellectual?"114 Because this is both a patent injustice to the

111Cited in Bowen, Innocence 265.

112See Bowen's arguments in Innocence 265-267.

113There are numerous examples of Norman's *lies': eg. in 1937 Norman wrote of Tsuru, "He is a paradigm of what a Communist ought to be..." yet he emphatically denied to his interrogators that he knew Tsuru was a communist. Norman is quoted in Bowen, Innocence 71.

114Bowen, Innocence 266. 81 men who questioned Norman and an inadequate defence of Norman's conscious decision to mislead them, it is necessary to seek some redress for the interrogators. For the RCMP the interrogators were Terry Guernsey and George McClellan. Guernsey, who headed the RCMP's counter-espionage department, B Branch, was a highly regarded figure in international intelligence circles. Peter

Wright attests that Guernsey "single-handedly built B Branch into one of the most modern and aggressive counterespionage units in the West," and that some of his innovations were adopted by both

British and American intelligence.115 One of Guernsey's peers,

Charles Sweeney said of him, "he had a completely analytical mind and had a genius for cutting through to the heart of any matter...He was so inquisitive and incisive you had to be awfully sure of yourself."116

The second RCMP man, McClellan, had been in charge of the

RCMP's Special Branch in 1947. He had long experience in conducting counter-intelligence work during World War II, and had been involved in the Gouzenko case. Sawatsky describes him as the penultimate military man.117 The third man present was External

Affairs' George Glazebrook. Recruited from the University of

Toronto's history department during the war, Glazebrook, too, had long been active in intelligence and security matters. He had been involved in the Gouzenko case as well, and the subsequent

115Wright, Spycatcher 61.

116Sawatsky, Men 100.

117Sawatsky, Men 96-100 passim. 82 reorganisation of national security. In 1945 he was put in charge of External's security and intelligence functions.118

Although both the RCMP and External Affairs made procedural mistakes in the Norman case, there is no reason to believe that these men were incapable of understanding Norman's point of view during the interrogation. It seems somehow unlikely that Norman would have sat across from them marvelling at their xignorance,' their inability to understand intellectual doubt, their Sheltered lives.' He must have believed in the ability of his own government to judge him, and been aware of the influences effecting his government's behaviour. The job of his interrogators was not, after all, to try to place him within the context of the march of historical forces: it was to assess whether his continued presence in a sensitive External Affairs position was wise from the standpoint of national security on the one hand, and from the liability he posed for security cooperation with Britain and the

United States on the other. There was also the problem, as

Glazebrook told Norman, of "reconciling evidence concerning his active work for the Communist Party with his own (1950) explanation."119

Much of the difficulty lay in the fact that often the evidence was simply one man's word against another's. Victor

Kiernan claimed that Norman had been an active member of the

Communist Party at Cambridge: Norman denied it. Alexander

118Granatstein, Influence 180-195 passim.

119Cited in Bowen, Innocence 257. 83

MacLeod, chairman of the League Against War and Fascism, claimed to have attended secret communist party meetings in Norman's

Ottawa residence in 1936, a claim that was later corroborated by an RCMP source in the 1960s: Norman denied it. He denied

"wittingly or consciously" knowing anyone in the British

Communist Party, organising Indian students at Cambridge, realising that Tsuru Shigeto was a Marxist, or that the study group he attended at Harvard was Marxist. He admitted to a brief association with the League Against War and Fascism, which he hastened to terminate, fearing for his reputation. (According to

Barros, the DEA transcript of the interrogation reads that Norman

"didn't then know" that the League was a communist front organisation, although in the RCMP this was the reason he apparently gave for his disassociation from it).120

Glazebrook urged Norman at intervals that if he had ever been a communist it would be best to confess. Norman eventually conceded that he had been a fellow traveller and might have been considered a communist in 1936. This was a rather large admission on Norman's part. Even Bowen has had difficulty in reconciling

Norman's conflicting statements. Norman had written to his brother in 1937 that he had joined the Party under John Cornford's tutelage, but had chosen, probably for very good reasons, to deny his past to his interrogators.

Bowen argues, quite rightly from a historical perspective, that the real question should not have been whether or not Norman

120Barros, Evil 77-78. 84 had been a communist, but whether "out of loyalty to communism

Herbert chose to betray his government."121 Set in the context of the 1950s however, Norman's communism was by no means an academic question. Unfortunately, the ideological barometer was not sensitive enough to measure such intellectual nuances. Norman knew this. Time and time again he demonstrated that he was aware his ideological preference was a dangerous one. After all, the basic premise of western security was that it was threatened by communism, and therefore communists were not the sort of people one wanted in one's diplomatic corps.

Norman's adherence to Marxism did not necessarily pose a threat to Canadian or western security, unless one regard's leftist principles to be threatening: in Cold War America this was the case. Norman was therefore perceived as a threat. And his beliefs did necessarily influence his policy input and his understanding of issues in a profound way. From MacArthur's Japan to Nasser's Egypt, Norman's bias was leftist, and he was influential. Furthermore, he lied, misrepresented himself to

Canadian and American authorities, and maintained politically suspicious associations. As Barros has observed:

...Mr. Norman lied on too many occasions, to too many people, over too long a period of time, producing xenough circumstantial evidence to leave a scintilla of doubt' as to his loyalty, as [Charles] Taylor admits. Indeed, Mr. Norman's lying would have justified his dismissal by any organised body, and raises serious doubts about his credibility on a wide front. In a court of law it

121Bowen, Innocence 262. 85

would have amounted to perjury.122

Nevertheless, in March 1952 Pearson proposed that Norman be cleared and his file closed. As far as External was concerned, his loyalty was not in doubt, although this view was shared neither by the RCMP or the Americans. It was at this point, probably hoping to assuage the unsatisfied American doubts, that

External made what would later amount to be a tactical error: it transferred Norman from his position as head of the American and

Far Eastern Division to that of the less important Information

Division, a move that signalled that he was "under somewhat of a cloud"123. External probably intended to simply reduce his visibility until the storm had blown over, but the transfer hardly demonstrated Canada's implicit faith in Norman to western intelligence.

He did not languish there long, however: on 24 January 1953 he was appointed Canadian High Commissioner to New Zealand, a respectable enough post that would not unnecessarily provoke the antagonists who protested his active service. For DEA it seemed to be a good compromise. Canada's autonomy in the internal security arena was apparently reaffirmed, while the move was not going to attract more pressures from the United States. And so, in July 1953 Norman arrived in Wellington where he served without mishap until the end of 1955.

122James Barros, "On Herbert Norman" letter to the editor, Globe & Mail (12 Nov 1986): A6. .

