Gilles G. Brunet

Sergeant Gilles G. Brunet was a career officer in Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police.[1][2] In 1972 American suspicions had triggered one of Brunet's colleagues, Leslie James Bennett, to lose his security clearance, leading to his dismissal. A year after Brunet's death, a Soviet defector named Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko would clear Bennett, and assert that Brunet was the mole.

Gilles G. Brunet
Born1934 (1934)
DiedApril 9, 1984 (50 years old)
Montreal
NationalityCanada
OccupationPolice officer
Known forAfter his death, Soviet officials asserted he had been a KGB mole

Brunet was the son of Josaphat Brunet, the first director of the RCMP Security Service.[3] According to The Fifth Estate, Gilles Brunet lived beyond his means, and made frequent trips to Mexico.[1][2] His father would rise to the rank of Deputy Commissioner.[4]

Brunet joined the RCMP Security Service in the early 1960s, and at first, seemed to show promise that would merit holding greater positions of trust.[4] He was offered Russian Language training, and did well. He played a significant role in the conviction of Bower Featherstone, and won a promotion in 1966.

But Brunet was drinking too much, and his marriage was in trouble because his wife, correctly, believed he was sexually unfaithful to her.[4]

According to Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada -- from the Fenians to Fortress America, Brunet enlisted as a Soviet informant in January 1968.[4] Later in 1968, his wife, looking for traces of his infidelities, found a $2,000 payment from the Soviets in his car. She reported the suspicious funds to the RCMP, and her report was dismissed because Brunet had warned colleagues that his jealous wife would say anything to bring him down.

Brunet betrayed Nikolai Artamonov, a Soviet who had found political asylum in the USA.[5] After making his way to the USA, and seeking asylum, Artamonov started working with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Soviet agent Igor Kochnov approached Artamonov, and invited him to return home. While Artamonov pretended to agree, and to meet someone to handle his extraction, in Montreal, he informed his FBI handler. Because the meet was in Canada, the RCMP Security Service became involved, and Brunet told his handlers that Artamonov's negotiations to return home were a trap. No one was captured in Montreal, but the Soviets caught up with Artamonov two years later in Vienna, where he died of a drug overdose when they tried to abduct, drug and repatriate him.

Brunet was still receiving glowing performance reviews as late as 1972.[4] In 1973, however, he and colleague Donald McCreery were fired, because it was believed they had ties to organized crime figures in Montreal.

After they were fired, Brunet and McCreery founded a private security firm.[4]

In 1977 Brunet and McCreery were key witnesses before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Certain Activities of the RCMP.[4] According to Crimes by the Capitalist State, the pair testified about "barn burning, the theft of documents, and 'participation and assistance to the CIA in offensive activities in Canada.'"[6]

According to the Historical Dictionary of Air Intelligence, Brunet still had knowledge of the handling of Soviet defectors in 1978 [sic].[7] The book asserts Brunet told his handlers that Vladimir Vetrov had not been emphatic in rejecting recruitment efforts by the RCMP, which triggered an investigation into Vetrov's loyalty to the Soviet Union, that, in turn, triggered hard feelings that led him to leak secrets about how the Soviets covertly copied western military and technology projects to French agents.

According to Moles, Defectors, and Deceptions: James Angleton and CIA Counterintelligence, Brunet died of a heart attack shortly before the RCMP was going to interview him about whether he was a mole.[8]

In Enquêtes sur les services secrets, Normand Lester writes that he died on April 9, 1984 while he was manager of the Centennial Memorial Gardens cemetery (now Rideau Memorial Gardens) in Dollars-des-Ormeaux, a Montreal suburb.[9]

Nigel West, in a book profiling the directors of Britain's MI6, asserted that the RCMP didn't begin investigating Brunet until their suspicions were confirmed by MI6.[10] West claimed "SIS's contribution greatly enhanced the Service's standing across the Atlantic..."

References
  1. Richard C. S. Trahair; Robert L. Miller (2013). Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations. Enigma Books. pp. 20–21. ISBN 9781936274253. Retrieved 2013-12-01. In 1974, when James Angleton was forced to retire from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and inquiry was made into Bennett, it was found that there was no evidence that he had ever been a mole for the KGB and that his loyalty to Canada had always been unquestionable.
  2. David Wise (1993-08-15). "A Labyrinth Of Spies: One Victim's Story -- The CIA Thought Canadian Agent Was Really A Mole". Seattle Times. Archived from the original on 2013-12-02. Retrieved 2013-12-02. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who had headed foreign counterintelligence for the KGB, said on the program that there indeed had been a mole in the Mounties who was paid "hundreds of thousands of dollars." The CBC program identified the mole as Gilles G. Brunet, a former Mountie, whose father had been the first director of the security service.
  3. Jeffery T. Richelson (1997). A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press. pp. 391–392. ISBN 9780195113907. Retrieved 2013-12-02. Yurchenko revealed that there was indeed a mole in the RCMP Security Service during part of Bennett's tenure--Gilles G. Brunet, whose father, Josaphat Brunet, had been the first director of the security service (1956-57).
  4. Reginald Whitaker; Gregory S. Kealey; Andrew Parnaby (2012). "Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada -- from the Fenians to Fortress America". University of Toronto Press. pp. 236–238, 240, 267, 306, 532. ISBN 9780802007520. Retrieved 2013-12-02. Brunet was marked for a brillian trajectory in the force. He joined the security service in the early 1960s. At the Russian desk, he won promotion in 1966 for investigative work that led to the conviction of Bower Featherstone.
  5. Nigel West (2007). Historical Dictionary of Cold War Counterintelligence. Scarecrow Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 9780810864634. Retrieved 2013-12-02. Fluent in Russian, Brunet was never suspected while he worked for the RCMP, but after his retirement, he came under surveillance. However, he died, ostensibly of natural causes, on the very first day an observation post was established across the street from his apartment.
  6. Gregg Barak (1991). Crimes by the Capitalist State: An Introduction to State Criminality. SUNY Press. p. 209. ISBN 9780791405840. Retrieved 2013-12-02. The two former officers in question were Donald McCleerly and Gilles Brunet... He and Brunet told of barn burning, the theft of documents, and "participation and assistance to the CIA in offensive activities in Canada."
  7. Glenmore S. Trenear-Harvey (2009). Historical Dictionary of Air Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780810862944. Retrieved 2013-12-02.
  8. David Robarge (2003). "Moles, Defectors, and Deceptions: James Angleton and CIA Counterintelligence" (PDF). The Journal of Intelligence History. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2012-09-27. Retrieved 2013-12-02. Thirteen years later, the RCMP finally identified the probable mole, a sergeant named Gilles Brunet. In a remarkable coincidence with what happened in Norway, Brunet died of a heart ailment just before the RCMP was about to interrogate him.
  9. Normand Lester (1998). Enquêtes sur les services secrets. Éditions de l’Homme. pp. 233–239. ISBN 2-7619-1425-2.
  10. Nigel West (2006). At Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain's Intelligence Agency, M16. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781591140092. Retrieved 2013-12-02. The RCMP had long suspected the existence of a mole, but Gilles Brunet, codenamed TANGO and the son of a respecte RCMP Commissioner, had not come under investigation until SIS provided the confirmation. SIS's contribution greatly enhanced the Service's standing across the Atlantic, although Brunet himself died in 1984, before he could be arrested and interrogated.
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