bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2011) — Fall/Winter 2011 // Automne/Hiver 2011, pp. 23–27
The foreign intelligence mandate of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is one of its lesser known responsibilities. The department collects, collates, and disseminates foreign intelligence in support of the foreign policy process.
The department’s active engagement in foreign intelligence dates to about 1940, although little was done before 1941. A distinct foreign intelligence unit did not come into being until 1950.
Today, as a member of the “Five Eyes Alliance”, Canada’s most significant foreign intelligence relationship is that with the United States. While Canada and the United States share a close intelligence relationship, it is not a partnership between equals but one, nevertheless, from which both draw benefits.
The most important element of Canada’s foreign intelligence activities is that of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), carried out today by Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC). Canada’s engagement in SIGINT grew out of an effort initiated by the Department of External Affairs (DEA) today named the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), a story which has been described elsewhere (Kurt F. Jensen, Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 1939-51, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008).
The wartime signals intelligence relationship between the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is often viewed as the foundation of the broader intelligence relationship which exists today. Such a perception is overly simplistic. Other significant intelligence exchanges and cooperation agreements developed independently during the war and flourished in the years thereafter, as intelligence organizations were reorganized, restructured, and resourced for peacetime mandates.
Significant among these was the foreign intelligence relationship. In recent years, the DFAIT foreign intelligence function has often suffered the vagaries of resource battles. While today we read about the struggle against terrorism, largely dominated by CSIS, we often forget the significant role which the department has played in Canada’s intelligence history. The goal of this article is to highlight the important role of the department in cementing the foreign intelligence relationship with the United States.
Intelligence ties between the DEA and the American CIA have existed for nearly 60 years. An intelligence relationship began earlier, in the midst of the Second World War, with the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
The exact date when DEA established ties with the OSS is not available in the public archival record. In the initial phase, however, the link does not appear to have involved any exchange of intelligence material.
A SIGINT exchange between Canada’s Examination Unit (the wartime SIGINT organization established by DEA) and the US Army began some time before August 1942. At about the same time, External Affairs had created a Special Intelligence Section, under E.H. Norman, to operate autonomously within the new Examination Unit with a mandate to prepare intelligence assessments based on SIGINT and intelligence material from other sources. In October of the following year, Norman was sent to Washington to discuss establishing an exchange liaison with the OSS. This was not an expansion of the SIGINT relationship but an initiative to exchange intelligence assessments which were based, in part, on SIGINT material.
Norman’s Special Intelligence Section’s liaison relationship with the OSS comprised exchanges primarily of Japanese diplomatic messages covering economic policy and “Japanese efforts at exploitation and organization of conquered territory.” No material covering Japanese diplomacy in general, particularly in Europe, was included. Some French and Spanish material was also made available.
The OSS could not provide a satisfactory guarantee of protecting the Canadian intelligence material, resulting in a compromise whereby an OSS official read reports in the office of Lester B. Pearson at the Canadian Legation in Washington. The OSS could use the Canadian material, albeit with utmost discretion. In exchange, Canada received various weekly bulletins and research data from the OSS.
OSS officers came to Canada in early 1943 to study Canada’s success in collecting, analyzing, and exploiting correspondence between German POWs in Canada and their families in Germany for intelligence, something OSS reported as constituting “a veritable gold mine for our work,” with hopes that more formal collaboration could be established.
The perception of the OSS by Ottawa was poor. In an interview many years later, George Glazebrook, one of the wartime intelligence officers and postwar head of the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee, recalled that the OSS was “overwhelmed by size, inexperience and romanticism.” He despairingly described an OSS officer responsible for French matters as “a professor of something who had once had a holiday in France.”
At one point Canada considered terminating its relationship with OSS on SIGINT-derived assessment although there is no confirming evidence that this occurred.
Certainly, Canada continued to be generally unimpressed by the quality of the OSS. Thomas Stone, one of the wartime leaders of Canadian foreign intelligence, wrote that “not only are OSS intelligence reports on Europe bad but…they must be read by people that have a tragically insufficient knowledge of their field on which to base any critical study of the reports.”
“Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the OSS, made at least one visit to Canada, where he met with Canada’s enigmatic Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who recorded the event in his diary as, “Had a pleasant talk with General Donovan re: orientals on the Pacific Coast. Glad to make his acquaintance.”
Canada’s foreign political intelligence unit had been very small throughout the war and seems to have continued largely unchanged into the early postwar period. While a postwar intelligence architecture was being contemplated, External Affairs and National Defence had different visions of how this might look with the External Affairs model, based on a British proposal, winning the day. In the late 1940s, Canada established its own Joint Intelligence Committee (CJIC), Joint Intelligence Bureau (CJIB), and a Joint Intelligence Staff (CJIS), all based on British structures.
