The Infernal Machine: Investigating the Loyalty of Canada's Citizens

Current historical orthodoxy contends that Canada was startled into implementing security screening in September 1945, when Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected in Ottawa, bringing with him sensational evidence that a Soviet espionage network existed in this country. The Infernal Machine challenges that conventional view in the course of rewriting Canadian security and intelligence history. Larry Hannant marshals evidence from previously classified documents to show that systematic security screening was launched fifteen years before Gouzenko. It was initiated because the Russian Revolution in 1917 caused Canadian authorities, particularly the RCMP, to view many citizens with suspicion. The heart of the security screening system was a unique Canadian experiment in mass fingerprinting. During the Second World War the RCMP received and checked over two million sets of fingerprints. This was both unprecedented and illegal. Because fingerprinting offended popular opinion and legal authority, surrendering their fingerprints was always `voluntary' for employees at war plants. The RCMP acknowledged that the procedure could be subject to abuse - and abused it was. People identified by security checks as having criminal records or even personal peccadilloes were fired and denied jobs. Some of these people protested their treatment, and in internal memos the RCMP commissioner fretted that the force was acquiring `a Gestapo reputation' among Canadians. The Infernal Machine presents a compelling new chapter in Canadian history. Hannant has produced an authoritative and dramatic examination of the Canadian state's deep fears of its own citizens and of the arbitrary measures taken against those citizens.