Igor Gouzenko - Ramifications of The Defection

Ramifications of The Defection

When word got out in the media (February, 1946) that Soviets operated a spy network in Canada in which Canadians gave classified information to the Soviet government it created a great stir. Much of the information taken was of public knowledge and the Canadian government was less concerned with the information stolen but more of the potential of real secrets coming into the hands of future enemies. Canada played an important part in the early research with nuclear bomb technology and that kind of vital information could be dangerous in the hands of other nations.

Gouzenko's defection "ushered in the modern era of Canadian security intelligence". The evidence provided by Gouzenko led to the arrest of 39 suspects; a total of 18 were eventually convicted of a variety of offences. Among those convicted were Fred Rose, the only Communist Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons; Sam Carr, the Communist Party's national organizer; and scientist Raymond Boyer.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate espionage, headed by Justice Robert Taschereau and Justice Roy Kellock, was conducted into the Gouzenko Affair and his evidence of a Soviet spy ring in Canada. It also alerted other countries around the world, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, that Soviet agents had almost certainly infiltrated their nations as well.

Gouzenko provided many vital leads which assisted greatly with ongoing espionage investigations in Britain and North America. The documents he handed over exposed numerous Canadians who were spying for the Soviet Union. A clerk at the Canadian Foreign Ministry, a Canadian Army captain, and a radar engineer working at the National Research Council were arrested for espionage. A spy ring of up to 20 people passing information to the Soviets led by Communist MP Fred Rose was also exposed.

In addition, his testimony is believed to have been vital in the successful prosecution of Klaus Fuchs, the German communist physicist who emigrated to Britain and who later stole atomic secrets for the Soviets. Fuchs spent some time at the Chalk River Laboratories, northwest of Ottawa, where atomic research had been underway since the early 1940s. It is also likely that his information helped in the investigation of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the U.S. Gouzenko, being a cipher clerk by profession, likely also assisted with the Venona investigation, which probed Soviet codes and which eventually led to the discovery of vital Soviet spies such as Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross (the so-called Cambridge Five), as well as Alan Nunn May.