JFK’S COLD WAR WITH CANADA
TENSIONS LED TO OTTAWA’S POWER TRANSFER IN 1963
Only one month before the Cuban Missile Crisis brought 12 days of fear upon the world, eight high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials gathered at an undisclosed location to plot their next steps in removing Fidel Castro from power.
When those people met on Sept. 14, 1962, the U.S. still had no idea that Russian missiles were stockpiled in Cuba. Operation Mongoose, in which officials schemed to assassinate, discredit or trigger an uprising against the Cuban communist leader, still dominated the meetings. But on this day, General Edward Lansdale, the head of Mongoose, and General Marshall Carter, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, didn’t pitch National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy on exploding cigars and conch shells.
Instead, they focused on Canada.
“General Carter said that CIA would examine the possibilities of sabotaging airplane parts which are scheduled to be shipped from Canada to Cuba,” reads a now declassified memorandum about the meeting.
Since July, the U.S. National Archives and President Donald Trump have released more than 25,000 secret files relating to John F. Kennedy’s time as president and his assassination. The memorandum from the 1962 meeting reveals for the first time that the CIA was floating the idea of taking action against Canada.
No approval was given at this meeting, where Carter also asked Bundy to increase intelligence on Canada because of its “reporting funding of subversive elements in Ecuador and possibly elsewhere,” according to the memorandum. Bundy made it abundantly clear that “sensitive” ideas involving sabotage would have to be presented in more detail and decided case-by-case.
“This would have constituted a violation of Canadian sovereignty, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone,” said Arne Kislenko, a Ryerson university professor who teaches the history of espionage and handled national security matters as a Canada Immigration officer for 12 years. “This is an agency which has undermined numerous countries.”
While it’s still unknown how the group reacted to CIA deputy director Carter’s idea, other sparse mentions of Canada in the JFK archives reveal that the CIA constantly kept one eye on Canada’s relationship with Cuba.
The sabotage mooted in the declassified memo, Kislenko said, could include anything from substituting the spare airplane parts for faulty ones to starting a fire at the factory where they were made. Canada’s relationship with the U.S. was tense leading up to the missile crisis, but it was unlikely the CIA would have risked an operation on Canadian soil when “it’s just so much easier to have a ship blown up at sea,” Kislenko said.
The U.S. would soon be involved in a cold war with the Soviet Union, but much of the tension between it and Canada was fuelled by the cold war between Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and Kennedy.
Between 1960 and 1963, Diefenbaker defied the U.S. government in a display of stubborn nationalism. When Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower ordered a trade embargo on Cuba in 1960, Diefenbaker refused. Canada and Mexico became the only two countries in the western hemisphere to ignore the embargo. Diefenbaker believed that the Castro-led revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista deserved a chance to succeed. It also helped that he saw an opportunity to make a few dollars.
Cuba couldn’t rely on the U.S. for trade, so Diefenbaker planned to make Canada the middle man and profit as a trading partner. Canada would export everything from spare airplane parts to rail cars to Cuba, explained John Kirk, a professor of Latin American studies at Dalhousie University.
When Kennedy reached the Oval Office, the isolation of Cuba heightened. Of course, he expected Diefenbaker to follow in lockstep, not only on Cuba but on foreign policy and nuclear armament. So when the grizzled prime minister shut down the playboy president, Kennedy fumed.
“(Kennedy) hated Canadian nationalism and thought Canada was the boonies,” Kirk said. “He had a tremendous imperial arrogance towards Canada.”
The hatred was more than mutual.
Kennedy visited Ottawa in May 1961 for a series of meetings with Diefenbaker on foreign policy. After their final meeting, Kennedy returned to Washington but mistakenly left something behind. It was a memo titled: “What We Want from the Ottawa Trip.” The document listed four foreign policy areas that Kennedy would “push” Diefenbaker on.
When an assistant found the memo and handed it to Diefenbaker, he refused to send it back to the U.S. and instead read it again and again, becoming more livid with each reading and underlining the word “push” twice in blue ink. Kennedy was a bully, Diefenbaker thought, and he’d get nothing from Canada.
