Play along with this little game. Read the following sentence and guess the year:
“About five years ago the U.S. authorities had concluded that the possibility of a covert attack on the United States with atomic, chemical, or biological weapons could not be ignored.”
It seems like something from the post-9/11 era of airport security hysteria.
But this particular sentence was uttered in 1957 as the United States sought permission to operate radioactive detection devices on Canadian trains.
Were passengers on this train secretly smuggling radioactive material? (Probably not.)
Credit: Library and Archives Canada/PA-149461
The short story below has the echoes of so many of our current difficulties with pre-clearance and border security. (But I’ve chosen to write about it for a much less sophisticated reason!)
The Mark II
Like my first newsletter on “Canada’s Cold War deepfakes”, the story of the radioactive detection devices revolves around a group of men huddled around a meeting. This time the meeting was in the Conference Room of the East Block of Parliament Hill.
There were three Americans in the conference room. An official from the Department of State in Washington, man from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, and Frank Russell of U.S. Customs. Russell had brought along a 10 pound machine that measured about 4” by 8” by 12”.
This was the “Mark II” radioactive detection device.
His audience in the East Block’s Conference Room included J. Timmerman of the Department of External Affairs, three officers of the RCMP, a man from National Revenue and two others from the Defence Research Board (including Mr. J. Koop, who I wrote about in “Posting a Chap: Attaching a Canadian intelligence officer to British intelligence in Cold War Germany”).
Russell’s job was to demonstrate to the Canadians that the Mark II worked - that it could detect tiny amounts of radioactive material hidden in luggage and without even opening a suitcase.
Ultimately, this was an effort to get the Government of Canada to agree to allow Americans to start operating this device in Canada.
The Threat
In the early 1950s, the American, British, and Canadian intelligence organizations had all given serious thought to the “clandestine use of atomic weapons by the USSR.” (See my article on Cold War defectors for the Canadian assessments on this threat.)
The United States took this concern much more seriously than the Brits or Canadians. You can read a CIA Special National Intelligence Estimate on the matter on the CIA’s website. (This CIA estimate is actually more measured than what the Canadians were told by their American guests.)
During the meeting in Ottawa, the American representatives described their fears: That Soviet nationals might smuggle small amounts of radioactive material into the United States and then deposit it at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., or their diplomatic mission in New York City. Over time, they might build up a significant amount of the stuff.
If the Cold War turned hot, and war broke out, the Soviets might explode the accumulated fissionable material, destroying the city or cities. Or, the Americans told their Canadian colleagues, Soviet “subversive agencies” in the United States might take the material to the edge of a Strategic Air Command air field and detonate it, destroying the base.
The Americans believed that if the Soviets were going to bring fissionable material into the U.S., they would smuggle it in the personal baggage of Soviet nationals.
During the Cold War, Soviet citizens could not just show up at any U.S. port of entry. They were restricted to entering the country at San Antonio, Laredo, New York’s Idlewild airport and the New York piers, and Washington, D.C. These were, at least in theory, the choke points to guard against radioactive smuggling.
The United States already used massive, 800 pound “Mark I” detectors at large ports to search for radioactive material. The Mark II was designed to meet the challenge of scanning passenger luggage. By 1957, it was already in operation at the entry sites listed above, and the Americans were planning on buying more devices (at $680 a pop) to cover an additional 90 ports.
But there was a loophole. And this is why the Americans and their Mark II machine were in Canada. The vulnerability was the Montreal-to-New York train.
Soviet-bloc nationals were allowed to enter the United States on this train line, and so the United States wanted permission to inspect the baggage on this train — and to inspect it in Canada.
In the American plan, U.S. customs officer would operate the Mark II in Canada, scanning the baggage of passengers getting on the train to New York. Since the U.S. officers would have no investigatory or arrest powers in Canada, they would allow the radioactivity-smuggler to cross into the United States before swooping down upon them.
The demonstration of the machine went well enough. It convinced the Canadians that the machine worked.
But then the Americans went on to highlight just how well it had worked in the field...
The use of the detectors had “already resulted in the seizure of a large consignment of undeclared watches.” (Luminous, or glow-in-the-dark, watch dials in the 1940s and 1950s glowed with radium paint.)
