A senior officer in the counterespionage unit of Australia’s premier spy agency ASIO has been exposed as a secret KGB mole, who stole and sold highly classified intelligence to the Russians for at least five years.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation program Four Corners has forensically threaded together decades of investigations to reveal the man’s identity. The breathtaking betrayal jeopardized Australia’s security relationship with the United States and Britain, key partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

The mole’s identity has been kept from the Australian public for nearly 30 years.

The man “was a critical [KGB] asset” according to international intelligence expert Neil Fergus.

For at least two years in the late 1970s, the ASIO mole was the feared Russian spy agency’s only back door to American and British intelligence secrets.

“This was gold for them,” Fergus said.

The mole’s ASIO colleagues suspected nothing.

His name was Ian George Peacock.

View this 2023 ABC documentary for your insider’s account.

Mainstream media is reporting "a significant cyberattack against a U.S. company, a first since the war started". On March 11, the group Handala announced an attack against the U.S. medical tech giant, Stryker.

Handala (also known as Handala Hack Team, Hatef, Hamsa) is a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group focused on politically motivated cyber campaigns targeting Israeli entities and organizations associated with Israel globally. The group has claimed responsibility for 148 attacks against Israeli interests since mid-2024.

Since the start of the US/Israel attacks against Iran on Feb. 28, Handala has claimed responsibility for 13 cyberattacks against Israeli interests, 1 UAE oil company, Saudi Aramco, and the US company Stryker.

This is the first specific targeting by Handala against a US company. Handala stated it attacked Stryker as it is a "one of the key arms of the global Zionist lobby and a central ring in the 'New Epstein' chain."

Stryker maintains ties to Israel through acquisitions like OrthoSpace in 2019 for rotator cuff implants and Stryker GI Ltd. (founded 1994), which develops endoscopic solutions. These operations support R&D and manufacturing in Israel.

Handala claimed it impacted over 200,000 systems, servers, and mobile devices and stole 50 terabytes of data, shutting down Stryker's offices in 79 countries. While groups like Handala often exaggerate their success for psychological impact, early evidence suggests that Handala’s claims regarding the Stryker attack are significantly more credible than typical "hack-and-leak" bluster. The attackers likely gained administrative access to Microsoft Intune allowing them to issue a "wipe" command to thousands of company-managed laptops and mobile devices simultaneously.

In relation to this attack, the group stated: "This is only the beginning of a new cyber chapter in cyber warfare. To all those plotting attacks on the infrastructure of the Axis of Resistance: The era of hit-and-run is over!"

https://cyberagroup.com/

By  FRANK BAJAK

https://apnews.com/

May 23, 2024

ARLINGTON, Virginia (AP) — U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to embrace the AI revolution, convinced they’ll otherwise be smothered in data as sensor-generated surveillance tech further blankets the planet. They also need to keep pace with competitors, who are already using AI to seed social media platforms with deepfakes.

But the tech is young and brittle, and officials are acutely aware that generative AI is anything but tailor-made for a trade steeped in danger and deception.

Years before OpenAI’s ChatGPT set off the current generative AI marketing frenzy, U.S. intelligence and defense officials were experimenting with the technology. One contractor, Rhombus Power, used it to uncover fentanyl trafficking in China in 2019 at rates far exceeding human-only analysis. Rhombus would later predict Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four months in advance with 80% certainty.

EMBRACING AI WON’T BE SIMPLE

CIA director William Burns recently wrote in Foreign Affairs that U.S. intelligence requires “sophisticated artificial intelligence models that can digest mammoth amounts of open-source and clandestinely acquired information.”

But the agency’s inaugural chief technology officer, Nand Mulchandani, cautions that because generative AI models “hallucinate” they are best treated as a “crazy, drunk friend” — capable of incredible insight but also bias-prone fibbers.

There are also security and privacy issues. Adversaries could steal and poison them. They may contain sensitive personal data agents aren’t authorized to see.

Gen AI is mostly good as a virtual assistant, says Mulchandani, looking for “the needle in the needle stack.” What it won’t ever do, officials insist, is replace human analysts.

AN OPEN-SOURCE AI NAMED ‘OSIRIS’

While officials won’t say whether they are using generative AI for anything big on classified networks, thousands of analysts across the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies now use a CIA-developed generative AI called Osiris. It ingests unclassified and publicly or commercially available data — what’s known as open-source — and writes annotated summaries. It includes a chatbot so analysts can ask follow-up questions.

Osiris uses multiple commercial AI models. Mulchandani said the agency is not committing to any single model or tech vendor. “It’s still early days,” he said.

