British spy tale about Cold War defection sheds new light on Canadian mole hunt

OTTAWA — There is new evidence that a Soviet spy who defected to Britain in the early 1980s played a key role in helping Canada unravel the mystery of a mole who passed secrets to Russian intelligence.

The recently published book Redwood, by journalist and author Ben Macintyre, tells the story of Vladimir Kuzichkin, who agreed to defect in the hope that he would receive medical treatment to cure his impotence.

It also fleshes out previous claims that Kuzichkin alerted Canadian intelligence officials to a high-ranking traitor within the ranks of the RCMP — a tip that led molehunters to zero in on former Mountie Gilles Brunet.

The Moscow-born Kuzichkin served in the Soviet army before being recruited in the 1970s into the KGB, the country’s main security agency at the time.

Macintyre’s book says Kuzichkin was stationed in Tehran in 1981 when he nervously approached the British about working for them.

During a clandestine meeting with a British intelligence officer, Kuzichkin revealed his disillusionment with the Soviet Union and the KGB, the book says. He also spoke of his desperation to solve the difficulties he was experiencing in the bedroom.

“Kuzichkin’s impotence was his overriding, overwhelming burden, the driving psychological impetus behind his decision to swap sides,” Macintyre writes.

The tall Soviet spy, who was given the code name REDWOOD, helped the British in Iran before fleeing to England via Turkey. He died in 2009.

Kuzichkin’s defection prompted a flood of queries from allied intelligence services, Macintyre writes.

In August 1982, the British informed the RCMP that “a top-level defector” had pointed to a KGB mole, code-named NIKON, in the Canadian police force, the book says.

“The British could supply no additional details: no name, and no certainty about whether this spy was still in the Canadian service,” Macintyre writes. “But the source was unimpeachable. The revelation sent a shudder through Canada’s intelligence establishment.”

The ensuing RCMP review of operational case files involving the Soviets from 1967 to 1973 did not yield anything that might identify the agent, according to records obtained by The Canadian Press in 2021 through the Access to Information Act.

An examination of hundreds of personnel files and interviews with members also turned up no firm leads.

Brunet spent much of the 1960s in Ottawa with the RCMP Security Service, the wing of the national police force responsible at the time for protecting Canada from foreign spies and extremists. His father had led the RCMP’s security branch for a time in the 1950s.

Brunet excelled in a Russian language course. But he had marital problems and ran up debt. In 1968 he transferred to Montreal, where he continued to work on security files.

Brunet was dismissed from the force in 1973 for refusing to cut ties with a person alleged to have underworld connections. He went into the private security business and later sold prearranged funeral packages.

Brunet was seen as intelligent, aggressive and ambitious but also “avaricious, vindictive and devoid of morals,” the internal records reviewed by The Canadian Press say.

“When it suited his purposes, he was extremely outgoing and gregarious. He played ‘hard’ and was a heavy drinker.”

In December 1983, a security investigator probing Brunet’s past believed the Mounties had found their mole.

The research showed that no Soviet-linked case of which Brunet was aware ever came to a successful conclusion, even though there were operational successes in other areas of the country during the same period.

In each case molehunters were able to document, “operations died immediately upon Brunet learning of them,” says the investigator’s memo. “It appears that not only was Brunet compromised, but that he was so committed that he gave his Soviet handlers everything he got his hands on.”

Investigators believed that the well-connected Brunet continued to feed information to the KGB even after leaving the RCMP.

The RCMP secretly followed Brunet for several days in early April 1984, surveilling his visits to the dry cleaners, a grocery store and — on the day before his sudden death from an apparent heart attack — a pizzeria.

There would be no chance to interrogate the suspect.

“The Mounties never did get their man, but at least, thanks to Kuzichkin, they knew who he was,” Macintyre writes.

Brunet’s grave marker at a Montreal cemetery depicts a beach scene in Acapulco, Mexico — a favourite destination — and a martini glass. It remembers him as a “bon vivant” and a “very special man.”

The newly created Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which took over responsibility for counter-intelligence work, continued to investigate, drawing on additional information received through a tip in 1985 or early 1986. Although details were stripped from the Access to Information release, this tip is believed to have come from another Soviet defector.

A 1987 CSIS report said the spy service “is satisfied” that Brunet was the agent recruited by Soviet intelligence. CSIS concluded that money, ego and career frustrations were the likely reasons for his betrayal.

Macintyre, who cites the Canadian Access to Information records in recounting the Brunet episode, is not the first to highlight Kuzichkin’s role in helping the Canadians.

A 2016 book, At Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Nigel West, also identifies Kuzichkin as the source of the tipoff about a spy for Moscow in the RCMP.

Kuzichkin’s valuable disclosure is also mentioned in unpublished research on the Brunet case carried out in the 1990s by Peter Marwitz, a former member of the RCMP Security Service and CSIS.

Marwitz suggested Brunet’s misdeeds included revealing the location of listening devices planted at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa and betraying the activities of a Canadian military attaché stationed in Moscow. He said Brunet was paid more than $700,000 by the KGB.

Macintyre writes that Brunet “was able to expose double agents within KGB ranks” and that he gave the Soviets a British debriefing report on Oleg Lyalin, who defected from the KGB in 1971.

Macintyre interviewed former American, British and Russian security officials, as well as friends and family members of those involved in the Kuzichkin saga. He teases out some intriguing new details about the Canadian elements.

Macintyre says Brunet’s KGB handlers taught him Soviet tradecraft, such as the use of cigarette packs to carry film and how to signal for a meeting by placing a piece of tape on a pole — horizontal for Ottawa, vertical for Montreal.

Brunet ignored it all, preferring to meet at a favourite pub, “exchange intelligence for bundles of cash, and then get blind drunk,” the book says.

“Brunet’s espionage is said to fill 20 KGB files of 250 pages each.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2026.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press