Wearing Red, Tracking Reds: What a Ride!: Policing and Counter-Espionage from Canada to Hong Kong

Entering the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1960 with visions of rural police duties, highway patrol or perhaps plain clothes detective work, I ended up in an unanticipated place, completely foreign to my expectations.

In 1964, I was inducted into the obscure and secretive world of subversion and counter-espionage investigations. One of the first books I was instructed to read was: The Theory and Practice of Communism, hardly the stuff I was interested in. I didn't know much about the Security and Intelligence Branch and I had a lot to learn about Communists, the Reds, Lenin's Lads or whatever they called them. Previously, my closest encounter with anything related to communism was the Cold War bomb shelter at my first Detachment; a Soviet diplomat, driving a Cadillac that I stopped for speeding; and, massive United States troop movements I observed in Los Angeles at the height of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. That showdown between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was probably the closest the World has ever come to all-out nuclear war. That event and the ever-present threats posed by the Cold War convinced me I needed to get serious about the work I was about to embark upon.

Unexpectedly propelled into Hong Kong in 1968, on the underbelly of Mao, Tse-tung's Chinese Communist dragon, while war raged in nearby Vietnam, it was an awakening to the realities of communism in South East Asia. The intensity of Mao's political rhetoric and propaganda spilled over into Hong Kong and took advantage of labour disputes creating politically inspired demonstrations and riots. Known as the 1967 disturbances, fear for the future of Hong Kong and of the brutality of the communists to the North, Hong Kong residents and escapees from China, in their hundreds, appeared at the Commission for Canada seeking refuge in Canada. Included was Mao, Tse-tung's arch rival, Chang, Kuo-tao, the first Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Chang was the only member of the Party to personally meet Lenin in Moscow. Now he was meeting with me and wanted my blessing.

Thus began a career in Canada's Chinese Counter-espionage program. China exploded onto the Canadian scene when Canada recognized the People's Republic of China in October 1970. The Chinese were out to catch up with the Western World, to bring China out of its inward-thinking "Middle Kingdom" outlook as proclaimed by the country's name. They were looking to bring China to the centre of the universe and their Four Modernizations campaign was at the root of their intelligence-gathering initiatives. The Chinese invasion of technical, trade and other delegations operated on the principle of take, take and take with little give in return. Naïve Canadian businesses found themselves vacuumed up in the process and left with nothing more than frustration. China was putting to use the philosophies of Sun, Tzu, the ancient philosopher warrior, who proclaimed, "Spies are useful everywhere" and that "no matter is more secret than espionage."

In a time of critical need to address these issues, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Security Service was plunged into the darkness of the McDonald Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the R.C.M.P. The Commission was looking into wrong-doings and illegal activities of the Service after the 1970 October Crisis in Quebec. Being pressed for information by the Government and the lack of intelligence on the issues of the day, the Security Service took wrong steps in hopes that they would flower into the right steps to satisfy their masters in Ottawa. Under scrutiny, the Service went into the fetal position, into denial and into the doldrums, which ended in criminal prosecutions for some. Two suicides within a year were devastating. In the end, the Security Service was amputated from the R.C.M.P. and became the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in July 1984. This was a very difficult and trying time for both Services which left lingering frustrations and scars in both camps.

This book covers the challenge of maintaining pace with the gathering storm of Chinese political and economic espionage, while at the same time coping with the organizational and individual stress of the McDonald Commission inquiries. It also speaks of the complexities of staffing, management responses during these trying times, of careers floundering and some flowering as the new Service, inundated with over-sight, new policies, procedures, restrictions and guidelines, tried to get its feet firmly on the ground. The stigma of "old wine in a new bottle" held sway in a climate of trying to move forward. Then the catastrophe of the 1985 Air India bombing--Canada's 911--complicated matters even further while C.S.I.S. was still in its infancy. The drama seems to be without end as the Phase II report of the Major Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182 has--at the time of this publication--yet to be released.

This is a telling memoir of a career in policing, intelligence and counter-espionage in Canada and overseas; in Services in the midst of traumatic organizational change and stress, mixed with inexplicable management tactics and the pride of diplomatic service.