123Barros, Evil 50. 86

Yet the doubts about him were not allowed to die. The

American embassy in Ottawa sent a report that detailed the SISS allegations to its counterpart in New Zealand, while the RCMP

filed a recommendation that his activities there be kept under review. In addition, from time to time the New Zealand Social

Credit Party would revive the incident, and charges that a communist was serving as Canada's envoy would appear in the papers.124 Nevertheless, Norman's career continued more or less quietly and efficiently, although, in the comparative tranquility of New Zealand he missed being away from the loci of world power.

In March 1955 he wrote to Pearson, prompted by the receipt of an offer to set up the University of British Columbia's new Far

Eastern Studies Department, and enquired as to his future with

External. Pearson responded that "there is no doubt in my mind that as time goes by you will be asked to undertake more and more responsible jobs in the Department."125 In December, an offer duly followed: DEA offered him an appointment as Ambassador to

Egypt. By August 1956 he was presenting his diplomatic credentials in Cairo.

Norman's diplomatic career has been ably chronicled by Bowen

in his biography of Norman. Suffice it to say here that Norman's value to the Department of External Affairs was significant, particularly during the turbulent times of the Suez Crisis. His dealings with Nasser, his careful and informative reporting on the

124Bowen, Innocence 269 and Taylor, Journeys 140.

125Cited in Bowen, Innocence 273. 87 situation there, and his instrumental negotiations with Nasser over allowing Canadian troops (unhappily named the Queen's Own

Rifles) to serve on the United Nations Emergency Force played no small part in the Middle East policy that was to earn Pearson a

Nobel Prize. But the doubts about him persisted. For example, there were rumours circulating in the Canadian civil service that

Norman had xsold out' the Suez operation by warning the Soviet

Union of the impending Franco-British invasion of the canal.126

Despite his years of exile, Norman was still the victim of his past political history. His taint endured.

126Ferns, Readings 216 58

Final Days

The events leading up to Norman's 4 April 1957 suicide gathered momentum in the spring of 1957. In this chapter I will begin with a brief survey of Canadian-American relations on a variety of foreign policy issues in the 1949-1957 period. Then I will examine what occurred in Ottawa and Washington in reference to the Norman case in some detail.127

Postwar Canadian-American Relations

We have seen in an earlier chapter that there were obvious ideological differences in Canadian and American approaches to foreign policy. While the foreign policy of the Canadian government remained staunchly liberal internationalist in sentiment, in the US the intensifying Cold War was expressed through an increasingly anti-communist (i.e. anti-Soviet) foreign policy.

In the 1949-1957 period, Canadian policy-makers were often concerned with constraining the more lurid of Washington's international objectives by, for example, channeling disputes through the multilateral frameworks of the UN or NATO. "Prudence, perseverance, moderation, and realism were in general the hallmarks of the Canadian approach to international politics

•^'Norman's deteriorating physical and mental state, brought about by the revival of the charges, has been dealt with sensitively by Bowen. See Innocence chapter 11. 89 during this period," writes Ross.128 Canada made efforts to defuse potentially explosive issues in Southeast Asia and the

Middle East and, from the loss of China through the Vietnam war,

Canadian and American objectives were often at odds.

The hardening of the American ideological stance during the

Eisenhower-Dulles regime precluded a Canadian-American consensus on foreign policy, and clashes occurred with increased frequency.

A fundamental difference existed between the two states over the appropriate use of the new American nuclear deterrent. The

Canadian government, like the British, was less than enthusiastic about Dulles' massive retaliation doctrine, and Eisenhower's advocacy of 'counter-force' targeting in Southeast Asia. Pearson adamantly desisted the notion that there could ever be an appropriate use of the bomb. "Pearson's philosophy," notes Ross, quoting Pearson, "was that 'use of the ultimate weapon should be kept ultimate.'"129

The recognition of China, participation in the Korean conflict, the Indochina dispute, and the status of Taiwan were also irritants to Canadian-American relations.130 The Canadian approach to these issues was always in favour of stabilization.

In 1953 Pearson penned an article that stressed "Our policy in

128Douglas A. Ross, In the Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam 1954-1973. (Toronto: U Toronto P, 1984) 10.

129Ross, Peace 54.

130The discussion of Indochina and Korea is derived largely from Ross, Peace 1-62 passim. See also Charles Roberston, International Politics Since World War Two: A Short History. (New York: Wiley, 1975): chapter 4. 90

Asia must be more than a policy of mere opposition to Communism.

It must be constructive; and anti-communism should not be the only claim to our assistance.1,131

Three times in the 1950s Canada raised the possibility of recognising Communist China, feeling that "recognition was simply a practical diplomatic necessity and not a good conduct prize awarded for adherence to the American way of life."132 Each time, however, Ottawa was deterred at least partially by American intransigence.

Ottawa also differed with Washington over involvement in the

Korean War. During the drafting of the UN charter, Canada had theoretically recognised that collective security was to be a vital UN function; but when North Korea crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea, Ottawa was initially reluctant to follow the

Americans into the area. Canada was not against communism per se, but rather interstate aggression, and was reluctant to get pulled into what could well become an American anti-communist crusade.

Three weeks after the June invasion, Ottawa reluctantly sent three destroyers for standby duty, and the Americans were unimpressed with this limited support of what was after all, a UN-sanctioned action. "To Pearson's assertion that [the destroyers] represented xno mere token' assistance, an American embassy official replied:

131Pearson cited in Ross, Peace 55.

132Donald Creighton, Canada's First Century 1867-1967 (Toronto: MacMillan, 1970) 289. On the recognition issue see also Nye and Keohane, Power 191. xokay, let's call it three tokens,'" King recorded in his diaries.133

In Korea, Canada publicly supported the UN action, but behind the scenes made efforts to limit the war to the peninsula, block its extension to the Taiwanese coastal region, and forestall the intervention of Communist China. Later, in Indochina, Ottawa also preached moderation. Ross has demonstrated that from 1954 on,

Canadian foreign policy was committed to peaceful coexistence and the diplomacy of constraint. Canadian policies were consistently more moderate than those in Washington.

Of course the man behind these Canadian policies was Lester

Pearson, who was not a favourite of the American right. Bowen notes that as of 12 April 1957—a week after Norman's death—the

FBI had a file on Pearson which contained 475 references.134

Through most of this period Pearson was suspected of conducting

Soviet espionage.

In 1945 Communist operative-turned-informer Elizabeth Bentley first approached the FBI to give evidence of espionage activities.135 She claimed that Pearson had given information to her agent Hazen Sise during 1943-1944. She gave similar evidence to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in 1949, and, in

1951, was called before the SISS ostensibly to further give

133Cited in Martin, Presidents 163.

