Jim Littleton; Filmmaker & writer scrutinized Canada's intelligence agencies

[Hyfler/Rosner]

JIM LITTLETON, 67: PRODUCER

Filmmaker and writer scrutinized Canada's intelligence
agencies
Author of Target Nation, he revealed a profound commitment
to the importance of political freedom and claimed the
mysterious death of a diplomat in Cairo was a U.S. attempt
to embarrass Lester Pearson
CHARLES MANDEL

Special to The Globe and Mail

December 23, 2008

Jim Littleton was a filmmaker, broadcaster and journalist
who made a life-long specialty of investigating Canada's
intelligence services.

In the 1970s, he would meet with documentary filmmaker
Donald Brittain at a Toronto tavern where, over steak and
beer, he would pull out the "evidence," as he called his
files on the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service. The two men would discuss how they would
incorporate the material into a series of films they were
working on, and who they would need to interview and what
footage they'd have to find. The "evidence" ultimately found
its way into a trilogy of National Film Board productions
entitled On Guard for Thee, about Canada's national security
operations and civil liberties.

Mr. Littleton was fascinated with security issues and the
abuse of power by institutions and individuals, according to
his friend and colleague, Peter Raymont, who is executive
producer of the television drama, The Border. Mr. Brittain
wrote and directed the films, but Mr. Littleton provided the
research. "He knew the history cold," Mr. Raymont said.
"Donald moved from project to project and he was always
doing three or four films simultaneously. Jim really dug
deep, so he was providing Brittain with the information, the
research, the characters, the stories."

John Walker, a Halifax filmmaker who was a colleague of Mr.
Littleton's, said that Mr. Brittain found his match in the
two men's conspiratorial view of the world. During their
work on the films, which coincided with the release of the
McDonald Commission report on the RCMP security service, Mr.
Brittain became increasingly paranoid. He was certain that
the RCMP was watching their every move and monitoring their
conversations. According to Mr. Walker, Mr. Littleton's
reassurance to Mr. Brittain was: "Don, don't worry about it.
They're not that smart."

If anyone could gauge the depth and breadth of the
intelligence of Canada's security agencies, it would have
been Mr. Littleton. Besides the films, he went on to write a
seminal book entitled Target Nation that his friend, York
University political scientist Leo Panitch, describes as
important and extremely well-researched. Target Nation, he
said, detailed the spying on of Canadian citizens and the
passing of "scurrilous material" against them to the FBI or
the CIA.

Even so, Target Nation was not quite what the title implied.
It was not a John le Carré-style expose of espionage
tradecraft or the role of the KGB in Canada; it carried no
hint that foreign operatives might have used Canada as a
soft beachhead for gaining some of the political and
industrial secrets of the United States. It did, however,
reopen the case of Herbert Norman, the gifted Canadian
diplomat who leaped to his death from a Cairo apartment
building in 1957 after allegations resurfaced in the United
States that he was a Soviet spy. Mr. Littleton used the
Norman case to argue that the man was a victim of
untrammelled McCarthyism, in which the counterespionage
agencies in Canada and the United States colluded in passing
along top secret and inaccurate material in an attempt to
embarrass Lester Pearson, then secretary of external
affairs, an outspoken critic of U.S. senator Joseph
McCarthy.

Mr. Pearson was the real target of this "smear campaign,"
Mr. Littleton wrote, because he served to establish, for the
communist hunters of the day, the grand myth of treason in
high places and cement the fraternal bond between the
"friendly" spy agencies in their common disdain of the
misguided intellectuals.

His research on security matters represented a profound
commitment to the importance of political freedom, Mr.
Panitch said.

Mr. Littleton was the son of a Montreal mechanical engineer
and a nurse. In 1948, his father was working on an
engineering textbook and, looking for some peace and quiet,
took his family to Nova Scotia for the summer. Struck by the
beauty of the Annapolis Valley, he bought a farm near
Lawrencetown, N.S. He installed the family there, but left
periodically to work in Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

It was on the farm that Jim Littleton grew up. According to
his eldest daughter, Susan, he spent a lot of time chopping
and stacking wood. He attended elementary school in
Lawrencetown and high school in Bridgewater. He went on to
study philosophy at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S. His
studies were interrupted for a year when his father died in
the early 1960s, and he went home to look after his mother.

Over the years, he had visited his father in such places as
New York and developed a taste for big-city life, so it came
as no surprise when he decided to head to Toronto. At that
time, students debated the Vietnam War on the campuses and
in the bars, and hippies converged on Queen's Park and in
Yorkville. It was the 1960s, and the atmosphere was charged
with new political ideas, Mr. Littleton fell in with the
Company of Young Canadians, a federally sponsored agency
that organized community programs and helped marginalized
people nationally. He also became involved with the Waffle,
an ironically named splinter group of the NDP that issued a
manifesto for an Independent Socialist Canada.

