#feather bed

Feather Bed (or, on occasion, Featherbed) was a nearly two-decade long RCMP probe to root out Soviet infiltration of the Canadian federal government, lasting from 1958 to 1975. In its infancy, the RCMP investigated the backgrounds of employees in high-level positions that fit the pattern of known Soviet agents in the United States. The original list of suspects included prominent figures, such as Herbert Norman, a Canadian diplomat whose 1957 suicide was often attributed to pressures resulting from persistent accusations that he was a communist, investigations were plagued by squandered time. By the time the investigation began in earnest in 1962, many individuals listed had passed away, and concrete evidence was hard to locate. While investigations continued for another decade, the Feather Bed file, as requested by the Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act in 2012, reveal no evidence that a Soviet mole was ever uncovered.