The memo would surface again during the 1962 Canadian election when Kennedy was clearly supporting Diefenbaker’s opponent, Liberal opposition leader Lester B. Pearson. In a fit of rage brought on by finding Kennedy inviting Pearson instead of him to a Nobel Prize gala, Diefenbaker pounded his desk, produced the memo and threatened to make it public. He had to show the Canadian public that he was the only one who could stand up to the Yankee bully. When news of the threat reached Bundy and Kennedy at the White House, the first solution the president offered was to “cut his balls off,” before calling Diefenbaker a “prick,” a “f-ker” and his most common phrase for Diefenbaker: “That son of a bitch.”
“Just let him try it,” Kennedy shouted at the meeting, ending it by threatening to never speak to Diefenbaker again.
Six months later, on Oct. 14, 1962, the Americans learned that the Soviet Union was storing missiles in Cuba. This lead to more than a week of threats between the U.S., Cuba and the Soviet Union that brought the world to the brink of thermal-nuclear war. Americans lived in constant fear, listening to their radios for breaking news and waiting to hear civil defence sirens blare in the streets. Children practised quickly hiding under their desks at school.
Fuelled by his hatred of Kennedy, Diefenbaker refused to put the Canadian military on high alert and only acted when the crisis was over. It was actions such as these that led to his defeat by the Kennedy-friendly Pearson in the 1963 election.
During Diefenbaker’s term, Canada never made the headway the prime minister expected on trade with Cuba, Kirk said. Part of that arose from the U.S. warning Canadian corporations to “think twice” about trading with Cuba if they still wanted business.
With Pearson still two months from office, the CIA finally determined that Canada’s trade with Cuba was not a matter that would lead to conflict, according to a declassified Feb. 23 1963 report. Sure, the CIA showed its hatred of Diefenbaker, who “wishes to exploit the anti-American line,” but it concluded the Canadian diplomatic missions in Cuba were too valuable to compromise.
So sabotage was out. Even though the CIA no longer saw Canada as being in a position of conflict, new documents show that Kennedy’s inner circle was still not pleased. During a Nov. 12, 1963 meeting, CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald briefed Kennedy on Canada and said it was still “refusing to cooperate” in the “economic denial” of Cuba. He called on Kennedy to strengthen the program to deal with Canada’s “most serious” behaviour. An undated CIA document shows that the CIA was pushing for sanctions against Canada.
It’s likely Canada had no idea of the CIA plans when Pearson agreed to allow Canadian diplomats in Cuba to spy on the Soviet Union on behalf of the U.S. intelligence agency.
John W. Graham served as a Canadian diplomat in Cuba almost immediately after the Cuban Missile Crisis between 1962 and 1964. Disguised as a Soviet soldier, Graham entered their military bases to keep track of their weapons, machinery and troop numbers and regularly report back to Ottawa using a cipher machine.
Along with Canadian diplomats turned spies, the CIA hired other Canadians — without the government’s knowledge — to do their bidding in Cuba. Canadian pilot Ron Lippert was hired by the agency to smuggle explosives packed in papaya into Cuba. Graham visited Lippert in prison after the pilot was caught.
Despite being privy to secret information, Graham had no knowledge about the CIA keeping tabs on Canada. It’s standard intelligence practice, Kislenko said, to spy on your allies like your enemies.
But even if Graham had known, it wouldn’t have changed his willingness to spy on the Soviet Union. His work, Graham said, helped the CIA understand that the Soviet Union was keeping its end of the bargain and no longer stashing intercontinental missiles on Cuba.
“There was a risk of thermonuclear war,” Graham said in an interview. “The more I was able to go to a Cuban military camp, prowl around the exterior and look at ... their equipment and describe that and sketch that, the more the American intelligence community realized (Soviet Union leader Nikita) Khrushchev was keeping his word.”
(JOHN F. KENNEDY) HATED CANADIAN NATIONALISM AND THOUGHT CANADA WAS THE BOONIES. HE HAD A TREMENDOUS IMPERIAL ARROGANCE TOWARDS CANADA. — JOHN KIRK, PROFESSOR OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES AT DALHOUSIE