Experts believe predictive analysis, war-gaming and scenario brainstorming will be among generative AI’s most important uses for intel workers.

‘REGULAR AI’ ALREADY IN USE

Even before generative AI, intel agencies were using machine learning and algorithms. One use case: Alerting analysts during off hours to potentially important developments. An analyst could instruct an AI to ring their phone no matter the hour. It couldn’t describe what happened - that would be classified - but could say “you need to come in and look at this.”

AI bigshots vying for U.S. intelligence agency business include Microsoft, which announced on May 7 that it was offering OpenAI’s GPT-4 for top-secret networks, though the product is not yet accredited on classified networks.

A competitor, Primer AI, lists two intelligence agencies among its customers, documents posted online for recent military AI workshops show. One Primer product is designed to “detect emerging signals of breaking events” using AI-powered searches of more than 60,000 news and social media sources in 100 languages including Twitter, Telegram, Reddit and Discord.

Like Rhombus Power’s product, it helps analysts identify key people, organizations and locations and also uses computer vision. At a demo just days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Primer executives described how their technology separates fact from fiction in the flood of online information from the Middle East.

CHALLENGES AHEAD AS AI SPREADS

The most important near-term AI challenges for U.S. intelligence officials are apt to be counteracting how adversaries use it: To pierce U.S. defenses, spread disinformation and attempt to undermine Washington’s ability to read their intent and capabilities.

The White House is also concerned that generative AI models adopted by U.S. agencies could be infiltrated and poisoned.

Another worry: Ensuring the privacy of people whose personal data may be embedded in an AI model. Authorities say it is not currently possible to guarantee that’s all removed from an AI model.

That’s one reason the intelligence community is not in “move-fast-and-break-things” mode on generative AI, says John Beieler, the top AI official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Model integrity and security are a concern if government agencies end up using AIs to explore bio- and cyberweapons tech.

DIFFERENT AGENCIES, DIFFERENT AI MISSIONS

How AI gets adopted will vary widely by intelligence agency according to mission. The National Security Agency mostly intercepts communications. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is charged with seeing and understanding every inch of the planet.

Supercharging those missions with Gen AI is a priority — and much less complicated than, say, how the FBI might use the technology given its legal limitations on domestic surveillance.

The NGA issued in December a request for proposals for a completely new type of AI model that would use imagery it collects — from satellites, from ground-level sensors – to harvest precise geospatial intel with simple voice or text prompts. Gen AI applications also make a lot of sense for cyberconflict.

MATCHING WITS WITH RIVALS

Generative AI won’t easily match wits with rival masters of deception.

Analysts work with “incomplete, ambiguous, often contradictory snippets of partial, unreliable information,” notes Zachery Tyson Brown, a former defense intelligence officer. He believes intel agencies will invite disaster if they embrace generative AI too enthusiastically, swiftly or completely. The models don’t reason. They merely predict. And their designers can’t entirely explain how they work.

Linda Weissgold, a former CIA deputy director of analysis, doesn’t see AI replacing human analysts any time soon.

Quick decisions are often required based on incomplete data. Intelligence “customers’’ - the most important being the president of the United States — want human insight and experience central to the decision options they’re offered, she says.

“I don’t think it will ever be acceptable to some president for the intelligence community to come in and say, ‘I don’t know, the black box just told me so.’”

FRANK BAJAK

Bajak is an Associated Press technology reporter who focuses on hacking, privacy, surveillance and military AI.

Iwona Mooney

CSIS DDG (Ret.)

To have or not to have?  In recent years there has been much speculation on the pros and cons of whether Canada should have a separate Foreign Intelligence organization, or should this responsibility be allocated to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), or perhaps housed within another government ministry.  As a former intelligence professional with a passion for current events, international politics, I try to stay atop relevant information as it becomes available. I use the word “try”.  So many weigh in with opinions and arguments, whether it be an informed source or a member of the public who feels they have the solution.  I am from neither camp. I am writing from “my heart”, from experience, and from years of reading about and researching intelligence agencies, as well as following ongoing intelligence issues as impacted and/or influenced by various global conflicts.

Even though espionage is considered to be the second-oldest profession in the world, today in 2025, no intelligence organization can function using traditional spy craft of the 1900s.  Post-World War II, the race for the atomic bomb, the heroic efforts of Igor Gouzenko to get “the West” to come to grip with the true realties of the now former U.S.S.R., and the devastating work of the Cambridge Five brought to a head the need to rethink how an intelligence entity deals with new security threats. The end of the Cold War era accelerated security intelligence priorities in areas unheard of before. Terrorism, international and domestic, is probably what comes to mind.  Yet there are so many new variants of threats that have emerged and will continue to evolve.  Cyber threats to governments, businesses and to individuals, are rampant.  Transnational repression is a type of foreign interference that can be subtle ranging to violence.  Regional conflicts based on religious and/or ethnic issues, which have been around for eons, do not seem to wane.  They just move around the globe with waves of migration from continent to continent.  And there are other issues, such as climate change, sabotage and counter proliferation.