134According to Bowen, from 1949 to 1951 Pearson was rendered 'Michael Pearson' in the FBI's files. Bowen, Innocence 348.

135See accounts of the Bentley revelations about Pearson in Littleton, Target 30-33. information on Sise. However, Sise's FBI file had been closed in

1949: that it was reopened one week after Wittfogel alleged that

Norman was a communist seemed to indicate that there was an ulterior motive:

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Elizbeth Bentley was brought before the McCarran subcommittee to defame Pearson. Pearson, as Secretary of State for External Affairs, had denounced the subcommittee and the Cold War assumptions that underlay everything it did. He had asserted that in this area Canada would make its own decisions. This the McCarran subcommittee could not tolerate...136

Since 1946 when, as ambassador to Washington Pearson decried

American pressures for closer military cooperation between Canada and the United States, it was apparent that ideological differences were inevitable.137 In 1953 Pearson blocked an

American effort to have Gouzenko testify in the United States, which further fuelled the FBI's suspicions about him. Charges that the Canadian External Affairs minister was deliberately scuttling American counter-intelligence operations were rife in right wing circles and the conservative press in the United

States. Yet Pearson had a number of sound reasons for denying the Americans the right to interview Gouzenko. The FBI had already spoken to him in 1950: now, a full eight years after

Gouzenko had last had contact with Soviet intelligence, the RCMP doubted he could have any further information to add. That the

American request came during the height of McCarthyism suggested

136Littleton, Target 33.

137Pearson published an article stating that Canada, "did not relish the necessity of digging, or of having dug for her, any Maginot line in her Arctic." Quoted in Littleton, Target 72. to Pearson that the motive was probably political rather than informational. Furthermore, Gouzenko himself was somewhat unreliable. He had capitalised on his status as informer before, selling information to newspapers and magazines. In fact, when

Pearson finally agreed to allow him to be interviewed by the FBI in 1953, under certain conditions, he had demanded money, and only agreed to grant the interview under duress,, although had had voluntarily gone to the FBI with his offer originally.138

Gouzenko was the man the FBI believed had named Norman as a

Soviet spy. In 1957 when Pearson defended Norman, /American officials would remember his reluctance to have Gouzenko give evidence in the United States, and, as the case unfolded, accuse

Pearson of attempting a cover-up. "If Pearson was a spy for the

Soviets," the logic ran, "...then [his] public defence of Norman's loyalty meant that he was simply protecting a member of his spy ring."139 This aspect will be discussed later: suffice it to say here that for the McCarthyite right, the Canadian government, like the American State Department, was xsoft' on communism. The presence of Pearson, first as External Affairs minister, and later as Prime Minister, added to American misgivings about Canadian security. In fact, there has long been a suggestion that Norman was xsacrificed' by the State Department to save Pearson. Bowen suggests that

A cynic.. might argue that the State Department did not do a

138Sawatsky, Men 85.

139Bowen, Innocence 347. 94

better job of forcing the SISS to keep harmful testimony against Norman from being publicised because it was decided that the sacrifice of one Canadian Ambassador was a fair trade for preserving good relations with Canada's Minister for External Affairs.1*0

1957: The Charges Revived

For Herbert Norman, the final act of his tragedy began in

Washington when charges of disloyalty were levelled against John

Emmerson who was called before the subcommittee to discuss these renewed allegations. In many ways, Emmerson's harassment by anti- communist witchhunters ran a course parallel to Norman's. In

December 1951 he had been charged with being a communist sympathiser during his tenure as a diplomatic officer in China and

Japan following World War II. The conclusion drawn after this hearing, which Emmerson noted consisted of eleven days of testimony, 1412 pages of transcripts and 150 exhibits, was that no one, with the possible exception of Eugene Dooman, ultimately questioned his loyalty.141 In May 1952 the Loyalty Security Board recommended that Emmerson's case be closed on the grounds that "no reasonable doubt exists as to his loyalty to the government of the

United States."142 Like others who had been associated as xChina hands', Emmerson was prohibited from serving in the Far East, but beyond that suffered no repercussions from the subcommittee's enquiry. Like Norman, however, his activities were

140Bowen, Innocence 291.

141Emmerson, Thread 320-330 passim.

142Cited in Emmerson, Thread 328. intermittently scrutinized by anti-communist watchdogs, although his career following his clearance was a distinguished one. In

1954 he received a meritous service award, in 1955 a promotion to

Class 1 diplomatic status (only career ministers and career ambassadors were superior to him in rank) and was assigned as deputy chief of mission. In 1956 he was moved to the United

Nations General Assembly.

In February 1957 Senator Jenner revived charges against the former China hands in the State Department, claiming that they were sabotaging American policy by persuading Middle Eastern governments to ally with the Soviet Union rather than the United

States. The immediate effect of that charge was Emmerson's recall, and so on 12 March 1957, Emmerson once again appeared before the Senate subcommittee. Because it seemed likely that

Norman's name would be raised during the course of the testimony, the session was to be held in camera.

Emmerson recalls that Robert Morris, who was once again the

SISS counsel, focussed his questioning heavily upon Norman: "Did

I know he was a Communist? I replied, %I have no reason to think that he was a Communist, either then (in Japan) or now.'"143 In response Morris read the 1952 Wittfogel testimony into the record, followed by the 1952 FBI report which was based in part upon the faulty 17 October 1951 RCMP report and General Willoughby's report. Hoping to discredit these fallacious and misleading attacks on his colleague, Emmerson told the subcommittee that

143Emmerson, Thread 334-5. Norman was presently serving as Canada's ambassador to Egypt, and that they had recently lunched together in Beirut. Rather than allaying the subcommittee's doubts about Norman, Emmerson's statement exacerbated them. The idea of a pro-Soviet Norman, engaged in delicate negotiations with Nasser, was a vindication of the subcommittee's fears that leftists were sabotaging the

American war against Communism and that the Canadian Department of

External Affairs was very obviously suffering from the same

Marxist affliction as the American State Department.144

Although the session had been held in camera, in accordance with the earlier wishes of the Canadian government, the subcommittee judged that the threat of communist subversion was greater that the need to respect diplomatic niceties. Emmerson's confidential testimony concerning Norman was leaked to the press two days later and Norman was once again on the front pages.

Following the publication of Norman's name, events in North

America moved quickly, and although Norman was obviously at the centre of them, he was physically removed from the loci of controversy (in fact, he did not even learn of the revival of the charges first hand, but rather read about them in the Egyptian newspapers the following day). In Canada, External Affairs

Minister Pearson undertook immediate action. He issued a statement maintaining that his department's support for Norman remained unconditional, announcing that "our confidence in Mr.

