J. Blair Seaborn

Seaborn was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Reverend Richard Seaborn and Murial Seaborn.[1] His father was the rector at St. Cyprian's Anglican Church and he had 8 siblings.[2] When he was six, his father died and his mother raised him on a clergyman's pension.[2] An outstanding student, he was awarded the Dirkson Scholarship which allowed him to attend university despite his family's poverty.[2] In 1941, he entered Trinity College at the University of Toronto, but his left his studies in 1943 when he joined the Canadian Army.[2] Seaborn called his military service his "Khaki holiday" as he served in the Royal Canadian Artillery.[2] After training in Canada and in Britain, Seaborn's regiment took part in the Liberation of the Netherlands in the spring of 1945.[2]  

St Cyprian's Anglican Church, Toronto, 2009. Seaborn's father was the rector at St. Cyprian's in the 1920s.

After serving in the Canadian Army, he demobilised in 1946. He was awarded a MA in Political Science and History at the Trinity College at the University of Toronto in 1948.[1] After graduation, Seaborn entered the Department of External Affairs in 1948 and served as a diplomat in The Hague, Paris, Moscow and Saigon.[1] Traditionally, the Canadian diplomatic corps were small as the British Foreign Office represented Canada abroad with Canada maintaining only high commissions in London and the Commonwealth capitals plus embassies in Washington, Paris and Moscow. Successive Canadian Prime Ministers were content to have British diplomats represent Canada as a cost-saving measure. After Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King who favored a quasi-isolationist foreign policy retired in 1948, his successor Louis St. Laurent was prepared to spend far more money than King ever had on expanding the Department of External Affairs.[2]

The years after 1948 were years of rapid growth for the Canadian diplomatic corps as St. Laurent's External Affairs Minister, Lester Pearson, had a very ambitious vision of Canada playing a greater role in the world.[2] The diplomatic corps became an elitist group as one diplomat asserted: "It is the combination of remarkable men with appropriate national backgrounds and opportune circumstances that has made for effective middle powermanship".[3] Precisely because Canada was not a great power, the diplomatic corps needed especially effective diplomats to promote Canadian interests abroad, hence the emphasis on elitism.[3] For this reason, the Canadian diplomats were often called the "mandarins".[4][5] Seaborn excelled in the growing diplomatic corps, serving as the Third Secretary at the embassy in The Hague, First Secretary at the embassy in Paris and counselor at the embassy in Moscow.[2] In 1950, he married Carol Trow and had two children, Geoffrey and Virginia.[1]

Trinity College, Seaborn's alma mater.

During his time in Moscow, Seaborn passed on covert messages to and from Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a senior officer in the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) who worked as a spy for the British MI6 and the American CIA.[2] Unlike Penkovsky who was executed after his arrest by the KGB, Seaborn enjoying diplomatic immunity was never in danger and the worse that could have happened to him if his work for the CIA and MI6 was exposed was being declared persona non grata by the Soviet Union. His assistance to the CIA with Penkovsky, the top Anglo-American spy in the Soviet Union in 1961–62, won him the trust of many in Washington.[2]

Seaborn served as the Canadian Commissioner to the International Control Commission (ICC), formed to supervise the Geneva Accords of 1954. Besides Canada, the ICC comprised diplomats and officers from India and Poland. As part of their monitoring duties, the Indian, Polish and Canadian delegates of the ICC were entitled to go anywhere in Vietnam, whether North or South, and to speak to officials of either regime, allowing the Commissioners a unique access to the leaders of both rival Vietnamese regimes.[2] Seaborn did not speak Vietnamese, but was fluent in French - the colonial language spoken by the educated in both parts of Vietnam - enabling him to make informal contacts with officials on either side.

In 1964, the Canadian External Affairs minister Paul Martin Sr called Seaborn one of Canada's "most ablest diplomats".[2] Seaborn lived in Saigon and came to renew his friendship with the American ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. whom he had known since the 1950s when Lodge was the American ambassador to the United Nations.[6][7] Lodge advised the Secretary of State Dean Rusk that Seaborn with his ability to go anywhere in the two Vietnams and his fluent French would be the ideal emissary to North Vietnam.[6] President Lyndon B. Johnson of the United States selected Seaborn to be his "back channel" to Ho Chi Minh.[8] Johnson requested from Pearson (who had become Prime Minister in April 1963) permission to use Seaborn as his "back channel", which was granted.[2] On 30 April 1964, Rusk visited Ottawa to discuss with Martin and Pearson the plan to use Seaborn as Johnson's emissary.[9] On 28 May 1964, Pearson visited New York to give a speech before the United Nations general assembly, and during the same visit to New York, Pearson met Johnson to give his approval to what the Americans called Operation Bacon.[9] Ho had a strong dislike of Westerners and Seaborn was never allowed to meet him.[10]

