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‘Strangely Easy to Obtain’:Canadian Passport Security,1933–73Steve HewittPublished online: 23 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Steve Hewitt (2008) ‘Strangely Easy to Obtain’: CanadianPassport Security, 1933–73, Intelligence and National Security, 23:3, 381-405, DOI:10.1080/02684520802137014

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‘Strangely Easy to Obtain’: CanadianPassport Security, 1933–73

STEVE HEWITT

Since December 1999 when an Algerian member of Al Qaeda was

arrested at the US border carrying a fraudulently obtained Canadian

passport, the issue of Canadian passport security has been widely

discussed. However, the controversy is nothing new. This article explores

the long history of the misuses of Canadian passports, which began in the

early 1930s, and the efforts by the Canadian government to combat these

abuses. These efforts involved considerable debate within the Canadian

government, specifically between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

and the Department of External Affairs, over what measures were

acceptable. Ultimately, the discussions around passport security have

relevance to debates in the present over biometric passports and identity

cards.

INTRODUCTION

Standing in Ottawa, the Attorney General of the United States did not hesitate

in his praise: ‘Our study of the policing and immigration arrangements along

the Canadian border reveals a highly satisfactory state of preparation and

vigilance on the part of the Canadian authorities. Citizens of the United States

can have full assurance as to conditions on the northern boundary by virtue of

vigorous steps which have been taken by the Canadian Government.’ The

joint press release offered a blander assessment of the purpose of the

gathering: ‘Canadian and American delegations . . . met yesterday and today

in an attempt to work out methods of speeding up and simplifying the

formalities necessary for border crossing, while at the same time arranging

for closer cooperation between the two countries with regard to protecting the

frontier against subversive elements.’1 Only the final reference to ‘subversive

elements’ offers a clue that the meeting in question did not occur after 11

September 2001, and that the name of the Attorney General was not John

Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales, but Robert H. Jackson.

Intelligence and National Security, Vol.23, No.3, June 2008, pp.381–405ISSN 0268-4527 print 1743-9019 onlineDOI: 10.1080/02684520802137014 ª 2008 Taylor & Francis

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The theme of Canada as a threat to the United States, however, has

repeatedly re-emerged between Jackson’s speech in 1940 and the present.

The high point in the present was not 11 September 2001, but 14 December

1999 when a US immigration official at Port Angeles, Washington, noticed a

man with a Canadian passport in the name of Benni Noris acting suspiciously

as he sat in his car after crossing over on a ferry. Noris was, in fact, Al Qaeda

member Ahmed Ressam and in his car’s trunk were explosives and bomb-

making equipment that he apparently intended to use as part of a millennium

plot against Los Angeles International Airport.2

Ressam’s arrest and subsequent conviction coupled with the attacks of 11

September sparked considerable discussion about Canadian government

policies in a wide range of areas including immigration. Rhetoric about

Canada being a ‘Club Med for terrorism’, or a ‘big Jihad aircraft carrier for

launching strikes against the United States’ abounded. That Ressam carried a

fraudulently obtained Canadian passport seemed particularly significant and

sparked criticism of the laxity by which such documents are obtained and, in

turn, efforts by the Canadian government to improve passport security.3

As usual in such matters, ignored in the process was any sort of historical

context to the issue at hand, namely passport security. The aim of this paper is to

fill in this missing dimension by examining the history of abuses of Canadian

passports and efforts by the Canadian government to curtail such activities.

Far from being a recent occurrence, the issue of passport security stretches back

to at least the first half of the 1930s, and, as this paper will argue, it will continue

well into the future not because of a problem with a laxity in Canadian security –

this may well exist but does not explain why Canadian passports have been

targeted – but because of the nature of Canada itself: specifically its proximity to

the United States, its perception in the world, and its multicultural nature. The

topic itself also contains elements of current debates in countries such as the

United Kingdom about identity cards and civil liberties.

THE PASSPORT: A BRIEF HISTORY

The development of the Canadian passport is part of a much longer history that

also intertwines with that of the British Empire. Although documents

providing the bearer with permission to travel either inside or outside of a

political entity have long existed, the first systematic use of passports began in

France in the era of the Revolution. Initially, the passport was an effort to

control the movement of people within France and as such aided the police

force in its efforts to keep track of those it deemed a threat to the state. Next,

the new revolutionary assembly brought in a requirement that merchants and

foreigners seeking to leave the country had to obtain passports from their local

districts in the case of the former and from the ambassadors of their countries

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of origin in the case of the latter. For some in the revolutionary assembly,

however, the passport remained a controversial and repressive measure.4

After the French Revolution and the time of Napoleon, passports fell into

general disuse across Europe. By the middle of the nineteenth century,

Britain, whose citizens disliked the procedure for acquiring a passport, had no

requirement for visiting foreigners to provide any type of document remotely

resembling a passport.5

Despite the trend in the opposite direction, various forces would lead toward

the development of the modern passport system. The Industrial Revolution,

for example, sparked the growth of a middle class, which, in turn, eventually

desired travel and tourism.6 More significant was the rise of the modern state

as it replaced private interests in the governing of life. As part of a process of

‘state formation’, the state extended its tentacles into wide aspects of ordinary

life. It also acquired a monopoly over the power to define citizenship and

control the movement of individuals. States, in the words of sociologist John

Torpey, offered their ‘enduring embrace of their citizens’, with the passport

being one additional means of control. Having a monopoly on the definition of

citizenship became increasingly important with the subsequent rise in the

twentieth century of the welfare state.7 In that sense the passport represented

an effort to construct an identity as racialized and gendered as that generated

by any other state structure. For example, well into the late 1940s, married

women in Canada were not allowed their own passport but, like children, they

had to be included on their husband’s document.8 In a very real sense the

passport has never been a neutral document.

The final key inspiration for the modern passport era was World War I.

Prior to the war, serious international discussions about moving toward the

elimination of passports had occurred. The conflict’s outbreak quashed these

efforts as a number of countries, including the United States and the United

Kingdom, dramatically tightened documentary requirements. In the case of

the latter, the requirement that British citizens carry identity cards was

enacted. The end of the war brought renewed calls for the elimination of

passports but the continuation of restrictive passport requirements as a

response to the rise of Bolshevism and the reality of millions of refugees

meant such appeals had little chance of gaining support from many

governments.9 Instead international conferences, initially through the League

of Nations and later after World War II through the United Nations, were

organized to facilitate an efficient use of passports, especially through their

standardization.10 Passports were here to stay.

By that time, Canada had acquired its own distinctive passport. Beginning

in 1893, the Governor General of Canada (although the Department of State

did the actual processing) began to issue British passports to native-born

Canadians. Between 1909 and 1911, Canada’s Department of External Affairs

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gained control of the issuance of passports, although the documents continued

to be officially authorized by the Governor General and technically continued

to be a British passport. With war and the requirement of many nations for the

presentation of a passport for travel, the Canadian passport system expanded

dramatically, rising from 461 passports issued in 1914–15 to 30,600 in 1920–

21. A backlog in processing soon ensued, necessitating an expansion of

resources devoted to the issuing of passports.11

As with World War I, the government failed to anticipate the impact of its

sequel on the need for passports. In fact, anticipating a reduction in travel, it

cut the staff of the passport office from 14 to 6. Reacting to potential threats

to its security, the US government announced on 6 June 1940 that as of the

first of the next month Canadians would require passports and visas to enter

the US. Ottawa reacted quickly by expanding the passport staff to 113, setting

up additional offices, and creating a special eight page passport specifically

for those travelling to Canada’s southern neighbour.12

The need for passports only grew after 1945 with the advent of the main

phase of the Cold War. A Canadian delegation again participated in a

conference held to address the issue of passports, in this case the World

Conference on Passport and Frontier Formalities. Reflecting the post-war

problem of refugees, the Canadian government’s focus fell upon keeping out

unwanted immigrants and deporting those from among that number who

made it in. Passport security remained a secondary concern, although

Canada’s main security agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

(RCMP), was consulted on the issue in the lead up to the conference.13

In addition, in this period three important passport revolutions occurred.

