The Norman Case

In a sensational article entitled “New Spy Revelations: Soviets Blackmailed Homosexuals in Ottawa,” Reguly stated, inter alia:

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau tried to stem the drain of senior civil service talent by easing up on security restrictions for homosexuals.

“Trudeau saw the end of the External Affairs department with so many top people being investigated and seen at orgies, that he opted for keeping them if they accepted medical treatment,” said a former top-level RCMP officer.

“But the Russians never eased up one bit in blackmailing homosexuals in government. Many had families to conceal it from. It’s still a Sodom and Gomorrah in Ottawa.”

The RCMP investigation of the blackmailed ambassadors, helped by the CIA and FBI, delved deeply into the chain in External that had promoted suspect ambassadors, at least four, to sensitive posts.

Part of that investigation was directed at Pearson, a friend of Watkins who had served as external affairs minister before becoming prime minister.

The FBI had 4,000 transcript pages of testimony, interrogation and cross-references from and about Elizabeth Bentley, long-time secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S. Included in the bundle sent to Ottawa was Bentley’s secret testimony before the U.S. Senate Internal Security subcommittee.

She testified that during World War II, Pearson as ambassador to Washington, had fed details of top-secret deliberations among western Allied powers to a Soviet agent, Hazen Size.

Bentley said Pearson knew that Size was a Soviet agent. Size, an architect, came to Ottawa after the war and worked for the National Capital Commission until his retirement. He died in Montreal several years ago.

The U.S. spooks were also unnerved by Pearson’s vigorous defence of his colleague, Herbert Norman, ambassador to Egypt who had jumped to his death in Cairo in 1957.

While Pearson was denouncing in Parliament the senate committee’s “witch-hunt” in identifying Norman as a communist, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower held a CIA dispatch from Cairo.

The message told him that on the night before Norman died, he had dined with a doctor friend and, according to the doctor, Norman said he feared that a royal commission would be called into the U.S. allegations.

If called to testify, Norman said he would be forced to implicate “60 or 70″ definite and possibly up to 400 Canadians and Americans in a Soviet spy network. He said he’d rather kill himself.

The most startling disclosure in the suppressed “Featherbed File” deals with almost similar statements by two former top officials in External Affairs, Herbert Norman and Hugh Hambleton (now of Laval University). In both cases, these exposed Soviet infiltrators expressed concern that if they admitted their own complicity “many others would be involved in top places.” Here is what the August, 1957, CIS issue reported on the Norman Case:

Early this month Willard Edwards, head of the Washington bureau of the Chicago Tribune Press Service, filed a most significant story relating to the “Norman Case.” Because it was widely suppressed by Canadian press and radio, we are reproducing, in part, the release which appeared in the July 12th Tribune.

“Washington, July 11 — Canadian Ambassador Herbert E. Norman leaped to his death in Cairo last April 4 because he could not face the prospect of an investigation in which he would be forced to involve a large group of American and Canadian officials.

“This is the gist of a highly secret report in the files of Canadian and American intelligence agencies which has deeply disturbed the government*; of both countries.

Norman’s Confession

“Norman’s suicide has remained officially a mystery. Originally, the Canadian government, then led by Lester B. Pearson, secretary of state for external affairs, attacked the senate internal security subcommittee for ‘slanders’ and ‘unsupported insinuations’ regarding the ambassador’s alleged communist background which caused him such mental grief that he ended his life.

“But new evidence from Cairo has furnished an entirely different motive. It came from an agent, given the highest classification for trustworthiness, who reported as follows:

“On the eve of his suicide, Norman had dinner with his personal physician and confessed to him his mental tribulations over the international storm aroused by the senate group’s disclosures.

Would Involve 60 or 70

“‘I fear that St. Laurent is not backing me up in this affair,’ Norman was quoted as saying. ‘I am seriously thinking of suicide. If there is an inquiry and I am forced to testify, I would have to involve 60 or 70 Americans and Canadian officials.’

“Early the next morning, Norman went to the top of the highest building in Cairo and jumped. He left two suicide notes, the major portions of which have been impounded by the Canadian government.”

Who Is Involved?

Willard Edwards, in the closing paragraphs of his story, relates Norman’s activities in the Institute of Pacific Relations, which was found by a Congressional committee to be “an instrument of communist policy, propaganda and intelligence.”

At the present time two of the key figures in the External Affairs Department are Chester Ronning and Escott Reid, Commander William Guy Carr, on page 213 of Red Fog Over America, gives the details of the pro-Communist backgrounds of these officials, both of whom were members of the Institute of Pacific Relations.

Are these key figures, operating at the policy-making level of our government, two of those whom Norman would have had to identify?

Would several figures prominent in the annual Lake Couchiching ‘Conference’, sponsored by the Institute of International Affairs and the CBC, have been identified?

These vital questions cannot be brushed aside just because Mr. Pearson was removed from his ministerial post a few weeks ago. The others involved still hold key posts in Ottawa.