Cargo of lies

by Dean Beeby

On a chill autumn night in 1942, a German spy was rowed ashore from a U-boat off the Gaspe coast to begin a deadly espionage mission against the Allies. Thanks to an alert hotel-keeper's son, Abwehr agent 'Bobbi' was captured and forced by the RCMP to become Canada's first double agent. For nearly fifty years the full story of the spy case, code-named Watchdog, was suppressed. Now, author Dean Beeby has uncovered nearly five thousand pages of formerly classified government documents, obtained through the Access to Information Act from the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Department of Justice, the National Archives of Canada, and Naval Intelligence. He has supplemented this treasure trove with research among still heavily censored FBI files, and interviews with surviving participants in the Watchdog story. Although British records of the case remain closed, Beeby also interviewed the MI5 case officer for Watchdog, the late Cyril Mills. . The operation was Canada's