At the same time, the Polish Commissioner to the ICC, Mieczysław Maneli, was also working as a "back channel" to find a way to end the war and had the additional advantage over Seaborn of being allowed to meet Ho.[11] Lodge was in contact with Maneli whom he was introduced to via the Italian ambassador, Giovanni d'Orlandi, but preferred to use Seaborn, whom he had known for some time, rather than Maneli whom he did not know that well.[7] Maneli for his part disliked Lodge, finding the snobbish manners of the Boston Brahmin Lodge off-putting, and later saying that Lodge was one of the most arrogant men he ever met.[12]

Maneli defected to the United States in 1968, and in 1971 he published a book, The War of the Vanquished, recounting his experiences on the ICC. He wrote that the Seaborn and the rest of Canadian delegation tended to be very pro-American, but that he was "struck" by their "loyal co-operation" in attempting to make the ICC work.[13] The rules of the ICC stated that the chairman was always to be an Indian and Seaborn often clashed with the Indian delegation, whom he accused of being very biased towards North Vietnam and against South Vietnam.[14]  

In 1964–65, Seaborn was involved in what historians have called the "Seaborn Mission". This was a Canadian attempt to end the Vietnam War through "shuttle diplomacy": repeatedly flying back and forth from Washington to Hanoi.[15] Through Seaborn was to deliver messages between Washington and Hanoi, he was made responsible to Ottawa, which also had the right to amend the messages he was asked to carry.[9] Before leaving for Hanoi, Seaborn was briefed by William H. Sullivan, an aide to Assistant Secretary of State for Asia, William Bundy, regarding the American objectives in North Vietnam:[16] Seaborn was to assess the state of public opinion in North Vietnam and to see if the North Vietnamese were growing weary of the war that had been essentially continuous since 1945;[16] he was to assess the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on North Vietnam and determine which side Ho favoured: China or the Soviet Union;[16] finally, he was to assess if there were any splits within the North Vietnamese Politburo.[16] Seaborn flew into North Vietnam abroad a rickety Air France Stratoliner whose two pilots had an alarming habit of drinking champagne on the job.[2]  

On 18 June 1964, Seaborn arrived in Hanoi to meet Premier Phạm Văn Đồng with an offer from Johnson promising billions of American economic aid and diplomatic recognition of North Vietnam in exchange for North Vietnam ending its attempts to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.[8] Seaborn also warned that Johnson had told him that he was considering an strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam if his offer was rejected.[8] Seaborn stated that North Vietnam would suffer the "greatest devastation" from American bombing, stating that Johnson had both the power and willingness to turn North Vietnam into a wasteland.[17] Đồng told Seaborn that the American terms were unacceptable as he demanded the end of American assistance to South Vietnam; South Vietnam to become neutral in the Cold War; and for the National Liberation Front, better known as the Viet Cong, to take part in a coalition government in Saigon.[8] Đồng told Seaborn that his nation did want a war with the United States, saying: "Our people will accept sacrifices whatever they may be. But the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] will not enter the war...we shall not provoke the U.S."[18] The North Vietnamese did not see Seaborn as a neutral and regarded him as being close to an American spy.[16] Speaking in French, Đồng told Seaborn the war was "drame, national, fondamental" to his government.[19] Afterwards, Seaborn reported to Martin "We would be unwise at this stage to count on war weariness or factionalism within the leadership...to cause North Vietnam to jump at the chance of reaching accommodation with USA."[2] 

On 13 August 1964, Seaborn returned to Hanoi to meet Đồng again.[20] The message that Johnson had asked Seaborn to deliver was felt in Ottawa to be too inflammatory and the mandarins removed some of the blunter passages, through the message that Seaborn delivered was faithful to the spirit that Johnson had drafted it in, through not in content.[21] Seaborn told Đồng that based on his recent meetings with Johnson that he was seriously using the powers he just gained from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to go to war, but also stated that Johnson was willing to offer "economic and other benefits" if only North Vietnam ceased trying to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.[20] Seaborn further stated that Johnson had told him that North Vietnam would "suffer the consequences" if it continued on its "present course".[22]

