MURDER BY SLANDER? A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE E.H. NORMAN CASE by CM. ANN ROGERS .A., The University of British Columbia, 1986 k THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Political Science) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA July 1988 ©, ." C.M.Ann Rogers, 1988 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. 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.