These new intelligence bodies were never perceived as being part of the foreign political intelligence unit at External Affairs. As in Britain, the CJIB was a military intelligence body; the CJIC was an interdepartmental management tool. What was different, however, was that External Affairs reserved for itself the direction of these new bodies. It was agreed that the Chairman of the CJIC would be an officer from the Department of External Affairs. The same was true for the CJIB, after some initial personnel turmoil. The rationale for ceding leadership to External Affairs was a recognition that Canada’s foreign affairs department was in the best position to follow international events and to advise on the urgency of taskings in support of formulating foreign and defence policies.
With the end of the war, the intelligence relationship between External Affairs and the OSS came to an abrupt end. In October 1945, William Langer, the eminent Harvard historian and one of the senior intelligence analysts in the OSS Research and Analysis Branch, informed Thomas Stone, by now at the Canadian Legation in Washington, that his organization had been transferred to the State Department and no further intelligence exchanges could follow until the State Department had reviewed the relationship and pronounced whether or not it was to continue, although he hoped that the exchange would be re-established.
No response was received from the State Department for several years regarding a resumption of the intelligence exchange which had existed between External Affairs and the Research and Analysis Branch of the disbanded OSS. One cause of the delay was the tardiness of the State Department in formalizing a role for the OSS unit. Not until 1946 did the State Department formally establish its Intelligence and Research Bureau (INR), using the former OSS analytical resources as its core.
It took several more years before External Affairs-INR relations were established. During the intervening years, the State Department intelligence unit showed no urgency in establishing a relationship with Canada. The seeming impasse began to break in September 1949 when James George, an External Affairs officer, was sent from Ottawa to meet for lunch with State Department INR representatives Allan Evans, the Director of Intelligence Research, Nathan Pelkowitz (or Pelcovits), the Canada Analyst, and several others, to propose an exchange relationship.
George briefed the group on the service intelligence exchanges which existed between the Canadian and the American armed forces and expressed a desire to expand this to include conventional political intelligence exchanges. The INR group was sympathetic to the Canadian proposal and Evans suggested that Canada request a copy of an INR publication, such as the periodic reviews describing conditions in Eastern Europe which were prepared as guides for the Voice of America broadcasts. Such a request was viewed by the INR members as innocuous and likely to act as a catalyst to more enhanced intelligence exchanges.
An extensive intelligence exchange between External Affairs and INR, however, did not materialize immediately. It took until early 1952 before External Affairs began to receive an ample range of INR intelligence products.
In 1950, DEA established the Defence Relations 2 Division (DL2), the first formal intelligence unit within the department. Until that time, foreign intelligence had been subsumed within existing geographic divisions.
The Central Intelligence Agency, the eventual successor to the OSS, came into existence in 1947. As with INR, there was no immediate establishment of an intelligence relationship between the Agency and Canadian foreign intelligence. The first step in establishing a political intelligence exchange between External Affairs and the American national intelligence agency occurred in February 1949 when G.G. Crean, the External Affairs Chairman of the CJIC, and a senior Canadian foreign intelligence officer within DEA, met with R.H. Hillenkoetter, the Director of the CIA, in Kingston, Ontario, to discuss the establishment of a liaison arrangement between the CIA and Canadian foreign intelligence. While Crean met with Hillenkoetter as the Chairman of the CJIC, as the concomitant director of External Affairs’ DL2, the broader foreign intelligence interests of Canada are not likely to have been far from his mind.
The meeting between Crean and Hillenkoetter, which seems to have been a CIA initiative, suggested placing a CIA liaison officer in Ottawa “in view of the ever-growing close relationships, particularly in defense matters, between Canada and the United States, [and] that the establishment of such a position would be of benefit to both of our organizations.” Crean supported the initiative and suggested to Hillenkoetter that a CIA liaison relationship should be established with the CJIB and the Director of Scientific Intelligence of the Defence Research Board. While Crean held out the possibility of establishing a liaison relationship with External Affairs for foreign intelligence, he wanted to discuss this further internally before coming to a decision.
In June 1949 the CIA sent two officers, Col. Robert A. Schow and James Jesus Angleton, to Ottawa to discuss a liaison arrangement. The visit was a failure. Schow and Angleton were interested in a broad exchange of intelligence material, particularly in counter-intelligence, the forte of Angleton, whereas the cautious Canadians wanted the exchange to focus on economic and scientific intelligence. The Americans were also interested in securing Canadian assistance in conducting espionage abroad, something which Canada was not prepared to embark upon at that time. While the Canadians and the CIA remained in contact no exchange arrangements followed.