One was the proclamation of the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1947, which

meant that for the first time Canadians would be called Canadian citizens

on their passports. This change ended the notion of a common British

nationality based on ties through the empire. A second shift involved

married women having their own passports instead of being automatically

added to those of their husbands. Then, in 1962, in a period of passport

reforms, the government created a separate passport branch and

introduced a new passport as part of a series of reforms related to

passport security.14

MISUSES OF CANADIAN PASSPORTS

Problems with the misuse of Canadian passports had been occurring since at

least the early 1930s in three general ways:

1. a genuine passport fraudulently obtained by misrepresentation on the part

of the applicant or on the part of the person processing the application;

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2. a counterfeit passport that involves the manufacture from scratch of a

passport that is made to look as authentic as possible;

3. the forging of a genuine passport, either in whole through the obtaining

of a blank copy or in part by reworking a legitimate one.15

All of these methods would be employed by different interests in an effort to

obtain and use Canadian passports. The version employed frequently

reflected the resources those in search of such documents could bring to

bear in pursuit of their goal. In general, three groups have sought to acquire

Canadian passports: foreign intelligence services, both of the friendly and

hostile variety, criminals, including drug and people smugglers, and terrorists

and terrorist organizations.

Among the first seekers of Canadian passports were foreign intelligence

services. In the early 1930s the RCMP reported to its political masters that

members of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) were attempting to

acquire birth certificates of dead Canadians. The implication of this effort was

that these would be used to obtain passports, possibly for Soviet ‘illegals’

(‘illegals’ are foreign intelligence agents sent to another nation with an

assumed identity). The RCMP would later discover that the small northern

Ontario town of Haileybury had become a favourite beginning in 1936 for a

process known as ‘tombstoning’. This procedure involved intelligence agents

compiling details of deceased citizens in order to acquire first birth

certificates and then passports. Haileybury became popular because fires in

1906 and 1922 had wiped out local records making it extremely difficult to

check on the background of passport applicants from the area.16

More passports came into the hands of Soviet intelligence later in the

1930s during the Spanish Civil War. Many Canadians arriving as volunteers

for the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion turned their passports over to members

of the Communist International (COMINTERN) in Paris before continuing

on to Spain. Some of these documents, especially from among the

approximately 600 Canadians killed in action, apparently later ended up in

Moscow.17 By 1940, hundreds of Canadians and thousands of American

passports were allegedly under Soviet control, prompting Federal Bureau of

Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover to make a special trip to Ottawa

to discuss the issue.18 Already in 1938 a Soviet military intelligence illegal

carrying a Canadian passport in the name of Ignacy Witczak, obtained in part

through the assistance of Sam Carr, an important member of the Communist

Party of Canada, had arrived in the US.19

Another illegal would materialize in 1940 in, arguably, the most famous

misuse of a Canadian passport. On the evening of 20 August at a villa in

Mexico City a man purporting to be a Canadian by the name of Frank Jacson

used an axe for breaking ice to strike a fatal blow to the skull of Leon

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Trotsky. While he carried a passport in the name of Jacson and a revoked

naturalization certificate for a Frank Jackson, the passport number was for

Tony Babich, a naturalized Canadian who had died fighting in Spain.

Trotsky’s assassin presented numerous stories as to his real identity and

origin, such as that he was born in Iran to Belgian parents. In reality, his real

name was Ramon Mercader del Rio, and he was the son of a prominent

Spanish Communist. Both worked for Soviet intelligence.20

It was not just Soviet intelligence that misused Canadian passports before

and after World War II. Criminals had an interest in obtaining the documents,

including for the purpose of smuggling into Canada people from historically

non-preferred immigration sources such as Asia and the Caribbean.21 They

also sought the document for access to the United States or, in the case of one

individual, to flee justice in the United States. On 4 April 1968, James Earl

Ray shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. He

subsequently fled to Canada. There the RCMP later discovered, after

examining nearly 175,000 applications, he obtained a passport in the name of

George Ramon Sneyd. He subsequently used the document to travel to the

United Kingdom before being apprehended.22

Even interests generally well inclined toward the Canadian government

took their turns at using Canadian passports for their own ends, on occasion

with the assistance of Ottawa. There was the so-called ‘Canadian caper’ when

the Canadian embassy in Tehran, under the leadership of Ambassador Ken

Taylor, helped six Americans escape from Iran just after the Iranian

Revolution and the seizure of the US Embassy. At least that is the way the

media and respective governments portrayed it at the time. In reality the

Central Intelligence Agency, with the aid of fake Canadian passports

provided by Ottawa, ran the operation.23

More recently there have been the examples of the employment of

Canadian passports by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, and an

organization with a friendly relationship with Canadian intelligence. In a

book co-written with a Canadian journalist, former Mossad agent Victor

Ostrovsky describes visiting an Israeli laboratory dedicated to manufacturing

passports and where he observed a supply of over 1,000 blank ones of the

Canadian variety.24

Mossad has put Canadian passports to operational use, specifically on

assassination missions. In July 1973, as part of a mission depicted in Steven

Spielberg’s film Munich, Mossad agents, including at least one carrying a

false Canadian passport, murdered a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer,

Norway after they had mistakenly targeted him as having been involved in

the planning of the Munich Olympics massacre.25 Almost 20 years later, in

September 1997, two men carrying forged Canadian passports in the names

of real Canadians, Shawn Kendall and Barry Beads, were apprehended after a

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failed assassination attempt on a senior Hamas leader in Jordan. The arrests

sparked a diplomatic row between Canada and Israel and an allegation on the

part of Norman Spector, the former Canadian ambassador to Israel, that

Ottawa ignored the use of Canadian passports by Mossad because it

desperately needed the intelligence that the Israeli agency offered on

incoming immigrants and on terrorist and espionage activities in Canada.

Despite a pledge from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Mossad

would desist from its use of Canadian passports, it was alleged in November

1998 that two Canadians who resided in Israel had been repeatedly

approached by Mossad for the use of their passports, although a subsequent

investigation by the Canadian Department for Foreign Affairs and

International Trade (DFAIT) discounted the story.26

Finally, of course, for the present there is the misuse of Canadian passports

by terrorists. There is the aforementioned example of Ahmed Ressam/Benni

Noris. Allegations of other fake passports have materialized but in some

cases these actually involved real Canadian passports held by real Canadians.

And as a mark of how things had come full circle from the time of the

Spanish Civil War, a RCMP report in June 2003 alleged that Canadian

members of the Tamil Tigers killed in battle in Sri Lanka were having their

passports used by smugglers to bring illegal immigrants into Canada.27

ATTEMPTS TO END THE ABUSES

Since the 1930s, concerns about the security of Canadian passports have

existed, as has recognition in some quarters that something needed to be done

about it. Efforts to reform the passport system were, however, consistently

reactive, taking place only after major incidents of passport abuse had already

occurred. From the 1930s through to the 1960s, a consistent advocate of

passport reform was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This position

would see it at times in conflict with the Department of External Affairs,

which had control of the passport system. Due to this sometimes fractious

relationship, and because more than one government agency was involved,

meaningful reform to the passport system took decades to achieve.