144See accounts of Emmerson's meeting with the SISS in Bowen, Innocence 293 and "Cold War" 48; and Barros, Evil 105. Norman has not weakened in any respect.... These slanderous and unsupported insinuations against him contained in the USA

senatorial subcommittee report we can treat with the contempt

they deserve.1,145 He also sent a cable of support to Norman in

Cairo, and a letter to American Secretary of State John Foster

Dulles which he described in his memoirs as "the strongest

note...that I have ever sent as Prime Minister or Secretary of

State to any country, even to a communist country."146 Two days

later the State Department responded, indicating that the

Washington executive had "every confidence in the Canadian

government's judgement in the selection of its official

representatives," and distanced itself from the actions of the

congressional subcommittee.147 As we shall see, throughout the

ensuing affair, the American executive branch consistently refused

to take any sort of responsibility for the actions of the

subcommittee, and therefore felt itself to be above the necessity

of making amends on behalf of Canada.

Meanwhile, whatever 'error' which led to the illicit release

of Emmerson's testimony was never satisfactorily identified. The

SISS said that the State Department had approved the release of

the statements. The State Department maintained that only

testimony favourable to Norman had been approved. After Norman's

death a remorseful senator, Arthur Watkins, came forward to say

145Cited in Bowen, Innocence 294.

146Pearson, Mike III: 169.

147Globe & Mail (18 Mar 1957) quoted in Eayrs, Affairs 154. 98 that eight of the nine senators involved approved the release, the ninth being in the hospital at the time. He also said that the

State Department's security section had cleared the release, but that the diplomatic section had not been consulted.148

Apportioning blame and seeking redress from the executive and legislative branches of the American government was to prove difficult for Canada.

The American State Department forwarded Pearson's forceful protest note to the subcommittee but Morris and his cohorts apparently had little difficulty in rationalising their actions.

For the witchhunters, the exigencies of diplomatic protocol and healthy Canadian-American relations were secondary to the task of purging communists from the western world. Morris and another counsel, William Rusher, met with three representatives from State on 20 March to discuss Pearson's protest note. Morris argued that the FBI had done nothing about Alger Hiss and Klaus Fuchs until the cases had been brought out publicly by the subcommittee, arguing, "Because a foreign national crosses the trail, must we stop our investigation?"149 He asked the State Department representatives "What do you suggest about how to protect the

United States' security against Norman?"150 After Norman's death he remained unrepentant, stating that "suicide was a man's own

148CP, "US Senator Wants Norman Death Probe," Globe & Mail 6 April 1957: 1..

149Cited in Bowen, Innocence 296.

150Cited in Bowen, Innocence 298. 99 tragedy," and that the SISS had an obligation to present a full record to the Senate, without deletions of references to politically sensitive individuals.151

"The randomness of targets, the haphazardness of so-called evidence, and the lack of concern for following through made

McCarthyism a very special business indeed," wrote one student of the phenomenon, an observation aptly demonstrated by the subcommittee's renewed 1957 efforts to impugn Norman.152

Throughout March, the SISS efforts to discredit Norman continued.

Emmerson voluntarily appeared before the subcommittee again on 21 and 23 March to clarify his previous testimony concerning Norman, explaining what had transpired during their luncheon in Beirut, and other such details. The SISS dared not leak this testimony right away, and in any event, there was nothing damaging in it. A

Senate staff member told a department security officer that

Emmerson's latest testimony "cleared the air" for the subcommittee, Emmerson reports.153

Although Emmerson was cleared once again, the vilification of

Norman was far from over. The next ace the subcommittee produced from its sleeve was Tsuru Shigeto, who was that year a visiting professor at Harvard. On 26 and 27 March he gave testimony to the

151Harold Greer, "Death of a Diplomat," The Nation 184:16 (20 April 1957): 341; and CP, "Felt All Hope Gone, Plunges 7 Floors," Globe & Mail 5 April 1957: 1.

152Mark Landes, Joseph McCarthy: The Politics of Chaos (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP, 1987) 135.

153Emmerson, Thread 335. 100

subcommittee, and was subjected to heavy questioning about Norman.

Tsuru testified in the manner of a repentant former Marxist, writes Bowen, and "pretty much told the subcommittee what it wanted to hear."154 He discussed the Marxist study group at

Harvard, the 1942 Cambridge, Massachusetts incident, and his

associations with other Canadians which the SISS was suspicious of

such as Lorie Tarshis and Robert Bryce. He also told the

subcommittee that it was Norman who introduced him to Israel

Halperin.

By this time the Canadian embassy in Washington had despaired

of ever effectively curbing the efforts of the SISS to ruinously

smear Norman. On 29 March Arnold Heeney cabled home a dispatch which read in part

Despite the efforts which have been made by the State Department, the publication [of Emmerson's testimony] clearly indicates that the subcommittee remains in full control of its extraordinary procedures, and is unlikely to drop this case or to acknowledge in any way that its methods are at fault."155

Suicide: The Canadian Reaction

Pearson maintains that initially the House of Commons had

been "pleased" with External's handling of the case.156 Norman's

dramatic suicide in Cairo on 4 April 1957 changed all that. With

the death of Norman, a wave of public outrage and concomitantly,

154Bowen, Innocence 296-7.

155From RCMP files 29 March 1957, quoted in Bowen, Innocence 302.

156Pearson, Mike 171. 101 anti-Americanism, swept through the country. The press, the government, and the population were furious at the United States for its continued and unjustified harassment of Norman, the United

States government's refusal to put an end to the smear campaign, and the tragic suicide that had resulted.

The Canadian government's reaction was suitably outraged, but the subsequent politicization of the issue altered the turn of events. The Norman case ultimately ran its course according to the exigencies of the 1957 federal election campaign. The Liberal government was quick to jettison what soon proved to be an electoral liability. Once again, political pragmatism, a consistent theme in the formulation of Canadian foreign policy, dictated the nature of the government's response to this latest violation of Canadian sovereignty.

A federal election had been called for 10 June. Three days after Norman's death, opposition leader John Diefenbaker, undoubtedly sensing an opportunity to make political hay out of the current wave of anti-Americanism in Canada, delivered the opening sally against Pearson's conduct of the Norman affair. He declared in a campaign speech, "How different might the course of events had been had we a courageous government. This government is afraid to stand up. It should have said to Washington "you look after your affairs and we'll look after ours."157

157Globe & Mail 8 April 1957 quoted in Eayrs, Affairs 159. In an earlier speech he is quoted as saying what should have become a classic Canadian political aphorism: "Let the US look after their own needs and we will look out for ours, if we have any." See William Kinnard, "Diefenbaker Urges St. Laurent Protest Of course this is what Pearson had been attempting all along, albeit it impotently, through diplomatic channels. Diefenbaker, who had long exhibited sentiments that included "a deep emotional attachment to Great Britain and a conversely profound suspicion of the United States" was consistent in his line of attack.158

However pure the intentions of the warring political parties may have been, the politicization of the case was unfortunate in that it constrained the government from taking meaningful steps to redress the problems Norman's suicide had so dramatically exposed.

