Bloom­field papers. Mon­treal lawyer’s widow asks fed­eral archives to seal husband’s doc­u­ments for at least 25 more years

by Eliz­a­beth Thom­spon
THE GAZETTE

Does the key to the assas­si­na­tion of U.S. Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy lie buried in Canada’s national archives?

Or is it another secret that has pit­ted Mon­treal researcher Mau­rice Philipps against Library and Archives Canada and the widow of a once promi­nent Mon­treal lawyer, Louis Mor­timer Bloomfield?

One thing is cer­tain. What­ever Bloomfield’s widow is try­ing to keep under lock and key — out of con­cern for “pri­vacy and the rep­u­ta­tion of Louis M. Bloom­field” — it has left Canada’s national archives wrestling with a dilemma that goes to the heart of the ques­tion of who con­trols access to pri­vate doc­u­ments donated to the fed­eral government.

A recent fed­eral court rul­ing found the insti­tu­tion can­not arbi­trar­ily extend the restric­tion on access to Bloomfield’s papers well past the orig­i­nal dead­line set by Bloom­field him­self. Now, the archives is strug­gling to decide when to lift the veil of secrecy on papers that have been judged of excep­tional inter­est to Canada.

“We are in the process of review­ing the whole issue and, upon hav­ing com­pleted that review, we will make it known,” Fran­cois Gagnon, spokesper­son for Library and Archives Canada, said yesterday.

Gagnon could not say how long that review is expected to take.

How­ever, Bloomfield’s nephew says he sees no rea­son to keep the papers shielded from pub­lic view. Mon­trealer Harry Bloom­field says the fight to keep his uncle’s papers behind a veil of secrecy prob­a­bly is fuelling con­spir­acy the­o­ries tying Bloom­field to JFK’s assas­si­na­tion — the­o­ries he says are com­pletely unfounded.

“There was this amaz­ing world of con­spir­acy the­o­ries that some­how landed on my poor late uncle who was com­pletely ... hor­ri­fied that any­one would ever (sus­pect that), after an amaz­ing, long, highly pres­ti­gious, highly proper, fine career as a lawyer in Canada and the world,” said Bloom­field, one of only four peo­ple autho­rized under his uncle’s instruc­tions to view the restricted papers. “It is total, absolute non­sense. I don’t think there is any­thing about his papers that will prove any­thing otherwise.”

Bloom­field said his uncle had noth­ing to hide and his aunt, who asked that the papers be kept under lock and key, has been estranged from the Bloom­field fam­ily since his uncle’s death.

“A nat­ural reac­tion by Mrs. Cartier, who is an extremely pri­vate per­son, may have bol­stered the idea that there is some­thing to hide. If they must be shown, then let them be shown. I am sure he would have been delighted and proud of his career.”

At the cen­tre of the con­tro­versy are 31 boxes of doc­u­ments that Bloom­field donated to the archives a few years before his death in 1984. A well-known lawyer who spe­cial­ized in inter­na­tional law, Bloom­field was a pil­lar of sev­eral Mon­treal char­i­ties, includ­ing the Reddy Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal and the Cana­dian Human Rights Foundation.

In addi­tion to cor­re­spon­dence with many promi­nent Cana­dian politi­cians and with George Bush Sr., the col­lec­tion includes doc­u­ments relat­ing to a vari­ety of char­i­ties in which Bloom­field was active, cases in which he was involved, such as the attempt to bring Roman­ian King Carol to Canada as a refugee in the Sec­ond World War and papers related to some of his clients, such as let­ters of Lady Hen­ri­etta Davis and her hus­band, Sir Mor­timer Davis.

The one con­di­tion Bloom­field placed on the dona­tion was that pub­lic access to the papers would be restricted for 20 years after his death. Mem­bers of the pub­lic who wanted to con­sult the Bloom­field Col­lec­tion would have to obtain the per­mis­sion of Bloomfield’s widow, Jus­tine Stern Bloom­field Cartier.

