Canada: Man on the Spot

Canada’s celebrated “Munsinger Affair” is more than just a national security flap. It represents a bitter personal contest—possibly to the political death—between Liberal Prime Minister Lester (“Mike”) Pearson, 69, and former Tory Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, 70. If Pearson proves his point that Diefenbaker’s onetime Associate Defense Minister jeopardized national security in his relationship with 36-year-old German Playgirl Gerda Munsinger, then Diefenbaker could find himself on the way out as opposition leader. If Pearson does not make his case, he might be the one to go. Last week, after five days of public hearings before Supreme Court Justice Wishart Spence, Diefenbaker was clearly the man on the spot.

A Strong Reprimand. One of the people who put him there was a fellow Tory and Diefenbaker’s own former Minister of Justice, E. Davie Fulton. Fulton said he first got wind of the affair between Gerda and Associate Defense Minister Pierre Sévigny in December 1960, and informed Diefenbaker, who in turn “strongly reprimanded” Sévigny for his relationship with a “known prostitute with a doubtful security background.”

Was Diefenbaker’s reproof adequate action? How much had he been told of the report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which disclosed that in Germany in 1949 Gerda stole two border passes and sold them to a Russian intelligence agent in East Berlin? The same year she showed up in a U.S. Army maneuver area with a man who had crossed over illegally from East Germany, carrying “a camera purportedly to take pictures of the area.” After entering Canada in 1955, Gerda moved into an apartment below some “known Soviet agents,” turned to prostitution ($15 to $20 per customer), and struck up a friendship with Sévigny that lasted almost until her return to Germany in 1961. What was more, the Mounties said, Gerda told them that “at a social function in Ottawa, the Prime Minister of Canada had told her that she was doing a great thing for Canada and that Mr. Sévigny had great things to offer Canada.”

Had he? The Dief said no. Breaking a long silence on Gerda, a Diefenbaker spokesman stormed that “this unsubstantiated, unverified material is a smear and completely irresponsible.”

“A Lady of Distinction.” Sévigny himself was no help to Diefenbaker’s cause. He never denied having had a “physical relationship” with Gerda, but insisted that she was a “lady of distinction” who was “welcomed in Montreal’s select circles.” As far as his own friendship was concerned, there was a platonic all-night visit to her Montreal apartment as late as November 1960, during which, he said, he did nothing more indiscreet than take a nap in a chair.

“May I suggest,” offered Government Counsel A. J. Campbell, “that when a gentleman visits the apartment of a lady of distinction, it is impolite to fall asleep while talking to the lady.”

“Sir, I was a very tired man.”

“What time did you wake up?”

“About 4:30. I was sitting in a chair, and frankly I said: ‘My God, it is a bit too late really to sort of call taxis,’ and so I just kept on sleeping in the chair.”

At week’s end rank-and-file Conservatives were withholding any judgment on Diefenbaker. When it comes, there are bound to be deep rumblings.