Đồng rejected the offer, saying he would rather see the war engulf "the whole of Southeast Asia" than to abandon the vision of one Communist Vietnam.[22] Đồng accused the United States of escalating the war and told Seaborn that North Vietnam would never give up.[23] Seaborn's report that the North Vietnamese were not interested in compromise and were convinced of their eventual victory did much to encourage the Johnson administration to favor escalation of American involvement in the war.[24] In December 1964, Seaborn again visited Hanoi, where he was met only by junior officials as the North Vietnamese had lost interest in talking to him.[25] Seaborn made 6 visits to North Vietnam and was uncertain if the purpose of his visits was to prevent a war or merely justify greater American involvement.[2]

On 13 February 1965, Johnson used his powers under the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to order a bombing campaign against North Vietnam.[21] In the majority report, the Indian and Polish ICC commissioners condemned the United States while Seaborn in the minority report argued that the attempts by North Vietnam to overthrow South Vietnam excused the bombing raids.[21] Through Seaborn had ordered by Pearson and Martin to take a pro-American interpretation out of the fear of antagonising Johnson, the report further North Vietnamese distrust of Seaborn. Pearson in a speech at Temple University on 2 April 1965 suggested that the United States should pause the bombing of North Vietnam, a speech that enraged Johnson as Pearson discovered to his discomfort the next day when he visited the president at Camp David.[26] Pearson was screamed at by Johnson throughout his visit, and treated with maximum disrespect.[26] As a result of Pearson's speech, Johnson came to be distrustful of Canada and lost interest in the "Seaborn mission".[26] At the same time, the Americans stopped sharing information with the Canadians about their Vietnam policy, which caused Pearson to feel that Seaborn was placed in an impossible situation of trying to negotiate without knowing everything that was happening.[26] In June 1965, Johnson revealed the Canadian back channel to North Vietnam in a television press conference, causing Seaborn when he heard the news to exclaim "My God! He's blown my cover".[2]

Seaborn appeared on the cover of the 15 November 1965 issue of Maclean's magazine under the title Our Man in Saigon. The journalist Terrance Robertson wrote:

"While two giants, the United States and China, wrestle —if unofficially —across the killing grounds of Vietnam, a 41-year-old Canadian, James Blair Seaborn, moves quietly behind both fronts in a frustrating, vital search for a formula for peace... Mid all the brutal violence, the harsh insulting language and the shrill cacophony of war which makes Vietnam the most explosive trouble spot on earth, a man you have probably forgotten (if you had ever heard of him) is officially charged with keeping the peace. He is our man in Saigon, a slight, bespectacled. and deceptively bookish-looking Canadian civil servant from Toronto named James Blair Seaborn. He lives in this tense, frenetic city, the southern terminal of the most crucial undeclared war in history, the focal point of what could become the most total war of all time. He is, in this nightmare environment, still vainly attempting to do what he came here to do nearly eighteen months ago — maintain a paper peace between North and South Vietnam, whose once-furtive hostilities now involve semi-confrontation between Red China (and a lukewarm Russia) on the one side, and the United States (backed by somewhat reluctant allies) on the other."[10]

Seaborn told Robertson:

"Frustrating as it is, it may be that if this commission can stand and wait long enough it will be able to play a worthwhile role in the future...Our function was drawn up when this was a local civil war so we proceed as if it were still true. We have to ignore the rather awesome confrontation the big powers have superimposed upon it. Once we have the evidence we take it up with the North Vietnamese military authorities, asking them to explain how weapons made in the Soviet Union or Red China, for instance, happened to find their way into the hands of the Viet Cong. If there’s no answer — and there usually isn’t — then I register the South Vietnamese complaint as a violation of the cease-fire by North Vietnam. Sometimes we three commissioners don't agree, and this can be irritating...You have to remember that Britain, France, the Soviet Union and Red China agreed on the cease-fire, set up the ICSC (which Canada, Poland and India undertook to form) and are responsible for paying its operating expenses. Britain and Russia are our co-chairmen. The U.S. didn't sign it, didn't like it particularly, but went along with it just the same. So now we have a situation in which these same powers all but ignore that we exist. The Soviet Union and China send missiles and arms into North Vietnam, and the U.S. sends an entire war machine into South Vietnam."[10]