Philipps, author of the book De Dal­las a Mon­treal, which explores a pos­si­ble Mon­treal con­nec­tion to JFK’s 1963 assas­si­na­tion in Dal­las, stum­bled on a ref­er­ence to the Bloom­field con­nec­tion in the mid-1990s and was intrigued — par­tic­u­larly given alle­ga­tions advanced by some JFK con­spir­acy the­o­rists that tied Bloom­field to the shoot­ing, a com­pany called Per­min­dex, the CIA and the agency that pre­ceded it, the Office of Strate­gic Services.

While the con­spir­acy the­ory con­nec­tion between Bloom­field and JFK’s assas­si­na­tion is a com­plex one and has evolved over time, it appears to stem from the fact he was named as a major share­holder in a shad­owy inter­na­tional com­pany called Per­min­dex. Among the other peo­ple involved in Per­min­dex was Clay Shaw, whom New Orleans district-attorney Jim Gar­ri­son sus­pected was part of a con­spir­acy to mur­der the pres­i­dent. There are also alle­ga­tions Per­min­dex was a front or shell com­pany for the CIA and was used to fun­nel money for intel­li­gence operations.

Some of the the­o­ries allege Bloom­field had been recruited into the OSS and that he had ties to intel­li­gence cir­cles — some­thing Harry Bloom­field vehe­mently denies.

While Philipps does not believe the papers impli­cate Bloom­field in the shoot­ing — in fact, he believes they may clear Bloomfield’s name — he believes they could con­tain clues that could help shed light on JFK’s assassination:

“I think we will find infor­ma­tion on peo­ple other than him ... but I don’t think that Mr. Bloom­field was directly linked to that in a crim­i­nal way.”

In 2004, how­ever, just as the 20-year restric­tion was com­ing to an end and Philipps applied in writ­ing for access to the col­lec­tion, he was told the archives had extended the restric­tion on access at the request of Mrs. Bloom­field, who was still alive, until 25 years after her death.

“I am con­cerned about cer­tain pri­vacy issues and the rep­u­ta­tion of Louis M. Bloom­field,” she wrote in a let­ter to the archives dated Aug. 31, 2004.

The let­ter does not say what in Bloomfield’s papers might risk harm­ing his rep­u­ta­tion. When chief archivist Ian Wil­son rejected his request to review the deci­sion, Philipps took his case to court, say­ing the archives should respect Bloomfield’s own wishes for a 20-year delay. Philipps pointed out part of the archives’ man­date is mak­ing Canada’s doc­u­men­tary her­itage avail­able to Cana­di­ans and that Bloom­field had got a tax deduc­tion for his donation.

Philipps also argued Bloom­field must have wanted the papers to be avail­able even­tu­ally to the pub­lic — point­ing out if he didn’t want them to be seen by Cana­di­ans, he could have eas­ily left them to his fam­ily or to his law firm.

Lawyers for the archives argued the terms of Bloomfield’s dona­tion allowed his widow to extend the length of the restric­tion. While Bloomfield’s con­di­tions meant that the papers had to be restricted for 20 years, they argued the ques­tion of whether to grant access after that lay within the pow­ers of the chief archivist, pow­ers that the archivist needed in order to nego­ti­ate with pri­vate donors to obtain doc­u­ments of inter­est to Canada’s history.

In his rul­ing, ren­dered in Novem­ber and made pub­lic this month, Judge Simon Noel ruled the donor’s orig­i­nal wishes should be taken into account and the archives’ view that Bloomfield’s widow had a right to revise the terms of the restric­tion on his papers was an error in law.

While the archivist should have some power of dis­cre­tion over whether archives doc­u­ments should be avail­able to the pub­lic, the deci­sion to restrict the Bloom­field Col­lec­tion until 25 years after his widow’s death was an unrea­son­able one, Noel ruled. He ordered the archives to review the decision.

Reached in Cam­bo­dia, where he is trav­el­ling, Harry Bloom­field said he has no doubt his uncle’s papers would be of inter­est to scholars.

“Peo­ple lead inter­est­ing, fas­ci­nat­ing, com­pli­cated lives. My uncle was de
lighted and hon­oured to leave his papers to the Cana­dian archives,” he said.