by Amy Knight
After his meeting with Truman, Mackenzie King went to the British Embassy to pay a call on Lord Halifax, who, in reference to his political cunning, Churchill called the “Holy Fox.” Although he had been an admirer of Hitler and a strong advocate of Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward the Nazis, Halifax was retained in the government when Churchill took power in 1940 because Churchill wanted continuity. Halifax, who wore a prosthesis as he had been born with a withered left arm with no hand, managed to offend King by seating him in such a way that the sun shone directly into his eyes: “It seemed to me to be a poor type of practice for a man like Halifax to adopt. It is I know a way that some people of the Mussolini type and others take. They must watch the countenance of the men they are talking to and have their own in the dark.” To make matters worse, Halifax suggested, apropos the Gouzenko case, that Truman and British prime minister Clement Attlee “should work out the matter between them.” King was incensed: “I at once interjected I thought it should be worked out with Canada as well. That the 3 of us were equally interested and added that perhaps we were in the most serious position of all as information was coming from Canada.”13
King and Norman Robertson traveled that same afternoon in a private railway car to New York, where they would board the Queen Mary for England the next day. They stayed at the Harvard Club, which not only had cachet, but was also less expensive than a hotel. King was always pinching pennies. (In Ottawa, he reportedly treated Robertson more as an assistant than as the man in charge of Canada's foreign affairs, causing him to spend much of his valuable time “worrying about such items as the cost of linen or the newest stenographer's salary.”) Much to the disappointment of a group of men King invited to the Harvard Club that night, he brought them into the bar and then suggested that they all have a lemonade. As his private secretary observed, “It was not just King's wartime teetotalism that dictated his choice of drinks that night: it was also his parsimony. He was a shameless miser and would resort to almost any device to avoid any charge, however minor, to his expense account, or worst of all, to him personally.”14
While King and Robertson were en route to England, a heated debate was taking place via top secret telegrams between London and Ottawa. British High Commissioner MacDonald, under pressure from the Canadians, cabled the Foreign Office voicing reservations about May's arrest on or after October 7: “On what grounds and with what purpose would you expect to be able to take action against him? If provisional legal advice referred to above is correct there would be no evidence in Canada on which he could be prosecuted and convicted under Canadian law. Do your legal advisers take a different view as regards English law? . . . So far as your end is concerned, action against primrose would presumably not . . . involve immediate complications with staff of Soviet Embassy in London. But here the situation is different.”15
After consulting with the Foreign Office, Roger Hollis wrote a response, which was approved by “C” (Menzies). In essence, the reply was that the Russians would interpret any action less than arrest “as weakness and the effect of this would be to worsen and not to improve relations.” As for the legal issues, Hollis threw the ball back in the Canadians’ court, giving them reasons why they should make arrests in their country: “Even if you have at present no evidence on which the agents in Canada could be brought into the Court, have you considered whether the products of the questioning of the agents in Canada will not produce material which will allow you to bring the agents to trial possibly in part as a result of some of the agents turning King's evidence?”16
As Hollis and his colleagues in MI5 knew, short of catching May red-handed in an act of espionage when he met his Soviet contact, they had no grounds to justify an arrest. The documents produced by Gouzenko referred to him by his Soviet code name Alek, and the only evidence that Alek was May was Gouzenko's testimony, which would not hold up in a court of law. The Canadians, on the other hand, could detain the suspects in their country under a special Order-in-Council issued secretly in early October under the War Measures Act, which remained in force although the war was over. This order allowed police to arrest suspects and hold them for questioning without the normal legal evidence required. Moreover, the suspects did not have a legal right to counsel, which provided an excellent opportunity for skilled interrogators to elicit confessions. Hollis and his colleagues probably hoped that some of the Canadian suspects would incriminate May under questioning. May, having been a member of the Canadian Association of Scientific Workers (CASCW), indeed knew some of the suspects. Raymond Boyer was president of CASCW, and two others, Edward Mazerall and David Shugar, were active in the association. But, unbeknownst to Hollis, May's secret contacts with the GRU were a separate matter. He had been approached by Zabotin's team just months before the defection and solely on the basis of his previous associations with the Russians while in England.
