US intelligence gave false IDs to 35 entering Canada, B’nai Brith report says

United States intelligence agencies provided false identity documents to at least 35 individuals who were inadmissible to Canada due to security concerns, including alleged ties to the Nazi regime, following the Second World War, according to a report released after legal efforts by B’nai Brith Canada.

The disclosures emerge from newly unsealed passages of a 1986 historical report written by researcher Alti Rodal for the Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes in Canada, chaired by Quebec judge Jules Deschênes. The Federal Court of Canada ordered the release of the redacted sections last month following applications by B’nai Brith Canada, which fought to make the full document public.

Declassified Portions of the 1986 Rodal Report

The newly available text reveals that American intelligence agencies operated a relocation program designed to move individuals who had rendered services to the U.S. in Europe during and immediately after the war. A U.S. official informed a high-ranking member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the 1950s that the 35 individuals included persons fleeing Eastern European communist regimes as well as former American agents.

The U.S. official acknowledged that these individuals required relocation but could not be legally settled inside the United States. Some of the relocated persons carried criminal backgrounds or files involving moral turpitude, the category under which Nazi war criminals were classified. The documents show that the individuals arrived in Canada equipped with false identification papers that obscured their true histories.

While the RCMP successfully blocked the entry of 52 other individuals sponsored by the American relocation initiative, the 35 named in the declassified passages successfully entered Canada during the 1950s. Historian Wesley Wark, an expert on Canadian intelligence history who is a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa, noted in a recent newsletter that the newly declassified material largely confirms known historical frameworks without introducing fundamentally new revelations regarding Canada-U.S. intelligence cooperation.

The Battle for Transparency and Historical Records

Richard Robertson, research director at B’nai Brith Canada, defended the organization’s legal battle to secure the unredacted documents. We did not know what information was still redacted. We had no way of knowing. What we did know was that Canadians had the right to have access to this information, Robertson told La Presse.

B’nai Brith Canada continues to pursue further disclosures of classified records linked to the Deschênes Commission. The fact that the Canadian government allowed for Nazis, and potentially Nazi war criminals, to be relocated into our country is a reality that is difficult for Canadians to admit, especially for Canada’s Jewish community, Robertson stated. We have a right to transparency, to learn from that and to heal from it.