Canadian Intelligence History: A Celebration of CSIS’ 40th Anniversary

Preface

The Canadian Intelligence History at the Crossroads workshop, held in Ottawa on October 3-4, 2024, marked a major milestone: the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The workshop brought together a diverse, cross-disciplinary group of experts, including academics, researchers, and practitioners, to explore the little-known history of Canadian security and intelligence.

The workshop was a volunteer project organized by Dr. Sarah-Jane Corke from the University of New Brunswick (UNB) and Wesley Wark from the Centre for International Governance Innovation, together with the program team chaired by Steve Hewitt and consisting of Alan Barnes, Greg Fyffe, Greg Kealey, Bill Robinson, Timothy Sayle, Wesley Wark, and Reg Whitaker.

The two-day event was held at the Canadian War Museum and at CSIS National Headquarters in Ottawa. One of the key themes of the workshop was the importance of transparency and accountability in the work of modern intelligence agencies operating to defend the values and tenets of liberal democracies. Dr. Nicole Giles, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister and Deputy Director of Policy and Partnerships at CSIS, and Dr. Sarah-Jane Corke, Associate Professor of Historical Studies at UNB, an expert in US intelligence history and one of the key Canadian academics teaching courses on intelligence, both emphasized the need for Canadians to understand the vital role that intelligence agencies play in keeping our country safe.

Presentations and discussions highlighted the value of learning from the past. By studying the successes and failures of Canadian intelligence history, we gain a deeper understanding of the complex issues that shape our world today. From the history of Canadian signals intelligence to the country's experiences with counterterrorism, counterespionage and countering foreign interference, the sessions were filled with fascinating stories and insights that we have encapsulated in this post-workshop report.

We hope that the Canadian Intelligence History at the Crossroads workshop will stimulate future such endeavours. It showed that by working together and sharing our knowledge, we can gain a deeper understanding of the role that history plays in shaping the complex world of intelligence and national security, and informing how we collectively navigate it.

René Ouellette, Director General
Academic Outreach and Stakeholder Engaement
Canadian Security Intelligence Service

The Origins of the Canadian Secret Service

The Canadian secret service dates back to tensions precipitated by the American Civil War. Initially established to prevent Southern Confederates from using Canada as a base to attack the northern states, it soon turned its attention to Fenian designs on Canada. In the Fenian playbook, British troops would be pulled across the Atlantic; Fenian battles with the forces of the Crown in Canada would inspire the revolutionary movement back home; England’s difficulty would become Ireland’s opportunity, and space would be opened up for the long-awaited Irish revolution. Canada would be incorporated into the American Empire of Liberty and Ireland would be liberated from British rule. That, at least, was the idea.

There was also a Fenian underground inside Canada, and the government took the threats from Fenians on both sides of the border very seriously indeed. Like its counterpart in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood in Canada was divided between those who supported the invasion strategy and those who wanted to keep the focus entirely on Ireland. An American-based Fenian secret service linked up with pro-invasion Canadian Fenians, who were scattered throughout the country but strongest in Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec. Plans were drawn up to recruit Irish soldiers in British regiments, spike artillery, poison horses, subvert the militia, destroy telegraph communications, blow up buildings, burn down buildings, and seize hostages: in short, to do everything possible to aid and abet the Irish Republican Army when it came into Canada. The Canadian secret service set out to stop them.

The force was divided into two sections, corresponding to the division between Canada East (present-day Quebec) and Canada West (present-day Ontario). The head of the Quebec section was Frederick William Ermatinger, the former chief of the Montreal Water Police. Ermatinger’s counterpart in Ontario was Gilbert McMicken, a Scottish immigrant with considerable knowledge of the Niagara frontier region and with close ties to John A. Macdonald, who described him as ‘a shrewd, cool and determined man, who won’t easily lose his head, and who will fearlessly perform his duty.’

Ermatinger reported to George-Étienne Cartier, while McMicken reported to Macdonald, who micro-managed the operations. Initially, it did not go well. The detectives lacked training in secret police work, were not regularly paid, and suffered from low morale. In the early years, half the members of McMicken’s force were accused of intemperance, misconduct, and assault, and the detectives began informing on each other.

Things changed significantly when the secret service was reconstituted in the fall of 1865 to investigate the Fenians on both sides of the border. A different kind of secret policeman was now needed: ideally, a ‘capable and reliable Irish Roman Catholic’—or, failing that, someone who could pass for one. Irish-speaking detectives were the most effective of all, partly because they were well placed to win the confidence of the Fenians, partly because they were assumed to be Catholics, and partly because the Irish language was an effective method of communicating secrets and shutting out strangers.

One of the new recruits who ticked most of these boxes—it is not known if he spoke Irish—was Patrick Nolan, a former regular policeman whose brother was the secretary of the Hibernian Benevolent Society in Toronto, a Fenian front organization. Nolan reported that there were 650 Fenians in the city, organized into nine Circles, and provided detailed information about their names and meeting places; he also informed McMicken that a further seventeen Circles had been formed in southwest Ontario. Most of the Toronto Fenians, he noted, rejected the invasion strategy and were raising funds directly for the revolutionary movement in Ireland. In September 1865, McMicken sent him to Chicago, the heart of the pro-invasion wing of the Fenian Brotherhood, where he sent alarming reports back to Canada. ‘Warn the Government to call out the Militia & the Volunteers,’ he told McMicken, ‘for you will not know the minute they will be into Canada.’

McMicken was cool and shrewd enough not to be taken in. The major problem facing detectives like Nolan, he realized, was that they were picking up the propaganda that the leaders were feeding the rank-and-file to maintain morale. Unless the detectives could work their way to the top of the Brotherhood, they would never be able to distinguish the smoke from the fire.

‘One plan only presents itself to me and that is this,’ McMicken told Macdonald in October 1865, ‘that one or two Clever Women whose absolute virtue stands questioned by the Censorious might be obtained who might by address could get some of the susceptible members of the ‘Senate’ into their toils and thus as Delilah with Samson possess themselves of their secrets.’ To assist this patriotic initiative, McMicken travelled to Baltimore, ‘in order to see a woman of this stamp’; he added helpfully that he knew another woman ‘just suited for such an operation.’ However, Macdonald never replied, and there is no evidence that McMicken’s strategy was ever carried out.

Contrary to received opinion, the leaders of the Fenian Brotherhood were very good at keeping their plans secret in 1865 and 1866. Without reliable sources of information, the secret police were reduced to guesswork. When the Irish Republican Army invaded the Niagara peninsula in June 1866, the secret police were taken completely by surprise. It was one of the greatest intelligence failures in Canadian history.

In response, McMicken and his top detective, Charles Clarke, concocted a long-range plan to infiltrate the Fenian leadership: they would set up a fake Fenian Circle in Missouri, headed by Clarke, and use it as an entry point to infiltrate the headquarters in New York. Clarke was in many ways perfectly suited for the part. An Irish-speaking Catholic, he had converted to Protestantism in Ireland and joined the Orange Order before moving to Toronto via Missouri to become a member of the city’s police force. As the Head Centre of the Circle in Missouri, Clarke, under the name of Cornelius O’Sullivan, visited New York regularly and gradually won the confidence of the president of the Fenian Brotherhood, William Roberts.

Using secret service money, Clarke acquired a pony, supposedly from Missouri, as a gift for Roberts’ eleven-year-old son. He attended mass and Sunday dinner regularly with the Roberts family, was featured in the Irish American newspaper as a model Fenian, and presented with a Fenian uniform for his services. Among the Fenians with whom he mixed were Rudolph Fitzpatrick, the assistant secretary of military affairs, and Charles Carroll Tevis, the commander of the IRA in Chicago and Milwaukee. The conversations must have been interesting, because unbeknownst to each other, and unbeknownst to Clarke as well, Fitzpatrick and Tevis had both turned informers—Fitzpatrick being handled by Edward Archibald in New York, and Tevis by Sir Frederick Bruce, the British minister in Washington. Although, it was the conversations with Roberts that mattered the most—and they made it clear that the Fenians were in no position to launch another attack for the foreseeable future.

Shortly afterwards, though, everything fell apart. Clarke deceived women with the same enthusiasm that he deceived the Fenians. Now, in New York, he did the same thing again—only this time, with a friend of his niece, a woman by the name of Miss Clapp. When he deserted her, she tracked him down, discovered his true identity, and went straight to Fenian headquarters with the information. Fortunately for Clarke, he was back in Canada at the time.

After Clarke’s fall from grace, reports from the frontier indicated that the Fenian Brotherhood was regrouping, and that plans for another attack were under way. The secret police did its best to monitor the situation, in a cat-and-mouse game with the Fenians. McMicken got the post office box number of the Fenian president in New York; henceforth, all mail from Canada sent to that address was to be intercepted and opened. For their part, Canadian Fenians were getting railway workers in the Brotherhood to hand deliver their letters to post offices across the border, from where they would be mailed to New York. The Canadian government’s counter-move was to employ Canadian spies in American post offices; the spies then sent originals or copies of the letters to the secret service bureau, after which they were passed on to John A. Macdonald and Thomas D’Arcy McGee.

During the election campaign of 1867, McGee leaked some of that information to discredit his principal opponent, and immediately began to receive death threats in response. One of them came from Patrick James Whelan, the man who would later be tried and executed for assassinating McGee. The government received reliable information that Whelan had been the Canadian delegate at a Fenian convention in Cleveland, but it also realized that the assassination had not been authorized by the Fenian leadership. Relying on intelligence acquired by the secret police, it arrested around twenty-five Canadian Fenians after the assassination, and kept several of them in jail for the next six months.

By this time, William Roberts had been replaced as President of the Fenian Brotherhood by John O’Neill, the ‘hero of Ridgeway,’ who planned for the next invasion of Canada with all the intensity of a monomaniac. Nevertheless, O’Neill’s rise to power was accompanied by the rise of a secret policeman whose career far surpassed that even of Charles Clarke. Thomas Billis Beach was an Englishman who had run away from home in his teens to Paris, and crossed the Atlantic in 1862 to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War. Assuming a new identity for the New World—more as a joke than anything else, he later wrote—he pretended to be French and changed his name to Henri Le Caron. Serving in Nashville as a lieutenant in the Civil War, he became close friends in 1864 with an Irish captain—none other than O’Neill himself.

Three years later, Beach made contact with the head of England’s Secret Service Department and struck a deal: he would supply information about the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, in return for £50 a month. Money was no doubt a factor. When he hit his stride, Beach was triple dipping: £50 a month from the Home Office, $75 a month from the Canadian secret service, and $100 a month from the Fenians. A love of adventure doubtless played a part; he was the kind of person who thrived on danger, and he became addicted to high-wire risk taking. Although, his primary motivation was probably exactly what he said it was—a powerful sense of English patriotism, mirroring the equally powerful sense of Irish patriotism for which he had nothing but contempt.

With the approval of the Home Office, Beach joined the Canadian secret police in May 1868. By this time, and in complete contrast with the situation before Ridgeway, the Canadians had their finger on the Fenian pulse. Along with Beach, McMicken had two other men inside the Brotherhood; he also had half a dozen detectives who monitored Fenian activities in Ontario. In Quebec, Ermatinger and his successor Charles Coursol ran several detectives in Montréal, with others operating in upstate New York and Vermont. At the Fenian headquarters in New York, Rudolph Fitzpatrick was sending regular reports on links between the American and Canadian Brotherhood. William Seward, the US Secretary of State, employed his own detective to investigate Fenian activities on the border and promised full cooperation with the Canadians. As long as these conditions prevailed, Fenians had little or no chance of taking the Canadian government by surprise.

And prevail they did. Beach steadily worked his way up the ranks, becoming the Adjutant General of the IRA, responsible for military preparations on the frontier. As Henri Le Caron, he arranged the movement of five thousand breech-loading rifles to Vermont and upstate New York. Meanwhile, as Thomas Billis Beach, he provided the Canadian and British authorities with detailed information about the location of Fenian arms, ammunition, and accoutrements in the area—right down to diagrams of the farms, barns, and outbuildings where the weapons were stored, and an inventory of the quality and quantity of the weapons in each location. He also presented Archibald and McMicken with the Fenian war plans—the feints from Buffalo, the main base of operations at St. Albans, the attack on Montréal from Rouses Point, and the attack on Ottawa from Ogdensburg.

It paid off. When O’Neill finally sent out the call to attack in May 1870, the result was total disaster. The rapid and comprehensive defeat of the Fenians, the glaring contrast between promise and performance, the flight of Fenians in the face of Canadian militia and British soldiers, delivered a demoralizing blow to the Brotherhood, opened its adherents to a withering mockery, and left the Canadian strategy in shreds.

Game, set and match, then, for the Canadian secret service. Five weeks later, the force was disbanded, with large bonuses paid to the detectives who had been operating in the United States.

That was not the end of the story, however. Lessons had been learned, and institutional memories were carried over into the next decades. True, the Dominion Police that emerged from the 1860s focused more on guarding public buildings and countering criminal activities than on undercover intelligence-gathering operations. However, Macdonald continued to rely on intelligence reports from British consuls in the United States and authorized the employment of secret policemen on short-term contracts for purposes of investigation and information. Thomas Billis Beach attended the Fenian convention in 1881 that initiated the dynamite campaign against Britain, and reported to both the Canadian and British governments. Percy Sherwood, who would be appointed Commissioner of the Dominion Police in 1885, sent detectives into the United States to report on ‘the various secret meetings of these various dynamite conspirators.’ In Britain, John Rose, who had been Macdonald’s Minister of Finance, advised the British government in 1882 about the most effective ways of infiltrating Irish American dynamite cells. And during the First World War, Canadian intelligence officers in the Department of Militia and Defence used similar techniques to those of McMicken and Ermatinger in investigating Irish Canadians who were raising funds and running guns for the revolutionary movement in Ireland.

All of which is to say that there were more continuities than might first appear. The secret police force in Canada originated in response to Confederate incursions from Canada into the United States, operated mainly in response to Fenian incursions from the United States into Canada, and set the stage for subsequent intelligence operations that reached far into the twentieth century and beyond. 

The Spies Who Came South from the Cold: CSE's 1980s Renaissance

The birth of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) dominated the headlines in the mid-1980s, but Canada’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), underwent a quiet rebirth of its own during the same years, shifting from an almost exclusive focus on the Soviet north and adding an array of new collection and processing capabilities to increase the agency’s value both to the Canadian government and its intelligence partners.

From its beginning, CSE worked in close integration with the UKUSA intelligence partnership, now commonly called the Five Eyes, in particular with its much larger United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) members. By 1957, the Canadian SIGINT program was focused almost entirely on Soviet long-range, high-frequency (HF) radio communications in the Arctic^{Footnote 1}  and the northern Soviet Union. This material provided the main Canadian contribution to the allied foreign intelligence partnership, in return for which Canada got access to a very wide range of US and UK intelligence reporting.

This map shows the radio intercept stations that were operated for CSE by the Canadian Forces Supplementary Radio System (CFSRS) during the 1970s and into the 1980s: Leitrim, located just south of Ottawa; Gander in Newfoundland; Masset in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia; and two stations in the Far North, Inuvik, and Alert, with Alert being the most important of the collection sites.

The CFSRS also operated a radio direction-finding site in Bermuda, used mostly to monitor the movements of Soviet missile subs and other maritime operations.

CSE’s Arctic specialization worked well for the agency, but as time went on HF radio declined in importance in Soviet communications, leading to allied dissatisfaction with the scale of Canada’s already small contribution. There was also concern within the Canadian government about a lack of political and economic intelligence on topics of special interest to Canada that were not well covered by allied reporting.

Some efforts were made to diversify CSE’s collection and processing in the 1970s, but only minor progress was made due to several factors, including very tight budget constraints and lack of strong Cabinet-level engagement. 

The Inuvik Deal

Things started to improve for CSE in the early 1980s with the start of the PILGRIM program, under which intercept sites were established in select Canadian diplomatic facilities. PILGRIM picked up from an experimental intercept site in Canada’s Moscow embassy that had started operations in 1972 but ultimately had been shut down.

The big change came in 1984, when CSE cut a deal with the Department of National Defence (DND) and Treasury Board (TB) to close the intercept site at Canadian Forces Station Inuvik but continue funding the station’s 276 person-years (PYs) for use elsewhere in the SIGINT program, mostly at CSE itself. DND, which was receiving large annual budget increases of its own by this time, also agreed to provide a small injection of new capital funding for CSE and the CFSRS.

This enabled CSE to propose a wide-ranging set of improvements to its collection and processing programs, which it put forward in its Strategic Overview for the Cryptologic Program, 1985-1988, presented to the Interdepartmental Committee on Security and Intelligence (ICSI) in March 1984.

The plan was designed to help CSE address three main challenges: 1) to broaden its collection focus to provide the government with more domestically produced economic and political intelligence while continuing to provide defence-related intelligence; 2) to improve CSE’s contribution to the UKUSA intelligence pool and thus preserve Canada’s access to the vast output of its UKUSA partners; and 3) to modernize CSE’s collection and processing capabilities, maintain compatibility with partner systems, and keep up with changing communications technologies used by SIGINT targets.

Presented with an improvement program requiring no new budget allocations, the members of ICSI had few objections. Each of the separate elements of the plan was considered individually by the committee, however, with the proposal to purchase a supercomputer approved immediately, other elements approved over the summer, and still other, longer-term, parts dealt with over the next several years, with some of the latter delay caused by the need to complete policy reviews initiated by the new Mulroney government after the September 1984 election.

Elevator

The first element of the plan that ICSI approved was Project Elevator, the purchase of a Cray X-MP/11 supercomputer and hiring of the staff needed to revitalize CSE’s cryptanalysis, or codebreaking, program. At the time of its purchase, it was the most powerful computer in Canada, and when it was received in 1985 it revolutionized Canada’s cryptanalytic capabilities. The program was projected to cost $11.8 million and require an additional 14 PYs.