Although the Mounted Police portrayed its campaign for passport reform

as being about reducing systemic abuses, its efforts also need to be

understood within the context of the Cold War. The RCMP, as did its

equivalents in other countries, recognized the potential for passports to be a

useful tool for tracking the activities of alleged subversives. During the Cold

War, it created a ‘Passport Control List’ containing the names of those it

maintained an interest in because of their politics. The force also established

a list of names of people refused passports on security grounds.28 Finally, the

Mounties continually supported requiring passport applicants to list the

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countries they intended to travel to as a means of monitoring the movements

of their targets. To the RCMP’s chagrin, External Affairs ended this practice

in 1956.29

There would always be a narrow division between the RCMP’s efforts at

passport reform designed to actually reduce passport fraud and changes that

would make it easy to monitor the activities of those with Canadian

passports the police had an interest in. This point aids in understanding the

frequent reluctance of External Affairs to do the RCMP’s bidding when it

came to passports and demonstrates both the complicated nature of

passports as a state document and the complexities of relations between

state agencies. Another related factor that explains the friction between the

two organizations is that some in External, possibly reflecting differences in

social class between the two institutions, viewed the RCMP as ignorant and

unsophisticated.30

The RCMP had a number of reasons for seeking passport reform. Seeking

to please Canada’s allies was one reason:

During my visit to your organization in 1935, and again in 1937, I

learned that there was a general feeling that Canadian passports were

both useful in facilitating international travel and strangely easy to

obtain. Instances were brought to my attention where most undesirable

people, criminals and prostitutes, had been deported [deleted] later to

return with Canadian passports. Some of these people, particularly

prostitutes, had never been in Canada. I was also forced to the

conclusion that as a result of occurrences of this sort, the reputation of

our country abroad had suffered, and the knowledge that our passports

were easily secured was being taken advantage of by undesirable

persons.31

Thus wrote RCMP Commissioner S.T. Wood in 1949 to the commissioner of

the American Immigration and Naturalization Service.

From early on the Canadian state asked why its passports were targeted for

misuse. Canada was not alone in being a target for fraud as other nations,

even the US, experienced passport fraud, as does the United Kingdom in the

twenty-first century.32 On the other hand, Canada did have a unique factor

that made its passports a particularly favourable target for abuse, particularly

from foreign intelligence agencies: geography. Canada’s close proximity to

the United States has always made it an inviting target for a wide range of

characters seeking to enter the US surreptitiously.33 Nothing could be done

about geography, but ensuring that those seeking to enter the US illegally did

not gain access to a Canadian passport in the first place became a priority of

the Mounted Police and later the government of Canada.

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A second aspect of the ‘why’ blends into the ‘how’. Because of the nature of

the Canadian passport application system, which in turn reflected the federal

nature of the Canadian political system, for much of the twentieth century it

made abuse easier. This factor was recognized early on but nonetheless

continued to be a problem. First, there was the documentation required to

establish an identity. The province of Quebec brought in civil birth certificates

only in 1926, and even then there was a lack of a centralized record system.

Before that change, baptismal records were used to demonstrate birth and thus

identity. Three other provinces brought in birth certificates only in the first

decade of the twentieth century. Additional aspects of the passport application

process made preventing fraud more difficult. In some cases the applicant’s

guarantor could be a travel agent, the path followed by James Earl Ray. Nor

were applicants required to appear in person. Instead applications could be

sent through the mail with only naturalized citizens and those applying for

passports outside of Canada having to produce documentation to demonstrate

their Canadian citizenship.34 Performing any kind of check on those outside of

Canada who applied for passports proved difficult for the young Canadian

state that had traditionally relied on the United Kingdom to manage its foreign

affairs. In the late 1940s, when consideration was given to allowing the

Canadian Trade Commissioner in Cairo the authority to issue passports, it was

to be allowed on condition that British intelligence be contacted to perform

security checks on passport applicants on behalf of the Canadian since it

lacked the capacity to do so itself.35

At the time, the Canadian government found itself up against foreign

intelligence agencies with the skill and resources necessary to falsify

Canadian passports effectively or to access them fraudulently. In the example

of Konon Molody, a Soviet illegal masquerading as a Canadian named

Gordon Lonsdale, the Canadian passport being used was an almost perfectly

forged document – the only non-Canadian aspect detectable in lab tests was

the glue used. The RCMP would later report that Soviet intelligence and its

allied agencies had devoted considerable resources to obtaining Canadian

passports from repatriated nationals but also by establishing travel agencies

in other countries and through the obtaining of legitimate provincial birth

certificates. In the aftermath of Mossad’s failed assassination operation in

Jordan in 1997, an RCMP scientific examination of the passports involved

found that they were, in the words of the lab report, ‘complete reproductions’.

This represented evidence to support Victor Ostrovsky’s claims regarding

Mossad’s passport production capabilities.36

The reality of bringing about change to the passport system remained, and

it brought the Mounted Police into conflict with the Department of External

Affairs. The first clash occurred in 1937. This was after the RCMP

recommended that because of fraud those allowed to vouch for a passport

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applicant be restricted to Police Magistrates, Collectors of Customs, Chief

Constables, and RCMP commissioned officers. The memorandum, which

also went to the Minister of Justice, ended up on the desk of O.D. Skelton,

Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs. He made no secret of his

distaste for the proposal:

Undoubtedly there have been a number of instances where passports

have been issued to persons who have misrepresented their identity and

status. . . . [I]n others they [RCMP examples] are quite erroneous . . . it

is necessary to see the matter in proper perspective. The Passport Office

in the last four calendar years has issued over ninety thousand new

passports and renewed some fourteen thousand exiting passports. It

may be that possibly ten passports out of twenty thousand a year are

wrongly issued. . . .The issue of passports cannot be made a branch of

the Police activities of the country.37

He added that a passport was not ‘a certificate of good character or political

orthodoxy’.38

Skelton’s response infuriated the senior leadership of the RCMP. In a letter

to the RCMP Commissioner, Assistant Commissioner S.T. Wood described

Skelton’s attitude as ‘unfortunate’ and amounting to an acceptance that

‘criminals, undesirables such as prostitutes, and leading functionaries of the

subversive movements can and will continue to obtain passports and

naturalization papers through misrepresentation due to our lax regulations’.39

In the end, he argued, ‘Canada’s reputation has suffered exceedingly on this

account’ as ‘this condition of affairs has been going on for some few years

without any attempt or prospect of rectifying the situation’.40 In a memo that

revealed for many in the RCMP hierarchy that the passport issue was more

about control than security, and which equated communism with crime,

Charles Rivett-Carnac, the RCMP officer in charge of its fledgling

intelligence branch, also took issue with Skelton’s interpretation:

In other words, in the view of the Under-Secretary of State, as long as

an applicant for a passport is a British Subject the fact that he is a

Communist or alternatively a habitual criminal does not enter into the

question insofar as issuance of the passport is concerned. It is not

considered that the view expressed by the Under-Secretary of State is

an entirely correct one but nevertheless it is the declared definition of

the Department concerned . . .41

Eventually Commissioner J.H. MacBrien took the matter up personally with

the Minister of Justice.42

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The arrival of the Cold War added new impetus to the RCMP’s efforts

at reforming the passport system. Particularly significant in this respect

was the release in 1946 of the final report of the royal commission,

established by the government to investigate the revelations of Soviet cipher

clerk Igor Gouzenko. In the course of its investigation, the Commission

discovered that for ideological reasons there had been complicity among

some passport staff and a Soviet agent, Sam Carr, in obtaining passport

applications on behalf of Soviet intelligence. The RCMP would later

investigate employees who worked in the passport office between 1935 and

1946.43 The role of passports in espionage prompted the commission to

recommend

That the practice and procedure in connection with the issue of

Canadian passports be revised. While not elsewhere referred to in this

Report, we have evidence indicating that naturalization and birth

certificates have also been improperly obtained. We therefore suggest

that the conditions surrounding the issue of these documents might be

the subject of consideration by the proper authority.44

In response, the RCMP made a concerted effort to improve the physical

passport, having its criminal laboratory theorize as to what could be done.45

External Affairs also began to express concern about the situation. Its chief

passport officer approached the Mounties for help in revising the passport

filing system. A.D.P. Heeney, Under-Secretary of State, requested that the

RCMP make enquiries ‘regarding the alleged misuse of Canadian passports

abroad’, which the Mounted Police subsequently did.46

The question of what could be done to stem the abuse would bedevil

Canadian officials for the remainder of the twentieth century. Ironically,

when it came to the technology of passports, Canada was in some ways ahead

of the game. In the 1930s, it was one of the first countries to adopt a special

typewriter for the production of passports.47 This measure, however, had

more to do with speeding up the process through standardization of

production than anything to do with security. Ultimately, with reform there

was to be a two-track approach: ascertain the extent of the abuse that had

already occurred and move to prevent any more from occurring through a

structural adjustment of the passport system.

