The OVATION File
What Canada learned from Oleg Gordievsky
In July 1985, Oleg Gordievsky was exfiltrated from the Soviet Union by the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The dramatic escape of the KGB defector, hidden in the boot of a car, was recently recounted by Ben McIntyre in his The Spy and the Traitor. The account, I think, lives up to its subtitle: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War.
There is a Canadian connection suggested in The Spy and the Traitor. It was, perhaps, a Czech defector living in Canada who had first suggested that Gordievsky might be turned. I had this in mind when I researched and wrote an article on Canada’s defector policy during the Cold War.
While combing through finding aids made available by the Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project, I noticed a file folder with the notation OVATION. This was one of Gordievsky’s codenames — the one issued to him when he arrived in the United Kingdom and began his series of debriefings, sharing more intelligence and recollections that had not previously passed to the British when he’d been their agent.
In December 2020, I requested the OVATION file from Library and Archives Canada. I waited. And I waited. I found out, as the result of an Office of the Information Commissioner investigation, that the files were only ordered and digitized for review in January 2024. Ms. Maynard, the Commissioner, ordered LAC to release the records. LAC resisted and filed a Federal Court review of the Order, and the wait continued.
Finally, LAC has released a heavily sanitized version of the archival file folder “Political Affairs - Political Asylum (OVATION),” in RG25/R219, BAN 2017-00434-0, box 7.
The archival file is not about Gordievsky’s recruitment (he wasn’t OVATION then). Instead, it is the paper trail of the OVATION Reports that the British passed to Canada in the 1980s.
On one hand, if you were to measure the release by the grey bars of sanitization, the file itself is not particularly revelatory. What remains in this folder is the bureaucratic bumf of intelligence sharing, rather than the intelligence reports themselves.
The SIS agents who spoke with Ben MacIntyre have shared far more information with the public than is available here. Indeed, even the United States has made available the names of some of Gordievsky’s debriefing reports — the names of which have been sanitized, in toto, by the Government of Canada.
The file obviously confirms that the Canadians did in fact receive OVATION reports. But it also reveals that Canada did not receive all of the intelligence provided by OVATION. (The Canadians figured this out themselves and did try to pursue access to more than was initially offered to them.) This is a useful corrective for those who assume that the near-automatic sharing of Cold War signals intelligence between Canada and its allies applied equally to human intelligence. It did not.
The most interesting aspects of the documents— beyond the fact that the Canadians constantly referred to the reports themselves as “interesting”—are the bureaucratic channels by which this intelligence information reached Canada and then which parts of the Government of Canada saw the OVATION reports and when.
Below are some rough and ready reactions to the administrivia of OVATION. It will take more digging to make sense of the files, but I think there are interesting elements within that will be useful for students and scholars of Canadian intelligence history. That’s why the records are now available on Canada Declassified, here.
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The file drops us in the middle of November 1985, beginning with a telegram from the Intelligence Advisory Committee Liaison Officer (IACLO), a Canadian official posted to the High Commission in London with responsibilities for maintaining links to British intelligence. Or at least parts of British intelligence, including the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and, it seems, SIS. There was also, at this time, a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Liaison Officer (LO) in London, who presumably had closer links to the Security Service.
The November telegram from the IACLO went straight to Blair Seaborn, the Intelligence and Security Co-ordinator, Security and Intelligence Secretariat, in the Privy Council Office. Students of Canadian foreign relations will recognize Seaborn of the Seaborn Missions — the backchannel conduit to North Vietnam during the American war there. (You can read about the Seaborn Missions on Canada Declassified here).
Seaborn had sent some “guidance” to the IACLO. The subject of the message from London was “OVATION,” and so by this point the defection was known to the Canadians. (This suggests there should be more records about OVATION somewhere else in Ottawa.)