The British were particularly anxious to arrest May because they feared he might defect to the Soviet Union, thereby presenting them with a humiliating counterintelligence failure and discrediting them in American eyes. Prime Minister Attlee wanted to persuade the Americans to give the British a larger share of their atomic secrets, as access to commercial atomic energy would help boost Britain's economic recovery. But if the British were allowing their scientists to get away with passing secrets to the Soviet Union, their membership in the club of nuclear powers would be short-lived.17
The Canadians had fewer concerns in this regard because their suspected agents were not high-profile atomic spies and were much less likely to seek haven (or be accepted) in the Soviet Union. They wanted more time to carry out surveillance and gather sufficient evidence before the Gouzenko case was blown publicly. And despite the powers of the Order-in-Council, the Canadians were worried about the legal aspects of prosecution. On October 6 (the day the order was issued in Canada, apparently in anticipation of May's arrest), Hume Wrong, acting head of External Affairs, sent a telegram to Norman Robertson, who was due to arrive in England on the Queen Mary the next day. Wrong noted that the Canadian Department of Justice took the view that, except in three or four cases, “there are grave doubts as to whether prosecution would result in convictions by reason of necessity for complying with the strict rules of evidence.”18 Indeed, RCMP commissioner Wood (whose agency was under the Justice Department) conveyed his hesitation about immediate arrests to both Hollis and Hoover.19
On October 7, 1945, King and Robertson were met at Southampton by Roger Hollis, who, as MI5's officer responsible for communist subversion, was under a lot of pressure. The first thing Hollis did was to show King a copy of an October 1 telegram to Alexander Cadogan from Lord Halifax in Washington. The telegram read as follows, “Acheson has now spoken to the President who said that if immediate and imperative reasons of security required an arrest [of May] he would naturally not stand in the way. But if, as he hoped, these imperative reasons were not present he would greatly prefer that action should be deferred pending further consideration and discussion. Acheson told me that the President felt this very strongly.” According to King's diary, Hollis said, “the Foreign Office wished to know if I would give approval to an arrest being made tonight.” King replied that he agreed with Truman and would not stand in the way of an arrest if the conditions Truman mentioned existed. Hollis hurried off to London with the message.20 Little did Hollis know, however, that Kim Philby had already reported to Moscow that MI5 planned to set a trap for May. Late that night a disappointed Hollis sent a telegram to Ottawa: “Rendezvous October 7th not . . . attended by either PRIMROSE or contact. No repeat no immediate action therefore called for on your part.”21
May's failure to appear at the rendezvous did not stop the British, both intelligence officers and politicians, from hoping he would meet his Soviet contact on one of the next alternative dates, October 17 or 27. Contingency plans continued to be discussed in daily telegrams between London and Ottawa. And the topic of arrests in the Gouzenko case came up repeatedly
while King and Robertson were in London during the month of October. Attlee and his foreign minister Ernest Bevin went back and forth on the issue. At Chequers, where King visited Clement Attlee on the evening of the seventh, Attlee “said he was in entire agreement, namely, that as much information should be secured both in the U.S. and here before the case would be opened up to the public. Attlee also agreed that an approach should be made in the first instance to the Russians themselves.”22
But “C” was pressuring Attlee and Bevin, arguing that all the suspects in the Gouzenko case should be arrested without delay, or “the scent will get very cold.” “C” and his colleagues were astounded by King's idea of persuading the Soviet government to “turn over a new leaf” and give up espionage. When King and Attlee met on October 11, Attlee had done a complete flip-flop regarding the May case. He said he thought May should be detained immediately and tried to convince King that inquiries should begin at once in Canada. King persuaded him otherwise. The next day Attlee reversed himself yet again, sending Bevin a message that he agreed with King and that “it would be inadvisable to break it [the case] prematurely.”23