Echelon

Canadian participation in Echelon, the UKUSA program to monitor traffic on commercial satellites, was given initial approval in June 1984. Legal concerns, possibly related to the potential for inadvertent collection of Canadian private communications, delayed the start of monitoring operations, but by 1988 those concerns had been resolved. Four satellite dishes, each covered by a radome, were installed at Canadian Forces Station Leitrim during the decade. The program was estimated to cost $17.5 million and require an additional 39 PYs.

Pilgrim

Pilgrim was the program to operate intercept sites in Canadian diplomatic facilities. Approval to conduct surveys of potential sites seems to have been granted around October 1981. According to former CSE employee Mike Frost, the first permanent site began operations in New Delhi in 1983.

All discussion of Pilgrim was redacted from the released version of CSE’s Strategic Overview document, but there is little doubt that additional sites figured as part of CSE’s plan, and other documents confirm that expansion of the program got the go-ahead no later than 1987.

Madrigal

Madrigal was the cover name for foreign intelligence collection in Canada under s.16 of the CSIS Act. This was a program that CSE had long pushed for. Such collection might include monitoring of the communications of foreign diplomats in Canada, monitoring of other foreign targets in Canada, or the interception of foreign communications that transit through Canada by cable. Costs were estimated to be in the $1–7 million range, depending on how much activity took place.

Use of s.16 depended on the passage and then entry into force of the CSIS Act, which happened at the end of August 1984. A tri-ministerial memorandum of understanding on how to initiate such operations was completed in 1987, but according to CSIS’s original watchdog, the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), actual operations took a while to get off the ground, with little activity before the 1990s.

Porcupine II

None of the foregoing meant that Canada was abandoning HF radio collection in the north. The Strategic Overview plan also contained a program, Porcupine II, to modernize and streamline conventional radio collection at the intercept sites and ensure its compatibility with UKUSA partner systems. Approved in August 1985, the $6.8 million program was expected to improve collection and compensate for the closure of Inuvik while generating an additional savings of 22 PYs.

Staff Growth

Largely because of the Inuvik bargain, CSE grew from around 600 employees at the beginning of the 1980s to around 900 by the end of the decade. This included an increase in the SIGINT part of the organization from around 460 to around 700, enabling the agency to hire more analysts to cover its broader range of targets, staff the Client Relations Officer (CRO) program that was used to relay SIGINT directly to senior departmental consumers, and begin limited 24/7 operations, probably mostly related to real-time processing of Soviet air activities, facilitated by Porcupine II and the completion of the High Arctic Data Communications System. The communications security, or COMSEC, part of the agency accounted for the rest of CSE’s employees, which also saw significant growth during the decade.

Not all of the Inuvik person-year savings went to CSE. Some were retained by the CFSRS and used to create 771 Communications Research Squadron, which stood up in October 1987. Rather than serving at an intercept site, this unit was assigned to the Sir Leonard Tilley Building, CSE’s headquarters at the time, and its 90-100 members were integrated into CSE’s SIGINT sections, boosting the total number of SIGINT personnel working within the agency to around 800 by the end of the decade—an increase of nearly 75% over the number at the beginning of the 1980s.

To accommodate all these people, C Wing, a $35.1 million, 12,000-square-metre windowless annex, was added to the Tilley Building. Construction began in 1989 and was completed in 1992. CSE moved from the Tilley Building to its new headquarters in 2014–2015. The newly renovated C Wing is soon to be the new home of the Government Operations Centre.

The Cold War Ends and Cyber Eats (Almost) Everything

All of this was completed around the time the Cold War ended, taking with it many of CSE's old Soviet targets. Much of interest continued going on in the former Soviet space, but CSE might well have shrunk significantly had it not already built the capability to monitor a much wider array of targets around the world.

Instead, the agency’s budget and staffing remained static over the 1990s, declining only slightly, even as virtually every other department and agency in Ottawa suffered sharp reductions.

Since the 1990s, and particularly since 9/11, CSE has been growing almost continuously. It is now four times the size it was at the end of the 1980s, and it is projected to grow even larger.

The agency’s operations are increasingly cyber-focused, ranging from the collection of Internet traffic to computer network exploitation, foreign cyber operations, and cybersecurity activities.

However, not everything has changed. The satellite dishes are still in place at Leitrim. The embassy sites remain. S.16 operations continue.

Even the radio intercept sites are still in operation, although remotely operated from Leitrim. DND recently built a boardwalk to facilitate maintenance of a 1-km-long Beverage antenna at the Masset intercept station, showing that the antenna is still in active service. Antennas of this type are very highly directional, so it is not too difficult to figure out what it is listening to. The long-range radio transmissions it collects emanate from northern Russia.

I mention all this to bring things full circle. CSE did come ‘south from the cold’ in the 1980s, and the changes since that time have been even greater. Yet CSE’s Arctic mission was never abandoned, and it still goes on today.

Intelligence Sharing with Industry: Comparing Models in Canada and the United States

Introduction

The crown jewels of national security are not always in the hands of the government. Often, private actors hold key pieces of information. They also represent some of the most common targets. When cyber threat actors attacked the Colonial Pipeline on 7 May 2021, they paralyzed gas station operations along the eastern seaboard of the United States (US) and prompted widespread panic.^{Footnote 2} This incident, while short-lived, was a reminder of critical infrastructure’s vulnerability to hostile actors. (In Canada, over 80 per cent of critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector). It was also a critical reminder of how important it is that corporations assess their risks and liaise with each other and with government partners to make everyone safer.

Many Canadian and US corporations have sophisticated intelligence and security teams that proactively assess their organizations’ security risks and provide insight to protect assets and employees. These are key partners for the government to engage to further national security. But how can the government engage with industry?

Analyzing Canada and the US reveals many different institutional models for public-private sector security sharing. It also reveals concerns over how to avoid preferential treatment towards one company over another, or any sharing that could provide a commercial advantage. Many practitioners mention the importance of avoiding preferential treatment towards companies, but few can point to the guiding legislation. This paper draws on policy documents and practitioner interviews to examine how legislation enables and restricts sharing, and what models are most effective for timely sharing of actionable threat information.

The Sharing Landscape: Three Categories of Policy/Authorities

There are many formal and informal institutional mechanisms for government and private sector security information sharing. The focus here is on policies and mechanisms relating to how government can share with industry. These institutional models usually emerged from crisis, and they have evolved over time, usually in the direction of expanding towards more sharing, although certain inflection points have led to constraints on sharing due to risks of infringing on civil liberties or causing harm. Existing policies and authorities can be divided into three categories: 1) Requiring Sharing, 2) Enabling or Authorizing Sharing, and 3) Constraining or Prohibiting Sharing.

1. Requirements to Share

The clearest model of a requirement to share is the Duty to Warn, also termed Duty to Inform. In the United States, duty to warn is enshrined in Intelligence Community Directive 191, which obliges every intelligence agency in the United States to engage in proactive warning if they are aware of a credible threat to human life or safety. In Canada, duty to warn has historically belonged to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), but the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) obligations recently changed with a 2023 Ministerial Directive.

Duty to Warn, per US Intelligence Community Directive 191 (ICD 191), means ‘a requirement to warn US and non-US persons of impending threats of intentional killing, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping’. The directive stipulates that if any of the 18 entities that comprise the US Intelligence Community ‘collects or acquires credible and specific information indicating an impending threat of intentional killing, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping directed at a person or group of people (hereafter referred to as intended victim)’, they ‘shall have a duty to warn the intended victim or those responsible for protecting the intended victim, as appropriate. This includes threats where the target is an institution, place of business, structure, or location’^{Footnote 3}. Unlike Canadian requirements, this directive applies to all intelligence agencies and other intelligence entities in the US government.

There are known cases in which the US intelligence community has engaged in duty to warn, and not all involved American targets. This author received a US government warning while working for a Canadian organization. In an even more striking example, 15 days before the 22 March 2024, ISIS-K terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow, Russia, the US intelligence community reached out to Moscow and warned the Russians. A US government public statement explained the warning to the Russian security services and stated ‘We never want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks’^{Footnote 4}. The duty to warn applies regardless of the nationality of the intended victim.

The US duty to warn is unclassified and publicly available (with slight redactions). It requires warning to avoid revealing sources and methods, thereby taking into account the ‘intelligence-to-evidence’ challenge. Importantly, ICD 191 stipulates conditions under which warning may be waived, including: undue risks to sources and methods of US personnel or foreign partners who provided the information; inability to warn the victim; situations in which the victim is already aware of the threat; or credible indications that the victim is a violent criminal, drug trafficker, or terrorist. These caveats are important, because warning is not always feasible or advisable, so not including exceptions immediately invites noncompliance. Notwithstanding the caveats, duty to warn is frequently acted on and underpins extensive engagement with non-governmental partners. It is expected that, with appropriate safeguards, threat information will be shared in a timely manner with external parties who are at risk.

In Canada, the landscape surrounding duty to inform/warn is changing rapidly. Historically, the RCMP has had responsibly for warning of threats to life. CSIS had previously been authorized to share only within the federal government, in accordance with the CSIS Act. Intelligence-to-evidence poses a problem, and threats that do not entail a threat to life have posed additional definitional and threshold challenges. Recently, however, there have been two key shifts in the policy landscape.

First, the Minister of Public Safety issued a directive in May 2023 entitled ‘Ministerial Direction on Threats to the Security of Canada Directed at Parliament and Parliamentarians’. This development was in the context of emerging concerns over foreign interference in federal electoral processes and democratic institutions. The directive changed the sharing landscape by authorizing direct disclosures, requiring CSIS to 'ensure that parliamentarians are informed of threats to the security of Canada directed at them’^{Footnote 5}. Second, Bill C-70, ‘An Act respecting countering foreign interference’, which received royal assent in June 2024, amends the CSIS Act to allow ‘disclosures to partners to build resiliency to threats’^{Footnote 6}. This is a key change that enables direct external engagement and entrenches the expectation that sharing with non-federal-government partners is critical to national security.

2. Authorizing or Enabling Sharing

Both the United States and Canada have various institutional models of engagement with external partners to share security information. Much of the current landscape has been driven by the importance of critical infrastructure for national security. Recently, the US intelligence community has intensified its focus on understanding and engaging with non-governmental entities, while the Canadian government has also expanded its outreach to non-traditional partners. The US 2023 National Intelligence Strategy emphasizes the importance of leveraging ‘a broad set of partners’, including the Five Eyes (the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand) but also, critically, ‘non-state and sub-national actors…from companies to cities to civil society organizations’^{Footnote 7}. Partnerships with external parties, including industry, are seen as mission critical.

US intelligence agencies are authorized to share with industry, as long as the information is defensive and focused on security, which parallels CSIS’ focus. There are many guardrails in the system. For example, sharing publicly or with a large industry association/group is the safest mechanism of conveying important threat information while avoiding preferential treatment, which is similar to the Canadian approach. While some engagement can take place through classified channels, much of the engagement is unclassified.

Examples of US government security engagement with the private sector (with parent organizations in parentheses):

• Overseas Security Advisory Council (Department of State)
• Public-Private Analytic Exchange Program (Department of Homeland Security/Office of the Director of National Intelligence)
• Domestic Security Alliance Council (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
• Information Sharing and Analysis Centers
• InfraGard (FBI)
• Homeland Security Information Network (Department of Homeland Security)
• Many other initiatives

The Canadian landscape has evolved to facilitate increased industry engagement. When China compromised Nortel executives’ accounts between 2004 and 2009, Canadian intelligence agencies lacked a clear mandate to protect industry. Even as this has changed, the bigger necessary shift is in culture and attitudes towards sharing; a legal mandate to share with critical infrastructure owners and operators is insufficient without willingness to engage. A 2017 survey of Canadian security professionals by the Conference Board of Canada, funded by Public Safety Canada (PSC), found that the private sector was sharing more with local law enforcement than with the federal government, and that they were leveraging trade associations more than direct government initiatives due to perceived shortcomings in government engagement. The study recommended leveraging industry associations, and encouraging a ‘willingness to share’ mindset because attitudes can pose greater impediments than legal barriers^{Footnote 8}.

Now, CSE, CSIS, and PSC prioritize protection of critical infrastructure and intellectual property, grounded in threat detection and information sharing, and share threat information through business association venues when possible. CSIS’s Academic Outreach and Stakeholder Engagement (AOSE) is a critically important partner in this engagement. One of the most important features of AOSE is that it considers external parties to be not just victims but also partners with subject matter expertise. In addition, with regard to the ten critical infrastructure sectors, PSC facilitates information sharing with industry that incorporates CSIS, CSE, and the RCMP, provincial government entities, and international partners from across the Five Eyes^{Footnote 9}.

Examples of Canadian government security engagement:

• CSIS’s Academic Outreach and Stakeholder Engagement
• Canadian Centre for Cyber Security
• Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange
• National Cross Sector Forum
• Other initiatives

3. Constraints and Prohibitions on Sharing

There are many key legislative constraints on information sharing with industry. These can be considered in three categories: 1) Prohibition on commercial intelligence sharing with industry for competitive advantage, 2) Obligation to avoid preferential treatment, and 3) Restrictions on who can receive intelligence/information.

The prohibition on sharing for commercial advantage, inherent to the Five Eyes, does not exist in most Western nations. Intelligence entities in many partnered and allied countries do not face such restrictions, whereas our intelligence services are profoundly constrained when engaging with industry, avoiding not just preferential treatment but even the semblance of it. US agencies are prohibited from collecting on private commercial or trade activity if the collection would be intended to help a commercial entity; collection must be solely undertaken to further national security^{Footnote 10}. While not as publicly available, Canadian intelligence authorities are similarly restrictive, prohibiting collection and dissemination of intelligence for commercial gain. Policies governing intelligence activities in both countries emphasize the defensive nature of intelligence. This does not extend to supporting trade advantages, which is a legitimate focus of intelligence activity; rather, it applies specifically to commercial advantage, and therefore to sharing with industry.

The need to avoid preferential treatment poses implementation problems for external engagement. CSIS and other Canadian government entities must ensure that information is made available as broadly as possible across economic sectors, which underscores the benefit of sharing through industry associations or similar mechanisms. This approach is similarly reflected in many of the effective US models, in which security information is made available broadly across industries.

The restriction on sharing partners has been discussed above and will not be dwelled on here; however, a key shift is that CSIS has historically been restricted in sharing with non-federal partners and now, with the passing of Bill C-70 in 2024, is empowered to disclose information ‘to key partners beyond the Government of Canada, with appropriate safeguards, to build resiliency to threats’^{Footnote 11}.

Intelligence Sharing with Industry Today and Tomorrow

In both Canada and the US, engagement with industry faces perpetual concerns over jeopardizing sources and methods, and over whether industry is trustworthy. The existence of security and intelligence practitioners in corporations, many of whom formerly worked in government, helps with building public-private sector bridges and mutual understanding. Some engagement models focus on industry as a victim to be briefed, whereas others recognize external expertise and facilitate two-way engagement. Finally, motivations for engagement have shifted over time. Many models originated in sharing counterterrorism information, and more recently have shifted towards protecting intellectual property and countering foreign interference.

Mechanisms and authorities around sharing threat information in Canada and the US with external partners are wide-ranging and constantly evolving. As demonstrated here, they fall into three categories: requiring, facilitating, and constraining sharing. The foreign interference investigation and Bill C-70 represent a fundamental shift in the Canadian national security landscape that has led to increased powers for CSIS to share threat information with external partners, including industry. Initiatives are likely to continue to evolve towards higher levels of engagement, while avoiding preferential treatment, and replicating best practices for effective collaboration with external partners who hold pieces of the threat picture.

The Canadian Forces HF/DF Station Bermuda, 1963-1993

From 1963 to 1993 the Canadian Forces operated a High Frequency/Direction Finding (HF/DF) signals intelligence (SIGINT) station in Bermuda. This essay will shed light on its little-known history.

It would be understandable to assume that this station was established in 1963 in response to the momentous Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. However, the decision to create it was taken almost two years prior to that crisis and had a deeper historical context. Its origins can be traced to the experience of the value of HF/DF for naval intelligence and operations in World War II.

During the Battle of the Atlantic HF/DF was used to detect U-boats, to direct escorts onto them, and to re-route convoys around them. Government Communications Headquarters historian John Ferris asserts that the U-boat offensive was defeated by ‘a symbiotic combination of Ultra, radar, traffic analysis and HFDF’, along with additional destroyers and aircraft. ‘Radar and HFDF located submarines as they attacked convoys and guided escorts against them’^{Footnote 12}.

As the Cold War got underway, concerns about the operations of Soviet submarines gave new impetus for the need for an allied HF/DF network for signals location tracking. If the Cold War had turned hot in Europe, the Atlantic would have been a crucial theater of operations, with anti-submarine warfare as its centerpiece. The US Navy (USN), Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) navies were tasked: to protect convoys sailing from North America to Europe; to prevent the Soviet navy from breaking out into the Atlantic; and to detect and sink Soviet ballistic missile submarines^{Footnote 13}. Even in peacetime, Soviet shipping regularly transited the Atlantic, using HF (short wave) radio to communicate. Over time, their communications became more technically sophisticated, using burst transmissions that lasted mere seconds. Therefore, it made sense to blanket the ocean with HF/DF coverage.

The RCN and the USN reached an agreement in 1950 (re-ratified in 1959 and 1971) to coordinate and standardize their HF/DF activities ashore. This marked the creation of the Atlantic HF/DF network. It included ten American and five Canadian sites, and several more in other countries bordering the Atlantic. The Canadian stations included: Coverdale, New Brunswick; Gander, Newfoundland; Gloucester, Ontario; Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories; and Churchill, Manitoba^{Footnote 14}. The Bermuda station joined the net in 1963. Net control was located at Cheltenham, Maryland. The Coverdale station served as alternate net control, until it was closed in 1971, its role taken over by the Gander site. Prior to the agreement with the USN, the RCN had to resist pressure from Canada’s new national SIGINT service, the Communications Branch National Research Council (CBNRC), to subordinate its operational priorities to the CBNRC’s strategic collection requirements. The RCN succeeded, and in the mid-1950s it also established a separate intelligence sharing agreement with NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic.