Despite the heavy sanitization of the cable, it is clear that the Canadian liaison officer was impressed with the “cooperation and assistance extended by [presumably, someone or some part of the British government].” The IACLO seems to suggest the British have “truly been helpful in dealing with a variety of questions from Ott[awa] and in providing us [sanitized] in a wider number of areas.” The Canadians were “now making greater use of [whatever it is], and, according to the IACLO, this has “assisted our operations considerably.”
It is difficult to read between the lines here, and it is not clear that the IACLO’s enthusiasm is specifically about Canadian access to OVATION reports or a broader improvement in intelligence sharing between London and Ottawa. I think it is the former. It seems likely that this was near the beginning of the transit of OVATION reports to Ottawa.
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Almost all of the documents in the archival folder are diplomatic cables or numbered letters from the High Commission in London.
It seems that when the IACLO received a report, that person would send a brief cable to External Affairs (XA) advising that the report had been received from the British. The IACLO would often include some details about the report itself in the cable. The full report, in paper form, would be put under cover of a numbered letter, and both the letter and report were sent to Ottawa by diplomatic pouch. (The folder has been stripped of the OVATION reports themselves.)
April 1, 1986, is the date of the first cable in the folder that fits this pattern, but it was not the first report received: “Have received another report in the OVATION series entitled “[sanitized.]” Later that month: “Have received an interesting OVATION document which is essentially [sanitized.] Report contains some interesting info on [sanitized] and some info related to [sanitized.]”
The cables from the IACLO also note when the CSIS Liaison Officer in London had also been provided, separately, with a copy of the report. The CSIS Liaison Officer (sometimes referred to in the plural) would “pass” the documents to CSIS headquarters. (Indeed, in some cases, it seems the IACLO received a copy of the Ovation report directly from the CSIS Liaison Officer, rather than a British contact.)
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In addition to the cables and numbered letters, there are some other miscellaneous documents in the file, including a letter to the Director, Political Intelligence Division (INP), Department of External Affairs, from the IACLO. It is an assessment of OVATION. It remains heavily sanitized but is still tantalizing. Of OVATION, the liaison officer writes:
“He is regarded as definitely being [sanitizied.]
This comes through in the observations he has had to offer on so many subjects. Indeed, it is one of the reasons why [sanitized].
It would appear to be the case that OVATION was, and is, [sanitized.]”
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The archival folder provides some information about the distribution of OVATION Reports in Ottawa, including distribution in the Department of External Affairs and a bit of friction between the Privy Council Office and XA.
The reports were held by the Political Intelligence Division in INP, but INP would share them with others in External Affairs on a “your eyes only” basis with no other circulation. It would be interesting to trace what divisions received reports, as this might help indicate what type of information OVATION was providing.
The struggle with PCO concerned whether and how PCO should receive its own copies of the reports directly from London.
In October 1986, the Privy Council Office cabled the IACLO directly: “Due to SANDI [Security and Intelligence] and IAC interest could you send us copies of all future OVATION reports.”
The IACLO wrote back to say that “Unfortunately, I am not in position to f[or[w[ar]d additional copies of OVATION reports.” The explanation was sanitized, but included the detail that External Affairs would now receive two copies of each report, and that CSIS HQ also received copies. The IACLO suggested to PCO “it would be easier if you could obtain from either EXTAFF or CSIS one of their copies.”
In December the IACLO wrote to External on this issue: “I am coming under some pressure from IAC and PCO/SANDI sect[ion]s to provide direct to them copies of OVATION reports.” The IACLO had received another request to send the reports directly to the coordinator. Clearly the IACLO felt the “existing arrangements which we have with [sanitized]” prevented this.
In January, a PCO official raised the issue directly with External Affairs. The XA officers claimed that the “very sensitive nature of OVATION reporting necessitates close handling of product (closer than for [sanitized], for example).”
External Affairs had been giving reports to Seaborn, directly, on an “ad hoc basis.” But what the PCO wanted was for the reports to get to Seaborn “through PCO staff,” meaning that it would work its way through other officials at PCO, allowing more officials to read the intelligence. External Affairs rejected the idea to ensure the material was “closely restricted to minimum number of recipients.”