The RCMP took the lead role in examining the extent of the problem.

‘Operation West Wind’ represented a major effort at cataloguing the

exploitation of Canadian passports by Russian intelligence. Launched in

1951, it was the idea of a leading light of the RCMP Security Service,

Inspector Terry Guernsey.48 ‘Operation West Wind’ began by working

backward, initially targeting passport application files and naturalization

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applications for the period between October and December 1936 because files

before this date had been destroyed. At its height the operation involved the

examination of 2,000 files a month, covering in total 121,180 passports for

the period 1 January 1936 to 30 June 1940.49

Once a list of suspected passports had been compiled, it became of matter

of further investigation to determine their authenticity or what had happened

to those individuals who carried them. Not all of the anomalies or even fraud

necessarily pertained to Soviet intelligence, but, according to one Mountie,

‘all parties mentioned on this file, should still be treated as suspects, as none

of those listed appear to have submitted an authentic passport application,

some have made obvious misstatements and in all cases suspicious

coincidences are noted’.50

Lists containing ‘certain persons believed to be in the employ of the

Russian Intelligence Service’ were circulated domestically and abroad to

embassies, consulates, commissions and allies. They also were sent to those

who might have firsthand knowledge of the individuals, such as the Mounted

Policeman in charge of visa control in London and a retired Mountie by the

name of John Leopold who had infiltrated the Communist Party of Canada in

the 1920s.51 The RCMP later established an ‘Illegals Desk’ for the sole

purpose of tracking such individuals. It remained active into the 1970s and

the West Wind file was still being circulated by the RCMP to External Affairs

in the context of continuing efforts to report the passport system in the late

1960s.52 Guernsey held out the hope that Canada, lacking a foreign

intelligence service of its own, might domestically produce foreign

intelligence of use to its allies and, in the process, ran the unspoken

assumption, improve its standing among them.53 Author Nigel West suggests

that in the end ‘Operation West Wind’ identified approximately 40 ‘illegals’,

although Guernsey in a 1953 letter mentioned only four Soviet agents having

been discovered.54

Equally important in this context was the RCMP’s relationship with allied

intelligence agencies. Lacking its own foreign intelligence service left

Canada dependent on the efforts of its friends. During World War II, attempts

by the Axis powers to obtain or use Canadian passports or those of other

nations were reported to the Canadian government by both British and

American intelligence. The FBI provided the Mounted Police with crucial

information on the Canadian passport involved in the Trotsky assassination.

Similarly, in the late 1940s, the Canadian government relied on British

intelligence for security checks on overseas passport applicants.55

What to do about the passport problem from a structural point of view

would be a recurrent issue until the end of the 1960s before emerging again

after December 1999. Again, the efforts at reform occurred in reaction to

incidents of passport abuse that in turn caused embarrassment to the

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Canadian government. In the 1950s, the impact of the Royal Commission on

Espionage was still fresh. In that decade External and the RCMP batted back

and forth suggestions on how to improve the passport system. Little was in

place to address the matter of security. Instead, the system had been designed

with ‘speed and efficiency [as] the first considerations’, and External

recognized that requiring additional identification from applicants would

slow the process. As it stood in the mid-1950s, the only security measures in

place involved cross-checking applications against file cards with the names

of people who had been stripped of their citizenship, owed the government

money, or had been deemed to be subversives by the RCMP. Fraudulent

applications discovered by Passport Office employees were due more to

‘good luck than by design’.56

Internally, External Affairs discussed appropriate changes to make the

system more secure, ruling out requiring applicants to appear in person at

post offices or even banks when applying for passports as impractical.57

Alternatively, the department suggested that the RCMP handle passport

applications in smaller communities, an option unacceptable to the police

because of the resources that would be required. In response, the RCMP,

warning that Soviet intelligence was using passport guarantors, requested that

External ‘card index the guarantor as well as the applicant’.58 In January

1956, ‘two young ladies from the R.C.M.P.’ began the process of indexing

passport guarantors beginning with the year 1954. Combined, they completed

cards for 5,000 guarantors a week, although the RCMP later decided that the

entire exercise had not been useful.59

The 1960s would see the passport security emerge again in a substantial

way. Again, major incidents of abuse inspired action. In January 1961,

‘Gordon Lonsdale’, a long-time Soviet illegal after adopting the identity of a

deceased Canadian child, was arrested in the United Kingdom. This event

and another serious incident later in the 1960s triggered a new round of soul-

searching and, for the first time, substantive change to the system for issuing

passports. Responding to a request in June 1961 from External Affairs for

suggestions, a senior RCMP intelligence officer proposed several solutions,

including state retention of expired passports, the addition of hidden marks to

passports, the benefit of the latter lasting only so as long as it took Soviet

intelligence to discover the marks, forcing repatriates to the Communist bloc

to turn over their Canadian passports before leaving, greater sharing of

passport information with Canada’s allies, and the creation of a passport

security officer within the Passport Office. Finally, and most controversially

of all, the force proposed the addition of a fingerprint to each passport.60

Ultimately, concluded the Mountie, only a complete security check by the

police of every passport applicant would suffice and, even then, this would

only reduce use of passports by criminals since the ability of Soviet

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intelligence to produce forged passports would render the security efforts

irrelevant.61

Eventually, the suggestions for reform made it to the cabinet of Prime

Minister John Diefenbaker in the form of a memorandum prepared by the

RCMP at the request of External Affairs. An accompanying appendix listed

the passport rules and regulations of Canada’s North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO) allies. The document outlined the general types of

passport misuse that occurred and then offered a range of suggestions,

prefaced with an admission that additional money and personnel would be

required, for addressing the problem. Topping the RCMP’s wish list was ‘a

system of compulsory national registration combined with fingerprinting

of all Canadian citizens at home and abroad’. This, the Mounties asserted,

would prevent real passports from being acquired through deceit but not other

types of fraud, and the cost and resources required would be enormous. There

remained the possibility of doing the fingerprinting alone, although the

security limitations would be even greater than when combined with national

registration. More practical measures were among those suggested: requiring

a personal appearance at the application stage; police investigations of each

applicant which for 1961 would have meant 139,000 cases; the re-

establishment of an index of guarantors; tougher legal penalties for passport

fraud; requiring applicants within Canada at a minimum to submit a birth

certificate or equivalent as proof of citizenship; and, finally, forcing the

applicant to pick up a completed passport in person. In the end, after

establishing a separate passport office, the cabinet decided to study further the

possibility of amending the laws governing passports. This meant that the

security status quo would reign even after the RCMP Commissioner, who

apologized for infringing on the turf of External Affairs, wrote directly to the

Minister of Justice, Donald Fleming, to encourage change.62

Questions about reform arose again two years later with the typical aspects

on display. The RCMP wrote to External to support a suggestion that travel

agencies inform the Passport Office when persons intended to travel to

Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. The police later forwarded statistics on

the frequency of such travel, although not an explanation as to how adding

the requirement would improve passport security. A separate warning in

March of 1964 said that Communist intelligence agencies were making a

concerted effort to infiltrate illegals into western countries, making passport

security improvements a necessity.63

At this point, External Affairs introduced some measures of its own. One,

based on a previous RCMP suggestion, brought about the creation of the

Passport Office Security Section. This consisted of an officer, a clerk and a

typist whose duties included the maintenance of the ‘Passport Control List

(Stop Card Index)’. The new Security Section also began work on improving

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the ‘physical security’ of the document described as ‘introducing a legend