In January 1961, Canada’s cabinet defence committee was advised of ‘the increase of Soviet submarine activity in the North Atlantic with improved communication techniques which utilized unconventional methods required the improvement of the effectiveness of HFDF coverage’^{Footnote 15}. Due to its location astride the Atlantic shipping lanes, ‘it was believed that a HFDF facility built on Bermuda could fill a critical gap in the expanding RCN-USN HFDF Atlantic network’^{Footnote 16}. The Bermuda government was reluctant to allow the US military, which already had several bases there, to acquire more land^{Footnote 17}. Instead, Canada was invited to do so.

The British and the Americans went to some lengths to make a Canadian-run HF/DF station on Bermuda an attractive proposition. The British were willing to lease the site to Canada for only $6,000 per year. The USN indicated that it would lend Canada the HF/DF equipment, and provide housing for single personnel. The Bermuda government would make married accommodation available. The RCN would have to provide the personnel, and to cover the costs of site renovation, power, water, and ground levelling, estimated at a total of $10,000^{Footnote 18}.

The Minister of National Defence, Douglas Harkness, approved the proposal in principle. He also granted DND authority to negotiate the terms with the British Admiralty, the USN, and the Bermuda government, to be completed by an exchange of notes with the UK^{Footnote 19}. For its part, once cabinet approved, DND had to allocate funding for equipment, construction, transportation, and the RCN had to identify appropriate personnel, and adjust its staffing plans to allow it to fill the Bermuda positions. These bureaucratic processes probably explain the long timeline involved in getting the station up and running. It opened on a trial basis in July 1963, and became a permanent installation in April 1964^{Footnote 20}.

During the Canadian Forces unification process, it was officially designated Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Bermuda. From 1966 on it was part of the Canadian Forces Supplementary Radio System (CFSRS), the military SIGINT service. However, creating the CFSRS did not resolve the competition between service operational SIGINT requirements and the strategic collection demands the CBNRC (and its successor, the Communications Security Establishment) exercised on behalf of the government and of its Five Eyes partners.

The initial RCN contingent comprised one officer and 14 other ranks. At its peak strength in 1977, the station had a complement of 96 (four officers, 13 warrant officers, 15 non-commissioned officers, and 64 other ranks). At the end of 1992, station establishment was 88 people, including one USN exchange member. The main station site at Daniel’s Head eventually comprised some twenty buildings and other facilities.

Over the thirty years of operation, the station underwent frequent upgrades. In 1967, a new DF system was installed, effectively doubling the station’s operational capability. This occurred just as a reorganization of Canadian SIGINT stations, called Project Beagle, was taking place. For CFS Bermuda this meant not just upgraded capacity but also the establishment of a new communications link to the Canadian Defence Liaison Staff in Washington, DC, and directly to the CF Communications Command network.

Close collaboration developed with the USN maritime patrol squadrons based out of their naval air station on the island, providing familiarization flights for CF station personnel. Those flights showed them how their DF work vectored the aircraft onto detected signal targets. A decade later, in 1977, further upgrading of the Bermuda station involved the establishment of a new and more sophisticated antenna array.

The commanding officer’s assessment in the 1977 Annual Historical Report asserted that ‘Personnel now on strength are highly competent and professional in their conduct and performance. An excellent rapport has been achieved with agencies using station product. I would judge CFS Bermuda to be highly effective in satisfying its operational and military tasks’^{Footnote 21}.

This judgement was seconded by others. Lieutenant (N) Les Lindstrom (ret.), who also served there in the 1970s, wrote: ‘During my tour with the USN [Naval Security Group HQ] in Washington I was tasked with collecting data for the LANT HFDF Net which Bermuda was part of. From the data collected it was determined that Bermuda was the most effective member of the network…^{Footnote 22}’

In the 1980s, CFS Bermuda was connected to the net control station via a commercial telecom company that could send but not read the traffic. Each station in the Atlantic HF/DF network had a computer called an OPU (outstation processing unit), which processed all the incoming and outgoing data. There was a manually operated position that the operator could tune so that they could observe a particular frequency when needed. All Atlantic net stations could look at and identify a target of interest at the same time.

Retired Chief Warrant Officer Jim Humes, who served at CFS Bermuda in the late 1970s, believed that the Bermuda station’s capabilities were very good. It had excellent equipment that had good ‘hear-ability’ and signal fidelity. The personnel were ‘very well trained through USN Courses and on-the-job-training’^{Footnote 23}. That included briefings from the US National Security Agency. Probably the last major upgrade to the station occurred in February 1985, when new HF/DF equipment became operational.

The station’s prowess was validated on 3 October 1986, when its DF located Soviet Yankee Class ballistic missile submarine K-219 in distress 680 miles northeast of Bermuda, following an explosion and fire in a missile tube. That allowed a USN P-3 Orion to visually monitor the incident, which ended when the sub sank on 6 October^{Footnote 24}.

This drama did little to slow the eventual obsolescence of the Canadian station. With the end of the Cold War looming, and the rise of new technologies, such as satellites, for ship location data, the Bermuda station’s days were numbered.

A CFSRS document from 1990 stated that due to ‘fiscal restraints’, CFS Bermuda was “deemed expendable” and would cease operations in 1993.^{Footnote 25} So, station personnel returned to Canada, most of the buildings were torn down, and the lease with the Bermuda government was terminated.

Between 1963 and 1993, the Canadian Forces Bermuda SIGINT station made a valuable contribution to allied efforts to keep a watch on Soviet naval activities. It carried on a Canadian capability and contribution that originated in World War II. Its history deserves to be remembered, and to be further explored.

Cold War Travellers, Immigrants, and Defectors: Canada’s Foreign Intelligence Interview Program Revisited, 1953–68

Canadian intelligence programs since the Second World War have been built on foundations of alliances and exchanges. Historically, Canada’s foreign intelligence work has been guided by the simple premise that by making a proportionate contribution to a common pool of allied intelligence, the Canadian intelligence community can access a more detailed picture of international affairs than it could ever produce in isolation. This was the logic of a Canadian Foreign Intelligence Interview Program initiated during the early Cold War. Its human sources were Canadian travellers, immigrants, and defectors from places of interest.

The existence of this Interview Program is not a new revelation. Kurt Jensen provided an excellent initial public record of the program in a 2004 article. However, that initial public record was based on documents that were not available to researchers or the public^{Footnote 26}. The secrecy of Canada’s human intelligence efforts reflects sensitivities surrounding tradecraft and the identities of sources that are inherent in the field. The passage of time and releases of records under the Access to Information Act, however, are making it possible to shed some light on Canadian HUMINT work during the postwar decades when a permanent intelligence community took shape in Ottawa.

Canadian diplomats and the armed services’ intelligence directorates started conducting intelligence interviews on an ad hoc basis in the late 1940s. A catalyst for the formal creation of an Interview Program was polite pressure exerted by US Director of Central Intelligence Agency Walter Bedell Smith in the early 1950s. Smith intimated to wartime acquaintance and Canada’s Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Charles Foulkes that if Canadians did not do more to leverage their unique sources of human intelligence, then his Central Intelligence Agency would want to do this work on Canadian soil. Ottawa responded by creating a dedicated ‘Interrogation Unit’ within its Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) in 1953. The word ‘interrogation’ was promptly changed to ‘interview’ to alleviate Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent’s concerns about undertones of coercion^{Footnote 27}.

For most of the program’s formative 1950s, interviews were conducted by three intelligence officers: a former commando who spent years in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps, an expatriate Polish naval captain, and a future university lecturer in Russian and German. These two men and one woman could enlist the help of translators and subject matter experts from elsewhere in the defence and intelligence communities as needed. The JIB trio were fluent in languages like Russian, Polish, Czech, and German, but not Ukrainian. When a source had specialized knowledge of Soviet ships, aircraft, or technologies, then it was beneficial to have scientists, engineers or other subject matter experts present. Yet, it was the interview officers who had to pose the right questions, make sources feel comfortable answering them, and make preliminary judgments about the reliability and significance of the information they gleaned. Extracts or interview reports were then sent to partners in the Canadian, British, American, and later Australian intelligence communities and foreign services.

Trusted Travellers

Canadian travellers were the first category of human sources tapped by the Interview Program. Before the Second World War, Canada had just a handful of permanent diplomatic missions abroad. The proliferation of Canadian embassies and legations overseas during and after the conflict produced new flows of reporting to Ottawa from diplomats, trade commissioners, and military attachés. This had real implications for Canadians’ ability to make informed foreign and defence policies. Key figures in Canada’s postwar intelligence community like Director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) George Glazebrook were interested in supplementing these officials’ insights with the knowledge of Canadian individuals and organizations with different perspectives, or access to places where government and military personnel could not go.

A logical place to start was to build relationships with Canadian businesses that had foreign footprints, such as financial and industrial firms based in Toronto, and natural resources companies headquartered in Montreal. JIB officers began debriefing willing employees when they returned to Canada. The interview officers’ pitch to potential sources was simply that ‘the Canadian government, in its concern for national security, would benefit from learning as much about their experiences as they [felt] free to tell us’^{Footnote 28}. The sources were promised that their identities, relationships abroad, and business interests would be protected by the intelligence community. The interviews focused on ‘overt’ intelligence gathered in the regular course of the sources’ business and travels, to avoid any whiff of espionage.

Canadian intelligence officers did take certain steps to make their debriefings with Canadian travellers more productive. The Soviet Union was hardly open to Canadians, but there was a modest expansion of academic, cultural, and scientific exchanges when Nikita Khrushchev emerged as Joseph Stalin’s successor. The details of these exchanges were carefully negotiated by Soviet and Canadian officials, so the Interview Program could share national or allied intelligence requirements with counterparts at External Affairs. Intelligence officers could also make discreet suggestions for Canadian delegations of miners, lumbermen, or petroleum and aerospace engineers’ itineraries in the USSR. In 1961, officials finally sought and secured permission from then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker for intelligence officers to brief select Canadian travellers before their departures. These briefings did not incorporate clandestine intelligence taskings, to key allies’ chagrin. Rather, the concept was to share background information that would make the travellers more effective observers of their surroundings, and perhaps better sources.

In JIB officers’ estimations, Canadian sources were eager to cooperate with the intelligence community, but the results were of mixed value. There were still enough successes in the 1950s to justify the continuation of this avenue of intelligence collection. Massey Ferguson executives and engineers proved to be keen observers of Soviet regions and state farms that were closed to western diplomats and attachés in 1954–55. The Chairman of Ontario Hydro’s 1959 visit to the People’s Republic of China was of particular interest to intelligence partners in the United States. These were model sources because of their technical expertise, and Beddell Smith’s successor as CIA Director, Allen Dulles, found their observations valuable enough to incorporate into US National Security Council briefings. Other sources were simply targets of opportunity like the Canadian journalist who tracked down Cambridge Five spy-turned-defector Guy Burgess on his own initiative in Moscow in 1959.

The Interview Program’s Canadian sources and reporting responded to international crises and events. An initial focus on the Sino-Soviet bloc was superseded by increasingly global horizons. Intelligence officers sought out travellers to Sino-Indian borderlands amidst the skirmishes and war scares of the late 1950s–60s. Similarly, they developed an interest in Aluminum Company of Canada workforce’s knowledge of British Guiana in the years preceding national independence under socialist leadership.

Canadian travellers were usually sources of commercial intelligence. The insights they provided into commodities, industry, technologies, and supply shortages could be used to study foreign states’ economies, standards of living, and development. The Cold War was, after all, a competition between different political and economic models. Canada’s intelligence community was always sensitive to risks of a third world war. In the 1950s-60s, the raw intelligence collected from debriefing Canadian travellers was considered in assessments of foreign adversaries’ economies and industrial bases, and their capacities to wage war.

Immigrants and Defectors

Immigrants and refugees were the second category of sources handled by the Interview Program. They were a particularly productive source of intelligence in the early phases of the Cold War because of an exodus of commercial and professional classes from Central and Eastern Europe. The intelligence value of postwar immigrants like the displaced manager of a Czech armaments factory was self-evident. The Interview Program’s small team of officers decided which subsets of immigrants from countries of interest to interview based on considerations like military service records, subject matter expertise, and places where they had lived or worked. The intelligence officers’ outreach to new arrivals was simply presented as government interest in life in communist countries. The same promises of confidentiality that were made to Canadian travellers were also extended to immigrants.

The Iron Curtain became less porous for people who wanted to emigrate from Warsaw Pact states throughout the 1950s–60s, with corresponding implications for the Interview Program’s work. Crises like the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 did produce tens of thousands of refugees to Canada which, in the eyes of the intelligence community, were a pool of tens of thousands of potential sources, although Warsaw Pact governments were not in the habit of letting people with access to sensitive information emigrate legally. Still, declassified documents make it clear that émigrés from the Baltics needed no special training to observe the proliferation of jet aircraft, the shape of their wings, and the location, paving, and extension of runways. Similarly, Ukrainian collective farmers could observe the expansion of nearby mines and factories and estimate their workforce sizes. Canadian interviewers typically asked such immigrants from the Soviet Union and its satellites questions about military, transportation, and industrial installations, with the aim of compiling basic intelligence that would have operational value if a war broke out.

The Cuban Revolution was transformative for the Interview Program. Spanish became as important as Slavic languages because in the 1960s, Canadian airports in places like Gander, Newfoundland, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, were refueling stops on flight paths between Havana and Prague or East Berlin. This made them hotspots of asylum-seeking and defection. These asylum-seekers and defectors included Cuban diplomats, policemen, and intelligence officers. They also included African students returning from university exchanges in Havana and privileged citizens of Soviet satellites who took state-sponsored holidays in Cuba through agencies like ČEDOK or were seconded to Cuban government ministries as advisors.

For the Government of Canada, a defector was not just a citizen of the Sino-Soviet bloc (broadly defined) who reached Canada illegally. Defectors were defined and distinguished from other categories of migrants by their intelligence value  ^{Footnote 29}. Individuals in Warsaw Pact member states who sought Canadian diplomatic missions’ help defecting were assessed as potential intelligence assets, and this in turn determined whether they were worth making a special effort to bring to Canada. Those who defected on Canadian soil that were of interest to the intelligence community were fast-tracked through the immigration system, financially supported by the government, assisted with housing and employment searches, and given new identities if necessary.

Defectors were therefore the most prolific of the Interview Program’s sources. Soviet and satellite diplomats could identify which embassy officials were really intelligence officers at missions in Canada, Iran, Italy, and International Control Commissions in the former Indochina. Polish pilots were intimately familiar with Soviet aircraft, and Canadian intelligence officers were particularly interested in an Egyptian flier’s varied experience with Soviet, American, and British warplanes. The Estonian sailors who defected had simulated the opening phases of the next war in Soviet naval and merchant marine drills. Ukrainian chemists and Bulgarian physicists could share insights into scientific advancements and research priorities behind the Iron Curtain. Less traditional sources like Czech graphic designers and filmmakers could shed light on how the state exercised control over film, art, and information.

When Soviet scientist Mikhail Klochko defected in the summer of 1961 after a distinguished career in Moscow, Kyiv, and the People’s Republic of China, Canada’s Interview Program recognized that they had a particularly valuable source on their hands. Canadians therefore sought advice from American, British, and Australian counterparts on the content and focus of intelligence interviews. These colleagues responded with over 650 questions for Klochko, so the resulting interviews lasted over nine months and produced voluminous reports ranging from precious metals mining to the organization of Soviet nuclear research and firsthand reminiscences about the Sino-Soviet split^{Footnote 30}. The handling of defectors like Klochko illustrates the extent to which the Interview Program was a Canadian HUMINT contribution to a much wider allied collection effort.

Conclusion

The intelligence produced by Canada’s Foreign Intelligence Interview Program in the 1950s–60s frequently reads like scattered miscellany. The program’s focus was initially on the Soviet Union and its satellites, and its coverage subsequently became global, albeit uneven. Some of the intelligence it gathered—like the identities of Soviet and satellite intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover—was certainly actionable. Sources’ insights into Chinese economic development programs, Cuba’s international student exchanges, Bulgarian science, and Czech film may simply have contributed to Canadian and allied governments’ understandings of closed societies and potential adversaries. The output of the Interview Program did not have to stand alone or meet specific national intelligence requirements; it simply had to make a useful contribution to the common intelligence-gathering efforts of Canada, the US, UK, and Australia.

The secret nature of the subject matter and realities of declassification mean that the history of the Interview Program in the 1950s–60s is coming into clearer, sharper focus than the story of the decades that followed. Still, the Interview Program outlived Canada’s Joint Intelligence Bureau, the Soviet Union, and its original Cold War raison d'être. It was transferred to External Affairs in 1968, where it remained for the rest of the twentieth century. This longevity can be attributed to the value of HUMINT, both on its own merits and as a way for Canadians to pay their membership dues in international intelligence alliances.

Mushrooms of Intelligence: Canada’s Nuclear Cloud Sampling Program in the Cold War

Between 1951 and 1962, Canada participated in an extensive and highly secret foreign intelligence effort to collect radioactive debris from nuclear test explosions in the Soviet Union. Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) planes specially fitted with airborne collection filters flew hundreds of flights over Canadian territory, capturing debris from nuclear plume clouds that had drifted over the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans after weapons tests in Kazakhstan and the northern Soviet Union. Once collected, ground personnel extracted the contaminated filters and transported the radioactive cargoes for laboratory analysis in southern Ontario. Canada’s Defence Research Board (DRB), the fourth branch of the Canadian military and the predecessor to Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), coordinated and guided the entire program. Under the direction of scientific intelligence officers in the DRB, the air force enabled the program by performing the brunt of the work: aircrews flew on a regular schedule, ground crews extracted and transported the radioactive debris filters, and personnel on the ground decontaminated all crews, planes, and equipment.