The larger detectors had found a “shipment of radio active tea” (!), some substances being sent to laboratories and, stunningly, “a number of persons who had taken or were in possession of radio active medicines.”
While the detectors may have found some radioactive people, “no fissionable material or weapons had so far been discovered.”
The Difference
The Americans were impressed at how well informed the Canadians seemed to be on both the science of detection and the issue of bomb smuggling. (As I said at the top, the Canadians had thought about the clandestine introduction of atomic bombs.)
I have not located any Canadian documents on the subject of the detection devices. But it seems to me that while the Canadians had thought about the problem, they had come to a different conclusion than the Americans.
My guess can one day be tested against Canadian records. For now, I think that the Canadians believed it unlikely that Soviet nationals would repeatedly smuggle small amounts of radioactive material into the United States to build a bomb that would only be used in case the Cold War turned hot. (The one exception to this doubt lay with the RCMP officers, one of whom seemed particularly excited and “granted the gravity of the threat.”)
The other concern, hinted at above, was something we still observe today (for example with reference to the recent NEXUS debacle). This is the challenge associated with pre-clearance and sovereignty. The Canadians simply did not wish for the Americans to do this type of screening on Canadian soil, and the Americans seemed unwilling to find a more creative solution.
The Canadians hinted that they might be interested in gaining access to the machines and operating them in Canada. This would have been significantly different than American officers scanning Canadians (and others) in Canada.
It does not seem that Canada obtained the devices, possibly due to the Canadians’ lack of interest but also American rules limiting the sharing of atomic information. (The briefing by Russell had to be cleared with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to make sure he was not sharing restricted information with the Canadians).
It’s Hard to Say No
The Canadians had never wanted to have this meeting in Ottawa.
They had stalled for a year before, and American diplomats had recorded the “very obvious lack of enthusiasm” in Ottawa. Canadian diplomats are, and always have been, very careful about being put in a position where the have to say “no” to the United States. And this was a non-starter.
After the meeting, the Canadians tried to smother the issue with silence.
In November 1957, The Counsellor at the American Embassy in Ottawa, Milton Rewinkel, tried to follow up on the June meeting. He sought out Timmerman of External Affairs to try and push for Ottawa’s agreement. Rewinkel’s record of his approach, and Timmerman’s response, is why I like this story so much.
It is important to keep in mind what had happened in between the June meeting and the November follow-up by Rewinkel. In October 1957, the Soviet Union had shocked the world and launched a satellite, Sputnik. The launch had enormous implications for the Cold War and nuclear warfare. If the Soviet Union could launch a satellite into space, it would not be long until it could launch a missile that could land on the United States. Sputnik was the unmistakeable signal that the Soviet Union and the United States would soon be able to destroy each other with intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Rewinkel found Timmerman and asked him again about the possibility of the Americans using detection devices to find smuggled fissionable material on trains in Canada. Rewinkel recorded:
“Timmerman’s immediate reaction was to exclaim, ‘Oh, my God!”
I laugh every time I read this. It sums it all up so nicely.
Timmerman clearly could not believe the Americans were still at it. He asked Rewinkel if the United States was still serious about this issue. Surely Sputnik had changed American assumptions (which I think the Canadians always considered suspect).
Rewinkel said, yes, the United States was still serious. Timmerman “reiterated the lack of Canadian enthusiasm” but said he would try and find an answer.
As of yet, I do not know if an answer was ever found to the American request. In 1958, U.S. officials were still complaining about “the unwillingness of even such a friendly country as Canada to allow our Customs officials to employ detection devices on Canadian territory.”
If I find the Canadian side of this story, I will write about it. But if you find the Canadian records first, please let me know!
**
There are, of course, stories of the Soviets planting nuclear suitcase bombs in the United States, but these are disputed. And Russia has demonstrated the destructive power of even small amounts of radioactive material as a weapon of assassination.
I have not used footnotes in the piece above, but all quotations and information, unless otherwise hyperlinked, is drawn from documents in Record Group 59, Bureau of European Affairs, Country Director for Canada, Records Relating to Military Matters, 1942-1966, Box 9, “Canada Atomic Detection Devices,” National Archives and Research Administration, College Park, Maryland.
If you’re looking for the Canadian side, there is both a DL(1) and DL(2) connection.