What has changed?  Attitudes, younger generations dissatisfaction with the current situation, religious factions having greater influences over the less fortunate, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few with the exponential rise of the oligarch / billionaire category.  How does this all fit into the dialogue of whether Canada should or should not have its own separate foreign intelligence agency?

In 1984, CSIS was established primarily as a defensive intelligence organization to protect Canada’s national security interests as mandated by The CSIS Act.  It collects information through human interaction, ergo – HUMINT – human intelligence.  Its sister organization, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is SIGINT-based, signals intelligence obtained through “ears in the skies”.  Both organizations operate within Canada’s borders, but, yes, there is a BUT.  These borders are a hindrance of sorts.  Canada has been relying on the sharing of intelligence through its partnership within the Five Eyes alliance – United Kingdom, United States, Australia and New Zealand, as well as other countries.  Some do have foreign intelligence agency capabilities; others deal with such collections as their laws allow.  Recent events have strained some of these partnerships, putting Canada at a disadvantage. 

The CSIS Act has been amended, the last being Bill C-70 (June 2024) to align its powers better to deal with the increase in, and changes within the current threat environment.  However, it did not provide CSIS with a distinct, separate “foreign intelligence capability” that would allow intelligence operatives to work abroad.  Federal court warrants can provide CSIS with the authority to conduct specific investigations abroad.  These changes are a step in the right direction.

In 2003 the former Liberal Member of Parliament (Nepean) David Pratt tabled a private member’s bill – C-409, An Act to establish the Canadian Foreign intelligence Agency.  As with the majority of private members’ bills, it did not pass. The idea was put forth and continues to have supporters and detractors.  The security intelligence environment is an ever-evolving one and if Canada is to participate in a level playing field, perhaps the time has come for serious consideration to be given to the conundrum of whether Canada should or should not have a foreign intelligence agency of its own. 

On the one hand, increasing substantially the funds to CSIS that would allow it to develop a “Foreign Intelligence Branch” within its organizational structure would seem to be the easier path to take.  However, it begs the question of sustainability, of integrating it into the strategic operational environment without jeopardizing the “agents” who would choose to work abroad.  Would these agents rotate in/out of the Service in order to “round” out their careers?  Where would their operational mandates emanate from?  These are just a few of the challenges that CSIS would face should it be given the foreign intelligence agency responsibility. 

There are sound reasons why our allies have separate foreign intelligence services:  The British have MI6, the Americans the CIA, Israel the Mossad, Germany the BND, France the DGSE, Australia the ASIS.  Then there is Russia with the SVR, and China the MSS. Some are smaller in stature and others, like the CIA or MI6 are legendary in their own right. 

Canada needs to focus on the WHY there may be need to have a permanent, separate foreign intelligence agency.  Will it enhance its stature within the intelligence community?  Will it allow Canada to focus specifically on those areas abroad where information cannot be otherwise gathered than through deploying agents?  And how long will it take Canada to get such an agency up and running at full speed.  Certainly, it is not an overnight exercise.  Probably more like five if not more years before it would be fully operational.  Does Canada have an appropriate human resources pool to hire suitable candidates, or does the initial round come from within CSIS and other Canadian intelligence-related entities?  Once the WHY is answered then the rest should fall into place.  A bill to enact a Canadian Foreign Intelligence Agency is already drafted, albeit would require updating.  Changes in today’s world security environment show that Canada needs to be part of the playing field, not just a spectator on the sidelines.  Some of these changes impact directly on Canada and going to the source of the “threat” to try and mitigate it may be the only way Canada will be able to deal with said threat.  Our partners may not be of much assistance if they do not have a vested interest.  To quote Lewis Carroll’s opening line in his poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter - “The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things” – to have or not to have a separate foreign intelligence entity.  

The Canadian Press

Published: March 08, 2026 at 8:06AM EDT

OTTAWA — The decades-long debate over whether Canada should create a CIA-style foreign spy agency has been coloured by pressure from allies, budgetary restraint and internal federal rivalries, a new study reveals.

Much of the discussion about Canada’s foreign intelligence aspirations has taken place — fittingly perhaps, given the subject matter — in classified memos and behind closed doors in the halls of government.