Two aspects of Canada’s airborne debris collection program require attention and scrutiny. One is the history of scientific intelligence and Canadian efforts during the Cold War to understand and prepare for the evolving nuclear weapons threat of the Soviet Union. Senior defence officials in Canada defined scientific intelligence as the practice of gathering and analyzing scientific information for forecasting the weapons and warfare potential of enemy countries. Theoretically, developments in radiochemical analysis in the 1950s enabled scientists to study samples of radioactive debris to understand the composition of the nuclear device that had generated the debris upon explosion. Accurately identifying radioisotopes in airborne debris samples could indicate weapon type and yield, thus using the science of radiochemistry to develop intelligence on the technical capabilities and lethality of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

The other aspect of this history worth studying is the exposure of air force personnel and scientists to radiation for intelligence-gathering purposes. At all stages of the program, from collection of the airborne debris to transportation and analysis of the radioactive cargoes, the service members and scientists involved received varying intensities of exposure to traces of residual radiation. The Canadian Central Experimental and Proving Establishment (CEPE), first at RCAF Station Rockcliffe and later Uplands, oversaw the radiation protection of participating personnel and the decontamination of planes and equipment. In a 2007 report on Canada’s Atomic Veterans commissioned by National Defence, historian John Clearwater found that the pilots and crews who flew collection flights received relatively little radiation because most of the fallout had settled elsewhere before reaching Canadian territory^{Footnote 31} . However, Clearwater’s report focused on Canadian service members who took part in nuclear weapons trials at the Nevada Test Site in the United States and at the Maralinga Range in southern Australia. He did not have access to the RCAF medical records kept by CEPE, thus negating a fulsome investigation of the radiation exposures that occurred. Though beyond the scope of this essay, the health implications of Canada’s airborne debris collection program deserve fuller attention.

Collection flights began in 1951, two years after the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first atomic device and began stockpiling nuclear weapons. Officials in Ottawa created the program to assist American and British efforts in gaining knowledge about nuclear advances on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain. Over the course of one decade, the RCAF operated three different aircraft specially fitted with filters engineered to capture radioactive debris from nuclear plume clouds. During the early years of the program, the CF-100 Canuck and the Dakota served as collection vehicles. As the program advanced, the RCAF used the T-33 fitted with specially engineered filter assembly collecting ducts loaned from the US Air Force (USAF). Collection flights occurred on a bi-weekly schedule, except for periods of known Soviet testing when the frequency of flights increased to match USAF requests for increased debris samples. Upon successful capture, RCAF personnel transferred the debris for analysis in the DRB’s radiochemical unit at Deep River and its research facility at Shirley Bay. Other samples ended up in Hamilton, where nuclear chemist Henry Thode used DRB funds to conduct radiochemical analyses in a newly constructed nuclear reactor on the campus of McMaster University.

Senior military and defence officials in Canada labelled and characterized the airborne debris collection program as a specific form of intelligence known as weather reconnaissance. Under an official agreement, RCAF Test and Development Instruction, the Air Force accepted the responsibility for providing support to the DRB by conducting routine and special nuclear debris sampling flights over Canadian territory. The radius of action covered a wide area of Canadian airspace, northwest from the Atlantic seaboard on the east coast to Hudson Bay and the northernmost portions of the Prairie provinces. Flights principally occurred over sub-Arctic Canada but could extend northward to and above the Arctic Circle. CEPE provided suitably modified planes and trained crews to collect the samples, exercising full control over all aircraft and flights carried out as part of the program. As the program advanced in the late 1950s, T33 aircraft fitted with an F57 filter assembly flew routine sampling flights every two weeks from Cold Lake, northeast of Edmonton, in central Alberta. Aircraft flying above the Cold Lake area ascended to 3000 feet below the tropopause, a boundary that demarcates the troposphere from the stratosphere, the two lowest layers of Earth’s atmosphere. The same aircraft and filter assemblage flew from Uplands in Ottawa on a similar bi-weekly schedule but ascended above the tropopause. All routine sampling flights occurred along the principal meridian, intercepting the predominate west-to-east path of radioactive clouds that drifted over Canadian territory after nuclear explosions in the Soviet Union.

Eager to obtain debris from each new cloud intercepted during ongoing trials, authorities in the DRB took on the intelligence responsibilities of the joint DRB-RCAF cloud-sampling program. Whereas the routine flights provided airborne samples on a regular basis, the special flights occurred periodically when intelligence shared with Canada indicated a specific series of Soviet nuclear tests. Analysts in the DRB’s Directorate of Scientific Intelligence (DSI) collected intelligence on Soviet nuclear trials from British and American sources, obtaining useful information that CEPE officials used to schedule sampling flights. When special flights occurred on demand, a sampling operations officer and supporting ground crew deployed from Ottawa to Cold Lake. The CEPE detachment also used meteorological and ground-tracking data to plan and execute special flights, using the filter-fitted T33 to intercept radioactive clouds on short notice from analysts in the DSI. Though the program allowed for the deployment of aircraft and support crews at other locations with the approval of Air Force Headquarters, the available records indicate that special flights occurred from Cold Lake alone.

Although records about the airborne debris-sampling program remain closed, documents available from Library and Archives Canada and the Directorate of History and Heritage suggest that debris-collection flights carried out by the RCAF obtained samples useful for analyzing the nuclear weapons capability and military threat of the Soviet Union. DSI originally coordinated and guided the collection program to obtain fission samples from Soviet nuclear explosions for analysis in Canada and the United Kingdom, but the quality of the filter samples and the overall success of the RCAF collection flights urged Canadian officials to expand the program and supply airborne debris for analysis in the United States as well. In some cases, the RCAF even collected debris samples of higher quality than those collected independently by the USAF, which partly explains the longevity of the decade-long Canadian program.

From an intelligence perspective, the program’s success hinged equally on the collection and analysis of airborne debris. Nuclear scientists at Deep River and Shirley Bay performed radiochemical analyses of the samples contained in the collection filters, looking for specific isotopes and certain known products of nuclear weapons. Similar research occurred at McMaster University in Hamilton, where Thode and his research team aimed to identify the composition of isotopes in the heavy elements of the nuclear debris samples obtained by the RCAF. Information on Thode’s research at McMaster is more readily available, in part, because he maintained extensive records on the secret and restricted scientific work that he performed under contract to the DRB.

Thode used a technique called mass spectrometry to determine the mass-to-charge ratio of ions, measuring the abundance of uranium and plutonium isotopes in the samples obtained from airborne debris. DRB funds paid for the installation of scientific equipment, namely a mass spectrometer, in McMaster’s nuclear reactor building. Thode’s research team carried out mass spectrometric analyses in cooperation with scientists at the DRB’s chemical laboratory in Deep River, regularly exchanging data about the latest debris samples obtained and analyzed. Deep River received all airborne debris samples directly from the RCAF before transporting the radioactive cargoes to Hamilton. Nuclear physicist Carman McMullen, appointed to Thode’s team in April 1960, supervised all aspects of the research related to scientific intelligence and interpreted the debris data for clues about the development of Soviet nuclear weapons.

Unlike the high-quality samples collected over Canadian territory and analyzed at Deep River and Shirley Bay in the mid-1950s, the mass spectrometric investigations carried out on the airborne simples delivered to McMaster showed marginal results. Only six samples prepared from airborne debris contained uranium and plutonium isotopes, the products generated by a nuclear explosion. Several other samples included rubidium, boron, and other radioactive elements, but residual material in the collected debris affected all samples and made measuring exact isotopic quantities difficult. Owing to the limited results and the challenge of obtaining and analyzing high-quality debris samples, Thode asked DRB officials to close his research grant in September 1965. Mass spectrometric determinations of heavy elements in McMaster’s nuclear reactor building seized thereafter, leaving the DRB with little to show for its multi-year investment.

Despite the limited results, Thode’s research at McMaster outlived the Canadian collection program by three years. As the Soviet Union intensified its nuclear testing program in the leadup to the single-largest detonation in recorded history—the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba test of October 1961—the USAF increased its independent airborne collection capabilities in North American airspace to such a degree that the Canadian effort became redundant and unnecessary. The Soviet Union had also moved its nuclear testing program to the Arctic Archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, placing any subsequent fallout cloud out of range for T-33 aircraft based at Cold Lake. In turn, the USAF used improved equipment to obtain superior nuclear debris samples to those provided by Canada. American officials also provided a formal notification to the DRB stating that additional nuclear debris samples were no longer required. Unable to reconcile radiochemical analyses of collected nuclear debris with the ongoing improvements to the Soviet arsenal, authorities in the DRB ended their contribution to the Canadian cloud-sampling program in April 1962. Thode received and analyzed samples as the program ended, but his research waned as the quantity and quality of the filters declined.

Recognizing that any future RCAF cloud sampling would likely produce limited results, the DRB’s senior leadership recommended the entire Canadian program for complete discontinuation in November 1962. The program’s termination had little to do with the performance of the RCAF, whose various flight crews and ground personnel had performed the dangerous and taxing labour required of effective cloud sampling for over a decade. They made effective and efficient use of the equipment provided under all types of conditions, and many took a keen personal interest in the success of the collection flights and sampling program. RCAF personnel received training in the handling and transportation of the radioactive filters, but they could only speculate about the extent and purpose of the research performed on the samples collected. Senior defence officials remained tight-lipped about the program and withheld information on the role of scientific intelligence in assessing the Soviet nuclear threat.

As time passes and the Cold War-era goes further out of view, it becomes increasingly important to remember the human element of intelligence gathering in the period. In the tense and uncertain security environment of the atomic age, Canada’s senior defence officials prioritized scientific intelligence as critical to military and national preparedness. Gaining accurate information on the scale, substance, and lethality of the Soviet nuclear arsenal required both physical and mental labour. Correspondence discussing the program’s cancelation indicates that officials in the DRB and the RCAF agreed to conclude the Canadian contribution. Air Commodore R.H. Bray communicated the decision to CEPE Uplands, writing down that the RCAF had received expressions of gratitude from both the DRB and the USAF. Informing CEPE to cease collection-sampling flights, Bray made a point to share that USAF officials had found the Canadian collection effort particularly important to supplementing their own sampling capability. Determining the extent to which nuclear cloud sampling as a form of scientific intelligence affected Canadian security and national defence is a matter for additional research, but the resources and time devoted to the collection program suggest that this is an area of Canada’s intelligence history not to be over-looked or ignored.

First Among Equals: Lester Bowles (Mike) Pearson’s Involvement in the Establishment of the Canadian Examination Unit 1937–1942

‘I wish I were a better cryptographer.’ The author was lamenting his failure to decipher a blank page sent from his friend and professional colleague William Stephenson (Director of British Security Coordination (BSC) in New York City during the Second World War), for he was unfamiliar with the use of secret inks he thought might have been used in the letter. So, who was this wartime author? None other than Canadas Department of External Affairs (DEA) Lester Bowles (Mike) Pearson, in February 1942. Is it historically significant? As Pearson was later 14th Prime Minister of Canada, I contend it is, for what other Western democratic national leader—past or present—has ever issued such an intimate, humble statement regarding cryptography at any point in their public career? So, what caused our future prime minister to make such a statement?

The answer to this question lies in Pearson’s experiences at the Canadian High Commission in London from 1935–1941, as well as his brief interlude in the latter half of that year supporting new Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs Norman Robertson in Ottawa, prior to his posting to the Canadian Legation at Washington, DC in 1942. Pearson played a pivotal role in early Canadian cryptologic development between 1939 and 1941; however, his contribution to Canada’s code-breaking program is overlooked.

In 1939, Canada depended upon the British Foreign and Dominions Offices to keep it abreast of world events. Britain provided its most important Dominion with intelligence it considered of interest to the Canadian Prime Minister. Pearson felt that such intelligence was offered by the British Government to shape the psychology of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in its favour as it navigated the fallout of its impotent foreign policies and crumbling diplomatic effort to achieve global parity and peace since 1919.

Mike Pearson and the Canadian High Commission in London

Mike Pearson arrived in London to begin his tenure as First Secretary of Canada House (Canada’s High Commission in the United Kingdom) in October 1935. Pearson’s professional goal during his posting to London was to ‘seek out and find those Londoners whose actions and views deeply affected British policy in the three years before the war’. He immediately renewed old Oxford contacts and friendships within the Foreign Office (FO), War Office (WO), and the Admiralty. Not surprisingly, these three organizations were the primary requirements drivers and consumers of British ‘special intelligence,’ not yet called Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). Pearson, responsible for ‘political [and by 1939, military] affairs,’ regularly consulted with the FO and reported to Canada through the High Commissioner on British political and diplomatic issues. He regularly read classified intelligence reports on foreign countries within FO spaces. Gladwyn Jebb, a rising FO officer in the 1930s—and later first Acting Secretary of the United Nations in 1945—quickly paid compliment to Pearson, noting that from the beginning, Mike seemed ‘one of us.’ Pearson’s social attractiveness, his high intellect, sharp wit, and polished diplomatic attributes were welcomed at the Foreign Office. He quickly became a trusted friend of the FO, fully supported by Vincent Massey, his High Commissioner.

In mid-1937, Pearson was first exposed to the British ‘special intelligence’ system, particularly the decryption and reporting efforts of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), when he was appointed Canadian Secretary to the 1937 Imperial Conference in London. He participated in every aspect of Canadian preparations, meetings, sub-meetings, and technical discussions, both political and military. Nigel West, a wartime GC&CS officer who wrote the History of Allied SIGINT at the end of the Second World War, categorically stated that ‘negotiations with Canada were opened in July 1937…with the suggestion that they should participate in an Empire-wide scheme for interception^{Footnote 32}’ Pearson was at the centre of the negotiations. ‘One of [his] jobs was to make sure Canada’s needs were looked after in its dealings with the various bureaucracies of the Imperial government. In this case, the bureaucracy was the Government Code and Cipher School^{Footnote 33}.’

A Department of Transport Monitoring Station located at the Experimental Farm, Ottawa, began continuous ‘watch’ of German commercial stations in mid-August 1939, wherein it intercepted ‘a large number of cypher messages to agents in various countries,’ interspersed within the commercial press plain language transmissions. Regardless of a dramatically increasing amount of intercepted material, Canada had no capability to decipher these messages, and the amount shipped to the GC&CS exploded exponentially.

Why did Canada make no initial attempt to decrypt any intercepted enemy wireless traffic? Firstly, it had no experienced cryptographers to take on the task; and secondly, the newly created RCN Foreign Intelligence Section (FIS) expressed no interest in the decryption of German naval communications. The Admiralty requested only three things from Canadian intercept activities and the fledgling FIS: ‘bearings, the call signs, and the broadcast frequencies of enemy transmissions^{Footnote 34}.’

Mike Pearson’s role as ‘special intelligence’ liaison between Canada and the GC&CS shifted onto a war footing. Canadian Militia Headquarters (CMHQ) was established in London, led by Pearson’s old friend, Brigadier-General Harry Crerar. Crerar worked with Pearson and senior leadership at the WO coordinating all aspects of Canada’s broader impending military presence in Britain. The Pearson/Crerar friendship blossomed, with Crerar quickly taking up residence at Pearson’s ‘flat, off Piccadilly,’ within walking distance of Canada House, CMHQ, the FO, the WO, the Admiralty, and GC&CS. Pearson and Crerar’s personal relationship and their extended friendships within the FO and the WO paid dividends, resulting in better communications between the Canadians and the British. Aside from FO intelligence despatches to External Affairs, the initiation of regular intelligence reporting and appreciations from the WO to NDHQ was one of the immediate outcomes, given the absence of any Canadian intelligence-gathering or appraising apparatus.

By November 1939, Colonel Maurice Pope at Militia HQ Ottawa assessed the need to incorporate a ‘cryptographic section [in]to the Militia’, and dispatched Captain Harry Wethey, the officer responsible for the Canadian militia’s newly formed wireless intercept service, to London in November to investigate ‘special intelligence options’ with British counterparts. Wethey spent two months learning British intercept processes and was tasked to discuss code-breaking procedures at GC&CS. All of Wethey’s findings were discussed at CMHQ, with Mike Pearson representing the High Commission. The War Office solution to decrypt intercepted traffic in Canada was simple: it suggested Canada send a cryptographer to GC&CS for three months and offered support to Canada to create its own embryonic code-breaking capability. Canada chose not to follow the WO recommendation.

The fall of France in June 1940 further exacerbated the extraordinary stress on the GC&CS. Britain was now alone in her fight against Hitler’s forces, and the rapidly expanding code-breaking organization was unprepared and still unable to decrypt German and Japanese machine-encrypted intercept. Inundated with raw traffic, Denniston spoke to Pearson regarding their earlier recommendation. In Pearson’s subsequent communication with Norman Robertson, he stated that the War Office was showing reluctance to decode Canadian raw intercept and was wondering whether Ottawa desired to set up a cryptographic bureau of its own, again offering assistance. The British offer to help Canada create a code-breaking ‘bureau’ was there once again. And once again, it was refused.

Mid-1940 through spring 1941 saw a flurry of activity related to the creation of a Canadian cryptographic unit. Firstly, the National Research Council (NRC) received a one-million-dollar donation from influential businessmen (Samuel Bronfman, John Eaton, Sir Edward Beatty), and International Nickel Co. to be used for ‘scientific research’ associated with the war effort. Hugh Keenleyside represented External Affairs on a small committee—the War Technical and Scientific Development Committee (WTSDC)—created to allocate the money to entities selected from a list presented by the president of the NRC. In mid-January 1941, Keenleyside met with Council President C.J. Mackenzie regarding a Canadian cryptographic capability. In April, Norman Robertson dispatched two mathematics professors to the US to open discussions seeking support to establish a cryptologic bureau in Ottawa. Concurrently, Mike Pearson was recalled from London to assist an over-worked Robertson in Ottawa^{Footnote 35} .