On 10 April, Pearson undertook to demonstrate that the

Liberal government was taking a firm stand. He issued a statement which read in part:

The issue before us... is not only the tragedy of one man... There is a broader question of principle involved—the right, to say nothing of the propriety, of the agency of a foreign government, to intervene in our affairs in such a way as to harass one of our citizens.... If we fail in the discharge of our security responsibilities as a government, we are answerable to our own people, and not to a subcommittee of any foreign legislature.159

Despite such bold pronouncements, it was obvious that the reaction to the government's handling of the "Norman Affair" was becoming a political liability, and the Liberal government was eager to sweep the whole affair under the mat as quickly as was decently possible. Prompted by the need to curb Diefenbaker's exploitation

Probes of Canadians," Globe & Mail 5 April 1957: 4a.

158Peter C. Newman, Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (Toronto: McClelland, 1963) 254.

159Pearson's statement was published in CP, "Will Deny Future Security Data to US Unless Preventative Action Taken: Pearson," Globe & Mail 11 April 1957: 3. 103 of anti-American sentiment while fulfilling its obligation of maintaining decent Canadian-American relations, the upshot was a lackluster and superficial effort to redress Norman's death.

Canada has, of course, grown used to playing the role of not- very-significant neighbour to the United States. As John Holmes once wrote, "The Power isn't really very good at seeing little sparrows fall, and it is difficult just to attract his attention.1,160 Needless to say, the American government was apologetic and embarrassed about the subcommittee's activities and

Norman's suicide, but he was, after all, a very small sparrow.

Overall, the Americans treated the affair with relative nonchalance.

Spurred on Diefenbaker's attacks, Pearson sent another strident note to Washington on 10 April. This time he threatened to cut off the exchange of security information between the two states unless the US government would assure Canada that confidential information would not find its way into the hands of uncontrollable congressional subcommittees. This threat was perceived as 'too little too late' for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, it was somewhat hollow in that because the United

States is the dominant power in the realm of western intelligence, the flow of information was and is south-north rather than vice versa. A Canadian refusal to cooperate in this area would have been more damaging to Canada than to the United States, which had little to lose really, given the Canadian provision of information

160Holmes, Uncle 2. 104 was so small. Secondly, Pearson would not even admit that RCMP information had been used against Norman in the United States hearings, telling the House on 12 April that the SISS "did not, so far as we know, act on any Canadian official information" even as he reiterated his threat to cut off information exchanges with the

United States. "Then why penalize their department for something they did not do?" asked Diefenbaker. Pearson responded with characteristic parliamentary equivocation: "My honourable friend complains that we did not do anything and when we try to do something he complains that what we are doing is not going to be of any use."161

The press was scarcely kinder to Pearson's threat to cut of the transnational information flow. Influential editorial writer

George Bains delivered a stinging attack on Pearson in the Globe &

Mail on 11 April, and portions of his column were read in the

House the following day. Bains complained that "The Canadian government's protest to the United States...was 90 percent a sham.... Yesterday's note, and Mr. Pearson's tough little speech that went with it, were aimed almost entirely at domestic consumption."162

Within a matter of days Diefenbaker's accusations of RCMP fallibility were proven correct. Pearson was forced to admit that portions of the faulty RCMP report had indeed found their way into

161House of Commons, Debates 12 April 1957: 3494.

162Bains was quoted in the House, Debates, 12 April 1957: 3497. 105 the hands of the congressional subcommittee. This revelation led to further vitriolic criticism of the government's actions, and of the RCMP's involvement in the affair.163 In fact, the discovery of the RCMP's botched investigations of Norman, including its failure to identify his links with Halperin earlier and its infamous 17 October report were judged to be of such gravity that they eventually led to the development of a new set of security procedures.

Pearson also revealed to the House on 12 April that he had known all along of Norman's Marxist past and had not divulged the full details of it in 1951. Rumours of an External Affairs coverup were rife, and Pearson was once again under fire for not being more frank about the matter and clearing it up when the allegations were first made. Pearson defended himself, explaining in a Maclean's interview that

it is our security practice in this government, based on British practices and traditions in this field, that we dismiss or reject charges against officials and we make public the decision when necessary, but that we do not make public the evidence on which the decision is based."164

Later, in his memoirs he maintained his stand on the matter. "I think we did the right thing in not mentioning details," he wrote.

"The fact that the matter was not mentioned for six years would

ie>3See, for example, editorial, "The Pearson Case" Globe & Mail 19 April 1957: 6. Pearson replied in a letter to the editor on 21 April.

164Blair Fraser and Lionel Shapiro, "The Norman Case," Maclean's 70:14 (6 July 1957): 14. 106 seem to vindicate our judgement."165

The domestic uproar, the attacks on Pearson and External

Affairs, the criticism of the RCMP and the wave of anti-

Americanism all amounted to a grave electoral drawback for St.

Laurent's Liberals. By 26 April he was already telling the press,

"I think there has been too much said about the Norman case," a sentiment that was echoed throughout the Liberal corps.166 Eayrs concludes,

While it was never a major issue in the campaign, the tragedy of Herbert Norman channelled and reinforced the undercurrent of anti-American feeling flowing strongly through the electorate; and it was very much in the voters' minds when they went to the polls on June 10.167

165Pearson, Mike 172.

166Harvey Hickey, "Too Much Said About Norman, PM Tells Press," Globe & Mail 26 April 1957: 10.

167Eayrs, Affairs 159. 107

Conclusion

The Government's Response

It is the greater tragedy of Norman's death that it was in vain: the opposition exploited the affair for its political significance while the Liberal government pointedly ignored the difficult issues it raised. Canada contented itself with a formal apology and simply hoped that in future, the United States would respect its sovereignty in internal security matters. Nothing was done to address the greater problems endemic to the Canadian-

American relationship that the Norman case implied.

Marcel Cadieux, a former Canadian ambassador to Washington, when asked what could be done to improve Canadian-American relations once quipped, "It's very simple. All you have to do is change the American constitution."168 The structural inadequacies of the channels of communication between Canada and the United States became particularly acute following the Norman suicide. Canada was once again reminded that against Congress it had few avenues of recourse. That the American executive was largely disinterested in standing up against Congress in this affair merely compounded the impotence of the Canadian government.

