If all historical events occur twice, as Karl Marx famously said, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, then the U.S. persecution of Canadian Maher Arar is the farcical afterpiece to its persecution of fellow Canadian E. Herbert Norman 50 years earlier. In both instances, a terrible injustice was done by the U.S. government to an innocent Canadian. In 1957, the excuse was the Cold War, the war against communism; today, it is the "war on terror."
In both instances, U.S. intelligence agencies were in cahoots with their Canadian counterparts; in both instances, the Canadian government insisted on the innocence of its citizens, and in both instances, the U.S. government, rather than admitting its mistake, perpetuated its cruel treatment of the Canadians.
The story of Mr. Arar is well known: After he was flagged by the RCMP as a potential threat, U.S. authorities detained Mr. Arar at Kennedy International Airport in 2002, then deported him to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for 10 months. Although a Canadian judicial probe later found no evidence to link Mr. Arar to terrorism, the U.S. is keeping his name on a terrorist "watch list."
The case of Mr. Norman is less clearly known and warrants a retelling. A Canadian diplomat and scholar who was serving in Japan at the onset of the Second World War, and was interned there following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Norman was accused of being a Communist in 1951 by allies of Joseph McCarthy in the U.S. Senate. Interrogated twice in secret by the RCMP at the urging of U.S. intelligence agencies, he was exonerated by Canadian authorities and allowed to resume his duties in the foreign service.
In the fall of 1956, following the Suez crisis, Mr. Norman, then 47, was Canada's ambassador to Egypt. Mr. Norman worked tirelessly to find a peaceful solution in negotiations with Gamal Abdel Nasser. His eventual success in persuading Egypt's president to admit United Nations peacekeepers into his country was, for that era, a singular achievement. Mr. Norman's boss, Lester Pearson, later won the Nobel Peace Prize, in part because of Mr. Norman's efforts.
In March of 1957, suspicions about Mr. Norman were revived by the U.S. Senate. On April 4, Mr. Norman stepped off the roof of a nine-storey apartment building in the heart of Cairo.
The complete account of the reasons for the death of Mr. Norman has yet to be told. My 400-page biography, now 20 years old, needs to be augmented. I knew this even when I finished writing the book. But, despite my repeated requests to the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act over the past quarter of a century, more than 60 classified documents acknowledged to exist by the agency in the early 1980s continue to be kept secret.
Secrecy is the enemy of truth and a crime against history.
Why has the U.S. government, and the CIA in particular, refused to release these records? Would their release help to explain Mr. Norman's fatal plunge in 1957? Would they establish definitively that Mr. Norman had not been part of the Cambridge spy network that included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, as once alleged by New Republic editor Michael Straight in secret testimony to the FBI in 1963? Would the withheld documents reveal some role by the CIA in Mr. Norman's death? Or would they merely show that the U.S. found it convenient, for reasons related to fighting the Cold War, to attack Mr. Norman publicly?
Whatever, it is clear that someone or some agency fabricated the details of Mr. Norman's death and "leaked" them to the U.S. press in 1957, making it appear that Mr. Norman was guilt-ridden and psychologically unstable, and that he chose to kill himself rather than face additional inquiries over his alleged Communist background.
One of several suicide notes leaked to the press then seemed to imply that Mr. Norman had had a close, perhaps homosexual, relationship with the Swedish ambassador to Egypt, Brynolf Eng. The New York Daily News account in April of 1957 reported Mr. Norman as having written to Mr. Eng on the eve of his death: "I wanted to spend some time with you during these last few days of my life and tell you about what has been worrying me but am afraid that even in this letter I cannot bring myself to tell you [the]true reasons that impel me to commit suicide. I have decided to die near your home. I know this may cause you some trouble and I am sorry but you are my best friend. Farewell. Sincerely, Norman."
This account stood as the "truth" for 30 years, contradicted only by Canadian sources whose comments did not register in the U.S. in 1957. The actual note Mr. Norman wrote to Mr. Eng, in his handwriting and found in the RCMP files, reads: "Mr. Eng, I beg forgiveness for using your flat. But it is the only clear jump where I can avoid hitting a passerby. E. H. N."
The disparities between what was reported 50 years ago and what the historical record says do not end with this example. But knowing just this much to be true should prompt serious questioning about the veracity of certain news reports based on information provided by government spokesmen.
As Tolstoy famously reminds us, "History would be a wonderful thing if only it were true." The Arar and Norman cases explain the logic behind Tolstoy's epigram: History is recorded too often by the powerful and is, alas, recorded for political reasons by those who brook no competing interpretations. Redress for the victims of such crimes against history must be had, but how?
Roger Bowen is the author of Innocence Is Not Enough: The Life and Death of Herbert Norman, and general secretary of the American Association of University Professors.