Early in 1951, Lt. Gen. Charles Foulkes, the Canadian Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, visited Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, the Director of the CIA, in Washington to reopen the question of liaison arrangements. Foulkes pointed out to Bedell Smith that no clear link existed between the CIA and Canadian intelligence agencies and that the latter were anxious to review CIA National Intelligence Survey papers. Bedell Smith agreed to provide Canada with Agency studies. Bedell Smith also encouraged a Canadian “intelligence team” to come to Washington to discuss exchanges and requirements with their opposite numbers in the CIA. In April, Ivor Bowen, the new Director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau, and J.A. Langley, Director of Scientific Intelligence, went to Washington for further discussions with their CIA counterparts. As a result of the visit, Canada decided to send as many of its CJIC papers as possible to the CIA, excluding any which bore on Canadian policy regarding third parties (or the United States).
The CJIC-CIA relationship blossomed although it was far from ideal. The relationship did not include the foreign intelligence unit at External Affairs, notwithstanding that the CJIC was directed by an intelligence officer from External Affairs who, within his own department, headed the foreign intelligence division.
Canada was always cautious in the field of intelligence. Indeed, a decision was soon taken in 1951 specifically not to establish a distinct secret foreign intelligence collection service. Consequently, there were severe limits on what foreign intelligence material was available to Canada, both for its own use and as exchange material with allies. By 1952, the CIA was complaining that the Canadian contribution to the bilateral relationship, provided through the CJIC, was inadequate, claiming that Canada was “the poorest contributor of all those collaborating with the CIA.” The CIA was correct that Canada had relatively little covertly collected intelligence to exchange. Having foregone establishment of a secret intelligence service, Canada relied on overtly collected information, which did not resonate well with the aggressive and secret operations of the CIA. Conversely, the cautious Canadians, while admittedly limited in what could be collected, were never caught illicitly collecting information. In response to CIA prodding, Canada established an Interview Program within the CJIB (later mover to DEA) in 1952, to debrief defectors from Eastern Europe as well as travellers who had observed or gained access to areas or subjects of intelligence interest. The CIA had urged the Canadians to pursue something along these lines for some time. In June, at one of their regular meetings, Foulkes informed Bedell Smith and his “Chief of Interrogation” about the Canadian initiative. While input and advice from the CIA on subjects to be interviewed would be solicited, CIA members would not be permitted to participate in debriefings.
For much of the early years of the Canadian relationship with the CIA it was conducted by the CJIC and the CJIB, both of which were part of National Defence. The CIA, however, remained interested in developing a relationship with the intelligence unit at External Affairs.
Some time after Allen Dulles became head of the CIA in 1953, George Glazebrook, while Director of Defence Liaison 2 (DL2 — the foreign intelligence unit), made a visit to Washington to discuss direct links between External Affairs (DL2) and the CIA. There had been earlier talks between External Affairs and the CIA but little had come of these because of the view in DL2 that the CIA did “practically everything that a professional wouldn’t do.” By the early 1950s Canadian perceptions had clearly moderated and Glazebrook concluded an exchange agreement with the CIA. A liaison officer from the Agency was to be stationed in Ottawa to service the relationship. Because of operational concerns expressed by Glazebrook, he was invited by Dulles to draft the letter of instruction for the CIA liaison officer.
The intelligence relationship between the CIA and the foreign intelligence division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has been of longstanding and, presumably, mutual benefit to both parties.
The CIA’s first Canadian intelligence partner was the CJIC, the CJIB and Defence Scientific Intelligence. Throughout the early years, the CJIC and the CJIB (until 1950) were headed by senior intelligence officers from External Affairs.
The hesitancy by DEA throughout this period to formalize ties with the CIA is difficult to fathom. Wearing their CJIC or CJIB hats, the DEA officers showed no reluctance to exchange intelligence with the CIA. In the absence of clarifying archival material, one can only assume that the hesitancy with which the CIA and External Affairs established ties reflected the cautious nature governing all elements of Canadian foreign intelligence, particularly that conducted by the DEA.
The more proactive ties which were established between foreign intelligence at External Affairs and INR at the State Department merely caused less concern, possibly being viewed as an enhancement of conventional ties existing between two foreign ministries with a track record of cooperation.
Kurt EF Jensen is a retired foreign service officer, with many years experience in foreign intelligence, who has written extensively on Canadian foreign intelligence programs, including Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 1939-51 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008). All quotes in this article are from archival sources.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2011) — Fall/Winter 2011 // Automne/Hiver 2011, pp. 23–27. Read the rest of this issue →