Despite enjoying diplomatic immunity, Seaborn had a frangipani tree growing outside of the terrace of his house in Saigon as he told Robertson that it blocked the view of the terrace, making it difficult for a sniper to target him.[10] For the same reasons, Seaborn kept his wife and children in Canada out of fear for their safety.[10] Seaborn described life in Saigon as both tedious and dangerous. Seaborn spoke of how the Saigon police tended to execute on the spot people caught violating the nightly curfew and the Viet Cong frequently threw bombs at restaurants popular with Westerners; the decaying telephone system left over by the French often did not work; and finally the heat, humility and rainstorms made daily life in Saigon difficult.[10]

After leaving the ICC, Seaborn returned to Ottawa where he became head of the East European Division at External Affairs and in 1967 he took charge of the Far Eastern Division.[2] In 1969, the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced his intention to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. As head of the Far Eastern Division, Seaborn played an important role in the talks that began in Stockholm in May 1969 between Canadian and Chinese diplomats.[2] In October 1970, Canada broke off diplomatic relations with the Republic of China government which only controlled Taiwan and recognized the People's Republic government which controlled the mainland of China as the legitimate government of China.    

After retiring from the diplomatic corps Seaborn worked in series of bureaucratic jobs in Ottawa. Trudeau disliked the Ministry of External Affairs, but admired the elite diplomatic corps and recruited many diplomats to serve in the civil service.[2] Seaborn served as the Assistant Deputy Minister in the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs in the years 1970–1974 and as the Deputy Minister in Environment Canada between 1975–1982.[1] In 1971, the Pentagon Papers were published and "the Seaborn Mission" first came to widespread notice, causing much controversy in Canada.[2] On 17 June 1971, during a debate in the House of Commons, the External Affairs Minister, Mitchell Sharp, had to defend Seaborn from allegations that he had served as "an errand boy bearing threats of an expanded war" and that the Canadians serving on the ICC had not acted in a neutral fashion, instead having a very pro-American stance.[27]

In his bestselling 1974 book Snow Job the journalist Charles P. B. Taylor accused Seaborn of being an "agent" for the U.S. who was attempting to intimidate Ho on behalf of Johnson.[28] In his 1986 book Quiet Complicity, the Canadian historian Victor Levant entitled the chapter dealing with the "Seaborn Mission" as "J. Blair Seaborn: Choreboy for Moloch".[29] Moloch was a god revered in ancient Phoenicia and Canaan whose worship demanded human sacrifice, especially that of children who were burned alive to honor him, and by comparing the United States to Moloch gives one an idea how Levant felt about the "Seaborn Mission". By contrast, the Canadian historian Greg Donaghy defended Seaborn from what he called an "unjustified and inaccurate" charge.[2] Donaghy argued the American government had the right to make its opinions about where it stood about the Vietnam war clear to the government of North Vietnam, and that is what Seaborn had done. Much of the controversy about the "Seaborn mission" was due to the fact in 1964 the Johnson administration had insisted in public that it had no plans for a war in Vietnam while at the same time had Seaborn deliver a message to Dong in June 1964 in Hanoi warning about the "greatest devastation" that would result from the American bombing of North Vietnam.[30] The fact that the double line taken by the Johnson administration in 1964 was only first revealed via the leaked Pentagon Papers in 1971 increased the sense that Johnson and others in his administration had been duplicitous to the American people.[30] Seaborn as Johnson's emissary ended being caught as part of the backlash against Johnson.[2]

Of the many duties Seaborn performed, the one he enjoyed the most was serving as Deputy Minister at Environment Canada.[2] As many Canadian cabinet ministers do not know their portfolio very well, it is often the bureaucratic Deputy Minister who provides the real leadership in their department. Environment Canada was a newly established ministry founded in 1971 and was foundering by 1975 under inexperienced leadership, leading to Trudeau in 1975 to sent Seaborn in to "fix" the department.[2] Raymond Robinson, an assistant deputy minister at Environment Canada remembered that "His diplomatic skill was much needed".[2] Seaborn, an active athlete and outdoorsman who excelled at hiking, skiing and canoeing was described having a passion for environmental issues while he also had the ability to win the trust of others and inspire his colleagues to work effectively.[2] Art Collin, the chief science adviser to the government called Seaborn "a wise and gentle leader" who finally made Environment Canada work as an effective ministry.[2] Donaghy described Seaborn as being unfailing polite and courteous, but also very firm as he set out to purge Environment Canada out of its dysfunctional tendencies.[2]

