29 October 1943: Memorandum for Robertson from Glazebrook

Bringing telephone censorship in to line required an understanding of the rules and mechanisms currently in place. In this memorandum to Norman Robertson, George Glazebrook of External Affairs helped to shed light on “the situation in regard to monitoring of land-line telephone calls.” While Glazebrook noted that Directorate of Censorship censors could only act on the written authority of the Director, the censors had at present fourteen directives from several offices, as well as a few “older requests” from External Affairs. Still, Glazebrook noted that none of the directives were aimed at diplomatic traffic, and he seemed confident that Colonel O.M. Biggar would act as a “safeguard” to ensure that censorship was not mis-applied.

Of greater concern was the RCMP, who had borrowed telephone monitoring equipment from Censorship, and the extent of their activities was said to be unknown. Glazebrook noted the RCMP’s monitoring was “quite undesirable,” and that it should be brought under the central Censorship authority. Only then could External Affairs ensure that censorship was not being applied to diplomatic traffic – something DEA officials did not “wish to appear as in any way connected” to.