As is suggested by Cadieux's remark, the problem of dealing with the American executive on the one hand, and Congress on the other, has long been a distinctive feature of the Canadian-

American relationship. Direct contacts between the Canadian ambassador and Congress are seldom undertaken simply because

168Holmes, Uncle 127. 108

legally, a relationship between the two does not exist, for "the ambassador is accredited to one element in a severely divided government, namely the executive, and the legislature is jealous

of its independence.1,169 In general,

...Canadian governments have considered it wise to make their approaches to the executive branch and leave it to interpret and . protect Canadian interests vis-a-vis Congress. The rationale for this practice is twofold: a belief that the executive is better equipped than the embassy to deal with Congress, and a concern not to arouse suspicion that the embassy might be making deals with Congress behind the administration's back.170

Heeney writes that when he first took the job of US

Ambassador in 1953, Pearson suggested he make an effort to

cultivate friends 'on the hill,' an initiative he admits he did

not pursue with a great deal of assiduity. On receiving word of

Norman's death, Heeney approached the State Department and took up the issue with Christian Herter, who was replacing the vacationing

John Foster Dulles, and some other State Department officials.

"All were sympathetic," he recalled, "yet they were virtually

powerless, themselves primary targets of red-baiters."171 After

some badgering by Heeney, Herter finally sent Canada a reply to

the 18 March protest note explaining that the State department had

•LC>yHeeney, Caesar 126.

170Peter C. Dobell, "The Influence of the United States Congress on Canadian-American Relations" in Annette Baker Fox, Alfred O. Hero, Jr., & Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Canada and the United States: Transnational and Transqovernmental Relations (New York: Columbia UP, 1976) 334.

171Heeney, Caesar 145. 109

no control over the actions of the subcommittee.1'^

On 10 April, Heeney called on President Eisenhower to say

good-bye, as he was to be replaced by Norman Robertson on 9 May.

Inevitably, the issue of Norman came up. Eisenhower, too, was

apologetic, but unwilling to take a stand against the

subcommittee:

he would not openly criticise Jenner and the other Senators involved; that, he thought, was just what they wanted. Jenner himself was 'nuts' but look what had happened to McCarthy. The same fate, he assured me, would eventually overtake Jenner and company. It was not a very satisfactory reaction to my representation; nor could I quite fathom Eisenhower's thinking in the matter. I had hoped for some public condemnation.173

When Robertson arrived in Washington, his first dispatch to

Ottawa also related to the Norman case in that he met Eisenhower

and discussed it. Robertson had been appalled at the suicide: an

American official candidly likened his reaction to that of a

husband watching the man next door attack his wife with an axe.174

Robertson sent out a report on 17 May 1957 which read in part:

[Eisenhower] said we knew how his administration felt about it. At the same time we should know better than any other people how American institutions worked.... He did not refer specifically to our [10 April] note on security procedures which is still waiting a reply, but I felt the earnestness with which he was trying to expound his general argument about the importance of restraint, forbearance and unremitting efforts to understand each other's special preoccupation and ways of doing things, that he was deeply concerned about the difference between Canadian and American approaches to security problems. At the same time I had the

172llCanada May Cut Flow of Information to US," Globe & Mail 11 April 1957: 2.

173Heeney, Caesar 145.

174Granatstein, Robertson 314. feeling that he was trying to make me understand why it would not be possible for him to give us the explicit assurances on security that our note had requested.175

Like Heeney, Robertson was disappointed with the failure of the

American executive to take action. He was significantly

disillusioned, reports Granatstein, upon realising at this early

stage in his American ambassadorial career that "the American

Congress was essentially uncontrollable."176 On his own

initiative he approached the senators of the states bordering

Canada and received support for the Canadian position that it had

the right to protect its own information and security. He

remained sceptical of the Congress throughout the remainder of his

career and opposed the establishment of the Canada-US

Interparliamentary Group when the idea was raised in the July of that year.

It has been argued that when Eisenhower became president, in

the realm of foreign policy formulation there was a noticeable

shift of power in Washington from the hands of the executive to

the legislative branch of government.177 Predictably, then, the

eventual American response did not go beyond what Eisenhower had

indicated to Heeney and Robertson, and stated publicly: "As

usual," he told the press, "I will not criticise anyone."178 The

official American response was that they were sympathetic, but

175Granatstein, Robertson 314

176Granatstein, Robertson 315.

177Ignatieff, Peacemonger 120.

178"Canada May Cut Flow,": 1. Ill were not willing to do anything more than was already being done to safeguard confidential information. That it was impossible for the executive to place the blame for the transfer of confidential security information from the FBI to the SISS on any specific department or individual made the American failure to attempt to make amends even more * justifiable.'

According to the news reports of the time, even prior to

Norman's death there was support both in Canada and the United

States to take a firm stand against the American government on this issue. The Globe & Mail reported in March that "Privately,

US government officials expressed the hope that Pearson would pull no punches in his protest," an impression that Robertson had himself received from a number of US senators.179 Editorial opinion in the US was also supportive of a firm stand, as was the

Canadian public. Yet the Canadian government chose to let the matter drop. The exigencies of election time pragmatism dictated this, and no actions were taken to prevent a future abuse by

Congress of Canadian security information. The State Department's apology of 15 August was simply accepted as a token of good faith.

A year later all the issues raised by the Norman case were exhumed once again when Robert Bryce, Secretary to Diefenbaker's

Cabinet and Clerk of the Privy Council, was named publicly by the

SISS. In its 3000 page report on the Norman investigation, the subcommittee claimed it had been much maligned by Canada's

179Harvey Hickey, "Pearson Angered, Protests Slander of Norman," Globe & Mail 15 March 1957: 1. 112 insidious anti-Americanism, arguing that Canada had exploited

Norman's suicide "to generate a frenzied wave of anti-U.S. sentiment. ..1,180

Robert Bryce was named in the report as the person who had introduced Tsuru to Norman at Harvard. Once again the subcommittee was apparently oblivious of the high government position occupied by its target, and only aware of him as an associate of Norman's and a member of the Harvard Marxist study group. The Diefenbaker government was suitably indignant:

Norman Robertson delivered a strong protest to Washington, while the Tories championed Bryce's loyalty in the House. Having settled for Dulles' apology and assurance that his government was eager to prevent a recurrence of an event along the lines of the

Norman affair, Canada was disappointed by this latest

Congressional smear campaign, and felt there had been a breach of trust.