device to prevent fraudulent removal and substitution of passport photo-

graphs, experimental work on the lamination of the photograph page, the use

of safety paper, and inks which would react to tampering by chemical and

other means’.64 Changes eventually introduced included a better cover, a

watermark, safety tint and stitching.65

Despite these efforts, and although greater cooperation was occurring

between the RCMP and External Affairs, there was still disconnect when it

came to the severity of the problem. An official from the passport office in a

1963 letter estimated that Canadian passport fraud amounted to not more

than 0.25% of the almost 1.5 million passports issued between 1946 and

1962 – this compared favourably, he argued, with the United States, where

despite requiring all applicants to appear in person, unlike Canada, the US

Passport Office had estimated a fraudulent rate as high as 5% of all

passports.66

It would not be until 1968, however, that agencies of the Canadian

government would systematically address the issue of passport security and

bring about multiple reforms. Although not initially inspired by the

embarrassment to Canada when it was revealed that the murderer of Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., James Earl Ray, had acquired a fraudulent Canadian

passport that allowed him to escape to Europe, this development would add

impetus to the reform efforts. The governmental response was to establish a

special Inter-Departmental Study Group on Passport Security, involving a

number of officials from the RCMP, External Affairs, and the Department of

Manpower and Immigration.67

The suggestions for reform that emerged in the run-up to the new

committee’s meeting were nothing if not familiar. Requiring passports to

contain the print of the right index finger of all applicants led the RCMP’s list

of suggestions. The justification for such a measure was that criminals and

foreign intelligence agents seeking a passport would be hesitant to have their

fingerprint recorded. Concerns about such a measure infringing on civil

liberties would be assuaged, the police believed, by relying only on a single

fingerprint instead of a complete set. The Mounted Police also opted to press

for the adoption of two US-style measures: the supplying of a social security

number with the application and an indication of the individual’s travel plans

including the date of his or her proposed return home.68 External Affairs

agreed to study the feasibility of the RCMP’s proposals, along with its own

emphasis on requiring individuals to appear in person when making an

application. The department did point out, however, that there would be

‘political implications’ to the adoption of fingerprinting.69

Little had changed when the Inter-Departmental Study Group on Passports

met for the second and final time on 18 June 1968. The RCMP continued to

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advocate its fingerprint proposal and the requiring of applicants to list the

countries they intended to travel to. External Affairs expressed interest in

other types of reforms including putting a five-year time limit on a passport

before requiring renewal.70 Even after the meeting, senior Mounties

continued to push the force’s reforms, particularly in correspondence to

External Affairs. Deputy Commissioner William Kelly emphasized the

importance of fingerprinting in a 28 August 1968 letter written in response to

the draft memorandum produced by the Inter-Departmental Study Group on

Passports:

Without otherwise detracting from the very good proposals, would it

not be feasible and indeed desirable to accelerate the fingerprint

proposition from its present position on your list of recommendations?

. . . I realize there may be technical and administrative objections to

accelerating the index fingerprint procedure. Nonetheless, positive

identification of the passport holder has been of utmost concern

throughout recent meetings of the Inter-Department al study Group and

in Press editors following the James Earl RAY affair. Because of this

concern, recommendation No. 10 on page 10 would seem to warrant a

higher priority than has been given.71

In the final memorandum, which was forwarded to the federal cabinet, the

problem of fraud was again cited with specific reference made to the James

Earl Ray example and also the efforts of Soviet intelligence. A number of

proposals were bandied about, with their original advocates making the

respective arguments on their behalf. The RCMP again proposed fingerprint-

ing with the promise that submitted prints would not be cross-checked against

police records. As a compromise, External agreed to study the feasibility of

the RCMP’s fingerprinting proposal although it also recommended to cabinet

that a broader examination of the possibility of the creation of a ‘National

Identity system’ be undertaken.72 It was left to the Cabinet Committee on

External Policy and Defence to decide which options to recommend to their

colleagues. That event occurred on 24 October 1968 when, after literally

decades in the making, the federal cabinet finally approved significant

changes to the passport application process based on the recommendations of

its internal committee, the Cabinet Committee on External Policy and

Defence:

(a) all Canadians, including natural born, be required to submit proof

of citizenship, those claiming citizenship by birth be required to

submit either a birth certificate or acceptable alternative evidence of

birth;

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(b) no change to be made to the existing guarantor system . . . but this policy

should be reviewed whenever a personal appearance procedure is

introduced;

(c) persons who submit a Statutory Declaration in Lieu of Guarantor be

required to complete a detailed questionnaire in support of their

applications in the form of the questionnaire attached to Cab. Doc. 651–

68;

(d) the period of total validity of a passport be limited to five years;

(e) the provinces be invited to introduce measures for securing effective

confirmation of an applicant’s entitlement to a birth certificate before

such a document is granted;

(f) passport applications not be accepted when they are submitted on behalf

of clients by travel agents who have also served the applicant as a

Commissioner for Oaths or as a Notary Public or Guarantor as a

supporting document;

(g) the Department of External Affairs be authorized to open branch

passport offices in cities where major air terminals are located for

scheduled overseas flights beginning with Vancouver, Montreal and

Toronto; and,

(h) for long range planning purposes the Department of External Affairs be

authorized to conduct studies for the development of a personal

appearance system for passport applicants in Canada.73

Left out of the changes was any reference to fingerprinting, although the

Committee in its recommendations did not ignore the issue: ‘The Committee

expressed reservations concerning the final recommendation in the

memorandum that paralleling the study of an acceptable personal appearance

system, the Department of External Affairs investigate the feasibility of

including a finger print as well as a photograph of an applicant in his

passport.’74 The adoption of the requirement of a birth certificate also had a

history of its own. When this had been proposed in August 1962, the External

Affairs minister said it would not stop fraud because Communists and

criminal gangs could still obtain birth certificates and use these to acquire

passports. An official from the same department said the real reason for

bringing in such a measure was simply to make Canada ‘look good’ to its

international partners, not make it any more secure.75

The battle over passport security carried on into the 1970s, as meetings

continued to discuss improvements to the passport, such as through reforms

to its physical layout and to the categories of who could serve as guarantors.76

A senior Mountie warned in October 1972 that ‘several problems relating to

passports and their issuance have come to light in several of our

investigations’. The Passport Office countered by arguing that ‘the number

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of such incidents occurring in this country is no greater than it is in others’.77

In that sense both perspectives were correct. Problems continued with

Canadian passport security, but this was true of other countries as well. The

most publicized and blatant misuses of Canadian passports in the 1970s

involved Israeli intelligence’s mistaken assassination of a Moroccan waiter in

Norway in 1973. Since Canada had a close relationship with Israel,

particularly between the two nations respective intelligence communities,

the response to the problem involved using diplomatic channels and pressure

to bring an end to the practice.78 The success, indeed even the seriousness of

this approach remains to be seen.

CONCLUSION: THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

In examining this topic there are clear lessons for the present and the future.

The first, beyond any doubt, is that Canadian passports will continue to be

targeted for misuse by a variety of interests. The reasons for this are simple:

the motivations that cause the passports to be targeted in the first place have

not changed. No further example is needed than the case of the apparent

Russian spy, masquerading as a Canadian named Paul William Hampel, who

had obtained a real Canadian passport through the use of a fraudulent Ontario

birth certificate.79

Geography is one factor that fuels demand for Canadian passports.

