"Instructions from Moscow"

Canada's Government got down to chapter & verse with its spy melodrama. This week in a nine-page, 3,000-word report, released after three weeks of rigidly secret investigation, it: 1) bluntly accused three Canadians and one British subject of giving Government secrets to Russia; 2) unfolded the details of Russian espionage in Canada. In an Allied world already jittery over Russia, the report was not calculated to lull suspicions and fears. Said the report:

"The evidence establishes that a network of [spies] had been organized ... for the purpose of obtaining secret and confidential information. ... These operations were carried on by certain members of the staff of the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa under direct instructions from Moscow."

The Government first heard about the Russian espionage last autumn from Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa. Why he tattled, the Government did not say. But he named names, produced documents, and pointed to Nicolai Zabotin, the Embassy's military attache, as the spy ring's head. He said that Zabotin, in the best spy manner, used a bogus name: "Grant."

Uranium & Telegrams. Gouzenko's documents, which the Canadian Government accepted as authentic, showed clearly that Zabotin and his agents received specific instructions from Moscow. Some of the facts they were ordered to get would be routine with military attaches of any country. But a lot was not.

Moscow, greatly interested in atomic energy, focused attention on Canada's National Research Council (custodian of atomic-energy secrets). Zabotin and his men were ordered to photograph and forward to Moscow every document in the Research Council's files. Said a Moscow cable: "Give more details of organization of Research Council. Manipulate so as to get to [its] leaders and find out what they do."

Other requested items: 1) "a sample of Uranium 235, with details as to the plant [at Port Hope, Ont.] where it is produced"; 2) details of the Canadian atomic-energy plant at Chalk River, Ont.; 3) the contents of telegrams passing into and out of the Canadian External Affairs Department.

U.S. Troops & Periscopes. The Ottawa Embassy was also used to get facts about the U.S. Moscow asked for "information as to the transfer of the American troops from Europe to the U.S. and the Pacific." Zabotin was told to locate the U.S. Ninth Army, and 20 other U.S. military units, to learn about "electronic shells used by the American Navy."

How many secrets, how much confidential information was actually passed on to Moscow, Ottawa was not ready to say, perhaps did not know. But it did know, and now made public, the identity of the four who had connived with Zabotin. The four:

P: Mrs. Emma Woikin, a young (25), good-looking cipher clerk in the External Affairs Department. She is a Doukhobor from Saskatchewan, of Russian parentage. Said the report: she gave Zabotin "the contents of secret telegrams to which she had access."

P: Captain Gordon Lunan, who was "loaned" by the Canadian Army to the Canadian Wartime Information Board. A 30-year-old Montrealer, he was, said the report, "the head of a group of [Canadian] agents under [Zabotin]," acted as intermediary.

P: Edward Wilfred Mazerall, about whom nothing much was known--except that he was a Research Council electrical engineer who gave to Captain Lunan, for transfer to Zabotin, information on radar.

P: Miss Kathleen Mary Willsher, 40, a Briton. She was deputy registrar in the office of the British High Commissioner to Canada. "She had access to practically all secret documents in that office and [disclosed] the contents of some [to the Russians]".*

The report ended on an ominous note: "The evidence indicates that, in addition, many other agents were active and that information more intrinsically important has been disclosed."

* One hour after the Government's report was issued, the four accused were arraigned in Ottawa's Magistrate's Court, charged with violating Canada's Official Secrets Act. Mrs. Woikin pleaded guilty; the others entered no plea at all. Conviction carries a maximum penalty of $2,000 fine and seven years' imprisonment.

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