CANADIAN REACTION TO RUSSIAN SPIES’ UTILIZATION OF CANADIAN PASSPORTS IN RING UNCOVERED IN U.S. LAST YEAR

By Daria Carmon

In 2010, indictments were issued against 11 members of a Russian espionage ring operating in America, and they were charged with working for the SVR, the Russian Federation counterpart of the infamous KGB. Four agents had posed as Canadians and the Canadian Press published an article in mid October of this year on that particular aspect of the spy affair, drawing upon entrée to voluminous emails and memos from Foreign Affairs afforded by the Access to Information Act. Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, known as Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, resided together in the Boston area and, according to the FBI, were assigned to collect information pertaining to American foreign policy on various matters, among which were terrorist usage of the Internet, the military, and Central Asia. They transmitted data to their handlers by means of software capable of embedding clandestine communications in images. Mr.Bezrukov’s alias could be attributed to the birth certificate of a Canadian boy with the last name of Heathfield who lived only six weeks, and who died in Montreal 48 years ago. Bezrukov and Ms. Vavilova, along with Natalia Pereverzeva, who had gone by the name of Patricia Mills in Arlington, Va., pled guilty and conceded their true identities. The three were returned to their homeland due to their inclusion in a prisoner exchange with the Russians. The fourth Canadian impostor, Christopher Metsos according to his passport, was apprehended in Cyprus, released on bail and fled, whereabouts unknown. Cypriot authorities disclosed he had taken on the identity of a dead Canadian child in order to secure his passport.

Passport Canada acted swiftly with immediate cancellation of the Metsos passport. However, the agency offered little comment on the other three Russian operatives passing themselves off as Canadians. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, records indicate that in June 2010, Passport Canada was engaged in a frantic search for documentation regarding the Russian assumption of Canadian identities. The response of Foreign Affairs to the “Canadian” faction of the spy ring was a number of top-priority meetings and upper echelon briefings. A memo dating from late June 2010 stressed the danger
present to the credibility of Canadian passports. Following the guilty pleas and the prisoner exchange, a Foreign Affairs memo the next month struck a tougher tone, advocating that the government adopt a resolute position on the purported misuse of Canadian identity papers. Official Canadian sensibilities were vexed even further when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, had a meeting with the 10 spies on their return and participated in a singalong of patriotic tunes with them. Nevertheless, Canadian-Russian relations have not suffered and the Russian Federation embassy maintained that Canadian authorities never as so much as broached the subject of the Canadian passports. In fact, it is unknown if Canada ever raised the issue to Russian authorities or of any possible outcome. Not so with the Irish. Ireland resorted to expulsion of a Russian diplomat upon learning that six ring members had Irish passports tied to stolen identities.