Canada’s close proximity to the United States, combined with the long and

easily traversed border between the two countries, makes it a useful stopping

off point for access to the United States, both in the past and present. Despite

increased security since 11 September 2001, Canadians, like Mexicans, still

face fewer restrictions when entering the United States than do nationals from

other countries, who are subject to fingerprinting.80

Additionally, there is the international perception of Canada and

Canadians. For anyone travelling on a Canadian passport, especially in the

era of the ‘War on Terror’, it means attracting less attention than using an

American or British passport.81 This is the reason why Americans sew maple

leafs on their backpacks while travelling abroad or George Clooney’s CIA

character in the movie Syriana repeatedly responds ‘Canadian’ when asked in

Beirut if he is American.82 It is also why when Al Qaeda had a Canadian

recruit named Mohammed Monsour Jabarah, one of the most appealing

things he had to offer was his ‘clean Canadian passport’.83 The relative

anonymity of certain other nations’ passports perhaps explains why the recent

choice of Mossad after Canada appears to be New Zealand.84

In this vein, a post-World War II development also makes Canadian

passports even more attractive to a wide variety of interests, especially

terrorists.85 Because of changing immigration patterns, Canada has become

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an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse nation. Literally there is not a

person in the entire world who could not legitimately claim to be a Canadian

citizen. Thus, whether you are a Mossad agent or an Algerian terrorist, you

could also conceivably be a citizen of Canada. This has enormous

implications for the future of passport security and ethnic and racial profiling

of the type already being practiced in some quarters and which will only

increase in the subsequent years.86 Martin Lloyd expresses the dilemma well

in The Passport:

The process of assessing the traveller is being dictated by the

document. Entire conceptions have to be discarded. A passport-control

officer voicing the opinion of the nineteenth-century British Consul that

‘I found his appearance was not that of an Englishman’ would today

find himself before a disciplinary board on racial discrimination

grounds.87

New security measures introduced after the Ahmed Ressam arrest,

including a redesigned Canadian passport, no longer accepting Quebec

baptismal certificates as proof of identity, and contacting guarantors, may

reduce abuses of Canadian passports, especially among the incompetent and

under-resourced.88 But these measures, and this has long been recognized by

the Canadian state, will not eliminate the problem because the demand for the

documents remains and the ability to continue to match technological

advances in security with technological advances in fraud will go on. The

government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper acknowledged as much when

it brought in changes in 2007 to the passport application process. Among

these were an expansion of those who could serve as guarantors from

individuals in select professions to almost any adult Canadians. The measure

represented an attempt to address a backlog in the processing of Canadian

passports caused by the US requiring Canadian air travellers to produce a

passport. Security was a secondary consideration, especially since the

relaxing of guarantor rules seemingly went against a reduction of passport

fraud.89

Compelling all citizens in a nation to have identity cards will also not end

the problem since if passports can be forged then so can identity cards and, of

course, acquiring an identity card in the first place could be done fraudulently

in the same way as passports have been obtained. The resources required for

an identity card, or even an enhanced passport containing biometric

identifiers of the type being proposed informally and formally by several

different governments including Canada’s, will also make a more secure

system difficult to implement and that is even before the civil liberty

implications of such measures are properly addressed.90 Indeed, the fact that

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identity cards will not address wider security issues does raise the possibility

that some of those most enthusiastically pushing for them, including

intelligence agencies, may have other agendas.

None of this is in any respect new. There was recognition of these inherent

problems back in the 1960s when the RCMP pushed for passports to have the

holder’s fingerprint, and it is being recognized in many quarters today,

including in a recent Canadian parliamentary report, among some members

of the cabinet of the government of the United Kingdom and even the former

head of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington.91 Collectively, what all of this means is

that in terms of passport fraud the governing philosophy well into the future

will be: ‘where there is a will, there is a way’.

NOTES

1 Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Record Group (RG) 146, vol. 5006, access requestAH2002/00336, pt. 1, Statement by Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, November 1940;ibid., Press Release Canada–US Conference, November 1940.

2 http://www.canada.com/national/features/terrorist/index.html.3 Lamar Smith, ‘Plugging our Porous Border’, Globe and Mail, 24 January 2000; Canada,House of Commons, 37th Parliament, 1st Session, 24 September 2001.

4 John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000) p.27; Daniel C. Turack, The Passport inInternational Law (London: Lexington Books 1972) p.18.

5 Martin Lloyd, The Passport: The History of Man’s Most Travelled Document (London:Sutton Publishing 2003) pp.6–7.

6 Ibid., p.73.7 Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, p.15.8 Ibid., p.87.9 Lloyd, The Passport, p.119; Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, p.127.10 Lloyd, The Passport, pp.121–8, 149–52; Turack, The Passport in International Law, p.23.11 John Hilliker, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, Volume 1: The Early Years,

1909–1946 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1990) pp.4–5, 10,14, 50.

12 Hilliker, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, vol.1, p.232.13 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, access request AH-2002/00336, pt. 1, L.B. Pearson, Under-

Secretary of State, to RCMP Commissioner, 30 December 1946; ibid., vol. 5005, accessrequest AH-2002/00336, pt. 1, Draft Instructions for Canadian delegation to advancedmeeting of experts for World Conference on Passport and Frontier Formation, December1946.

14 John Hilliker and Donald Barry, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, Volume 2:Coming of Age, 1946–1968 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1995)pp.12, 181–2; Turack, The Passport in International Law, p.118.

15 Lloyd, The Passport, p.213; LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, Access Request AH-2002/00339,Interdepartmental Study Group on Passport Security, Attachment to letter to Rettie, no date;LAC, RG 25, vol. 8561, file 50224-40, pts. 3.1, 3.2, Memorandum to Cabinet, 30 September1968.

16 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (NewHaven, CT/London: Yale University Press 1999) pp.79–82; Steve Hewitt, Spying 101: TheRCMP’s Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917 to 1997 (Toronto: University ofToronto Press 2002) p.8; Nigel West, The Illegals: The Double Lives of the Cold War’s MostSecret Agents (London: Hodder & Stoughton General 1993) pp.31–2; Canadian Security

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Intelligence Service, Operation West Wind, Terry Guernsey to officer in charge of SpecialBranch, 1 May 1951. In the early 1960s the Soviets would use a Vancouver area man, GeorgeVictor Spencer, to search out information from city records for the preparation of a profile foran illegal or illegals. John Sawatsky, For Services Rendered: Leslie James Bennett and theRCMP Security Service (Toronto: Penguin Books 1982) pp.114–38. The RCMP supplied adetailed description of the tactics of illegals to External Affairs in 1968. LAC, RG 146, vol.5005, access request AH-2002/00339, Attachment to letter to Rettie, 1968.

17 LAC, RG 25, Records of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, vol.2692, file Death of Canadians Abroad file Death of Canadians Abroad-Leon Trotsky,Commissioner S.T. Wood to Under Secretary of State O.D. Skelton, 12 October 1940.

18 Reg Whitaker, ‘Introduction’, in Reg Whitaker and Greg Kealey (eds.) R.C.M.P. SecurityBulletins: The War Years, Part II, 1942–45 (St. John’s, NFLD: Canadian Committee onLabour History 1993) p.13.

19 Haynes and Klehr, Venona, pp.183–4; CSIS, Operation West Wind, Memo from Leopold, 25January 1950; Amy Knight, How the Cold War Began: The Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt forSoviet Spies (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 2005) pp.184, 193.

20 LAC, RG 25, vol.2692, file Death of Canadians Abroad file Death of Canadians Abroad–Leon Trotsky, Commissioner S.T. Wood to Under Secretary of State O.D. Skelton, 12October 1940; Terence Robertson, ‘My Strange Encounter with the World’s Most MysteriousAssassin’, Maclean’s Magazine, 12 September 1959; Christopher Andrew and VasiliMitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Penguin Press1999) pp.113–16. The misspelling of Jackson to Jacson may have been Soviet intelligence’sreaction to the discovery that Jackson’s original naturalization certificate had been cancelled.William Rodney, ‘Passport to Murder’, RCMP Quarterly, January 1954. For more on thiscase and as an example of the nature of the information supplied by the FBI to the RCMP inthis area, see http://foia.fbi.gov/trotsky.htm and compare with External’s Trotsky file: LAC,RG 25, Records of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, vol. 2692, fileDeath of Canadians Abroad file Death of Canadians Abroad–Leon Trotsky.

21 See, for example, a 1960 case involved a phoney clergyman accused of acquiring passports tofacilitate the entry into Canada of illegal immigrants. LAC, RG 25, vol. 8561, file 50224-40,George F Davidson, Dept Min of Citizenship and Immigration, to Norman Robertson, Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 25 October 1960; LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, AH-2002/00336, Memorandum from Sgt. A.J. Davidson, re. Regulations re Canadian Passports, 22October 1946.