In a mid-June communication with Major-General McNaughton in England, NRC President C.J. Mackenzie mentioned the allocation of $10,000 from the WTSDC for ‘the organization of a section of cryptanalysis’, to import ‘some experts’ for a six-month trial period. The nine-member Examination Unit had begun training a week earlier, led by American cryptologist Herbert Osborne Yardley. Mike Pearson was appointed Chairman of the Examination Unit Advisory Committee, a position he held until posted to Washington, DC in spring 1942.

By mid-1941, Mike Pearson had four years experience in the ‘special intelligence’ field through his relationship with the GC&CS. Yet surprisingly, Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs Norman Robertson hired Yardley, requesting neither Pearson’s experience nor his advice on the subject. Robertson also disregarded the advice of Hume Wrong, First Secretary at the Canadian Legation in Washington, DC, not to hire Yardley. Why did Robertson proceed? His decision could be attributed to his predecessor O.D. Skelton’s ‘nationalist’ approach to distance Canada from Britain, for under Skelton the DEA had twice previously refused GC&CS’s offer to help create a cryptographic bureau in Ottawa. Regardless of Robertson’s logic, supported by $10,000 in NRC funding, Yardley was hired to teach cryptography to Canadian personnel for a six-month period.

Norman Robertson was neither unaware of Yardley’s contentious character, nor that he was persona non-grata within the intelligence community of both the US and Britain for his disclosure of ‘special intelligence’ trade secrets in a 1931 book, The American Black Chamber, which caused significant damage to both countries ‘special intelligence’ programs. Canada ridiculously attempted to obscure the name of their newly hired cryptologic expert by directing Yardley to use the nom de guerre ‘Herbert Osborne.’ When the GC&CS and US Army Signal Intelligence Service discovered Yardley was working on cryptography for Canada in Ottawa, they immediately refused any further cooperation with the Examination Unit unless he was removed from the position. Mike Pearson had the unenviable role of advising Yardley his contract would not be renewed, as well as smoothing ruffled feathers in both London and Washington, DC. He accomplished these challenging tasks with his characteristic diplomatic aplomb. In response to Pearson’s actions, by December 1941, Commander Denniston offered Canada aging First World War Room 40 veteran Oliver Strachey (who specialized in breaking German Abwehr [agent] codes), to replace Yardley as Director of the Examination Unit. From that moment forward, the Examination Unit became a junior partner to the GC&CS, and for the remainder of the war the GC&CS kept the Examination Unit under a British sphere of cryptographic influence.

Conclusion

…in 1941 Pearson…enjoyed numerous contacts within the Allied intelligence community. Pearson, as a member of the Department of External Affairs, had contacts within the Canadian High Commission in London, the Canadian Legation in Washington, the BSC [British Security Coordination] in New York and all three Canadian armed forces. Pearson helped staff the BSC, [and] created reporting structures for intelligence, and assisted with the creation of Ottawa’s ‘Examination Unit’, a Canadian unit initially led by American codebreaker Herbert Yardley”^{Footnote 36} .

At the start of the Second World War Canada, with no external threats, saw no need for a national code-breaking unit. Prime Minister King and Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs Dr. O.D. Skelton, believed they would receive any intelligence from the British Foreign or War Office under any circumstances, including war. Not so.

To even be considered to receive any British ‘special intelligence’ as a member of a Dominion nation, it was first necessary to establish trusted personal relationships with those leaders and senior bureaucrats controlling the organizations possessing such intelligence. The British services and Foreign Office leadership trusted Mike Pearson— ‘one of their own,’—with their country’s most closely held intelligence secrets, Winston Churchill’s ‘golden eggs.’ He had earned such trust through personal and professional dedication and commitment over six years in London, and through previous wartime, Oxford, and international friendships that he nurtured carefully. Pearson recognized that intelligence sharing is as much about such trusted relationships as it is bureaucratic policy guidelines.

When Britain needed to expand collection capabilities within the Dominions in 1937 to address East Asian security concerns, Pearson was the Canadian they turned to. Two years later, through his trusted personal relationships developed over time within the British services and the Foreign Office, Pearson responsibly coordinated Canadian intercept and raw traffic processing directly with the GC&CS. Twice the Director of GC&CS offered Canada support and expertise to establish a code-breaking bureau in Ottawa through Mike Pearson. The offer was refused both times, the outcome of the August 1940 Ogdensburg Agreement and the newly initiated intelligence sharing pact with the United States.

When the US offered cryptologic expertise and training support to Canada in May 1941, in the guise of Herbert Osborne Yardley, Canada leaped at the opportunity. Pearson’s professional advice regarding the hire was neither sought nor offered. In transit from London at the time, he was unaware of any cryptologic decisions made by Under-Secretary of State Norman Robertson. Robertson also failed to consider the advice against hiring Yardley proffered by Hume Wrong, First Secretary to the Canadian Legation at Washington, DC.

Pearson was immediately tasked as Chairman of the Examination Unit Advisory Committee from the time of his arrival in Ottawa, to the time of his departure to the Canadian Legation in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1942. He was intimately involved in every aspect of Examination Unit decision making, training and cryptologic activity in the first six-months of its existence, and deftly coordinated Yardley’s replacement with the GC&CS.

Mike Pearson played not ‘a’, but ‘the’ pivotal role in the establishment of Canada’s first cryptographic bureau, the Examination Unit, in the spring of 1941. His legacy, and the legacy of his cadre of close friends stands today on Ogilvie Road in east Ottawa, Canada’s Communication Security Establishment . 83 years later, Canadians deserve to know the names of the men involved in the creation of our first foreign intelligence service. Leading them all was the self-admitted poor cryptographer, Lester Bowles (Mike) Pearson.

Early Military Intelligence and the Workers’ Revolt

At the time of Confederation, Canada’s militia was principally focused on defending the state from external threats like the United States Army and Fenian raiders. Intelligence gathering mostly fell to a system of secret police devised and personally controlled by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. These police provided information regarding the likely sites of border incursions, and the militia mobilized and concentrated accordingly. The militia did not initially have a dedicated service for gathering intelligence regarding foreign threats or looking inward. However, many militia officers were concerned about the security risks of internal dissent, particularly organized labour. The fear that workers would foment revolution was a longstanding concern, most notably during a period known as the Workers’ Revolt (1917–1925).

Although fear of left-wing revolutionary organizations is most evident in the years following Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, there were also concerns after the 1871 Paris Commune. In Quebec City, military officers fretted over the impact of newly arrived French immigrants with ties to the commune. Some communards agitated among construction workers who were building the new city hall. When a riot broke out in 1878, overwhelming the local police, the full-time soldiers of 'B' Battery took to the street. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Bland Strange identified one of the veterans of the commune and ordered his soldiers to fire on him. A coroner's jury absolved Strange of any wrongdoing, given the man's role in the riot and his failure to disperse after the mayor read the Riot Act.

The following year, the militia in Manitoba proceeded by rail to the site of a railway workers' strike in the isolated Keewatin District. The workers' grievances were rather ordinary: poor pay, terrible working conditions, and an inability to leave the isolated camp. Lieutenant Colonel William Osborne Smith, the commander, suspected that the workers were communists and believed that they had fortified a commune in the nearby hills. There was no such camp, and beyond a rumour that the workers had carried a ‘red flag’ at one point, nothing to suggest that they derived much inspiration from Karl Marx.

Officers like Strange and Osborne Smith, both former British army officers transferred to the Canadian militia, effectively served as their own intelligence officers. Their knowledge of security threats was principally informed by professional experience, personal connections within their communities, and any prejudices they might hold. Militia officers at this time were overwhelmingly white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, typically drawn from high society or the upper middle class. Working-class movements, particularly those with strong followings within immigrant communities, were perceived as security threats despite a dearth of actual intelligence. Conversely, organizations that expressed strong loyalty to the Crown, the Church of England, and the British constitution, were perceived as stabilizing and valuable. The Orange Order was one such organization, but its deliberate anti-Catholic provocations were often the cause of much public violence.

Military intelligence began to professionalize in 1903 with the establishment of the Corps of Guides. Each Military District had a District Intelligence Officer (DIO) and a small staff, with a Director General of Military Intelligence in Ottawa. In many respects, the organization was more like a mounted reconnaissance unit than an intelligence organization. Still, it provided the military with a dedicated staff with increasingly specialized knowledge of intelligence-gathering techniques. Their focus was on studying terrain and enemy organizations to best predict courses of action and help their commanders make better decisions. At the time, an American invasion still seemed possible, and the Corps of Guides produced extensive reports on potential routes and forces available for such an attack.

During the First World War, Military District commanders and their DIOs began to pay closer attention to domestic dissent. The Dominion Police was the lead agency in monitoring subversive groups and identifying security threats, but the military had to prepare for uprisings within their Military Districts. DIOs employed military members as undercover agents and hired both private detectives and confidential informants. Military District commanders and DIOs even appear to have spent their own money when they could not get approval for enough agents through official channels.

In Manitoba (Military District 10), the Corps of Guides coordinated with Winnipeg police and shared information about organizations like the Social Democratic Party, a left-wing organization that included large numbers of English, Yiddish, Russian, Ruthenian, and Swedish speakers. In 1917, Sergeant Major Francis Edward Langdale infiltrated the Winnipeg branch of the Anti-Conscription League. Agents and informants attended meetings, read the mail, and reviewed pamphlets and newspapers in detail, producing files on individuals and organizations. Many of the clippings were in languages other than English, and these were dutifully translated and shared with Ottawa and neighbouring Military Districts. Such activities took place across Canada, although not all files have survived in such rich detail.

Major-General Huntly Ketchen, recently returned from service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium, took command of Military District 10 late in the war. The war-time intelligence activities continued after the Armistice and remained in place during the events leading up to the Winnipeg General Strike in May–June 1919. Sergeant Major Langdale remained undercover, and Ketchen’s various informers continued to feed him information about the meetings held by the Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council.

Ketchen also personally attended the Citizens’ Committee of One Thousand (the city's business and professional elite who sought to break the strike), arranged to use the Canadian Pacific Railway's telegraph lines to secretly communicate through the city, and made lists of "loyal" citizens who would oppose the strikers. Ketchen exaggerated his knowledge of and influence over events during the general strike, but it is clear that he was fairly well informed through both military intelligence and intelligence sharing with the Royal North-West Mounted Police.

The Winnipeg General Strike was hardly the only such event at this time. In March 1919, many unions departed the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada for the more aggressive One Big Union. More than 100 general strikes followed, some of which became violent. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, the combination of the Royal North-West Mounted Police and the Dominion Police) feared that these general strikes might grow into a revolution, and many senior military officers shared these fears. Nonetheless, post-war restructuring gutted the Corps of Guides. Ketchen cautioned that he would have been blind during the Winnipeg General Strike without his intelligence staff and expressed concern as the Military District's intelligence staff was reduced to almost no strength.

The new Chief of the General Staff, Major-General James Howden MacBrien, attempted to establish a system that would permit better intelligence sharing. As MacBrien’s resources shrank, the RCMP’s resources increased. In Ottawa, MacBrien established a Defence Committee. He represented the militia and invited representatives from the Air Board (soon the Canadian Air Force) and the Royal Canadian Navy. With these representatives, he pursued innovations in joint operations, such as testing communications between aircraft, ships, and soldiers in Halifax. He also invited representatives from industry (such as railway and telegraph companies) and the RCMP. In this forum, they could share military intelligence and security intelligence gathered by the RCMP. Each Military District established similarly structured local committees.

In 1921, RCMP Commissioner Aylesworth Bowen Perry attended the Defence Committee meetings and advised that he suspected a rebellion would soon play out in Vancouver. A general strike shook the city in 1918, and another had loomed in 1920. Perry's evidence of a forthcoming rebellion in 1921 was limited. When some police officers evicted a worker from his home, the angry man declared that there was a revolution coming and the workers would have their vengeance. The threats were more specific than usual—claims of numbers of rebels prepared for action and some weapons—and some other police reported similar rumours. These reports were enough for Perry to bring them to MacBrien’s attention: what was the militia prepared to do if rebellion came?

At this time, Canada's military contingency plans were called ‘defence schemes.’ The most famous of these was Defence Scheme No. 1, the plan for a defensive war against an American invasion. Its author, Lieutenant Colonel James "Buster" Sutherland Brown, drew on the many Corps of Guides reports and his own reconnaissance. Defence Scheme ‘Internal Trouble’ was prepared shortly afterwards. MacBrien directed each of his Military District commanders to offer their assessments of the internal threats in their area, provide lists of available military forces, police, and loyal civilian auxiliaries, and to articulate their plans for any uprisings. These included what they planned to do with only local resources and what they could do to support other Military Districts in the event of a widespread rebellion.

The responses from the different Military District commanders show that some officers already had detailed plans for responding to uprisings. In Nova Scotia, for instance, the Halifax garrison had a detailed plan called Defence Scheme Emma for the rapid dispatch of troops by rail to the site of a labour dispute. They set aside equipment and made arrangements with the Canadian Pacific Railway for speedy deployment by commercial rail. In Saskatchewan, the Military District commander advised that he had already set up a Citizens' Committee of One Thousand, which he used for intelligence-gathering purposes.

Military District Commanders often revealed their prejudices when determining who they considered trustworthy citizens. They tabulated the number of full-time and part-time soldiers in their districts, police, and citizens they might put under arms in an emergency. Most Military District commanders included veterans and service clubs in their calculations. For instance, the Kiwanis Club in Calgary and the Great War Veterans' Association in Toronto were considered trustworthy and could be armed in an emergency. In assessing the risk of rebellion in their districts, commanders pointed to political groups, labour organizations, and ethnic communities as possible threats.

Major-General Victor Arthur Seymour Williams (the future commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police) offered a particularly ethnocentric view of the risk of an uprising in Toronto. He believed that most Torontonians were loyal, ‘and it is only the foreigners, Jews, Sinn Feiners, and a certain element of returned men (men who were always wasters and always will be) who are disloyal’. Given the number of ‘disloyal’ unemployed workers in the city, he saw an uprising of 20,000-30,000 workers, led by Bolshevik cadre, as a possibility. Williams' reports do not indicate that he based his conclusions on anything more than rumours and his own prejudices.

The Internal Trouble plans were exercised several times during the 1920s and the early 1930s. In Nova Scotia, preparations for Defence Scheme Emma facilitated several efficient deployments to the Cape Breton coalfields. Soldiers departed Halifax by rail within hours of receiving orders. Toronto militiamen prepared to defend their armouries on several occasions on false alarms of insurrection, at least as late as 1930. British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan used elements of their plans as late as the 1935 On to Ottawa Trek.

Defence intelligence, from Confederation to the Workers’ Rebellion, was largely the work of enthusiastic amateurs. The Corps of Guides made important strides foreword, but much of the expertise they developed during the First World War was lost in the post-war demobilization. Efforts at intelligence sharing with the RCMP helped offset this loss, but as Major-General Williams’ report on Toronto indicates, senior leaders formed their views largely based on their own biases rather than anything resembling professional intelligence-gathering methods and analysis. The Militia Department’s fear of a workers’ rebellion persisted, but these concerns were hardly the result of its own rigorous analysis.

Stepping Through the Looking Glass: Social Democrat Critiques of National Security Policing in Cold War Canada 1957–69

A Big Chessboard – Introduction

When Alice stepped through the mirror, she found a strange world that resembled so much her own but was just a little askew. It was divided into squares like a giant chessboard where she met wonderful creatures along her journey, living backwards in a dream.

This real-life fairy tale uses the allegory of Lewis Carroll characters from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, a sequel to his first beloved book, to explain the discomposure social democrats felt peering into the workings of the Canadian security state during the middle Cold War. The game of chess has become a mainstay in espionage and national security literature. Social democracy, including the Canadian variant, navigated the ideological East-West divide during the Cold War to find legitimacy, popular support, and to be taken seriously. The New Democratic Party (NDP) was established in 1961 from joining farmer populism behind the Cooperative Commonwealth Party (CCF) and the ranks of organized labour. The aspiring political party garnered a fair proportion of votes in elections to put some fielded candidates into provincial legislatures and Parliament. When mentioning ‘security’, CCF/NDP members are typically associated with social security initiatives and the beginning of national healthcare rather than contributions to national security. Still, despite small numbers, they provided consistent and effective criticism of government policies related to national security policing. Entry into the secretive world of espionage and countersubversion challenged long held assumptions and compelled the governing parties to change course on occasion.

Red Queen – Curious Case of Communism in Canada

For social democrats and the Canadian state, Soviet infiltration of North American society ran faster and faster in the name of inevitable progress but in reality, the red queen never seemed to move from the same spot.

Two wings of socialism in Canada competed for attention from ordinary people, labour, and the working classes. The Communist Party of Canada (CPC), which rebranded into the Labour Progressive Party (LPP), was committed to fundamental political and economic change and even violent overthrow of government. It had been subjected to surveillance and disruptive activities by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and judiciary over many years. Authorities worried about links to the Soviet Union and cultivation of agents of influence amongst individuals, groups, and political parties in Canadian life. Consequently, national security policing remained focused on preventing and countering the entrenchment of communist ideas. As a social democratic party mostly opposed to the CPC/LPP, the CCF/NDP worked as a willing participant within the existing political system by advancing a progressive agenda with hopes of one day forming government or official opposition. Under the leadership of M.J. Coldwell and subsequently Tommy Douglas, greater numbers of CCF/NDP achieved political office than the ones and twos representing the CPC/LPP. In one case, the Canadian state tried communist MP Fred Rose elected from a working-class Montreal riding and deported him to Poland. The CCF/NDP usually applauded such moves that removed political opponents, so long as the security instruments of the state were not directed toward it, and it suited its interests. Coldwell supported Canada’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and a common defence against the Soviet Union. In contrast to the CCF/NDP’s modest success, the CPC/LPP electorally made little headway in Canada and remained a marginal political force due to state oppression, organizational problems, and lack of appeal.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee – John Diefenbaker and Davie Fulton

The misfit pair, things in a Progressive Conservative dream of power, readied for a fight then took to their heels and disappeared out of sight relegated to opposition ranks.

