Espionage

In 1979 the art historian was outed as one of the Cambridge spies recruited by Stalin. Shocking new evidence suggests he may also have passed deadly secrets to the Nazis, Robert Verkaik reports

This is not the story I intended to tell. I set out to write a book about a distant relative, Eddy Verkaik, who had fought in the Dutch resistance during the Second World War. Eddy had helped alert the British to the treachery of a fellow Dutch resistance fighter — a terrifying giant of a man known as “King Kong”: Christiaan Lindemans.

Lindemans had betrayed Operation Market Garden, the ambitious and ill-fated Allied airborne mission that dropped thousands of paratroopers into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, the 80th anniversary of which falls this September. Had it succeeded, it would have kicked open the door to the heart of Germany and brought the conflict to a speedy end. In the event the Allies lost more than 17,000 men in what was to be their final defeat of the war.

I am standing on the 26th floor of a skyscraper in Tel Aviv with views over the city and out to the Mediterranean, clutching a bottle of red wine from a Portuguese vineyard that doesn’t exist.

The wine certainly looks convincing. The bottle has an artful label with an etching of vines stretching across a hillside, a farmhouse in the distance. The vineyard also apparently bottles a sauvignon blanc and an aged ruby port, and reviews of its wine have featured on an established website, Vivino. ‘Another great wine from Alcantara,’ says one. ‘A soft fresh and fruity blend that pairs nicely with dessert. I was happily surprised with the tartness of the cranberries that was nicely balanced with the sweetness of the plum.’

One of Canada’s former top spies says that insider threats are one of the country’s biggest national security threats following three high-profile incidents.

“An insider threat, whether it’s a leaker or a spy — a spy from the inside — is unquestionably the most serious threat to national security,” former CSIS executive manager Dan Stanton told Mercedes Stephenson on The West Block.

“These are individuals that progress from low-risk to potential to do some leakage to becoming a high-risk where they actually act on these impulses and these plans. And it’s a very serious threat.”

But the good news is many of Canada’s internal threats are multicultural.