22 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, access request AH-2002/00339, Interdepartmental Study Group onPassport Security, Long Range Planning, 14 June 1968; http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/assassins/ray/10.html?sect=24 (accessed 15 September 2003).

23 Antonio J. Mendez, ‘A Classic Case of Deception’, http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter99-00/art1.html (accessed 16 September 2003). The possibility of the Canadian governmentusing its passports as carrots to encourage individuals to do its bidding also exists.Correspondence from former Canadian intelligence agent, July 2003.

24 Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of aMossad Officer (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1990) pp.73–5.

25 George Jonas, ‘Canadian Passports Get a Bad Rap’, Kitchener-Waterloo Record, 14 October1997; Arieh O’ Sullivan, ‘Legendary Mossad femme fatale to be buried in Israel’, JerusalemPost, 14 February 2005.

26 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/208368.stm; ‘Hussein calls attack on Mashaal‘‘reckless’’’, Jerusalem Post, 5 October 1997; Solicitor General of Canada, access request1336-A-2002-0080, Solicitor General Files Related to use of Canadian Passports by ForeignIntelligence Services, Norman Spector’s Comments, CBC Radio’s As it Happens transcript,12 November 1997. In 2002 Canadian officials investigated a report that Mossad agentscarrying Canadian passports had attempted an assassination in Gaza. In the end it wasconcluded that the report was false. Stewart Bell, ‘‘‘Misuse of Canada’s identity’’ questionedIsraeli spy operation’, National Post, 24 December 2002.

27 Stewart Bell, ‘Passports of killed rebels recycled’, National Post, 5 June 2003. In January2002 the government of Singapore alleged it had arrested the ringleader of an Al Qaeda cell

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that was plotting attacks on American targets and that he carried a fake Canadian passport.Globe and Mail, 17 January 2002. In fact, the individual was a Canadian citizen. http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/CBC/2003/01/11/jabarah030111 (accessed 27 April 2007). Then therewas ‘container boy’, a man arrested in Italy after being discovered in a container in a shipbound for Canada. He carried a Canadian passport that Italian officials initially suggested wasa fake. It was real and he was later released, although it remains uncertain what the purpose ofhis voyage was. ‘Container Boy sparks terror fears’, Guardian Online Edition, 29 October2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,582851,00.html (accessed 27April 2007).

28 For more on the use of passports in this way against individuals such as Leopold Infeld andFred Rose in the early Cold War, see Reg Whitaker, Double Standard: the Secret History ofCanadian Immigration (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987) pp.178–87.

29 LAC, RG 25, vol. 2691, file 12992-7-7-5-2-40, T.P. Malone, Under-Secretary of State forExternal Affairs to Consular Officials and Passport Office, 6 March 1958; ibid., PassportOffice to Defence Liaison (2) Division, 27 November 1956; ibid., Passport Officer to SpecialBranch, RCMP, 13 September 1956; ibid., Memo regarding Passport Office Temporary StaffRequirements, 24 November 1953. For a list of some of the names on the Passport ControlList see ibid., Passport Control List, no date. Other countries, both democratic andundemocratic, recognized this potential as well. In the late 1920s, fascist Italy passed laws inan effort to control the movements of regime opponents. During the Cold War both WestGermany and the United States passed laws in an effort to restrict access to passports on thepart of subversives. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, pp.123, 147–8. In 1948 the SouthAfrican High Commissioner to London even inquired as to how the British government wentabout blocking access to passports on ideological grounds. In the aftermath of the passing ofthe McCarran Internal Security Act in the US the Canadian government briefly consideredrestricting the access of Communists to Canadian passports. Lloyd, The Passport, p.249. ‘BanPassports to Communists Pearson’s Plan’, Toronto Star, 11 September 1950; LAC, RG 146,vol. 5005, pt. 2, access request AH-2002/00337, Under-Secretary of State to RCMPCommissioner, 14 June 1956.

30 Escott Reid, Radical Mandarin: The Life of Escott Reid (Toronto: University of TorontoPress 1989) pp.143–4.

31 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, pt. 1, access request AH2002/00336, Wood to INS Commissioner, 9June 1949.

32 ‘Interviews to Target Passport Fraud Begin’, Home Office, 20 March 2007, http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/press-releases/target-passport-fraud (accessed 14 October 2007).

33 There is the case of the aforementioned Ahmed Ressam. See also the case of Gideon, aSoviet illegal sent to Canada as the first step for his eventual entrance into the UnitedStates. Instead, he became a Mounted Police double agent. Sawatsky, For Services Rendered,pp.33–58.

34 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, AH-2002/00339, Inter-Departmental Study Group on Passports, 18June 1968.

35 LAC, RG 25, vol. 3239, file 5757-40, Passports, Etc. in possession of the enemy –Notifications, Wood to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 3 March 1945; ibid.,British High Commissioner to Canada to Secretary of State for External Affairs, 15 January1945; ibid., F.J. Mead to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 24 September 1943;ibid., Wood to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 20 August 1943; LAC, RG 25,vol. 3358, file 10-BW-40, 7 March 1947.

36 LAC, RG 25, vol. 8561, file 50224-40, pts. 3.1, 3.2, Minutes of June 18 Inter-DepartmentalStudy Group on Passport Security, 26 June 1968; LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, pt. 2, accessrequest AH-2002/00337, Under-Secretary of State to Moscow Embassy, 15 December 1958;Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, access request A-2002-00379, RCMPCentral Forensic Laboratory Report, 8 October 1997.

37 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, pt. 1, access request AH-2002/00336, Skelton to Lapointe, 22 April1937.

38 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, pt. 1, access request, AH-2002/00336, Memorandum to theCommissioner Passports General, 24 August 1937.

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39 Ibid., S.T. Wood to Commissioner, 24 August 1937.40 Ibid., Wood to Commissioner, 8 June 1937.41 Ibid., Memorandum to Commissioner from Rivett-Carnac, 8 May 1937. In the same memo

Rivett-Carnac recommended the revocation of naturalization certificates of those deemed tobe subversives although he cautioned ‘it is very doubtful as to whether the fact alone of theindividual being a member of the Communist Party would be sufficient – under the presentLiberal regime – to warrant revocation’.

42 Ibid., Memorandum to the Commissioner re: Passports General, 24 August 1937;ibid., MacBrien to S.J. Pearson, Office of the Honourable the Minister of Justice, 8 May1937.

43 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, access request AH-2002/00339, The Use of CanadianDocumentation by Hostile Intelligence Services, 1968; LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, pt. 1,access request AH-2002/00336, Memorandum from Leopold, 17 June 1946.

44 Canada, Royal Commission to Investigate the Facts Relating to and the CircumstancesSurrounding the Communication by Public Officials and Other Persons in Positions of Trustof Secret and Confidential Information to Agents of a Foreign Power (Ottawa: E. Cloutier1946), pp.689–90. My thanks to Reg Whitaker for this reference.

45 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, pt. 1, access request AH-2002/00336, Leopold to the DCI, 20August 1946.

46 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, pt. 1, AH-2002/00336, Memorandum to Inspector Leopold fromAsst. Commissioner, L.H. Nicholson, Asst Com, 23 December 1946; ibid., CommissionerS.T. Wood to A.D.P. Heeney, 13 July 1949; ibid., Wood to deleted, 9 April 1949.

47 Lloyd, The Passport, p.141.48 Guernsey also organized Operation Feather Bed, an effort to ferret out Communist moles in

the Canadian government by doing a lengthy examination of the background of prominentcivil servants in an effort to discover Red roots. For more on Guernsey see Sawatsky, ForServices Rendered, pp.253–9.

49 CSIS, West Wind, Terry Guernsey to Officer in charge of Special Branch, 1 May 1951; ibid.,Letter from Supt. J.R. Lemieux, 4 March 1955.

