Leslie James Bennett; RCMP spy & falsely accused KGB mole
Hyfler/Rosner
March 31, 2004 Wednesday Toronto Edition
HEADLINE: Falsely accused as KGB mole, RCMP spy dies in
Australia: Jim Bennett: 1972 mistake 'a blot on the history
of the security service'
SOURCE: National Post
BYLINE: Andrew McIntosh
OTTAWA - Leslie James Bennett, a senior counter-intelligence
officer forced from his job with the RCMP in 1972 over
unfounded allegations that he was a mole for the Soviet KGB,
has died in Australia, ending one of the most tragic
chapters in Canadian intelligence history.
"Jim" Bennett died in Melbourne last fall, at age 83, though
news of his death is just now filtering back to Canada
thanks to a report in the latest edition of The Spirit, an
RCMP Veterans' Association newsletter.
The former spy was mugged in Melbourne two years ago and had
continued to suffer from related injuries, friends said.
News of his death was kept quiet at the request of Hilary
Bennett, one of his two surviving daughters.
Ms. Bennett, a Melbourne lawyer, did not return telephone
calls.
But she told retired Mountie Dave Lehman, a former head of
drug and criminal intelligence in Ottawa, that her father's
death "was a relief from the terrible burden placed upon him
by the allegations that he was a mole."
Mr. Bennett was a victim of a Cold War-era, anti-communist
witch hunt instigated by James Angleton, a former U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency counter- intelligence chief.
Mr. Angleton believed Canadian intelligence had a dangerous
mole in its ranks -- it did, in fact -- and suspicion fell
on Mr. Bennett, who was then the highest-ranking civilian in
the security service and head of Soviet counter-intelligence
efforts in Ottawa.
The RCMP subjected Mr. Bennett to a two-year-long
investigation. The mole hunt reached a feverish pitch in the
spring of 1972, when Mr. Bennett was interrogated for five
days at an Ottawa hotel by a team of five investigators.
Though no charges of any kind were laid, word of the secret
probe leaked out.
No evidence was ever found against Mr. Bennett, but his
spying career at the RCMP security service was over, his
marriage collapsed and Canadian spies damaged his remaining
working life with innuendo about him being a Soviet mole.
He was forced from the RCMP security service later in 1972
on a medical discharge when his health failed under the
strain.
Part of Mr. Bennett's ordeal was told in For Services
Rendered, a 1982 book by Ottawa-based investigative
journalist and teacher John Sawatsky.
Between 1982 and 1985, the RCMP security service, and its
civilian successor agency, the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service (CSIS), both confirmed the real mole
was not Mr. Bennett, but a hard-drinking, womanizing field
operative named Gilles Brunet, the son of an RCMP assistant
commissioner.
Neither the RCMP nor CSIS breathed a word of their discovery
to the public, leaving the stain of betrayal and deception
hanging over Mr. Bennett for years.
In 1991, Mr. Bennett, who by then had moved to Australia to
be closer to his daughters, asked the RCMP Veterans'
Association to help him clear his name.
Two years later, the CBC TV program the fifth estate exposed
the mistreatment of Mr. Bennett, quoting former KGB General
Oleg Kaslugin as saying Mr. Bennett was wrongly accused of
being the mole.
Shortly after the 1993 broadcast, Conservative
solicitor-general Doug Lewis rose in Parliament and publicly
cleared Mr. Bennett of wrongdoing, but he and the government
stopped short of offering the former spymaster a public
apology.
Mr. Bennett -- then living on a small medical pension and
trying to support his estranged wife and children --
requested and received $100,000 in compensation.
He died without ever getting the full apology he wanted from
Canadian authorities.
Peter Marwitz, a retired RCMP intelligence officer who
worked with Mr. Bennett and who lives in Ottawa, said his
ordeal is a dark chapter in Canadian history.
"Despite a ministerial exoneration, he ultimately carried
within himself the heavy weight of the accusation of being a
mole until his dying day," Mr. Marwitz said.
He says six of Mr. Bennett's closest colleagues never
wavered in their support for him, refusing to believe he
could be a KGB mole.
"Like Bennett, these people have suffered in their careers,
too," he added.
Mr. Marwitz has spent years investigating the controversy
and is the author of an unpublished book on Mr. Bennett's
experiences at the hands of the mole hunters.
"The investigative team in their initial broader search for
the penetration agent entirely missed the real KGB mole,
Gilles Brunet, who was a field operative in Ottawa and
Montreal," Mr. Marwitz said.
The late Mr. Brunet accepted as much as $700,000 from the
Soviet KGB to betray Western agents and secret locations of
RCMP listening devices.
"Jim Bennett was entirely honourable man and became a very
tragic figure," Mr. Marwitz said. "His case has been swept
under the rug, unlike other Western democracies where these
matters are eventually aired."
Mr. Lehman, the retired RCMP criminal intelligence chief,
said the story of Leslie "Jim Bennett is a blot on the
history of the RCMP security service. The Russians set him
up. They were afraid of him."
Mr. Bennett remained a staunch supporter of Canada from his
Australian base, although he could never forgive his
accusers. In the 1990s, he co-authored a book titled
Canadians Living in Australia.
He is survived by his two daughters.