INDICATIONS ARE THAT CANADA, BRITAIN AND U.S.A. ARE ENGAGED ON BIG SPY HUNT

Wanganui Chronicle, 31 May 1950, Page 5

INDICATIONS ARE THAT CANADA, BRITAIN AND U.S.A. ARE ENGAGED ON BIG SPY HUNT

OTTAWA, May 29 (Rec. 6 pm).— i Indications today are that Canada is engaged, with Britain and the United • States, on an anti-espionage drive, the I pace of which has not been matched ■ since the celebrated spy trials of 1946,1 says the Canadian Press correspond- i ent. There are signs it may blow wide open any time, but it is all submerged and curtained off. Nobody in Ottawa is talking. Officials of the Justice Department and Royal Canadian Mounted Police will say nothing about London reports that

| a Canadian will be arrested in an inI ternational atomic spy investigation. ’ They make no attempt to deny reports; they simply refuse to talk abeut them. I The iron-bound reticence and other hints, however, make it obvious that ) the “mounties” and anti-espionage 1 officials are co-operating behind the scenes with British and American police in an effort to exploit the arrests of Klaus Fuchs and Harry Gold into a full-scale offensive against I Communist espionage. In fact it is possible the "Mounties' already have

evidence that could warrant a reopening of at least one of the 1946 trials which ended in acquittal. This evidence is provided by a notebook seized in 1946 from one of those later acquitted. In it was found the name of Fuchs. That name did not emerge with any significance in 1946. It has big significance now. Under the sweeping Official Secrets Act, the fact alone of possessing the notebook would establish presumption of guilt against its owner, unless he could explain the presence of Fuch’s name to a jury's satisfaction.