Five Red Rings

The Canadian spy melodrama labored into the last act. Five months after it started to probe the cloak & dagger activities of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, the Royal Commission on Espionage last week summed it all up in a fourth and final report. All told, it had uncloaked 17 Soviet Embassy officials, and charged them with spying in Canada.

Two days after the report was issued Prime Minister Mackenzie King rose to tell the House of Commons and the people the results. Said Mr. King: the Russian Government, which had earlier recalled eleven of the spies, had now told the remaining six to come home at once. As far as Canada and Russia were concerned, that seemed to be that.

But Canada was far from through with Canadians who had been in cahoots with the Soviet spies. In Ottawa the Mounties picked up the first of nine Canadians named in the Royal Commission's final report. He was William Pappin, a passport clerk, and he was accused of issuing a false Canadian passport for a Russian agent who had been operating in Los Angeles.

No More Quarrels. The report told how the spies operated. The espionage nerve centers were in secret rooms on the second floor of the Soviet Embassy. From there five separate rings operated, spying out Canada's war secrets, and also spying on one another. They rowed so frequently that Moscow finally sent instructions: "There should be no more quarreling between the various systems operating in Canada."

The Red Army and Naval Intelligence services, and the NKVD secret police each had its system. The fourth was a political ring under Peter G. Goussarov, who rated as a second secretary in the Embassy; the evidence showed that he had "authority . . . on the level of an ambassador." The fifth and most active unit was the Military Intelligence network bossed by Colonel Nicolai Zabotin (TIME, March 11). Canada's Communist (Labor Progressive) party furnished the rings with recruits. Their pay was small, usually only $30 to $100 for a piece of information.

All But the Atom. The five rings got: samples of uranium, information on radar, the Asdic detector and the VT-proximity fuse. But the Russians did not get what they wanted most: the know-how of the atomic bomb. The reason was simple. Said the report: "There was no one in Canada who had that information."

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