The Progressive Conservative Party (PC) under leader John Diefenbaker held power with a clear majority in the 1958 federal election, bookended by two minority governments in 1957 and 1962. Having bested the long dominant Liberal Party, the PC inherited a security apparatus from the St. Laurent government and existing Security Panel that furnished a basis for collaboration and sharing of information. Diefenbaker chose Kamloops MP Davie Fulton to be minister of justice responsible for the RCMP and prosecution efforts. The Directorate of Security and Intelligence (DSI), known within the RCMP as I Directorate, had replaced the Special Branch in 1956.

PC success at the polls meant that CCF numbers in Parliament were much reduced, to a low of only eight elected members. Nonetheless, this small caucus proved remarkably vocal and persistent in pressing issues in and out of the House of Commons. Douglas Fisher, the MP from Fort William on Lake Superior who had defeated Liberal heavyweight C.D. Howe, wrote a regular ‘Inside Politics’ column in a Toronto newspaper touching upon national security-related topics. David Orlikow, representing Winnipeg North, often took the lead in question period asking Diefenbaker and Fulton about security screening of public servants, surveillance and enforcement of injunctions against trade unions, and expulsion of Soviet military attachés and diplomatic staff for engaging in espionage activities. In early 1959, Colonel V.A. Kuznetsov was quietly sent back to Moscow for obtaining maps from Canadian lawyer Frank Jordan, and in late 1961, Lieutenant-Colonel A.F. Loginov was publicly declared persona non grata and expelled. Harold Winch, former provincial NDP leader in British Columbia and an MP with his father Ernest Winch in Ottawa, kept constant pressure on the government when leader Tommy Douglas, elected MP for a nearby Burnaby riding, was otherwise unavailable.

The PC majority and minority governments certainly gave the CCF/NDP much to criticize in terms of national security policing techniques, who was being watched, and a propensity for secrecy and sharing little information in public. Diefenbaker, a personification of contradictions in a Prime Minister, showed varying degrees of interest beyond domestic issues and afforded DSI professional practitioners considerable latitude absent clear policy guidance and direction. Accountability under Fulton remained loose. Somewhat ironic then that the Diefenbaker government which introduced a Canadian Bill of Rights trampled over the civil liberties and freedoms of so many for the sake of the state’s national security. Once Lester Pearson’s Liberal Party replaced the PC in 1963, Diefenbaker stayed on as leader of the official opposition with the unfulfilled hope of bringing down the Liberals and gaining power again. The NDP under Douglas was reduced to seventeen seats behind a Social Credit Party buoyed by an electoral surprise in Quebec. National security policing controversies came to the fore during successive minority governments under Pearson. 

Humpty Dumpty – Elusive Victor Spencer

A spying minor postal employee fell off a high wall and all the King’s horsemen (RCMP) could not put him together again, threatening to topple a minority government.

After gaining four more seats in the November 1965 federal election for a total of twenty-one, the NDP found a cause célèbre in the case of Victor Spencer, a Vancouver postal employee caught collecting information for the KGB and dismissed from federal employment without pension and benefits. The RCMP watched Spencer meet up with Soviet contacts in Ottawa on numerous occasions and followed him in British Columbia and Alberta photographing and filming a pipeline thought to be a possible sabotage target. Subsequent interrogations revealed that Spencer exchanged information from tombstones and school records for false identities useful to KGB sleeper agents called illegals, and scouted out farms for sale in Surrey near the border for a potential base of operations and secret communication site to infiltrate spies into the United States. Minister of Justice Lucien Cardin decided not to pursue prosecution in the case because Spencer was diagnosed with lung cancer, raising doubts about mortality and problems with RCMP surveillance evidence, but promised constant round-the-clock tabs on Spencer’s activities by the DSI so long as he lived. Douglas and the NDP felt the way the Pearson government handled Spencer’s dismissal, without any sort of appeal or recourse to defend himself, was exceedingly unfair.

In actuality, the politically mandated RCMP surveillance was welcomed by a lonely and isolated Spencer hounded relentlessly by the press in his last months alive. The DSI members assigned to Spencer ensured his safety and whereabouts by renting hotel rooms or staying in his house as regular companions, with whom he became quite acquainted and familiar. When NDP York South MP David Lewis inquired about the dismissal and treatment at the hands of the government, Spencer reported positively about the experience with the RCMP but resented the simple return of superannuation contributions and denial of insured health benefits, warranting in his opinion further inquiry. Pummelling of the Liberals over the Spencer case reached a crescendo in Parliament on 4 March 1966 when Cardin let slip during a lively exchange with Diefenbaker the name of Gerda Munsinger, a hostess in Montréal with a colourful past who had been on intimate terms with a couple of PC cabinet ministers from the previous government. Although a salacious Canadian spy sex scandal akin to the Profumo affair in Great Britain soon eclipsed the grievances of a sick postal employee, NDP engagement offered a way out for the Liberals after Pearson talked personally with Spencer over the phone to confirm the desire for a public review. Another separate commission of inquiry was established to examine the circumstances behind the ‘Munsinger affair.’

An appointed commission of inquiry chaired by Justice Dalton Wells of the Ontario Court of Appeal held hearings in Ottawa and Vancouver, notwithstanding that Spencer had since been discovered dead from natural causes in his home. DSI coverage had been stopped by Solicitor General Lawrence Pennell weeks earlier, completely missing Spencer’s demise, which invited press comment and NDP questions in Parliament. Testimony during the commission of inquiry covered the extent of Spencer’s espionage and claimed that the RCMP were his only ‘friends’ in the end. The deceased Spencer could neither collaborate nor refute this positive view of security state altruism, and perhaps more profoundly, never provided direct testimony that might have proved incriminating. Working under the commission’s narrow terms of reference, Wells concluded in a final report released in July 1966 that Spencer’s dismissal was reasonable and legally sound, thereby exonerating the government and RCMP for the most part. Douglas was not so sure and issued a critical press release pointing out that Spencer’s dismissal was still unfair and faulted the Cabinet and bureaucracy. The Pearson minority government however survived a major national security controversy to remain in power with NDP help. Another secretive commission of inquiry focused on national security policing came out of the Spencer case.

Lion and Unicorn –Mackenzie Royal Commission on Security

Governmental concerns for national security came up against idealistic views on civil liberties and individual rights in a constant battle that ended in a sober assessment that tried to find a balance so everyone could eat plum cake.

The Royal Commission on Security, perhaps the most significant and comprehensive examination of national security in Canada until that time and years after, was promised in the original terms of reference given to Wells because Pearson wanted to keep separate any detailed review of security methods and internal organization from the politically-charged and public Spencer and Munsinger inquiries. Chaired by senior public servant Maxwell Mackenzie, it sat mostly in-camera between November 1966 and September 1968 with three members that included former CCF leader Coldwell. Coldwell at the start requested the DSI security file kept on him and was a bit disappointed at its shortness and limited number of pages. The RCMP also maintained security files on Pearson and Diefenbaker (destroyed by CSIS in the late 1980s) and Lewis (preserved for posterity). The inclusion of a social democrat and no conservatives on the long-running royal commission recognized the assistance given by the NDP to the government in the recent national security controversies and the need for variety of opinion that took into account civil liberties and the rights of individuals in a functioning democracy. The NDP had proven more mature than the PC in appreciating the fundamental issues while remaining true to underlying principles, and accordingly were allowed behind the veil of national security policing for the first time.

For Coldwell and the NDP, the royal commission was certainly eye-opening. The scope of work and inquiry was comprehensive, wide-ranging, and surprisingly frank. Individuals from most security-related departments and agencies within the government appeared before the commissioners and provided informed testimony and documentary evidence, recorded in notes, aide memoire, and research memoranda. The commissioners travelled to Washington, DC, London, Paris, Bonn (West Germany), Stockholm (Sweden), The Hague (Netherlands), Brussels (NATO), Melbourne and Canberra (Australia), and Hong Kong to hear first-hand from practitioners and decision-makers about allied best practices touching upon Canadian matters. A secret unabridged report finished in September 1968 recommended a security secretariat be established within the Privy Council, RCMP security functions be handed over to a new civilian agency, enhanced security screening for public servants and immigrants respectful of privacy and individual rights, restrictions on citizenship for individuals with criminal records and security concerns, and limiting interception of telecommunications and electronic eavesdropping to security and law enforcement professionals with suitable legal authority through judicial warrant. Overall, the report was respectful of the RCMP in the national security policing role and held up the FBI as a model for law enforcement and counterintelligence. Coldwell and the NDP were tutored in the internal workings of the Canadian security state. The Royal Commission on Security, in its proceedings and findings, juggled the ideals of civil liberties (unicorn) with national security essentials of the state (lion) to strike a balance that achieved something better.

Queen Alice – Conclusion

With some help from a kindly bumbling knight named Pearson, the NDP were finally taken seriously in matters of national security and invited inside. The white and red queens threw a dinner party to celebrate Alice being crowned a queen then promptly ignored her.

The progressive views espoused by CCF/NDP social democrats improved discourse surrounding national security policing in Canada because important questions were asked that the governing party found hard to ignore. The third political party, neither Liberal nor PC, never governed but its influence proved of value in and out of Parliament. The CCF/NDP, which was distinct and diametrically opposed to the CPC/LPP, brought a different socialist perspective to national security policing, and made sure the apparatus of the security state was not directed towards them. Social democracy in Canada held the advantage of a few good leaders, a committed small caucus of MPs, and a constituency drawn from labour and progressive ranks in respectable society. CCF/NDP politicians combined real-world experience that informed pragmatic approaches true to socialist ideals but never forgot who elected them and who they represented. Their critiques promoted greater fairness, accountability, and effectiveness that accepted the need for a state security structure. Social democrats, like Alice, encountered many surprises and missteps along the way living backwards in a dream when the obsession was with espionage, subversion, and ‘security.’ So, the fairy tale ends.

Fears of the FLQ Abroad: Documents from the Task Force on Kidnapping

Several terrorist groups across the world made names for themselves throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout these networks, members of seemingly disparate groups would connect and share ideas about their national or ideological struggles, often strengthening these interconnections through intellectual solidarity. As the October 1970 Crisis unfolded, the Canadian government feared that the Quebecois separatist movement, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) would find itself a place in these same networks.

Using recently declassified documents from the Task Force on Kidnapping, this work details how the Canadian government tried to anticipate the movements of the FLQ abroad. The Task Force worried predominantly about three possibilities: direct state support from Algeria, Cuba, or any other socialist revolutionary state; the FLQ petitioning to an international body like the Red Cross or the United Nations; or the FLQ finding sympathies with non-state revolutionary groups abroad. All of these fears revolved around ways in which the FLQ might use international channels to legitimize itself and its cause to the world. This piece argues that the FLQ can and should be situated within this broader framework of emerging international terror networks.

Most studies of the FLQ examine it within the context of Canadian history and politics. While this is an extremely valuable orthodoxy, it is also worth examining the FLQ in the context of emerging international terrorism in the 1970s.

Though Quebec separatism has existed in some shape since the 18th century, the FLQ itself is often periodized between 1963 and 1972. The early days of the FLQ are especially notable for being rooted in leftist, anti-imperialist rhetoric. This was most evident in works like Pierre Vallières’s 1968 essay Les nègres blancs de l’Amérique, which framed the Quebecois as a minority, oppressed and colonized by the English, and argued for ‘revolutionary violence’ against the capitalist system as the only way to truly achieve independence. Most members of this founding generation of the FLQ were interested in constructing an ideology for their movement. Many, such as Mario Bachand, were devout Marxists.

Perhaps best known of the FLQ’s exploits is the October Crisis, triggered when the FLQ’s ‘Liberation Cell’ kidnapped British diplomat James Cross, Senior Trade Commissioner, from his home on the morning of 5 October 1970. Among other demands, Cross’ captors wanted safe passage for the captors and their families to either Cuba or Algeria. On 10 October, a different cell of the FLQ kidnapped Quebecois Minister for Labour Pierre Laporte. Six days after that, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau put the War Measures Act into effect. Cross was released on 3 December by his captors in exchange for safe passage to Cuba. The FLQ lost most of its popular support after Laporte’s execution and was all but extinct by 1972 when the last of its cells were wiped out and its members arrested.

The day of Cross’ abduction, the Department of External Affairs also assembled the Task Force on Kidnapping. Made up of civil servants from various sectors, from the RCMP to the Privy Council Office, and even the Press Office, the Task Force’s mission was to assess the crisis, and make contingency plans. A large section of the assessment involved gauging whether the FLQ had the intention or capacity to establish and act on any links abroad. The Task Force believed that if the FLQ was to follow all other ‘classic models’ of similar groups, their next course of action would be to establish an international wing.

State Sympathies and Support

The first and most evident job for the Task Force was to investigate possibilities of an FLQ connection with Cuba and Algeria since they were mentioned directly in the demands of Cross’ release. Canada had no formal diplomatic mission in Algiers and saw this moment as good a time as any to negotiate one; if Canada had a stronger political presence in Algeria, they would be able to better investigate and mitigate any possible FLQ presence there. The FLQ had referenced Algeria because their Front de libération Nationale (FLN) had been a common rallying cry for liberation movements throughout the 1960s, in addition to the Algerian government’s pro-revolutionary, anti-imperial stance. They also had in common a membership to the Francophone linguistic community, making communication that much easier. The Task Force had also collected several news stories detailing Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver’s flight to Algeria through his ties with the Chinese embassy there. The concern was that Cleaver’s open exile to Algeria would set a precedent for members of the FLQ. The Algerians, however, were very receptive to the idea of Canada establishing a stronger presence in their country, as it presented an opportunity for further political accreditation. This acted as a symbiosis between the two states: in exchange for political validity, the Algerians would assure that the FLQ would not open a mission on their soil.

The Cuban connection was more pronounced. Not only was the Cuban government transparently pro-revolution, and had offered asylum to like-minded political activists from across the world, but its strong ties to the Soviet Union were a point of concern for the Task Force. An October cable even places the FLQ’s own Mario Bachand in Havana. Two other founding members, Raymond Villeneuve and André Garrand had also been there since 1968, hoping for training in guerilla warfare that never materialized.

In reality, the Cubans seemed uninterested in the FLQ’s cause, and felt that FLQ presence in their country was burdensome. Villeneuve, Garrand, and other felquistes were not treated to the fantastical and ideological version of Cuba they had dreamed of; Quebec separatism was not taken seriously by the Cubans. One telegram suggests that part of this reticence came from the fact the FLQ did not fit into the geographically determined Afro-Asian-Latin American solidarity organization for which Cuba was trying to position itself as leader. The Task Force still gathered that, despite assurances to their face from the Cuban government to the contrary, Cuban sympathy and interest in the FLQ was high.

The Task Force also explored possible links to other nations. One document recounts a junior Jordanian diplomat in Beirut indicating that he had heard of Canadians involved with Fedayin fighting. As well, previous (albeit vague) evidence that an unspecified number of Quebecois had received training in Palestine led the Task Force to speculate that the FLQ may find support somewhere in the various Palestinian liberation groups. The Task Force even wondered if the FLQ would seek support in China, North Korea, or Vietnam. A November memorandum details that, though unlikely, the possibility of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) getting involved could not be fully ruled out, stemming from RCMP indications that the communist movement in Montreal was likely receiving funds from the CCP. Though not directly expressed, it is likely that this link was due to the ideological, overtly leftist and Marxist writings of earlier felquistes. Out of abundant caution, and likely a sense of panic, the Task Force still commissioned information wherever they could find it, from reports about the Basque separatist movement, to the Malaysian government’s crackdown on kidnappers.

The Task Force feared direct, covert assistance from revolutionary states, or states allied with the Soviet Union. They worried that any recognition, sympathy, or support from a genuine nation-state would act as a political legitimization for the FLQ and would further encourage their cause. This was especially pressing considering the socialist and anti-imperial rhetoric seen previously with the FLQ in works like Les nègres blancs.

While they pursued all contingencies, even the most unlikely, it seemed that direct state support was not the most likely avenue through which the FLQ would establish an international wing. This, the Task Force observed, was likely due to insufficient resources on the part of the FLQ. Despite the kidnappings, the FLQ seemed weak and meandering to many of the revolutionary states it could have approached, and largely was not taken seriously except on rhetorical grounds for the sake of ideology and international revolutionary solidarity.

International Bodies

The Task Force wondered if the FLQ might instead leverage its anti-colonial ideas to find a platform within international institutions. A mid-November report listed the International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International, the Red Cross, and the United Nations as possible targets. Of these, the United Nations and the Red Cross were top of mind.

Whether the FLQ could legally claim that a genocide against the Quebecois was being carried out, in attempt to garner UN favour was also a highlighted area of concern. A study by Legal Affairs concluded this strategy would be highly unlikely, but if the FLQ wanted to argue genocide they would do it by leveraging the War Measures Act. The fear was driven in part by evidence that the founding generation of the FLQ had seriously considered petitioning to the UN that their human rights were being violated. Some documents from the Task Force point to Arab dignitaries in the UN trying to leverage the kidnappings to get the Canadians onside for their own agendas. A memorandum from the Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs from late November asked for reassurance that it would indeed be common practice for the Canadian delegation to be notified first if the UN were to receive any petition from the FLQ. They also requested information on what the procedure would be if an unauthorized demonstration were to break out in front of the United Nations Headquarters.