Mr. Littleton's friends and family said he was passionate
about social justice. He was particularly concerned about
Canada's independence during a time of cultural nationalism
when many questioned U.S. influence in Canadian culture,
politics and economics.

In the 1970s, he decided he wanted to try his hand at
filmmaking. He began writing and directing an idiosyncratic
series of documentaries that could be described as
perplexing. One documentary chronicled artist James Spencer;
another, Tree Power, dealt with using energy by burning
wood; a third concerned his love for Celtic music. All the
films were intensely personal and were influenced by his
background.

For instance, Mr. Spencer and Mr. Littleton had attended
Acadia together and been good friends. After Mr. Spencer
moved to Toronto, his paintings garnered critical acclaim.
According to Mr. Walker, Mr. Littleton wanted to explore his
friend's art and Nova Scotia roots. Similarly, Tree Power
harkened back to Mr. Littleton's childhood spent cutting
wood. Mr. Walker described Mr. Littleton's father as a
"back-to-the-lander" and the film celebrated wood as an
alternative energy form. Celtic Sprit recalled the fiddle
music of Cape Breton and was made well before the Celtic
music craze swept North America.

Mr. Walker recalled making a trip to Nova Scotia in the
mid-1970s with Mr. Littleton in his Volkswagen. They roared
at top speed through the fog while Mr. Walker screamed at
him to slow down. Around every turn, Mr. Littleton exalted
at what he called "God's country."

In Nova Scotia, his friend was a different man, Mr. Walker
said. "Jim was somebody who wanted to change the world. When
he got to Nova Scotia, all that went away. He liked it just
the way it was. He was transformed in Nova Scotia ... he was
quiet, contemplative."

Back in Toronto, Mr. Littleton went back to making movies.
Mr. Raymont worked with him on the 1976 film titled We Just
Won't Take It. The one-hour movie documented the effect that
Trudeau-era wage-and-price controls had on Canadian auto
workers.The National Film Board and the CBC co-produced the
On Guard For Thee series of films, and that led to Mr.
Littleton moving to radio. In the early 1980s, he became a
producer for Morningside, a highly popular show hosted by
Peter Gzowski. According to his daughter, Mr. Littleton
would work late into the night in his book-cluttered study
to prepare the next morning's show and not go to bed. A
night owl, he didn't want to have to rise early for the
morning radio show. Later, he was a producer with television
news shows The Journal and The National.

SIDNEY JAMES LITTLETON

James Littleton was born Oct.17, 1941, in Montreal. He died
Nov. 14, 2008, in Toronto of cancer. He was 67. He is
survived by his daughters, Susan and Claire. He was
predeceased by his wife, Cheryl.

[sutop...@gmail.com]

Thanks you for posting this. I have moved several times over the past five years and haven't been able to find my original copies of this lovely tribute to my father.

[Francois]

I had only one encounter with Mr. Littleton. In 1983 he produced and narrated a four part series on the CBC radio program "Ideas" about the federal government's first Bill (C-157) to create a new civilian intelligence service. I subsequently ordered a copy of the transcript of the whole series from the CBC. The whole thesis of the four part series was basically summarized in one paragraph where he identified the "threats" to national security that were outlined in the Bill. He went through them one by one (e.g., espionage, terrorism, etc.) and then he got to the last one which was "subversion". He stated that he had come to the conclusion that there was no such thing. The whole point of his production, with all the interviews and comments, was that whatever the government called subversion was in fact dissent. A few years later I attended a two-day conference at Osgoode Hall Law School about Canadian national security, and Mr. Littleton was a speaker on one of the panels. At that time Peter Wright's book "Spycatcher" had come out. Mr. Littleton's speech involved his looking at the CSIS employees in the audience (former Deputy Director Harry Brandes was there) and telling the audience that the "Spycatcher" book proves that the security services are themselves "subversive"! I was in the audience and had brought with me a copy of the transcripts of his program from four years earlier and during the question and answer period afterwards I quoted from his earlier statement on national radio about there being no such thing as subversion and asked him where his accusation that day of security services being subversive was not contradictory. He mumbled something into the microphone about "that's not what I meant", and before we could engage in any meaningful debate on the issue, the panel moderator intervened and quickly changed the topic. Mr. Brandes approached me the next day in the hall and told me that I had asked the best question of the conference. Unfortunately, the CSIS guys did not speak up, as they never do in public.