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No Sense of Evil: Espionage, the Case of E. Herbert Norman, by James Barros (Deneau, 300 pp., $24.95)* Students of ancient history will recall that in 1951 the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee turned up the name of E. Herbert Norman in its researches into the Institute of Pacific Relations, until then perhaps the most successful Soviet instrumentality in subverting U.S. foreign policy in the Far East. At the time, Norman was an important and ubiquitous figure in Canada’s foreign service. The very suggestion that he could be a member of an underground Communist apparatus created a minor furor.

When the Senate subcommittee adduced in executive session evidence linking Canadian Foreign Minister Lester Pearson to NKVD operations— Pearson had been Norman’s passionate protector—the air turned blue behind the scenes in Washington and Ottawa. Elizabeth Bentley, a former Communist espionage agent whose every statement survived probative tests, told the subcommittee that Pearson, as counselor to Canada’s wartime embassy in Washington, had supplied secret information to one of the people she ran. But this shocking information was swept under the rug.

RT

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Ralph de Toledano

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No Sense of Evil: Espionage, the Case of E. Herbert Norman, by James Barros (Deneau, 300 pp., $24.95)* Students of ancient history will recall that in 1951 the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee turned up the name of E. Herbert Norman in its researches into the Institute of Pacific Relations, until then perhaps the most successful Soviet instrumentality in subverting U.S. foreign policy in the Far East. At the time, Norman was an important and ubiquitous figure in Canada’s foreign service. The very suggestion that he could be a member of an underground Communist apparatus created a minor furor.

When the Senate subcommittee adduced in executive session evidence linking Canadian Foreign Minister Lester Pearson to NKVD operations— Pearson had been Norman’s passionate protector—the air turned blue behind the scenes in Washington and Ottawa. Elizabeth Bentley, a former Communist espionage agent whose every statement survived probative tests, told the subcommittee that Pearson, as counselor to Canada’s wartime embassy in Washington, had supplied secret information to one of the people she ran. But this shocking information was swept under the rug.