In the end, when it was clear that May was not going to be caught in the act of meeting a Soviet agent, the leaders decided to postpone the entire Gouzenko matter until the upcoming mid-November conference among Attlee, King, and Truman in Washington. But Bevin had reservations: “This will of course mean that primrose will remain free for the present. We know that he has contact with one top scientist working for the Government on atomic research . . . I feel myself that we are dealing too tenderly with these people and I would prefer that a term should be put to their activities as soon as possible.”24
King was clearly enjoying his new role as a leading statesman, on a par with the likes of Attlee and Truman. Troubling as it was for Canada, the Gouzenko case had made him the center of attention. He even received an invitation to lunch with Winston and Clementine Churchill at their new home at Hyde Park Gate. He was delighted. Mrs. Churchill he found particularly charming, and recorded every detail of the visit in his diary.25 After lunch Churchill, who had been voted out of office in July 1945, revealed how much his attitude toward the Soviet Union had changed since the heady days of Yalta. As King noted, Churchill spoke forcefully of his distrust of the Russians: “He stressed very strongly what realists they were. He called them ‘realist lizards,’ all belonging to the crocodile family. He said they would be as pleasant with you as they could be, although prepared to destroy you.” Then King took the liberty of telling Churchill about the Gouzenko case, after getting Churchill's assurances that he would keep what was said in strict confidence. Like Truman, Churchill did not seem surprised and was ready with advice: “He thought it would be as well to delay action until a careful plan had been worked out but that it should not be allowed to go by default. He felt it was right to talk to the [Soviet] ambassador but to leave it there would be a mistake. The world ought to know where there was espionage and that the Russians would not mind that; they had been exposed time and again.” This seemed like an all-out effort to dissuade King from trying to settle the Gouzenko case with quiet diplomacy.
As King was leaving, Churchill added flattery: “He said to me, in reference to the [recent Canadian] elections, other men are as children in the leadership of the party as compared to yourself. You have shown understanding and capacity to lead that other men have not got, or words to this effect. He used the expression that he hoped that God would bless me. No words could have been kinder than his as we parted. It was the sweetest side of his nature throughout – a really beautiful side.”
His meeting with Churchill was like a tonic. The rejuvenated King vowed to himself that he would return from England “ready to enter on a larger sphere of work than ever – a sphere of work which will identify me with this new age of atomic energy and world peace.” But despite Churchill's efforts, King continued doggedly to follow his own stubborn instincts regarding the espionage case.
Back home, there were worries about what the Soviets were up to in Canada. In mid-October a message from Ottawa to London, presumably from MI6's Peter Dwyer, reported that a waiter known as “Nick the Greek” at Ottawa's Connaught Restaurant, passing himself off as a British intelligence agent, had asked an RCMP plainclothesman if he knew anything about a Russian Embassy employee who disappeared with papers. According to Dwyer, “this is probably an NKVD fishing expedition.” Dwyer, who was surely fed up with the endless debate over what to do with the spy suspects, voiced his approval for the strategy of MI5: “I endorse the views set out by Hollis . . . namely that delay will increase chances of Russians getting in first with a trumped up charge and of agents over here perfecting their cover stories and destroying any incriminating evidence which they may still have in their possession. Corby, in conversation a few days ago, also mentioned that Russians might take initiative and would already have started to take steps to cover up over here.”26
Dwyer also reported that the Soviet agent Ignacy Witczak, who was identified in the Gouzenko case and had been residing in California on a false Canadian passport, was on the run. “A study of Witczak's correspondence with his wife during past month leaves no doubt that a general warning was issued to Canadian and United States networks shortly after Corby's disappearance. . . . He shook F.B.I. surveillance in a Turkish Bath in New York and has now, by lucky chance, been picked up again in Chicago where he is still making every effort to shake surveillance. For all we know he may be making for Seattle where there are Russian ships.” Under ordinary circumstances, the report noted, the FBI might arrest Witczak on criminal charges, but “they feel unable to take any action involving a member of grant's [Zabotin's] network since instructions are that no action be taken which might precipitate matters.”27
