Betrayal: The Spy Canada Abandoned

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and the
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Ryszard Paszkowski was a Polish-born agent of SB—the Polish spy
agency—who later worked for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
(CSIS). As MP for the Edmonton constituency where Paszkowski lived,
Kilgour talked to Paszkowski and read his documents. Paszkowski himself
wrote the prologue, and Kilgour quotes him at length, arguing that
Canadian authorities were not fair to a man who had performed services
for CSIS.

This is thrilling material. At spy school in the Urals, the KGB
instructor warned that, with its worldwide network, the KGB could kill
traitors anywhere on earth. Paszkowski learned to forge airline tickets,
mislead the lie-detector machine, slit a dog’s throat, and kill with a
toothbrush. Revolted by General Jaruzelski’s 1981 declaration of
martial law, Paszkowski hijacked a Polish airliner and ordered the
captain to fly to Munich. Escaping from a West German prison, he
accepted an SB offer to spy in France, and the SB provided money and
documents so that he could relocate. Then he defected again. Framed by
muggers, Paszkowski joined the Foreign Legion to escape further
imprisonment, then went AWOL. Soon he offered his services to the RCMP
at the Canadian Embassy in Rome; CSIS inherited him and asked him to
penetrate the Polish Embassy in Ottawa. Once Paszkowski had done what it
wanted, CSIS arranged for his return to Europe, tried unsuccessfully to
keep him there, and did what it could to disrupt his life when he
returned to Canada. His fate remains uncertain. Marring Kilgour’s
narrative is some sloppy editing and the absence of an index.