bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1999) — Fall 1999 // Automne 1999, pp. 40–41
AGENT OF INFLUENCE: A TRUE STORY by
Ian Adams, Stoddart Publishing Co.
Limited, Toronto, 1999, 233 pp. $29.95
Reviewed by John Starnes
What Ian Adams has written is anything but a true story, non-fiction wrapped in a gossamer-thin veil of fiction. The author spins what some might think an entertaining tale of espionage. However, even if the novel were entertaining (which it is not) this does not excuse Adams for having created such an ugly, flawed ’true story’ concerning the circumstances surrounding the tragic death in Montreal in 1964 of former Canadian ambassador John Watkins.
The book is an intellectual conceit which fails miserably in its apparent purposes, to sell the book and to convince readers that Watkins’ unfortunate death in Montreal during the process of being questioned by the RCMP Security Service was engineered by James Jesus Angleton of the CIA in an effort to discredit Pearson and to overthrow his government. In my memoirs, Closely Guarded: A Life in Canadian Security and Intelligence, published in 1998 by the University of Toronto Press, I refer to an occasion when Angleton trotted out the ridiculous idea that Pearson was a KGB agent of influence, an idea I immediately and vigourously rejected. However, I know of nothing whatsoever to support Adams’ claim that Angleton somehow was involved in Watkins’ death. Adams seems incapable of abandoning his role as a latter-day conspiracy theorist.
I do not know what, if any, are the ethics in the publishing industry concerning the deliberate use by an author of a work of fiction to create a work of non-fiction and especially, as in this case, when the result is damaging to John Watkins, former members of the RCMP Security Service and, in What Adams wrote about me is so carelessly inaccurate I was led to wonder if other parts of the book are not also similarly inaccurate. I am glad, therefore, that I have been asked to review the book for bout de papier.
In his ten page ’author’s note’ at the end of the book Adams claims that in my capacity as director general of the RCMP Security Service I attempted to cover-up Watkin’s unfortunate death in 1964. This is utter nonsense. During the period in question, when I am supposed to have been a member of the RCMP, I was serving in Bonn as Canadian Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany (1962-66). Several years later, after serving as Canadian Ambassador to the United Arab Republic and Sudan (1966-67) and subsequently as an assistant deputy minister (administration) in external affairs (1967-70), on January 1, 1970, I was appointed the first civilian director general of the RCMP Security Service, holding the post until April 1973 when I resigned from public service.
The essential facts are a matter of public record which Mr. Adams, his publisher and his various editors could and should have ascertained before publishing the book. Not to have done so was misleading and carelessly unprofessional.
As I expressed it in chapter six of my memoirs, entitled Robertson, Pearson, St. Laurent, (pages 67-68): “I was as surprised and shocked at the unwelcome news as any of John’s friends. He showed great courage and fortitude in facing the ordeal created by the Soviet machinations. Both the experienced RCMP investigators, Harry Brandes and Jim Bennett, reported that there was no evidence to suggest that Watkins had been a traitor.”
The publisher describes the book as, ’an account of the interrogation and death of Ambassador John Watkins. Based on true events, declassified documents, and investigative reporting. Some of the characters in this book are wholly fictional; some are fictionalized composites of two or more real people. None of the characters represents a single real individual This last sentence is quite untrue. John Watkins, and Lester Pearson although dead, nevertheless were ’real individuals’ who play central roles in the story. No attempt is made to quote from or even to identify the source material referred to.
In the author’s note Adams’ writes, “To tell this story, I have at times drawn heavily upon Ambassador John Watkins’ official dispatches from his years of service in Moscow. To fold these dispatches into the style and structure I have created for this novel, I have had to change tenses, work in my own characters, and refigure time and place. But I did this only where necessary … Watkins was a fine writer with a good eye for detail, and in those places in the novel where I set him up to speak in a stream of consciousness, I did it because I felt I really had to know the man. I tried not to tamper with his views of the people he wrote about’. What presumptuous claptrap.
Many of the phrases and words the author puts into Watkins’ mouth make clear that Adams never did ’know the man’. His lack of understanding of John Watkins, his ethos and the world in which he lived is very obvious. Clearly, moreover, Adams knows nothing about security and intelligence and hasn’t a clue as to how Watkins, thought, spoke and acted. Some of the pompous statements he puts in John’s mouth are ludicrous. And the way he has Watkins behav- I ing in the weird scenes where he is being interrogated by the RCMP is loathsome and quite incredible.
Adams’ carelessness in writing about me is reflected elsewhere in the book. He repeatedly refers to the ’RCMP security services’ when even a casual look at the McDonald Commission’s published reports would have made clear this title is inaccurate. In several places he even has Watkins making the same mistake.
On the dust cover of the book Watkins is described as ’a close friend of Prime ; Minister Lester Pearson’.. There are similar references elsewhere throughout the book.
Since John Watkins and I entered the fledg-
• ling department of external affairs about
• the same time, at the end of World War II, I came to know Watkins quite well. I would not describe him as one of Pearson’s close friends. Certainly Pearson admired Watkins and his work and particularly as Canadian Ambassador in Moscow but I would hardly f describe the relationship between them as : ’close’. It was not comparable, for exam-
• ple, to the relationships which Pearson established with a number of others then in : the Canadian foreign service such as, John Holmes, Gerry Riddell, Hume Wrong or Norman Robertson. Presumably Adams introduced the idea in an effort to bolster his improbable conspiracy theories.
Towards the end of the book Adams has Watkins in a most unlikely conversation with a fictitious, lesbian RCMP inspector who interrogates him in a suite in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Montreal. In response to her question, ’When you were in Moscow whose orders did you follow? Mr Pearson’s? Adams has Watkins replying; ’Ultimately, yes. The difference is that there is a policy — an entire strategy on how we should approach and deal with the Soviet government. We had a series of long-term positions with goals that were worked out by the minister, advisers, and policy analysts, with considerable input from me’. Such a pompous, self-serving, immodest statement by John Watkins would be completely out of character. It simply lacks any credibility. Unfortunately, that flaw afflicts much of this book, which is neither a true story nor a well-crafted novel.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1999) — Fall 1999 // Automne 1999, pp. 40–41. Read the rest of this issue →