The whole event was extremely short-lived. That both the

United States and Canada were in favour of avoiding a similar tragic battle over Bryce suggests that both sides recognised a mutuality of interest in maintaining good relations. The Norman affair had been considered something of an anomaly, and is interesting in that neither side initially felt inclined to institutionalise transgovernmental procedures that could formally prevent a recurrence. (However, in July 1957 the

180George Kitchen, "Wide Slander Charged by US Senate Probers," Globe & Mail 15 May 1958: 1. Interparliamentary Committee was established to facilitate better communications between the American Congress and Canadian legislature). The threat of a repeat with Bryce at least served to mobilise the American government into taking some concrete steps.181 In 1959 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee established a Subcommittee on Canadian Affairs, which, unfortunately, "proved... to be anything but active."182

Therefore, as far as efforts to improve communications and relations between the United States and Canada, Norman's suicide achieved nothing.

Internal Security After Norman: The Role of the RCMP

The E.H. Norman case can be seen as a study in the violation of Canadian sovereignty. That the internal security apparatus actually helped to facilitate the violation has raised serious questions about the Canadian security organisation's relationship with its government.

Throughout the western security network, a tension often exists between the intelligence organisation and liberal democratic governments, as the nature of the security function

181Eager to defuse a potential crisis, the American ambassador, Livingston Merchant, delivered what the press considered a statement brilliant for its tactfulness. He called the Canadian public's outrage at the latest subcommittee actions not an indication of anti-Americanism, but rather, "an assertion of a passionate feeling of national destiny and Canadianism." Philip Deane, "Canada is Guilty of Sins, Too, US Commentary on Relations," Globe & Mail 17 May 1958: 1.

182Dobell, "Congress" 312. commonly violates the boundaries of individual liberty.

Throughout the Cold War the RCMP security organisation and the

Liberal government disagreed in principle upon what constituted a threat to Canadian security. As early as 1947 the RCMP was calling for a communist purge of the Canadian Civil Service even as the

Liberal government was drafting legislation to preclude a communist witchhunt.183

The RCMP found an ideological counterpart in the American intelligence community, and the relationship between the two organisations was close. After all, in addition to a shared political affinity,

the Canadian security services...depended heavily on their allied counterparts, and especially on the American security and intelligence agencies, for information, expert advice, and access to new technology. They have, in turn, been generous in their cooperation with their American friends...184

The RCMP was unhappy with External Affair's clearance of

Norman. It felt that the government did not take the communist threat seriously enough and "the suspicion of treachery in the highest levels of government of Canada became an ongoing obsession within the right wing of both the American and Canadian security organisations."185

Although internationally little was achieved through Norman's death, domestically the suicide led to a close examination of

183Littleton, Target 16-17.

184Littleton, Target 107.

185Littleton, Target 33. 115

Canadian internal security policy. The RCMP's role in security screening procedures was specifically reexamined. When the

Liberals resumed power in 1963 the new Prime Minister, Lester

Pearson, "acted firmly to prevent the more extreme manifestations of Cold War paranoia from taking root in Canada."186 Cabinet

Directive 35 was issued in December 1963, following a lengthy review of security procedures. CD 35 continued to form the basis of Canadian security until it was replaced in 1984 by the Canadian

Security Intelligence Service [CSIS] Act. Its criteria for determining loyalty still hinged upon a person's affiliations with

Communist and Fascist parties, front organisations or groups that advocated the use of force for political purposes, but it now provided review procedures for individuals not granted a security clearance. Furthermore, and more germane to the Norman case, the new legislation now recognised the distinction between active participation and ideological orientation:

the definitions in CD 35 represent a clear statement of liberal assumptions about threat to national security in the late Cold War period. They are straightforward in the explicit naming of Communists (and Fascists) as being the enemies of liberal democracy in Canada. One of the considerable virtues of CD 35, in comparison with other formulations of the genre, is that it does not condemn political ideals as such; it is instead concerned with active participation in or support of political organisations.187

The formal recognition of a difference between active and past participation was a concrete improvement in security policy that

186Littleton, Target 168.

187Littleton, Target 170. 116 sprang directly from the Norman case. When he joined External

Affairs, Norman's active work for the Communist Party had long since ceased, yet until 1963 such a cessation could not have been legally recognised.

Towards Further Research

An awkward compromise of acquiescence and sovereignty, expedience and dignity, has generated a kind of schizophrenia in Canadian political life. From MacKenzie King on, Canadian leaders have walked the narrow path between the stone wall of American's perceived strategic self-interest and the wasteland of unfulfilled aspirations to national independence.189

In the postwar era, the tensions of the Apolitical schizophrenia' described above have often led to incoherent and/or inadequate strategies for coping with foreign :policy formulation in the

Canadian context. Successive governments have attempted to achieve their short- and medium- term objectives while the overall goal of genuine nationhood has receded in the distance, somewhere beyond the next election, economic summit or social issue.

Problems between states that have distinctive and sometimes conflicting interests are inevitable: they cannot simply be legislated out of existence. A certain amount of ad hocery, flexibility and willingness to compromise is required at all times if relations are to remain if not always amicable, at least workable. But Stairs has argued that in Canada, policy makers have gone too far: "politicians here have made the praxis of

Littleton, Target 45-6. compromise their highest—some would say lowest—art."190

What is required is an ability to stand firm when one feels one's interests are being compromised, or in this case, one's sovereignty violated. To do this, Canadian leaders need a clear view of their country's long-term objectives, a strong sense of national purpose, not simply "a resigned acceptance of the inconveniences of being weak."191 There must be a consensus within the country of what interests are at stake, and of whether the principles at stake are worth defending. In the Norman case, the issue of western security came into direct conflict with that of national sovereignty: the outcome was unsatisfactory in that neither issue was resolved.

It is small wonder that analytical paradigms and explanatory models often fall short of describing that ephemeral essence which guides Canadian policy-makers, and can even fail to explain a relatively minor event like the suicide of a Canadian diplomat.

While remembering that it has been many years since Graham Allison first demonstrated that there may not be a single best way to approach a given analytical problem, the employment of a sound theoretical perspective is an integral part of the process of historical enquiry. It enables us to navigate the labyrinthine caverns of political reality with both a systematic approach and a clear objective.

190Denis Stairs, "The Political Culture of Canadian Foreign Policy," Canadian Journal of Political Science XV:4 (Dec 1982): 667.

191Stairs, "Culture" 679. 118

The juxtaposition of two broad theoretical perspectives like

Dewitt and Kirton's theoretical perspectives of liberal internationalism and peripheral dependence, and subsequent application to a discrete case such as that of Herbert Norman is, of course, but one of myriad hypothetical paths to an understanding of any empirical problem. The advantage of the adopted approach is that it not only affords a more objective and comprehensive interpretation of the Norman case than has hitherto been provided, but also contributes to a deeper understanding of

Canadian foreign relations in more general terms.