50 CSIS, West Wind, Report of deleted, 23 May 1951.51 CSIS, West Wind, RCMP Security Service to Officer in Charge (W.H. Kelly) Security

Section, Visa Control, Canada House, 7 January 1954; ibid., Tadeson to Guernsey, 3 February1955; ibid., Guernsey to Kelly, 24 September 1953. For more on the career of John Leopoldsee Steve Hewitt, ‘Royal Canadian Mounted Spy: The Secret Life of John Leopold/JackEsselwein’, Intelligence and National Security 15/1 (Spring 2000) pp.144–68.

52 CSIS, West Wind, Memo for file, 5 March 1973; ibid., Higgitt to Under-Secretary of State, 7May 1968.

53 CSIS, West Wind, Report of G.E. Land, 26 March 1956; ibid., Guernsey to OfficerCommanding ‘C’ Division, 26 September 1956.

54 West, The Illegals, p.32; CSIS, West Wind, Guernsey to Kelly, 24 September 1953.55 LAC, RG 25, vol. 3239, file 5757-40, Passports, Etc. in possession of the enemy –

Notifications, Wood to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 3 March 1945; ibid.,British High Commissioner to Canada to Secretary of State for External Affairs, 15 January1945; ibid., F.J. Mead to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 24 September 1943;ibid., Wood to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 20 August 1943; LAC, RG 25,vol. 3358, file 10-BW-40, 7 March 1947.

56 LAC, RG 25, vol. 1, file 12992-7-7-1-40, pt. 1, Consular Division to the Under-Secretary ofState for External Affairs, 21 March 1956.

57 Ibid., Memorandum for Mr. Chance, 18 December 1950.58 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5006, pt. 1, AH-2002/00336, Acting Under-Secretary of State for External

Affairs to RCMP Commissioner, 23 May 1952; ibid., vol. 5005, pt. 2, access request AH-2002/00337, RCMP to External Affairs, 8 December 1954.

59 Ibid., C.H. West to T.P. Malone, 16 January 1956; LAC RG 146, vol. 5005, pt. 2, accessrequest AH-2002/00337, William Kelly, to P.A.E. Johnston, 13 June 1961.

60 LAC RG 146, vol. 5005, pt. 2, access request AH-2002/00337, William Kelly, to P.A.E.Johnston, 13 June 1961. As early as 1937 senior Mountie and future Commissioner S.T.

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Wood had advocated the universal fingerprinting of all Canadians. Larry Hannant, TheInfernal Machine: Investigating the Loyalty of Canada’s Citizens (Toronto: University ofToronto Press 1995) pp.41–61.

61 LAC RG 146, vol. 5005, pt. 2, access request AH-2002/00337, William Kelly, to P.A.E.Johnston, 13 June 1961.

62 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, access request AH-2002/00339, Memorandum to the Cabinet, 27August 1962; ibid., access request AH-2002/00337, pt. 2, External to RCMP, 17 August1962; ibid., Appendix A: LACTO Document, 1962; LAC, RG 146, vol. 8561, file 50224-40,pts. 3.1, 3.2, Harvison to Fleming, 18 December 1962.

63 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, access request AH-2002/00337, Commissioner George McClellanto Norman Robertson, 27 January 1964; ibid., access request AH-2002/00339, Re: Issuanceof Canadian Passports, 26 March 1964; ibid., access request AH-2002/00339, William Kellyto J.J. McCardle, 22 December 1964.

64 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, access request AH-2002/00339, Inter-Departmental Study Group onPassport Security, 2 April 1968; LAC, RG 25, vol. 8561, file 50224-40, pts. 3.1, 3.2, Inter-Departmental Study Group on Passport Security, 2 April 1968.

65 LAC, RG 25, file 12992-1-3-4018, Durdin to Wershof, 18 November 1963.66 LAC, RG 25, file 12992-1-3-4018, Durdin to Wershof, 7 January 1963.67 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, access request AH-2002/00339, W. Cadieux, Under-Secretary of

State, External Affairs, to W.L. Higgitt, 11 March 1968; ibid., Minutes of Inter-DepartmentalStudy Group on Passport Security, 19 April 1968.

68 Ibid., W.H. Kelly to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 1 May 1968.69 Ibid., Long Range Planning, 14 June 1968.70 LAC, RG 146, vol. 5005, access request AH-2002/00339, Re: Passports, Asst to Officer in

charge ‘B’ Branch, 17 June 1968; ibid., Inter-Departmental Study Group on Passports, 18June 1968.

71 Ibid., RCMP to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 5 July 1968; ibid., W.H. Kellyto Asst. Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 28 August 1968.

72 LAC, RG 25, vol. 8561, file 50224-40 pts. 3.1, 3.2, Memorandum to Cabinet, 30 September1968.

73 LAC, RG 2, vol. 6338, Cabinet Decisions, 24 October 1968.74 Ibid.75 LAC, RG25, access request 2004-00447, M.H. Wershof Memo to Durdin, 6 May 1966.76 LAC, RG 25, vol. 12335, file 84-5-3, pt. 15, Meeting of Inter-Departmental Committee on the

Card Passport, 1 June 1977.77 LAC, RG25, access request 2004-00447, Parent to Sutherland, 19 October 1972; W.S. Durdin

to R.J. Sutherland, 19 May 1971.78 Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, access request A-2002-00379,

Ministerial Briefing Notes, 1998.79 ‘Canada detainee ‘‘is Russian spy’’’, BBC News, 22 November 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/

1/hi/world/americas/6171306.stm (accessed 22 February 2007).80 ‘U.S. starts fingerprint program’, CNN, 5 January 2004, http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/01/

05/fingerprint.program/index.html (accessed 27 April 2007).81 I encountered this firsthand when leaving Iran in October 2006. An American academic

accompanied me to the Iranian passport control. Whereas, I was quickly waved through, hewas made to stand for 20 minutes while various officials examined his passport.

82 ‘American abroad? Try traveling Canadian’, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6666338/(accessed 7 February 2006). Stephen Gagan, screenwriter, Syriana, 2005.

83 Peter L. Bergen, The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al-Qaeda’s Leader(New York: Free Press 2006) p.273.

84 ‘Israelis admit passport fraud’, http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_national_story_skin/434022%3fformat¼html (accessed 7 February 2006); ‘Clark ensured exposure of passport fraud sayspaper’, New Zealand Herald, 29 July 2004.

85 Lloyd, The Passport, p.21586 Jenni Russell, ‘Who the hell are you?’ New Statesman, 6 October 2003.87 Lloyd, The Passport, p.257.

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88 CBC Disclosure, 26 March 2002, http://www.cbc.ca/disclosure/archives/020326.html (ac-cessed 24 June 2005); http://www.ppt.gc.ca/whats_new/new_book_e.asp (accessed 25 March2006).

89 ‘New guarantor policy in effect’, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade,1 October 2007, http://www.ppt.gc.ca/newsroom/news.aspx?lang¼e&page¼/newsroom/20071001.aspx (accessed 14 October 2007).

90 Campbell Clark, ‘Biometric identifiers are on way, Coderre tells group’, Globe and Mail, 9October 2003; Alan Travis, ‘Secret go-ahead for ID card database’, Guardian, 30 September2003; Philip Shenon, ‘New passport rules are put off by U.S.’, New York Times, 8 September2003; Jennifer Lee, ‘Passports and visas to add high-tech identity features’, New York Times,24 August 2003; Will Knight, ‘US passports to carry digitally signed images’, New Scientist,23 July 2003. The US government proposed back in 1996 a new system to track themovement of foreign nationals in and out of the United States. For more on the significance ofidentity cards in relation to passports see Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, pp.1, 166–7.

91 ‘A National Identity Card for Canada?’ Report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship andImmigration, October 2003, http://www.parl.gc.ca/InfocomDoc/Documents/37/2/parlbus/commbus/house/reports/cimmrp06/cimmrp06-e.pdf (accessed 15 July 2005); Alan Travis,‘Labour steps back in push for ID cards’, Guardian, 4 August 2005; Mathew Taylor,‘ID cards useless, says ex-spy chief’, Guardian, 17 November 2005.

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