The Task Force also commissioned information on Amnesty International to ensure that those arrested on charges of affiliation with the FLQ (especially through the War Measures Act) would not have recourse to present their case. They did not want to appear as though the Canadian government was holding political prisoners. Their investigation of the International Commission of Jurists was along a similar vein: the Task Force had to be sure that any possible case of Canada not following international rule of law would not be taken seriously.

International, Stateless Solidarity

The Task Force worried that the FLQ’s anti-imperialist rhetoric would garner sympathy from other anti-colonial movements across Africa and Asia, or even with students abroad, particularly in France, the United States, and Belgium. Several syndicalist groups in Paris, for instance, expressed their solidarity with the FLQ as being in defense of democracy. On many occasions Parisian syndicalists added discussions to their meeting agendas that framed Quebec as a nation colonized and oppressed by the British. The Task Force also requested information on Canadian students in Belgium, who had ties to these movements.

James Cross’ kidnapping received a great deal of media coverage across France. Ottawa had expressed to the French government that much of this coverage was ‘unfavorable.’ The concern was that FLQ exiles in Europe had perhaps infiltrated the French media. Interestingly, the cable specifies that these ‘sympathetic agents’ be found ‘whether they are Canadian or not’—implying that even non-Canadians could work for the FLQ if their connections abroad were as strong as the Task Force feared. The same cable references a meeting of the Socialist Party of Quebec informing their French comrades of the War Measures Act. This was a clear example of outreach abroad for the Task Force, and confirmed many of their fears. Of particular concern was the message’s focus on the War Measures Act, which was common through-line and rallying cry for FLQ sympathies.

The Task Force also sought a transcript of an American interview with McGill Sociology professor Marlene Dixon, where she discussed Quebec as a ‘colony of American imperialism.’ She went on to assert that the War Measures Act was an American idea, and that even before the Act was put into effect, Quebec was living under a ‘fascist regime.’ Dixon, though not French-Canadian, was very close to the separatist movement and was also involved in several other Leninist, Maoist, and socialist causes.

Politically, Dixon’s interview hit a nerve for the Task Force, who feared international left-wing solidarity would lead to FLQ sympathies abroad, especially when it leaned on anti-imperial rhetoric. An early November memorandum on possible FLQ activities outside of Canada lists groups like the Black Panthers and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) as groups of interest. The earlier generation of the FLQ had found tremendous solidarity with the Black Panthers and the SDS, with Vallières spending most of his 1966 exile in America living with his friends in the Black Panthers. As well, after the 1969 arrest of felquiste Pierre-Paul Geoffroy, two other felquistes used their connections with the Black Panthers to get closer to the SDS leadership, who eventually helped them secure passports and passage to Miami, then to Cuba. The intellectual and ideological solidarity was already there, it was only a question of whether that support remained throughout the October Crisis.

The memorandum also states that any anti-US, anti-NATO ‘peace’ groups “may see the FLQ cause as an example of an ‘imperialism, colonialism’ attitude in Canada ‘dictated by Washington.’” These pro-FLQ sentiments abroad were only bolstered by the War Measures Act and its high degree of support domestically. For instance, Dixon’s interview maintained that, though Laporte’s death was regrettable, it was actually the War Measures Act and the decisions of the Canadian government that had ‘forced’ Laporte’s death. The Task Force also recognized that the War Measures Act could be pushing the FLQ threat into a wider net, rather than keeping it domestic where they felt they could better contain it. This, they worried, would embolden the FLQ to undertake other activities associated with international terrorist groups like plane hijackings, bombing Canadian missions abroad, and kidnapping or assassinating Canadian diplomats.

Conclusion

The FLQ was, at its core, a nationalist separatist movement; its rhetoric often invoked socialism and anti-imperialism, as seen in the works of Vallières and the founding members of the organization in the 1960s. Several of its members, like Bachand, were also card-carrying Marxists. After this generation was either arrested or went into exile, their inheritors did not appear to be as interested in producing literature on their cause or capitalizing on the intellectual networks of their predecessors.

However, the Task Force worried these connections could be reinvigorated. This is of particular importance, as much of the sympathy expressed for the FLQ was under the guise of admonishing the War Measures Act. Anti-imperialists abroad were willing to look the other way when it came to Laporte’s death, because the Act exemplified the FLQ’s plight against Anglophone dominance.

In the end, the FLQ was never able to establish a presence internationally the way the Task Force had feared; they simply did not have the connections or the funds. The most concrete connections the FLQ had abroad were the ideological ones forged by earlier, more overtly leftist generations that the FLQ of the October Crisis did not seem to leverage. Most of these intellectual sympathies were expressed through condemnation of the War Measures Act. Whether through overt state support, tacit support from international bodies, or links in other non-state movements, the Task Force feared that the FLQ would seek to legitimize itself through international channels. Throughout many of the documents, there seems to be a tacit understanding that it would be very easy for the FLQ to use the War Measures Act as proof of Anglophone oppression, and find sympathy through these channels.

The Task Force’s documents reveal an interesting glimpse into how Canada tried to be proactive against domestic terrorism during one of its most tense and contentious periods. They are also illuminating in situating the FLQ and the October Crisis within the broader scope of emerging international terror networks in the 1960s and 1970s. It is clear that, despite the fact that many of the Task Force’s fears did not materialize, they also understood that the FLQ had the potential to capitalize on the international, intellectual solidarities of its founding generation during the October Crisis. 

‘A Changed World’: CSIS, the Cold War, and Counter-Terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s

The opening section of the annual report of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) on its 20th anniversary was entitled ‘A Changed World’. A similar tone underlay the report that coincided with its 30th anniversary. Both documents noted how the security environment and priorities had changed from fighting communism at the birth of CSIS to fighting terrorism in a post 9/11 world. Although the reports acknowledged the emergence of transnational terrorism in the 1990s, they underplayed the connection between Cold War intelligence practices, including the long-forgotten counter-subversion, and post-Cold War counter-terrorism.

In turn, the paper that follows makes three main points:

1. The period from the 1970s to 9/11 represented not a shift or transition between the pre-and-post 9/11 security environments but rather a fusion of the security world of the Cold War and that of post 9/11 war on terror. In other words, when it comes to domestic security, the Cold War remains in the twenty-first century a fundamental part of the so-called ‘war on terror.’ Intelligence collection methods such as informants, tactics deployed against targets such as disruption efforts, and the significance of allies, particularly the United States, remain as relevant since 9/11 as during the Cold War. The security environment began to destabilize already in the 1970s as a movement began away from security targets based on the Cold War toward those that would dominate in the post-Cold War period. Nonetheless, continuity remained via these methods and in the tendency to blame domestic security problems on foreign elements, as had occurred in Canada since at least the First World War. Similarly, the counter-terrorism (CT) of the 1970s would concentrate on ‘foreign’ threats to Canada, in contrast to earlier efforts against the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), which the Canadian state viewed as a domestic threat despite its at least partial transnational nature. Both counter-subversion and counter-terrorism ‘othered’ those deemed a threat. The security state would view many of them as, in the words of political scientists Rita Dhamoon and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, ‘internal dangerous foreigners’.
2. Even after its end, across the 1990s, the Cold War still played a significant role in how terrorism was understood and responded to. There remained a great deal of continuity between CT of the 1970s by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and that of CSIS in the 1990s, which is not surprising given the integrated history of the two agencies, including through personnel in the early years. Indeed, that war is crucial to the story, as the instruments at hand for the state to engage with the rise of new threats from terrorism in the 1970s were Cold War constructs developed through the securitization of communism. Although this, of course, involved counter-espionage in Canada, a major focus of the RCMP’s intelligence branch was counter-subversion. It was within the counter-subversion branch of the Mounties, that the Security Service’s first unit dedicated to countering international terrorism would arise in the aftermath of the attack by Palestinian terrorists on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
3. Many of the post 9/11 issues around terrorism and CT that were seen as unique had emerged across the previous three decades before 9/11 and represent an ahistorical aspect to the study of terrorism and CT, fuelled in part by the domination of the topic by social scientists.

The contentions in my three points are, of course, at odds with some of the prevailing wisdom of the last 25 years. Rhetoric after 9/11 would abound in which security agencies across the western world failed to notice the threat of terrorism until passenger airliners crashed into buildings. Afterward, entities that were largely Cold War constructs designed to deal with the menace of communism found themselves in the uncomfortable position of dealing with a new type of danger. That became the common wisdom divorced from a historical context around the activities of intelligence agencies, such as CSIS. This was particularly true in the United States, where some scholars posited that intelligence agencies created in the Cold War were unprepared for the emergence of a ‘new’ threat posed by terrorism. In Spying Blind, Amy Zegart acknowledges that the FBI performed more than just a crime-fighting role during the Cold War, including duties such as counter-subversion that would overlap with efforts to combat terrorism, but largely ignores the FBI’s CT role, which began in earnest in the 1970s. Instead, FBI CT in the post-Cold War period represented doing ‘a different job entirely.’ Similarly, Gregory F. Treverton’s Intelligence for an Age of Terror creates the impression that terrorism and CT only began with the end of the Cold War. The book also does not acknowledge fully the extent of Cold War domestic surveillance against targets beyond foreign intelligence agents.

Such interpretations miss the significance of first the Cold War, where duties around counter-subversion would anticipate some of the efforts to counter violent extremism after 9/11. Although the domestic security work included counter-espionage in Canada, a major focus of the RCMP’s intelligence branch was countering amorphous subversion. It was within the counter-subversion section in 1972 after Munich that the first section dedicated to countering International Terrorism began (similar developments occurred in the UK and Australia). Across the 1970s, the role continued albeit with restructuring at various points.

Nor were the forces that led to 9/11 completed unknown. Institutionally, Canadian CT certainly held an awareness of the possibility of ‘Islamist’ terrorism. As far back as the 1970s, the Canadian state recognised the possibility of Middle Eastern disputes spilling over into Canada in the form of violence. At that time, the issue, reflecting the secular nature of Palestinian groups targeting Israel, had an ethnic instead of religious angle.

Terrorism was certainly on the radar for CSIS well before the events of September 2001 as it was for its RCMP predecessor. Terrorist attacks in the first half of the 1980s, such as the killing of the Turkish military attaché Colonel Atilla Altikat in Ottawa in 1982 by Armenian terrorists and, of course, the deaths of 331 people in two airline bombings in 1985, including Air India Flight 182, made terrorism a new priority for Canadian domestic security for the first time since the early 1970s. The 1982 killing of Altikat embarrassed the government of Pierre Trudeau and prompted an across government review of CT over two years involving 11 agencies.

In relation to the review process, the RCMP produced in 1983 a document listing what it saw as the major issues around CT; many remain relevant in the present:

1. limited manpower resources, which necessitates the prioritization of targeting efforts;
2. the sensitivity of investigation ethnic and issue-oriented groups;
3. the difficulty in determining the line that distinguishes legitimate dissent from terrorist sympathy and support;
4. the problem of balancing the rights of the individual with the security requirements of the State;
5. the lack of coordinated analytical resources within the Security and Intelligence community;
6. the different interpretation and definitions that various States apply to the field of terrorism which makes it difficult for the Security Service to verify information and threat assessments;
7. problems of a legal nature in the conduct of some types of CT investigations, these have been identified by the McDonald Commission.

In the aftermath of Air India, more resources began to shift from counter-subversion, an internal security focus since at least the 1920s, to CT, which became a ‘high priority’ under the Mulroney government. CSIS moved assets, including office space, secretaries, and computer terminals, from counter-subversion, which had its last meeting in 1987, to CT. Already in the autumn of 1986, CT-5, a new unit focused on ‘Terrorist and Threat Implications-Country’ had been established and tasked with the handling of country profiles, a job previously carried out by those in counter-subversion. Perhaps inevitably, resources proved inadequate for the new focus on terrorism and plethora of materials to process as a result. Redacted minutes from a CSIS meeting in the latter 1980s gives voice to this concern: ‘Lack of Personnel - CT [deleted under ATIP: person’s name] pointed out that CT is sinking into an information hole. There are not enough people to process reports and overtime is not making much headway. [deleted under ATIP: person’s name] feels that they should approach the Minister stating that their capability to process intelligence is suffering very badly.’

Efforts were certainly made to map the terrorism threat landscape in ways that the RCMP had previously done in the 1970s as communism diminished as a perceived threat. In 1992, CSIS produced a detailed examination of terrorism in the form of the ‘Director’s Special Study - Terrorism in Canada.’ The document, based on ‘terrorist incidents’ defined as acts of ‘politically motivated violence’ between 1988 and 1991, revealed a broad spectrum of threats to the Canadian state that included ‘Native Extremism, Sikh Extremism, Right-Wing Extremism, [and]… the Language Issue.’ The inclusion of Indigenous protests reflected, at least in part, the impact of the 1990 standoff at the town of Oka, Quebec between members of a local Indigenous community and the Canadian and Quebec states. Indeed, the CSIS report included the Oka standoff itself in its list of ‘incidents’ of political violence that took place during the period covered by the report.

There were also hints in the Director’s Study of the version of terrorism that would become associated with the 9/11 era nine years later, although it was categorised differently in 1992: ‘With the exception of one incident involving an arson attack on a store intending to sell The Satanic Verses and one home-made bomb related to the Gulf War, Canada has historically not been a major target of any Middle East inspired terrorism,’ Bookstores and a federal cabinet minister (Otto Jelinek) received threats because of the sale of Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel. The labelling of this as ‘Middle Eastern Terrorism’ represented an interpretation using a decades-old model of violence associated with the Middle East in which groups such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization were largely secular. It also clearly reflected the common perception at this time that political violence was external to Canada, and when it did occur within the country, the motivation came from abroad. A 1985 CSIS document on terrorism ‘threat assessments’ noted that in part these threats contained a ‘support structure in Canada or abroad’ that would include ‘ethnic concentrations and their political activism, and pro and anti-community, or national sentiment in Canada.’ This came in the aftermath of a 1982 RCMP Security Service project to map out populations of Middle Eastern and North African heritage across Canada using census data. In the context of ‘Middle Eastern Terrorism’, the 1992 CSIS report claimed that that ‘Service has been able to provide intelligence to the appropriate departments to expel or deny entry to several known and suspected terrorists and intelligence officers.’

By the early 2000s, CSIS CT activity involved preparing threat assessments for the Canadian state (the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre was established in April 2004), working and monitoring local communities across Canada, helping maintain a database of actual and suspected terrorists to aid in preventing their entry into the country, and working with other federal government agencies plus provincial and civic entities around dangers and incidents. A review of CSIS work around the threat of Sunni Islamic extremism covering the period from 1 April to 12 September 2001 found that CSIS had a ‘long-standing’ investigation that had ‘grown steadily in scope and complexity since its inception. At the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Service’s investigation of Al Qaida appears to have been extensive.’ That work included the use of human sources, wiretaps obtained through warrants, and intelligence received from foreign agencies. In the aftermath of 9/11, CSIS received a thirty per cent budget increase.

CT in Canada thus did not begin with 9/11 and neither did its CT relationship with the United States and the wider world. Coordination between the two countries around combating terrorism existed well before 9/11, with regular bilateral CT meetings having occurred at least since 1979 and occasionally, as in 1985, trilateral meetings involving the United Kingdom. For instance, in January 1988, a Bilateral Consultative Group on CT Co-Operation launched and in June 1989, an ‘exercise’ occurred as a drill for examining relations if a terrorist attack occurred on the border. The following year, representatives from Ottawa and Washington met to establish guidelines for dealing with an ‘incident affecting both countries.’ The 1990-1991 Gulf War prompted increased concerns about the possibility of Iraqi-sponsored attacks or ones sympathetic to Iraq with a prediction by the CIA of the potential for a ‘showstopper’ if the war went against Iraq. At a May 1992 US-Canada bilateral meeting on CT cooperation, matters discussed included the ‘Evolution of Islamic Fundamentalism,’ the domestic threat posed by ‘Indigenous groups- internal/external support,’ and ‘Immigration movements and assessing the potential for the support of terrorism.’ CSIS took the lead on the latter, which covered topics such as ‘Sikhs, Tamils, Hizballah, [and] Palestine.’

To conclude, although the scale of 9/11 was unprecedented in terms of violence committed by non-state actors, it led to the assumption that domestic intelligence agencies terrorism lacked either expertise about terrorism or the ability to carry out CT duties. As part of this conjecture, the view developed that the Cold War had completed hampered the ability of intelligence agencies to address 21st century terrorism. As this paper argues, the Cold War certainly had an impact on both CSIS and its RCMP predecessor and while communism was clearly concentrated for too long in the 1980s, CT operations either before or after 9/11 for that matter did not represent a radical break with what came before in the fight against communism, especially in relation to methods such as disruption operations, surveillance, and informants. For state intelligence agencies, in many respects, the post 9/11 world represented a fusion between the Cold War of the past and the CT world of the present. It was indeed, in the words of the CSIS report, ‘a changed world’, but that world had changed over several decades and not overnight on September 11th. 

National Security Crises and Emergency Powers: From the War Measures Act to the Emergencies Act

Twice the Canadian government has invoked states of emergency in the face of national security crises. The government of Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act (WMA), proclaiming the existence of an ‘apprehended insurrection,’ in the October 1970 Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapping/hostage crisis. A half century later, the government of Justin Trudeau proclaimed a public order emergency, invoking the successor to the WMA, the Emergencies Act (EA) during the Freedom Convoy occupation of downtown Ottawa in 2022.

1970

The 1960s saw the rise of the idea of Quebec independence, with two faces. The legitimate face brought the secessionist Parti Québécois (PQ) to office in Quebec and to two referenda on sovereignty. The second, illegitimate, face followed the route of violent, terrorist tactics, the so-called ‘national liberation struggle’ model. The legitimate face presented a threat to national unity, while the illegitimate face presented a threat to national security.