For the FBI, the Witczak case had been a tremendous exercise in frustration. Witczak was quite a “big fish” in counterintelligence terms. He was a bona fide GRU agent with a fake Canadian identity, and was, the FBI assumed, setting up GRU networks on the West Coast not far from the Manhattan Project. Scores of FBI agents were detailed to follow the movements of Witczak, who traveled from Los Angeles to New York with the FBI hot on his trail. FBI agent Robert Lamphere, stationed with the New York espionage squad at the time, recalled spending a “long and uncomfortable night” outside Pennsylvania Station looking for Witczak, but it was his colleagues at the coach terminal who spotted the GRU agent as he was getting on a bus: “He was a smallish man with glasses, and immediately panicked and started to run away. While the other agents kept up with him, one man got a message to the field office, and then to headquarters, describing the situation and asking for permission to bring in ‘Witczak’ for questioning. Headquarters notified the RCMP, which asked that we not bring him in, lest we somehow jeopardize the cases that were just then being developed for prosecution out of the Gouzenko defection.”28 In fact, Lamphere was misinformed: it was Hoover who told the RCMP that the FBI did not have enough evidence to arrest Witczak. But the end result was the same. After a few months of continued FBI surveillance Witczak disappeared completely.
The story of Witczak strengthened the argument of those favoring immediate and simultaneous arrests of suspects in the Corby case in all three countries. Hollis, of course, was the leading exponent of this view. But once he left for North America in the third week of October, MI5 did a bizarre about-face with regard to Alan Nunn May. On October 31, MI5 sent Hollis a telegram in Ottawa stating that “we are inclining toward the view that whatever type of action is eventually decided upon we here ought not to take simultaneous action against PRIMROSE but ought to leave him alone.” The reasons MI5 gave for this sudden change of heart were that, first, they did not have enough material to offer interrogators a chance of breaking “Primrose.” Second, since he doubtless had been warned by the Russians, this meant that they might have to wait before getting more useful evidence against him. And, finally, “an abortive interrogation of PRIMROSE serves no useful pur
pose and indeed may induce him to do the very thing we most fear, namely to escape to Russia.”29
Was Philby, who was responsible for the transmission of the telegram, behind this reversal? As chief of counterintelligence for MI6, he was being consulted on the Corby case and receiving all the reports. It is not far-fetched to suggest that, in Hollis's absence, he was able to impress his views upon others more convincingly.
Hollis, not surprisingly, was far from happy. He telegraphed immediately back to MI5, pointing out that the chances of a successful interrogation of “Primrose” would only grow smaller if he were to be alerted by detentions in Canada before his questioning. It was best to interrogate “Primrose” simultaneously with the Canadian suspects. Hollis concluded that “If policy decision is for prosecution I feel that every effort should be made to prosecute primrose who is the worst traitor in network . . . RCMP, while not wishing to influence your decision, would undoubtedly be disappointed if you did not interrogate.”30
The response from MI5 was that they appreciated the force of Hollis's argument but that the risk of an abortive interrogation of “Primrose,” possibly driving him to defect, was so great that the final decision would have to be taken by the prime ministers of Britain and Canada, along with President Truman, at their forthcoming November meeting in Washington.31
Hollis traveled to Washington for that occasion, and there was great hope on the part of the British and the Canadians that finally a course of action in the Gouzenko case would be decided upon. Malcolm MacDonald chaired three meetings on the subject, and on November 14 a tentative agreement was produced whereby simultaneous actions in the three countries against the Gouzenko suspects would occur in the week beginning November 26. Agents against whom there was a legal case would be prosecuted, and the Canadians would set up a Royal Commission to report on the full facts of the matter. They would also make a diplomatic protest to the Soviet ambassador in Ottawa and demand the recall of military attaché Zabotin and his colleagues.32