Seaborn served the chairman to the International Joint Commission between 1982–1985, and as the Intelligence and Security Coordinator to Privy Council between February 1985-May 1989.[15][1] In 1985, there was much recrimination over the bombing of Air India Flight 182 and allegations that it was bureaucratic rivalries between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that led to the failure to stop the bombing despite the fact that the suspects were being monitored by both the RCMP and CSIS.[2] CSIS had been founded in 1984, taking over the intelligence and counter-intelligence work traditionally performed by the RCMP, causing a bureaucratic turf war as the RCMP still insisted on its right to investigate a terrorist plot involving Sikh separatists living in Canada to bomb Air India. Much of Seaborn's time as Intelligence and Security Coordinator was taken up with futile efforts to make the RCMP and CSIS co-operate and share information.[2] Additionally, starting in February 1985, Seaborn served as the chairman of the Intelligence Advisory Committee that oversaw the work of Communications Security Establishment, Canada's signet agency and provided advice on intelligence matters to the Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney.[2]  

After his ostensible retirement in 1990, he served for eight years as chairman of the Environmental Assessment Panel on Nuclear Fuel Waste Management.[1] The most important conclusion of the "Seaborn Panal" was that burying spent nuclear rector rods was technically safe, but politically toxic owing to NIMBYism (Not in my Backyard) guides the politics of the Canadian nuclear industry to this day.[2]

After finally retiring in 1998, he was awarded the Order of Canada in 2000.[1] In 2010, he told the journalist Tony Blair of The Ottawa Citizen: "I hoped to live until the end of this century. I didn't do any preparing for it. I just happened to live this long...I tell young friends 'Don't retire at 65' Take a part-time job if you can'".[31] In a 2014 opinion piece, the diplomat Jeremy Kinsman listed the "Seaborn Mission" as an example of the sort of diplomacy Canada should practice, arguing the attempt to play a "honest broker" in attempting to end the Vietnam war, even if unsuccessful, was still a noble endeavor.[32] In 2019, a fall badly injured Seaborn and he died on 11 November.[2] A devout member of the Church of England, his funeral service was held at the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa.[2]

• Addington, Larry (2000). America's War in Vietnam: A Short Narrative History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-00321-8..
• Barry, Donald; Hillike, John (1995). Canada's Department of External Affairs, Volume 2: Coming of Age, 1946-1968. Montreal: McGill University Press. ISBN 0773562346.
• Blair, Anne (1995). Lodge in Vietnam: A Patriot Abroad. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300062265..
• Bothwell, Robert (Winter 2000/2001). "The Further Shore: Canada and Vietnam". International Journal. 56 (1). pp. 89–114. Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Donaghy, Greg; Roussel, Stéphane (2004). Escott Reid: Diplomat and Scholar. Montreal: McGill University Press. ISBN 0773527133..
• Firestone, Bernard (November 2013). "Failed Mediation: U Thant, the Johnson Administration, and the Vietnam War". Diplomatic History. 37 (5). pp. 1060–1089..
• Gates, John (July 1990). "People's War in Vietnam". The Journal of Military History. 54. pp. 325–346..
• Granatstein, Jack (1982). The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins, 1935-1957. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019540386X..
• Herring, George (2014). The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers. Austin: University of Texas. ISBN 1477304258..
• Hunt, David (1993). The American War in Vietnam'. Ithaca: SEAP Publications. ISBN 0877271313..
• Karnow, Stanley (1983). Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670746045..
• Langguth, A.J (2000). Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743212444..
• Levant, Victor (1986). Quiet Complicity: Canadian involvement in the Vietnam War. Toronto: Between the Lines Publishing. ISBN 0919946739..
• Maneli, Mieczysław (1971). War of the Vanquished. New York: Harper & Row..
• Preston, Andrew (January 2003). "Balancing War and Peace: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Vietnam War, 1961–1965". Diplomatic History. 27 (1). pp. 73–111..
• Ross, Douglas Alan (1984). In the Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam, 1954-1973. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802056326..
• Taylor, Charles (1974). Snow Job: Canada, the United States and Vietnam (1954 to 1973). Toronto: House of Anansi. ISBN 088784717X..

• Canada in Vietnam: Diplomacy or complicity?