Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

The KGB was saved in the nick of time from a major intelligence disaster, which, it believed, would have included the arrest and show trial of Filonenko, by a walk-in to the Ottawa residency. On July 21, 1955 a heavily indebted 39-year-old RCMP corporal, James Morrison, who for some years had taken part in surveillance of the Ottawa embassy, got in touch with Burdin’s successor as resident, Nikolai Pavlovich Ostrovsky (codenamed GOLUBEV), and reported that Brik had been “turned” eighteen months earlier. He was acting, he claimed, out of sympathy for the USSR and a desire to prevent a repetition of the Gouzenko affair which had done so much damage to Soviet-Canadian relations ten years earlier. Morrison’s request for 5,000 dollars, however, provides a better indication of his motives. 37Unknown to Ostrovsky, he had already been caught embezzling RCMP funds with which he hoped to pay off the debts caused by his taste for high living. Remarkably, instead of being sacked, Morrison was allowed to refund the money he had stolen. Ironically, he was to use money from the KGB to repay the RCMP. 38

The Centre initially suspected that the intelligence from Morrison (later code-named FRIEND) was an elaborate “provocation” by the RCMP, but decided to interrogate Brik in Moscow. Fortunately for the KGB, it had already been decided in June that Brik would travel to the Soviet Union for a holiday and reunite with his wife later in the summer. 39Though understandably nervous at the thought of returning to Moscow, he appears to have been confident of his ability to continue to outwit the KGB. 40Before leaving Canada, Brik was briefed by Charles Sweeny of the RCMP and Leslie Mitchell, the SIS liaison officer in Washington, and asked to find out what he could about the fate of Burgess and Maclean, as well as to identify as many KGB officers as possible during his visit. They told him that if he needed assistance in Moscow it would be provided by the British SIS, since Canada had no foreign intelligence service. He was given details of one rendezvous point with an SIS officer, the location of two dead letter-boxes and signal sites to indicate when a DLB had been filled. If it became necessary to arrange an escape, SIS would leave in a DLB a short-wave radio, money, a pistol with silencer, false Soviet passports for himself and his wife, the internal travel documents needed to go to the town of Pechenga near the Soviet-Norwegian border and a map showing where to cross the frontier. 41

The Centre took great care not to arouse Brik’s suspicions before his departure. His first stop, arranged in June, was in Brazil, where he was due to meet Filonenko (HECTOR) on August 7. Filonenko was warned not to attend the meeting, but the prearranged rendezvous was kept under KGB observation. When Brik arrived on August 7, the KGB watchers reported that he had two companions, thus providing strong circumstantial evidence that he was now a double agent. Apparently undeterred by Filonenko’s failure to meet him, Brik continued to Moscow via Paris and Helsinki. The residents in both capitals were ordered to give him a friendly welcome and discuss with him the travel arrangements for his return to Canada. A KGB strong-arm man was, however, sent to Finland in case Brik had any last-minute doubts about going to Moscow. If necessary, a Soviet agent in the Finnish police agreed to arrange for his expulsion to the Soviet Union. 42

On August 19, 1955 Brik arrived at Moscow airport and was immediately arrested. He at first denied that he was a double agent, but his file records that he subsequently broke under “pressure” and “told all.” 43His confession confirmed everything reported to the Ottawa residency by James Morrison (FRIEND), who was then paid the 5,000 dollars he had asked for. Morrison volunteered for further payment what the Centre considered “valuable” information about the organization, personnel and operations of the RCMP and, in particular, its security service. 44

On September 4, 1956, at a closed session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, Brik was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The fact that he escaped the death penalty was presumably due to his cooperation in what his file describes as “an operational game.” Brik was not allowed to meet any member of the SIS station in the Moscow embassy, probably for fear that he would blurt out what had happened to him, but instructed to arrange a rendezvous which he did not keep. By keeping the rendezvous site under surveillance, the KGB was able to identify Daphne (later Baroness) Park, the member of the British embassy who turned up there, as an SIS officer. During the “operational game” Brik was allowed to live at home with his family in order to try to give SIS the impression that he was still at liberty. The KGB discovered, probably by bugging his apartment, that he tried unsuccessfully to persuade his wife to flee abroad. 45

Morrison continued for three years to work as a Soviet agent. Including the 5,000 dollars he received for betraying Brik, he was paid a total of 14,000 dollars by the KGB. The Centre, however, became increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the information he supplied. In September 1955 Morrison was posted to Winnipeg as part of a unit investigating drug smuggling from the United States, and lost much of his previous access to RCMP intelligence. His last meeting with a Soviet controller took place on December 7, 1957. Morrison asked for help in paying off a debt of 4,800 dollars. The deputy resident in Ottawa, Rem Sergeevich Krasilnikov (ARTUR), however, paid him only 150 dollars and told him that he would need to arrange a transfer to Ottawa and get better access to RCMP intelligence if he wished to earn more money. Morrison failed to turn up to his next pre-arranged meeting with Krasilnikov and broke off further contact with the KGB. In 1958 the Ottawa residency discovered from press reports that Morrison had been dismissed from the RCMP and given a two-year suspended sentence for fraud. 46

Though Morrison’s warning in 1955 had helped to contain the damage done to KGB operations by Brik’s twenty-one months as a double agent, that damage was none the less considerable. The Centre was forced to abandon its plan for a second illegal residency in the United States based on Brik and Filonenko. In addition to betraying five KGB agents, Brik had also identified to the RCMP a number of KGB officers in the Ottawa legal residency, all of whom were withdrawn from Canada. 47

ANOTHER PLAN BY the Centre to establish a further illegal residency in the United States also collapsed in the mid-1950s. The intended illegal resident was Vladimir Vasilyevich Grinchenko (codenamed RON and KLOD), who had taken the identity of Jan Bechko, the son of a Slovak father and a Ukrainian mother. Since 1948 Grinchenko and his wife, Simona Isaakovna Krimker (codenamed MIRA), had been based in Buenos Aires, where in 1951 they had gained Argentinian citizenship. In 1954 the Centre planned to transfer them to the United States. At the last moment, however, it was discovered that the FBI had obtained Grinchenko’s fingerprints while he was working as an agent on a Soviet ship visiting North America. Grinchenko was hurriedly redeployed to France, where, a few months later, his career as an illegal was ended by what his file describes as “a gross breach of security.” In August 1955 his Argentinian passport, French residence permit, student card and expense account were all stolen from his hotel room in Paris. So was the photograph of, and a letter in Russian from, another KGB illegal codenamed BORIS. Both Grinchenko and BORIS were hurriedly recalled to Moscow. 48

Though the Centre did not yet realize it, its one established American residency was by now also in trouble. Unlike Makayev (HARRY), Brik (HART) and Grinchenko (KLOD), “Willie” Fisher (MARK), the illegal resident in New York, was a paragon of both self-discipline and ideological dedication. 49His chief assistant, Reino Hayhanen, however, was to prove even less reliable than Brik.