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External Affairs was also not willing, at least at first, to automatically share OVATION reports with the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).
In an Ottawa-based discussion of who should receive what reports, officials in External Affairs claimed to have “no/no objection [sanitized] making reports available to CSIS, since we understand that they are normally sent a copy of [sanitized] released to us, and assume that this holds true for OVATION material.”
But the same was not necessarily true of the Communications Security Establishment:
“As far as CSE is concerned, we would wish to review reports and release them on [an] individual basis depending inter alia on relevance to CSE mandate.”
The file contains a letter, dated from November 1987, to Peter Hunt, Chief, CSE, following up on a November 5 conversation with John M. Fraser, Director General, Foreign Intelligence Bureau. This seems to be the start of XA sharing OVATION reports with CSE — along with a warning to Hunt that “OVATION remains a highly delicate source” and that “knowledge of this material within your organization be limited to those with an immediate need to know.” Hunt agreed.
By December, CSE had received copies of OVATION reports from External Affairs.
CSE then worked through the reports and found cross-references to what seemed to be other reports not in Canada’s possession. The IACLO was asked to investigate.
This diligent work was one of the ways in which Canadian officials learned they were not getting the whole picture from London. This became especially obvious in the summer of 1987.
In July of that year, Canadian officials held a conference in Ottawa with officials from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The UK representative at the conference “referred to OVATION as the source of certain reports on [sanitized].” Whatever it was, the Canadians reviewed their OVATION files and could “find no reports answering this description.” In other words, the British had information from OVATION that the Canadians did not have.
The liaison officer was tasked with finding out if these reports existed, and whether they could be released to Canada. It seems the Canadians did, ultimately, get ahold of these reports by September 1987.
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There are some hints as to what sort of intelligence information was being received.
In February 1987, the IACLO believed intelligence coming from OVATION would be useful to Canadian decision-makers: “I wonder if this does not/not present an opportunity to inject a useful ‘intelligence perspective’ into the decision-making process concerning our commitment of [sanitized.]
A later section of the cable makes clear this information was related to the CAST BG commitment. CAST BG was the Canadian Air-Sea Transportable Brigade Group, a Canadian unit stationed in Canada but ready to deploy to Norway if the Norwegian government asked for it.
“If we are, in fact, engaged in reconsidering our CAST BG commitment, perhaps OVATION’s views can somehow be fed into the process as a small contribution. They may have an impact on thinking.”
Also, if Ottawa wishes, “I could seek to have [sanitized] put some follow-up questions of a specific nature to him.”
It seems like OVATION intelligence was at least considered in analysis of this Canadian CAST BG commitment (a commitment that ended in 1989): Ottawa replied that the particular OVATION Report was “being made available to principal players in EA and DND concerned with this subject. On balance, we do not/not believe an approach to OVATION is required, as report itself [sanitized].”
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By July 1987, the Ovation series was coming to an end; “To close out the series, two final reports have been issued.”
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In May 1991, a PCO official learned that DND’s Soviet analysts seemed never to have seen any of the OVATION reports. This confirms how closely the reports were held. But the note itself is quirky because of the notation at the top of the document. CX is the styling used by the first chief of the British SIS - the original “C” - to refer to human intelligence reports. This symbol, which began in the 1920s and is still in use in SIS today, was used to protect information about Gordievsky in Ottawa in 1991, too.
Very 'interesting' as always. Curious through what other channels Gordievsky's material was circulated to allies, and how much more Canada was getting out of this specific liaison arrangement. Also curious about nature of the reports. Most references here are dated post-defection, so debriefings rather than current intel. In that sense, one wonders how useful for debate on Canadian commitment to NATO
In 1992, Christopher Andrew brought a disguised Gordievsky to our grad class at UofT - well, he had a goatee. The USSR was gone but there was still some risk, they explained. Too bad the Archives didn’t release more interesting stuff than all that “bumf”. I would like to know more.