1. I saw Freeman Matthews, Deputy Under-Secretary of the Department of State this afternoon to protest the publicity given to the charges in the Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee of the Committee on the Judiciary and the manner in which this question had been handled in that committee.

2. I called to Mr. Matthews' attention the editorials referred to in your paragraph two as an indication of the public reaction in Canada and left copies of those edito­rials with him.⁹¹

3. I advised him that it was the hope of the Canadian Government that it would not be necessary to give publicity to our protest but pointed out to him that it was quite possible that the Canadian Government might find it necessary to give such publicity.

4. I left with Mr. Matthews a memorandum, the text of which is quoted below, which was based on paragraphs 1 and 3 of your message. Since the recent publicity has resulted from the hearings in the Senate sub-committee and none has resulted from hearings of a Committee on Un-American Activities reference to that commit­tee was deleted.

5. The text of my memorandum was as follows: Text begins:

"The Canadian Government was surprised to learn that the Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee of the Committee on the Judiciary found it necessary to make public reference to a high official of the Canadian Government, E.H. Nor­man, and on the basis of unimpressive and. unsubstantiated statements by a former Communist, in a way which could not fail to prejudice the position of that official before the public of his own and other countries.

The State Department will know that the Canadian Government has complete confidence in Mr. Norman, and hopes that they will inform the Congressional Committees of this fact, and its consequent regret and annoyance that their counsel went out of his way to drag Mr. Norman's name into their hearings.

The Canadian Government does not desire any publicity to be given to its repre­sentations, because there has been too much publicity already on this subject but it is to be hoped that the committees can instruct their counsel to act differently in the future in matters which concern officials of this government. If in evidence before investigating committees in Washington names of Canadian officials appear, the Canadian Government naturally expects that these names can be sent in confidence to the Canadian Government so that the allegations made can be investigated here and the results referred back to the State Department.

The Canadian Government hopes that the State Department will agree that this is the course which should have been followed in this case, and will be able to give some assurance that it will be followed in the future". Text ends.

6. After reading the memorandum Mr. Matthews said that he did not disagree with anything stated in it and expressed his sincere regrets at the publicity which had arisen. He undertook to bring our memorandum to the attention of the appro­priate authorities and to do what he could to prevent a repetition. He said that he felt he had to point out however that the State Department had not yet been able to devise a means of preventing similar publicity of unfounded charges against mem­bers of its own staff and that therefore while he would do whatever may be possible to prevent a recurrence in the case of Canadian officials he was not in a position to give any assurances of success in his efforts.

⁹¹ Voir/See "The Contemptible Attack on Mr. Norman" in Ottawa Citizen, August 11, 1951; "The Smear Comes North" in Globe and Mail, August 11, 1951.