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rfmcdonaldCBC News' Janet Davison reports on the latest revisiting of the famous Igor Gouzenko espionage case.
It is an intriguing slip-up in the annals of international intelligence — did Igor Gouzenko's crying baby help make it easier for the Soviet cipher clerk to defect with a bunch of secrets stuffed under his shirt in Ottawa 70 years ago?
U.K. author and historian Jonathan Haslam suggests that it did in his recently released book, Near and Distant Neighbours — A New History of Soviet Intelligence, showing how Gouzenko's domestic circumstances flummoxed his Moscow watchers
Gouzenko's story, says Haslam, demonstrates the role of accident and personality in intelligence, along with how some plain good luck can pay off for the other side.
He also argues that this history has relevance today as some of these Russian intelligence methods, and especially the mindset behind them, still seem to be in play.
The 109 documents Gouzenko snuck out of the Soviet Embassy on Sept. 5, 1945, revealed a Soviet spy ring in Canada and sparked great worry in the halls of Washington, Westminster and Moscow, not to mention Ottawa. For some historians, what became known as the Gouzenko Affair marked the beginning of the Cold War.
