Canada's 1940s spy scandal can shed light on today's foreign-interference problems

Amy Knight is the author of How The Cold War Began: The Igor Gouzenko Affair and The Hunt For Soviet Spies and, most recently, The Kremlin's Noose: Putin's Bitter Feud With The Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia. As the controversy over foreign interference in Canada's democratic processes continues to grip Ottawa, a look back at a similar episode in Canadian history may offer some useful perspective. It has been almost 80 years since cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko left the Soviet embassy in Ottawa with a sheaf of secret documents that revealed an extensive Soviet espionage operation in Canada,…