Watkins was picked up at his apartment the following morning and taken to a CIA safehouse where he admitted to having a liaison with someone apparently under KGB control and failing to report it. He denied that he was blackmailed or did anything in conflict with Canadian interests. Bennett told Watkins that they preferred not to question him in France, and that the Canadian government would pay for him to travel to Ottawa. Watkins declined for fear inadvertently running into old friends there, but he did agree to Bennett's suggestion of going to London, where the debriefing continued at an MI5 safehouse. In London, Watkins met with John Wendell Holmes, his close friend and confidant who preceded him as chargé d'affaires in Moscow, and told him that he was being investigated as a possible security risk. After a week, Bennett and Brandes convinced Watkins to allow them to move the questioning to Montreal. There, the interrogation continued at the Holiday Inn Chateaubriand on Côte-de-Liesse Road. Each day, more details emerged as Watkins' revealed the story of his homosexuality, meeting Kamahl, and the Soviet's attempt to pressure him. After verifying Watkins' statements with the lengthy dispatches he had written in Moscow nearly ten years earlier, Bennett and Brandes were convinced that the former ambassador had been truthful and that the KGB attempt to blackmail him had failed.
