Cleared or Covered up?

Abstract

More than 50 years after his death Herbert Norman remains a controversial figure in Canadian diplomacy. To his detractors he was at best a security risk and at worst a Soviet agent. To his defenders he was the innocent victim of a witch hunt led by unscrupulous American officials and their allies in congress.1 In 1950, Norman, a prominent member of the Department of External Affairs and a leading authority on Japan, was recalled to Ottawa from Tokyo where he had been head of Canada's liaison mission. This was done after his name surfaced during congressional committee hearings into communist subversion in the United States, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for information about him. External Affairs cleared Norman, but it reopened the case in 1952 after MI5, the United Kingdom's counterintelligence and security agency, informed Canadian authorities that it had evidence that he had been an active communist while a student at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s. The department again exonerated Norman even though he had tried to hide his involvement. Norman continued his diplomatic career, serving first as high commissioner to New Zealand and then as ambassador to Egypt, where he took his own life in April 1957 after a congressional committee revived accusations against him.No less controversial are the Department of External Affairs' investigations of Norman. Critic James Barros charges that the department, based on the flimsy consideration of personal acquaintance and collegial solidarity, was intent on giving Norman clearance, despite that fact that answers could not be found to many ofthe items uncovered by the RCMP, the FBI, and MI5. Norman's biographer, Roger Bowen, agrees with External Affairs that communism had been important in his but it had long ceased to be relevant and there was no evidence of disloyalty or misrepresentation during his career. Bowen contends that the department did not do enough to protect Norman from his accusers.2 This essay argues that although External Affairs officials were aware that Norman had not been truthful about his communist past, they viewed him as one of their own whose earlier affiliations had to be balanced against a distinguished record of service in the department. Neither External Affairs nor the RCMP found any indication of disloyalty, although they had different views about his employability. Complicating matters was the fact that the Norman issue became entangled in the larger currents of Canada-US relations at a time when McCarthyism was at its height. The Canadian government's efforts to deal with the case without inflaming domestic opinion or damaging relations with the United States were frustrated by US executive agencies and congress, which made it a public issue despite Ottawa's urgings. The experience had a lasting effect on relations between the two countries.HERBERT NORMAN AND CANADIAN DIPLOMACYHerbert Norman was born in Japan, in 1909, to Canadian Methodist missionary parents. He received his early education in Japanese schools after which he continued his studies in Canada, receiving a BA in classics from the University of Toronto in 1933. While there he became involved in socialist politics. For the next two years Norman studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he came under the influence of a charismatic fellow student, John Comford, under whose tutelage he entered the [communist] party.3 After completing his degree, Norman returned to Canada and taught briefly at Upper Canada College in Toronto, during which time he continued to support communist causes. In 1936, he began graduate studies in Japanese history at Harvard University, participating in Marxist study groups in Cambridge, MA (1936-38) and New York (1938-39), where he continued his research at Columbia University and the Institute of Pacific Relations, a forum for the study of Asian issues. …