Canada: The Mounties Get Their Men

For more than a month, Canada’s celebrated “Munsinger Affair” (TIME, March 25) had been the talk of the country. Last week it moved into the courtroom, as public hearings opened under Supreme Court Justice Wishart Flett Spence, 62. They would try to determine whether there had been a national security leak in the friendship of 36-year-old German Party Girl Gerda Munsinger with ministers of the former Conservative government. So far, the evidence was about as scant as the party-girl costumes Gerda had donned for cheesecake photos in Munich.

Key testimony of the week came from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Gerda, the Mounties claimed, was jailed several times in East and West Germany for “forged documentation, petty thievery and prostitution,” and in 1949 admitted to West German police that she had “engaged in espionage” for the Russians. “Other facts gleaned by counterintelligence sources,” deadpanned the report, “tended to corroborate her statement.”

Once Gerda was safely in Canada, the Mountie report went on, she waited out her five-year-residence requirement and applied for citizenship. Then came a routine investigation that turned up not only her past record but also the fact that she “had been carrying on an illicit sexual relationship with the Associate Minister of National Defense”—Pierre Sevigny.

“Extremely Vulnerable.” All the while, the Mounties said, Gerda was “very actively engaged as a common prostitute” in Montreal and, as such, associated with members of Montreal’s underworld. When Gerda’s citizenship was finally turned down, she returned to West Germany. But before leaving she went on a buying spree, scattering rubber checks all over Montreal. When they bounced her into jail, Gerda threatened the cops with Sevigny’s name, and was free the next day.

Because of her background, the Mounties concluded, Gerda “was extremely vulnerable to further exploitation by the Russian intelligence service,” and indeed “the opportunity existed for such communication.”

What sort of opportunity? Counsel John O’Brien asked former R.C.M.P. Commissioner Clifford Harvison.

“Persons known to be connected with the Russian intelligence service,” Harvison testified, “had been seen going into [her] apartment building.”

“That answer had better be clarified,” Justice Spence broke in.

“Not Mrs. Munsinger’s apartment,” Harvison corrected. They had gone into other apartments in the building, which were occupied by members of the Soviet “intelligence service” in Montreal. Had anyone ever seen Gerda even talking to the Russians? No.