In the mid-1960s, the FLQ conducted a bombing campaign against ‘Anglo’ targets. In October 1970 FLQ cells kidnapped the British trade commissioner James Cross and the Quebec minister of Labour Pierre Laporte, issuing a list of demands in exchange for the hostages’ lives. The Canadian and Quebec governments refused to negotiate with terrorists. The Quebec government invoked the Aid to the Civil Power to bring the Canadian armed forces into Montreal. The federal cabinet invoked the WMA on 16 October, proclaiming the existence of an ‘apprehended insurrection.’

The proclamation of a state of emergency had one immediate consequence: the next day, Laporte’s strangled body was found in the trunk of an abandoned vehicle. It would take five weeks until 22 November when Cross was located and freed following negotiations with his kidnappers that provided them with safe passage to Cuba. Finally in early December, the kidnappers and killers of Laporte were tracked down and taken into custody. In November the WMA was replaced by the Public Order Temporary Measures Act which remained in place until the end of April 1971, bringing a final closure to the state of emergency over six months after it was first proclaimed.

Most Canadians and Quebecers agreed that the FLQ were criminal terrorists who had to be met by the full force of the state. There was less consensus that the invocation of the WMA represented the most appropriate means to reach that objective.

The WMA legislation originated in 1914 and was employed during the two world wars of the 20th century. It was wartime emergency legislation, a temporary but wholesale transfer of powers from the provincial to the federal level of government and a temporary suspension of citizens’ rights and liberties, given the existential threat to the country. Apart from war and invasion, the WMA could be triggered by ‘insurrection, real or apprehended,’ the clause invoked in 1970. The WMA declared that if the Governor in Council proclaimed an apprehended insurrection, the proclamation itself constituted ‘conclusive’ proof of the existence of an apprehended insurrection. However, ‘insurrection’ is not defined in the WMA, nor is ‘apprehended.’ The government promised to submit evidence, but failed to do so, at the time of proclamation and later. This failure may have caused political problems for the Trudeau government, but it had no legal obligation to do so. Nor was the executive in any legal need of parliamentary approval, although the latter might be sought as a courtesy. In carrying out the WMA, the executive worked under little external restraint and no formal accountability. After the Diefenbaker Canadian Bill of Rights was enacted in 1961, the WMA had been amended to affirm that acts under its authority could be exercised notwithstanding the Canadian Bill of Rights, or any other existing rights.

The WMA was ‘one size fits all’ legislation, providing powers disproportionate to the widely different levels of the threats posed by war or invasion on the one hand, and apprehended insurrection on the other. Combatting the latter, the WMA offered high firepower without precision in targeting. In 1970, the WMA was employed almost exclusively in the detention of suspects without criminal charge, counsel or habeas corpus, and in unrestricted search and seizure raids of private residences. In all, 497 individuals were detained, of whom 435 were later released and 62 charged with various offences, 32 being held without bail. Over 1600 raids were conducted by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and Montreal Police, about which there are few known details.

There was ambiguity from the outset about what was to be accomplished by the emergency detention powers. According to its own account, the government was acting on its sources of intelligence in identifying FLQ terrorists for detention. Yet in direct contradiction of this explanation, leading government sources later intimated that it had been the lack of actionable intelligence that had required emergency powers.

In retrospect, neither explanation stands up to scrutiny. Did the detentions and raids in practice contribute to the resolution of the kidnapping/hostage crisis? There were no leads produced indicating the whereabouts of the kidnappers. Testimony by detainees suggests that they were asked few questions relevant to the FLQ or the kidnappings; some were never questioned at all before release. Police resources may have been diverted from the criminal investigation by the requirements of drawing up lists, tracking down, taking into custody, and holding almost 500 detainees. In the end it was careful, professional police work without the need for extraordinary powers that brought the crisis to a successful close.

The contrary claim was later advanced that an RCMP intelligence failure necessitated emergency powers. The declassified record of RCMP intelligence on Quebec terrorists belies the picture of ‘Anglo’ cops allegedly ignorant of Quebec realities. By 1970 the RCMP had produced reasonably good intelligence dossiers on separatist groups, the identities of violent activists and their possible plans—including taking foreign diplomats and cabinet ministers hostage. What they did not have was intelligence that pointed to the FLQ as a group capable of using criminal acts like bombings and kidnappings to set off a revolution. Senior RCMP officials later testified behind closed doors that they had never been consulted on proclaiming the WMA. If they had been asked, they would have advised against it, as providing powers disproportionate to the requirements of the kind of criminal investigation that could bring a hostage crisis to a close.

So, what was the government doing when it carried out these mass detentions and raids? One possible answer is that emergency powers were deployed to intimidate, not just FLQ-style terrorists, but the entire range of indépendentistes, including many who limited their separatism to legal avenues and advocacy alone. That the detainees included folk singers, poets, social activists, and others with no links to terrorism but sharing a common belief in Quebec independence, hardly escaped notice at the time. Eventually, 103 detainees had to be compensated by the Quebec government as having been wrongly detained.

Judging the use of the WMA in 1970 in political and public policy terms yields mixed results. Emergency powers were of little or no policing value in bringing the kidnapping crisis to a successful close but left an impression of a federal government indiscriminately targeting legitimate as well as illegitimate separatists. On the other hand, after the crisis, the FLQ and armed separatism began to disintegrate, eventually disappearing. How much of this can be attributed to the state’s 1970 show of force majeure is impossible to estimate. When the PQ came to power six years later, and when the first sovereignty referendum was held in 1980, the federal government respected Quebec’s choices and trusted in the democratic process rather than invoking another emergency. The terrorist route to independence was successfully repressed because a peaceful route to independence was always kept open.

In the comparative literature on states of emergency in democracies, some writers claim that invoking emergency powers may permanently damage the fabric of liberal democratic practice, remaining a permanent feature after the state of emergency is formally ended. The long-term consequences of the 1970 WMA experience call that claim into question.

An aggressive ‘countering’ campaign against violent separatism followed directly in the aftermath of the October Crisis. Secret federal operations in Quebec in the 1970s often crossed lines of legality with break-ins and thefts, mail openings, barn burnings, and more. Eventually scandal erupted and the McDonald inquiry, after exhaustive examination, recommended that the security service be removed from the RCMP and made into a civilian agency with a legislative mandate that indicated what it could investigate, as well as what it could not; an independent review body to which it was accountable; and judicial authorization of intrusive surveillance warrants. There is a direct link between this liberalization of national security policy and practice and the 1970 state of emergency, but the link is one of reaction against the perceived excesses of 1970.

The same could be said even more emphatically for another reaction, this time the repeal of the WMA in the 1980s by the Mulroney Conservative government. Its replacement, the Emergencies Act (EA) can be read as a critique of its predecessor:

1. The EA specifies four graduated levels of emergency with specific emergency powers proportionate to the level of threat—as opposed to the WMA’s ‘one size fits all.’
2. The EA requires parliamentary approval for invocation and provides Parliament with power to revoke a state of emergency if dissatisfied with the evidence for an emergency presented to MPs—as opposed to the proclamation by executive fiat in the WMA.
3. Emergencies invoked under the EA are subject to judicial review of their legality—as opposed to the WMA’s provision that the proclamation of an emergency is its own conclusive proof.
4. The EA mandates an independent arm’s length review following the invocation of a state of emergency—as opposed to the absence of any accountability under the WMA.
5. The EA explicitly stipulates that the exercise of emergency powers is subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as to international legal protection for human rights—as opposed to the WMA’s ‘notwithstanding’ exemption from the Canadian Bill of Rights.

2022

34 years after enactment of the EA, and 52 years after the last state of emergency in the October Crisis, the new legislation was employed for the first time.

Early in 2022, ‘Freedom Convoy’ of truckers with their heavy vehicles set up economic blockades at US border crossing points at Coutts, Alberta and Windsor-Detroit in Ontario; an even larger group proceeded toward the national capital in Ottawa, where they settled into an occupation of Parliament Hill and central Ottawa. The protest began ostensibly against COVID vaccine mandates, but quickly expanded in scope. Quasi-insurrectionary goals were articulated by the Ottawa protestors: that the elected Justin Trudeau government be dismissed and replaced by a government more to their liking. This linked the Convoy to the 6 January 2021 uprising at the US Capital; it was later learned that some 40 per cent of the funding for the Convoy had come from the same US sources that had funded the 6 January riot.

The economic costs to Canada of the blockades could be counted in billions of dollars in lost business. The occupation of downtown Ottawa was leading to a potentially explosive situation involving rising tensions between truckers and residents. In Coutts, an RCMP undercover operation discovered a weapons cache in the possession of protestors. This later proved to be a one-off, but at the time there was a plausible risk of a wider potential for armed resistance.

This was an unprecedented challenge to public order. Yet authorities were ill-prepared as to the intentions and capabilities of the protestors. The loose networked nature of the Convoy leadership left authorities uncertain about where the protest was heading. There was little intelligence coordination between municipal, provincial and federal policing agencies. One intelligence-gathering section of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) showed promise, but there is no evidence that its assessments reached the top of the OPP, let alone shared with agencies from other levels of government.

The 2022 crisis was dogged by breakdowns in federal-provincial cooperation. This was crucial because the provinces and municipalities already had the power, on paper, to disperse the Convoy protests. Indeed, the border blockades were eventually suppressed. At Windsor, Premier Doug Ford, invoking Ontario emergency powers, effectively shut down the blockade, in contrast to Ontario indifference toward Ottawa. The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) and the OPP demonstrated neither the capacity nor the will to shut down the occupation. Truckers made a mockery of ineffectual police pleas for cooperation, openly defying compliance orders with impunity. Members of both police forces were later revealed to have been financial contributors to the Convoy. Tow truck operators under contractual obligation to remove vehicles designated by the city refused to fulfil their responsibilities.

On 16 February, the cabinet proclaimed a Public Order Emergency under the EA, citing the necessity of ‘taking special temporary measures for dealing with the emergency,’ the latter involving threats of violence against persons, property and critical infrastructure ‘for the purpose of achieving a political or ideological objective.’ EA enabled powers would specifically be directed to control movement in and out of the occupied zone; prohibit public assembly that might lead to a breach of the peace; compel the rendering of essential services such as the removal of vehicles; and regulate or prohibit the funding of the Convoy and freeze bank accounts of funders.

Serious questions were raised over the legality of the proclamation. A Federal Court decision determined that the proclamation was not legal (pending appeal). Interestingly, the judge rendering the negative verdict also mused that while he was acting as a jurist interpreting the letter of the law, if he had been a decision maker facing the crisis, he might well have decided that invoking emergency powers was necessary. Any assessment of the decision should be approached not only from a strictly legal position, but also from a political or public policy view.

In policy terms, the application of emergency powers must be judged a success. Once the federal government took charge, the OPP and Ottawa Police were deployed under RCMP direction. Protest leaders were arrested and charged with criminal offences in regular court, with bail. Police surrounded the remaining protestors, gradually but deliberately reducing the protest area, ensuring that exit routes were always available to those choosing to leave without legal consequences. Those insisting on remaining had their trucks towed and impounded. Dispersal was accomplished without violence.

Within three days, the emergency was revoked. A special Public Order Emergency Commission (Rouleau), mandated under the EA, reviewed the entire affair, holding public hearings at which government officials, including the Prime Minister, testified at length under oath and under questioning from counsel for the protestors as well as for the Commission. A five volume, 2000-page report concluded that the proclamation of an emergency was indeed appropriate, given the failure of policing at the provincial and municipal levels.

Conclusion

It is too early to discern any long-term consequences of the 2022 use of the EA. The 1970 emergency actually produced greater liberalization and an improved emergency law in reaction to the excesses of the WMA.

We can compare the WMA to the EA as policy instruments. The contrasts are in some cases ironic. The proclamation of the WMA was lawful—but only because it was a uniquely self-justifying statute proof against legal challenge. From a political, public policy standpoint, the use of emergency powers in 1970 is questionable. The proclamation of the EA in 2022 remains questionable legally (final determination pending) but as public policy it could be termed exemplary, setting a standard for how protests of this magnitude could in future be handled without the need to invoke an emergency, if provincial and municipal cooperation in enforcing existing laws can be secured.

The cooperation of federal and provincial authorities in 1970 is in sharp contrast to the failure of intergovernmental cooperation in 2022, especially the behaviour of the Ontario government in ignoring the gravity of the Ottawa occupation. This record does not bode well for future emergency situations. However, the EA has been demonstrated to be a much superior legislative tool to its predecessor, should the need arise again.

If future threats to the security of Canadian democracy require invoking states of emergency, Canada is at least better equipped with legislative tools to withstand those threats than it was in 1970.

The Past, Present, and Future Relevance of Canadian Intelligence History

In a 1992 speech to the Oklahoma Press Association, then-Director of the United States Central Intelligence (CIA), Robert Gates, announced that the CIA would embark on a significant effort to open the agency up, so that the public, the press and academia could be more informed on the agency’s history. In his opening statement, Gates joked that a speech on the CIA and Openness was an oxymoron. What he went on to do was not a joke, and it completely revolutionized the history of American intelligence.

His objective was to make CIA, and the intelligence process, more visible and understandable. He wanted to help ‘the American people better understand what the CIA does and how it does it.’ His approach grew out of the belief that it was important that the CIA should be accountable to the American people. The objective was to be as forthcoming, candid, informative, and helpful as possible, but to do so in a way that ensured that the agency’s mission, and the protection of its sources and methods, remained consistent.

In his speech, Gates went on to outline 20 separate initiatives under three sub-headings: the public and the media, Academia, and declassification. These initiatives included everything from making available articles from the CIA’s in-house, classified journal Studies of Intelligence, to providing intelligence officers as guest lecturers in university classes, to initiating a voluntary review program, outside of the Freedom of Information Act, to independently review and declassify CIA records.

The CIA now maintains a website that contains millions of pages on the CIA’s history. It is a virtual gold mine to historians studying American intelligence. Thirty years after Gates’ initiative, American intelligence history is a profoundly rewarding field to study. However, American success in encouraging intelligence history goes beyond providing access to high profile government officials.

Although grumbles continue about what has yet to be declassified, historians of the CIA also recognize the importance of what has been declassified. To date, CIA declassifications includes millions of documents that are over thirty years old, including all national intelligence estimates on the former Soviet Union over ten years old, and thousands of pages on American covert operations on Albania, Iran, the 1954 Guatemalan Coup, the Bay of Pigs, and the Vietnam War. None of these collections show the CIA at its best. Still, they are all available for scholars, so that the public and intelligence practitioners can learn from them.

Historians have made good use of these documents. Several books have appeared on each of these events and none has caused a firestorm.

We can presume there were those at the CIA in the 1990s who could not have foreseen this and thus did not want these huge declassifications to take place. However, there were also those who argued that this was in the agency’s best interest; the CIA had an important story to tell.

An internal CIA document on the Gates Commission, recently declassified, argued that these types of declassifications were necessary because many Americans do not understand the intelligence process and role of intelligence in national security. Many still operate with a romanticized or erroneous view of intelligence from the movies, television, books, and newspapers. They concluded that these views often damage the agency’s reputation and make it harder for them to fulfill their mission.

It goes beyond damaging the agency’s reputation and preventing them from completing their mission, however. As Political Scientist Amy Zegart recently pointed out in her book, Spies Lies and Algorithms, in a chapter she aptly titled ‘The Education Crisis,’ given the lack of education about intelligence in universities, fictional accounts are playing a critical role in how Americans, and arguably Canadians, think about their history. Zegart illustrates how fiction influences public opinion on issues as important as torture, assassinations, and the general approval or disapproval of government intelligence agencies. As Zegart correctly notes, ‘depiction is shoddy education.’

Our need to understand that the world today still hinges on our ability to think critically about intelligence. As Zegart concludes, when we fail to provide a scholarly examination of these topics, ‘fiction too often substitutes for fact, creating fertile ground for conspiracy theories to grow and influence the formulation of real intelligence policy.’ This is in no one’s best interest.

On these issues, there are no differences between the United States and Canada. Both the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) have important stories to tell. Many Canadians do not understand the intelligence process and the role of intelligence in national security. Many Canadians still operate with a romanticized or erroneous view of intelligence from movies, television, books, and newspapers. There have been times when these views have damaged the reputation of our intelligence agencies and make it harder for them to fulfill their mission.

In this context, it is important to note the CIA is not the only American agency now declassifying documents. The National Security Agency (NSA), CSE’s American equivalent, has also declassified scores of documents on the Korean War, the USS Liberty, the Paris Peace talks, and the Venona Project.

In 2020, these documents allowed historians Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes to unmask a fourth atomic spy who worked at Los Alamos during World War II. The spy, code named GODSEND, had defected to the Soviet Union with his wife, his brother and his wife, and his mother-in-law in 1951.

Besides dramatic narratives, these efforts have provided countless ways for historians to educate others about intelligence, what it is, and – as importantly – what it is not. It has also allowed universities to train students in intelligence analysis by pairing declassified intelligence estimates with actual intelligence briefers.

While this conference is a good start, Government and academia alike still have a lot of work to do in promoting transparency and telling these stories. It will not be easy; should Canadian intelligence agencies embrace openness, universities would need to understand the importance and value of intelligence history.

A new generation of scholars needs to be fostered. At present, very few historians consider themselves scholars of intelligence history at major research universities; even fewer consider themselves historians of Canadian Intelligence.

There are things that can be done to encourage an interest in intelligence in Canada, such as promoting conferences like this, as well as supporting emerging scholars, and encouraging federal government research funding councils to appreciate the unique importance of Canadian intelligence history.

For example, Canada has several scholarships and grants available to students who do graduate work in Canadian Military History. At present, there are no specific grants for students studying the history of Canadian intelligence. Having scholarships available to students is important as the more scholarships that are available, the more students will be drawn to the field, and the more university administrators take notice. If we build it, they will come.

There is a lot of work to do. The federal government, intelligence agencies, and universities alike can recognize the value of research in Canadian intelligence history and take steps together to facilitate it.

Canadian intelligence history deserves a future so that we can reflect on and learn from the past.