Now You See It, Now You Don't

Once, and then for only a minute, the lid of secrecy was lifted from Canada's espionage case (TIME, Feb. 25). The two-man Royal Commission, investigating Prime Minister Mackenzie King's charges that Canadians had peddled Government secrets to Russia, reported that: 1) eleven men and two women were being questioned; 2) evidence confirmed the serious nature of the matter; 3) there could be no public announcements for another "two or three weeks."

Then the lid popped on again.

Ottawa well knew, and so did many another discerning Canadian, that the Russian search for scientific data in the Dominion was neither surprising nor reprehensible ; the best nations do it. To official Canada, the whole affair was purely domestic: some civil servants obviously had acted, if not treasonously, at least unpatriotically in giving away -- or perhaps selling -- atom-bomb data and other information. Unperturbed by international hubbub (and inexperienced in it) Canada concentrated on tidying up her own house, and ignored Moscow's roar for the time being (see INTERNATIONAL).

Witnesses and suspects, deprived of the right of habeas corpus, were questioned in strictest secrecy in a ninth-floor room of the capital's guarded Justice Building. At night they were still held incommunicado, beyond reach of either relatives or lawyers, some at a Royal Canadian Mounted Police barracks. The area was swept by floodlights and ringed with armed guards in buffalo coats.

Don't Look Now, But ... In the wake of secrecy came such cloak-&-dagger speculation as the Dominion had never known. It spouted wherever people gathered. Headlines and stories dripped hysteria:

P: The Ottawa Journal, in recording the arrest of a young woman, delightedly pounded on the fact that she had in her room a copy of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

P: The Canadian Press reported from London that Russia's Andrei Vishinsky was en route to Canada. It turned out to be Louis Rasminsky, a Bank of Canada official homeward bound from UNO.

P: The Windsor Daily Star heard about a ''large black sedan" crossing from Canada to the U.S., hinted that it was probably loaded with escaping Russians.

P: The press found vicarious satisfaction in the ways the news was publicized abroad. Said one headline: BIG PLAY IN AUSTRALIAN PRESS.

P: Ottawa's Citizen noted that "four individuals . . . with Russian-sounding names" had registered at an Ottawa hotel. Officialdom had an attack of jitters too. Trumpeted Ontario's Premier George Drew: ". . . The time has not come when Canada is going to accept as its national emblem the hammer & sickle. . . ."

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