ESPIONAGE: The Mounties Get Their Man

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And the KGB loses out in a double-agent sting

It was designed as a textbook cloak-and-dagger intelligence operation. Clandestine meetings were arranged by passing filmed instructions that were stuffed inside a hollow stick or in a specially designed pack of Marlboro cigarettes. There were coded passwords and complex secret-signal systems. Using these elaborate precautions, the Soviet mission in Ottawa must have felt secure as KGB agents within the embassy seemed to have recruited a spy from Canada's equivalent of the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For nine months, in fact, a Mountie had pocketed KGB bribes totaling $30,500 in exchange for what appeared to be highly sensitive information.

Last week the plot blew up in the KGB's face. Thirteen Russians, most of them diplomats in Ottawa, were unmasked as spies and banned from Canada. It was clear, moreover, that from the start it was the Mounties who had been fielding the classic textbook operation: a sting by a double agent. The KGB appeared so deceived by the Mounties' ruse that one astounded Canadian official said, "One wonders—do they assign their better people here? They seem to have been incredibly crude, gauche and maladroit."

Announcing the expulsion to the House of Commons, Donald Jamieson, Secretary of State for External Affairs, said that an unnamed Mountie was approached in early 1977 by two Soviet diplomats (one of whom he knew from a previous assignment). The officer was offered "an unlimited sum of money" to provide profiles of his R.C.M.P. colleagues and information about the force's counterespionage operations.

The Mountie immediately told his superiors about the offer. He was instructed to take the money, turn it over to the government and, according to Jamieson, begin passing "carefully screened nonsensitive information or completely fabricated material" to his KGB contact. The contact was Igor Vartanian, who as First Secretary for Sports and Cultural Affairs at the Soviet mission in Ottawa traveled widely around the country, especially in connection with the annual Canada-U.S.S.R. hockey matches.

The Mountie met seven times with Vartanian, with other Russians involved in arranging the rendezvous; some provided transportation, while others posted cryptic signals. One method was to stick tapes to a pillar in an Ottawa shopping center. According to written instructions given the Mountie, "Vertical position of tape—operation takes place in Montreal. Horizontal position—operation takes place in Ottawa. Yellow color—call for the regular meeting. Black color—call for instant meeting."

But the KGB has posted its last tape.

Convinced that the entire network was in the R.C.M.P.'S noose, the government last week summoned Soviet Ambassador Alexander Yakovlev to the Department of External Affairs. He was told that Canada had "irrefutable evidence" of the caper. Yakovlev was handed a stern protest and coldly informed that eleven of his colleagues were being kicked out of Canada; two others, in Moscow on leave, would not be allowed to return.