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
Thanks for the note. Yes, it is not clear to me at all whether Canada was receiving current intelligence derived from Gordievsky before the defection. Yes, I agree on the seemingly untimely nature of the information relevant to the CAST Brigade Group, but the IACLO clearly saw value in it. It may be interesting, if anyone does a deep dive on the Canadian decision-making regarding CAST, to see whether and how this intelligence shows up in the records.
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.
I had no idea about the visit! That is a great tidbit. Where was the classroom? I am hoping we will get some more information on this. I think some of the sanitizations in this package are unnecessary, and I have complained about them. And I think there is certainly more information in other files -- we just need to find them!
Hmm, I'm not sure which room it was in. I think that our seminar room was either in UC or some of the rooms in Trinity that later became the Munk School. It was a small group, just our class of 10 to 15 students. I do hope that you get more released. I'm amazed in your posts by how difficult it seems to be to get information released in Canada compared to the US Archives system.
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
Thanks for the note. Yes, it is not clear to me at all whether Canada was receiving current intelligence derived from Gordievsky before the defection. Yes, I agree on the seemingly untimely nature of the information relevant to the CAST Brigade Group, but the IACLO clearly saw value in it. It may be interesting, if anyone does a deep dive on the Canadian decision-making regarding CAST, to see whether and how this intelligence shows up in the records.
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.
I had no idea about the visit! That is a great tidbit. Where was the classroom? I am hoping we will get some more information on this. I think some of the sanitizations in this package are unnecessary, and I have complained about them. And I think there is certainly more information in other files -- we just need to find them!
Hmm, I'm not sure which room it was in. I think that our seminar room was either in UC or some of the rooms in Trinity that later became the Munk School. It was a small group, just our class of 10 to 15 students. I do hope that you get more released. I'm amazed in your posts by how difficult it seems to be to get information released in Canada compared to the US Archives system.
Another excellent contribution from Canada Declassified. Many thanks to Tim Sayle for his work.