Spy Case

More than two months after it occurred, the Canadian government last week made public details of another Soviet espionage case. Gennadi Popov, a second secretary at Ottawa's Soviet embassy -- the same embassy where Cipher Clerk Igor Gouzenko exposed a vast spy apparatus in 1945 -- was ordered out of Canada last July for trying to bribe an R.C.A.F. civilian employee.

The new espionage incident was, much tamer than the Gouzenko case. Gouzenko's revelations involved top British and Canadian atomic scientists and a Member of Parliament. Popov's only known contact was a Grade 2 air-force clerk, James Stanley Staples, 30, whom he met at an Ottawa chess club.

When the Russian invited him out for a drink, Staples asked a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer for advice and was told to accept and keep the Mountie informed. Then, under the illusion that he had been deputized as a counterspy, Staples began chumming around with Popov and other Russians; the conversation eventually drifted around to Staples' work and R.C.A.F. aircraft. His police friend warned him to stop, but Staples continued meeting the Russians. Finally, when Popov gave him $50 (Staples said he gave it back) and spoke about providing him with a camera, government security officers cracked down. Staples was dismissed as a security risk, and an official protest was made to the Soviet ambassador, who bounced Secretary Popov back to Moscow. That would have closed the case except that the press got belated wind of it last week and heavily criticized the government for its failure to warn the public. The criticism did not seem to ruffle Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. "Every coun try has a spy system," said St. Laurent complacently. "What happened here was not worth making an international incident about."

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