In September of 1990, the 5th edition of the Mackenzie Newsletter was released – the first one entirely designed on a desktop computer. One piece of older Cold War business going right back to 1957 was the suicide of Canadian diplomat Herbert Norman. He had long been painted as an innocent victim of American McCarthyism run amok but the 1986 book by James Barros pointed out that there were sufficient grounds to believe he was a Soviet agent. Curiously, the Ministry of External Affairs attempted to whitewash Norman’s reputation again in 1990. Maurice Tugwell wrote this response to the Peyton Lyon report on Norman.
In ancient times the bearer of ill tidings was put to death. In modern Canada an attempt has been made to revive the custom. The Peyton Lyon Report on Herbert Norman was released last March. Despite the claims of Mr. Clark, Minister of External Affairs, the report did little to settle the controversy about the former Canadian ambassador. What it did do was attack the reputation and motives of an author and two MPs who raised the matter in the House – the bearers of ill-tidings.
Herbert Norman’s 1957 suicide left a number of unresolved questions. The two foremost were: Was Norman a communist and, if so, was he working for the Soviets? James Barros’ 1986 book on the issue, No Sense of Evil, concluded that Norman certainly was a communist and that there were sufficient grounds to believe that he was a Soviet agent.
Herbert Norman had participated in Communist Party work and study groups at Cambridge and at Harvard. He was well acquainted with several prominent communists and Soviet agents – including the notorious Philby, Burgess, MacLean and Blunt. Anthony Blunt, testifying after receiving immunity from prosecution, stated that Norman was “one of us” and that he was “in the game.”
Enter Joe Clark and Peyton Lyon. The Lyon report was commissioned by External Affairs to establish the facts. It announced, with remarkable certainty, that there was not “an iota of evidence” to suggest that Norman was a spy or agent. While the report attacked James Barros’ research, it was full of inconsistencies itself. Lyon scorned some of the sources used by Barros but still managed to agree with many of the findings in No Sense of Evil.
Peyton Lyon does not dispute that Norman was a communist sympathizer when at Cambridge and Harvard, that he abruptly switched from Academia to External Affairs and sought positions dealing with foreign policy and intelligence, and that he lied in interviews about his communist activities. Nor does Lyon adequately discount Anthony Blunt’s intimation that Norman was involved in Soviet espionage activities.
The credibility of the Lyon report was undermined by Mr. Clark himself. The minister accepted Lyon’s conclusions but not his methodology – a very curious combination. For if the approach was flawed, how can the conclusions be accepted?
The Lyon report does not answer any questions about Herbert Norman. If it was meant to be an exercise in whitewashing “one of our own” very little is obscured. Just as Barros’ book does not prove beyond all possible doubt that Norman was an agent, the Lyon Report fails to prove that he was not. The matter may remain unresolved until the KGB files are open to scholars. [And unfortunately while the files of the KGB were passed to the West by Mitrokhin in 1992, many older NKVD files from the 1930s and ‘40s were not. Norman’s status remains unresolved — JT]
The unpleasant and unusual aspect of the report is its vindictive attack on James Barros who is represented as the real villain of the piece for daring to investigate the facts. At a time when Canada is prosecuting suspected war criminals from the Nazi period, why is it considered wrong to investigate servants of an equally murderous regime?
One is led to the conclusion that the exercise was primarily political, an attempt by Mr. Clark to frustrate the questioning of Alberta M.P.s David Kilgour and Alex Kindy, who had requested a full investigation of Norman’s communist links. The videotape of Mr. Lyon’s press conference following the release of the report, as well as the report itself, offer ample evidence that the author entered into the spirit of the witch hunt against Progressive Conservatives who dared to forget their progressive responsibilities. Indeed, for any Canadian who wishes his country to be taken seriously, the press conference recording is a sad embarrassment.
The messengers were not killed nor were they intimidated.
