Agent of Influence: A True Story

Steven R. Hewitt is an assistant professor of history at the University
of Saskatchewan.

In 1964, former Canadian ambassador John Watkins keeled over from a
heart attack while being interrogated by members of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police over unsupported allegations that Watkins had spied for
the Soviet Union. Adams’s detailed treatment of the incident is
reasonably entertaining, but is riddled with major and minor errors of
fact. The lead RCMP character, for example, is a woman at a time when
the Mounted Police had only male members. Hints are dropped about the
1979 Iranian Revolution. Hockey player Spinner Spencer is mentioned
several years before his professional career actually began.

Far more serious is the suggestion that Watkins was actually killed by
American intelligence in an attack on the government of Lester Pearson.
Not a shred of evidence is offered to support this contention; it
reflects the sort of simplistic conspiracy theory one might encounter on
the Internet.