The liberal/conservative debate on Norman as articulated by

Barros, Bowen, and other students of the case is limited by its very nature. An ideological approach that pits those who believe communism—or pro-Sovietism—poses a threat to western security against those who advocate the relative freedom of the individual to adhere to whatever ideology he chooses, can raise profound questions about the validity and morality of the role and nature of the state. What it cannot do is allow us to stand back and assess the underlying perceptual/social/historical context of such questions objectively. Placing the Norman story in this broader context of Cold War relations reveals the great complexity of issues and considerations which cannot be duly dealt with in a ideologically-derived debate. By examining some of these issues— the internal and external variables affecting security policy formulation, transgovernmental and transnational contacts, organisational rivalries, divergent perceptions of threat and so 119

on—it becomes obvious that the Norman case is not just about the

Cold War.

The comparison of Dewitt and Kirton's models reveals some of

these competing variables. We can see that although Canada struck

out on an independent foreign policy course in the postwar years,

exhibited attitudes and perceptions markedly different from those

of the United States and Great Britain, and was committed to

international activism and collective responsibility, there were

constraints upon its aspirations to independence. Norman's

suicide still raises the questions, "what could have been done to

prevent it? What policy options were available?" The

alternatives were extremely limited.

There is nothing to suggest that as a former communist,

Norman could have been acceptable to the SISS, rigid security

screening, recantations of belief or avowals of loyalty by

External Affairs notwithstanding. His persecution was not governed by the laws of logic, but rather by assumptions rooted in

distorted perceptions and hostile ideologies. Norman has been

seen variously as pawn, victim, and spy. In the press at the

time, he was quite often portrayed as a weapon with which the SISS

struck at Emmerson, Lattimore and the IPR. James Barros and other

conservatives such as British journalist Chapman Pincher have

portrayed him as a legitimate threat to western security, whereas those of a more liberal inclination such as Bowen and Taylor have

painted a picture of calumny and persecution.

A crack RCMP security branch, a Congress more respectful of 120

Canadian interests, improved transgovernmental communications, better vetting procedures in the Department of External Affairs, a

State department committed to silencing an errant Congressional subcommittee—could any of these things have saved Norman from his

'murder by slander'? The constraints on Canada's foreign policy limited the government's options significantly. Both the peripheral dependence and the liberal internationalist models are helpful in identifying the influences most germane to the Norman case.

We saw in the introduction that Canadian leaders possessed

Cold War attitudes very different from those of their southern counterparts. We also saw that External Affairs enjoyed a higher degree of autonomy vis-a-vis Canadian society, and made policy virtually unfettered by domestic constraints, including intrusion by the media. Such a a policy-making environment is an integral part of the liberal internationalist model as developed by Dewitt and Kirton. However, in the realm of internal security policy,

'external determinants,' (i.e. attitudes in Washington and London) profoundly influenced Canadian internal security policy, both by defining the need for it and dictating much of the shape it eventually took. The fact that Canadian leaders were powerless to silence the foreign maligners of Norman suggests that in this particular case, the peripheral dependence explanatory model seems much more appropriate in accounting for the pattern of events.

Of course, the situation was never static, and what may hold true at one point of the explanatory account may not do so at 121 another. For example, the autonomy of Pearson and External, which allowed them to operate relatively free of domestic considerations in this realm throughout much of the period, was severely curbed by the political exigencies of the 1957 election campaign. But the politicization of the case, Diefenbaker's attacks on the

Liberal government, and the recurring rumours that Pearson was a

Soviet mole were fine fodder both in the media and the House, and directed much public attention to the matter. Following the illicit publication of Norman's name in the American press in

1957, External was no longer able to maintain its tacit mandate of secrecy in the internal security field. This erosion of actor autonomy and the concomitant increase in salience of societal determinants alters the applicability of the theoretical approaches. Of course such approaches are only generalisations of trends and themes occurring over time. In this case, however, deviation from the norm is highly important for its ramifications on attempts to explain the government's response.

If some generalisations can be made about the preceding exercise they are as follows. Firstly, the present discourse of the life and death of Norman is revealing, but inadequate: it illumines the nature of the man and his tragedy—as can be i expected from biography—set against the backdrop of McCarthyism and the Cold War era. But ultimately, the subjectivity of the existing accounts limits them: they are unable to transcend their ideological trappings, set as they are upon proving the respective a priori assumptions on which they have been constructed. 122

Therefore, in order to redress the inadequacy of this debate, a fairly loose application of two analytical paradigms used to explain Canadian foreign policy enables us to approach the Norman case more objectively, thereby meeting the second research objective. In this way both research objectives are mutually enhancing in that the complexities of a case study suggest the

inadequacy of any monocausal explanation, i.e. the contention that any given case should adhere to any one theoretical model. The

Norman case demonstrates that although very useful, Dewitt and

Kirton's theoretical approaches cannot tidily explain away a

specific historical example.

What this model can do is bring us to the third objective, that is, an identification of some of the influences on Canadian foreign policy. Both external and internal determinants, in an constant state of flux, affect the policy outcomes of the Canadian government. Because the Norman case ocurred over decades, it is particularly amenable to a study of changing variables as historical circumstances changed. For example, we have seen that

adherence to marxism and even membership in the Communist Party, was comparatively 'acceptable' in the 1930s.192 The arrival of the Cold War but a few years later made such sentiments and

activities not only 'unacceptable,' but illegal. Using the case of one man allows us to isolate such dramatic shifts in perception and identify how they affected the conduct of Canadian-

192It is interesting to note that both Heeney and Robertson participated actively in the 1926 General Strike in London—on opposing sides. Granatstein, Robertson 18. 123

American relations over time.

Robert Morris was wrong: no man's suicide is but a personal tragedy, particularly not Norman's. His was a public tragedy— indeed, a universal tragedy. It is all the more poignant in that it was unnecessary and preventable.

Shortly after Norman's death, Sidney Katz wrote an article in which he compared the Canadian diplomat to Hamlet. Although

Shakespearean parallels are well worn, the words of the tragic

Dane capture Norman's spirit, and are a fitting epitaph.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable. in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me... 124

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Dewitt and Kirton's Theoretical Perspectives

FOREIGN POLICY PERSPECTIVE DETERMINANT

liberal- peripheral- internat'list dependence

EXTERNAL relative salience moderate high actor relevance UK mod high US mod high

II. SOCIETAL relative salience mod low actor relevance institutional autonomy mod low Parliament low mod media high low

III. GOVERNMENTAL relative salience mod low actor relevance Prime Min. Group mod low DEA high low other domestic departments low mod