“To spy, or not to spy,” a new paper by researcher and former Canadian intelligence analyst Alan Barnes, draws on recently released archival records to trace the history of official thinking on the question from 1945 to 2007.

Ottawa’s fractious relations with Washington over the last year have prompted fresh conversations about whether Canada should have its own intelligence service that dispatches people abroad to covertly gather political, military and economic information.

An understanding of past deliberations about a Canadian foreign intelligence agency “is an important element of an informed public debate” on the question, said Barnes, a senior fellow at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

Barnes’ paper, published by the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, explains how Canada’s cautious consideration of the idea of an international espionage service stretches back at least eight decades to the days following the Second World War.

During the war, Canada developed the ability to electronically collect signals intelligence, the Joint Intelligence Committee co-ordinated foreign intelligence activities and produced assessments, and the RCMP gathered information about domestic security threats.

Missing from the mix was an organization operating outside Canada to collect foreign intelligence clandestinely using human sources, similar to the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Barnes writes.

“Nevertheless, when officials were considering the shape of the post-war intelligence community, the idea of creating a foreign intelligence agency was in the air,” the paper says.

An SIS officer visited Ottawa in 1951 to discuss setting up a Canadian spy service with Britain’s assistance. That led to a proposal for a modestly scoped agency which, Barnes surmises, would have operated in the Caribbean. The plan was gradually scaled back and ultimately went nowhere.

“It was only the first such proposal to meet this fate,” the paper says.

Still, Canada was coming under increasing pressure from its allies to contribute more to the collective pool of intelligence information, Barnes writes.

The CIA informed Ottawa of an American interest in conducting interrogations in Canada of defectors and immigrants from the Soviet bloc.

“This galvanized the attention of officials in Ottawa with the concern that if Canada did not do the work, the allies would do it themselves,” the paper says.

The federal cabinet gave the green light to an “interview organization” in April 1953.

In the late 1950s, that organization expanded its work to include debriefings of Canadians — often businesspeople or scientists — following their return from travels in the Soviet bloc, Barnes writes.

“On occasion, travellers were briefed on specific intelligence requirements prior to their trip.”

This activity was now “edging closer” to intelligence collection abroad, “with the attendant personal and political risks,” the paper says.

Canadian military officers and diplomats were part of the International Commission for Supervision and Control that operated in Indochina beginning in 1954.

“Washington was quick to accept Canada’s offer to provide intelligence from the delegation,” Barnes writes. “Over the following years, Canada furnished military, political and economic reporting to the American, British, and later, Australian, intelligence agencies.”

In Cuba, after the U.S. cut off diplomatic relations with the Castro regime, Canada provided Washington with extensive diplomatic reporting from the Canadian Embassy in Havana, the paper notes.

“After the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, at the request of the U.S., Canada stepped up its intelligence collection activities in Cuba by assigning an additional officer full-time to this work.”

At one point, John Starnes, a senior foreign ministry official who would later lead the RCMP’s security service, was approached by a CIA officer who made a strong case for Canada’s engagement in covert intelligence-gathering abroad.

“He was nonplussed by Starnes’ response that he could see no direct benefit to Canada of an organization which would be largely serving the interests of other countries, or any vital government information requirement that could not be more effectively addressed by other means,” the paper says.

The RCMP committed illegal break-ins, stole a Parti Québécois membership list and burned a barn to prevent a meeting from taking place — events that helped spur the formation of the civilian Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 1984.

An early meeting of deputy ministers to discuss the proposed new intelligence service raised the idea of “establishing a separate intelligence gathering unit, particularly with respect to foreign intelligence, along the lines of arrangements in Britain and Australia,” the paper says.

Officials felt economic and commercial intelligence were of growing importance and the distinction between “national security” and “national interest” was often not clear.

But the legislation governing CSIS stopped short of giving the new agency powers to gather foreign intelligence abroad.

It authorizes collection of intelligence related to security — such as a brewing terrorist attack — both inside Canada and overseas, and the gathering of foreign intelligence within Canada at the request of either the minister of foreign affairs or the minister of defence.

The period from the 1990s to 2007 saw a number of proposals for a Canadian foreign intelligence agency “of varying detail and completeness,” Barnes says.

“These proposals were driven by the concerns of officials in Ottawa about how best to adapt Canada’s foreign intelligence capabilities to meet the new demands of post-Cold War conditions and then the new international situation brought about by 9-11,” he writes.

“They reflected Canadian — rather than allied — views of what was needed. But the debate within the bureaucracy was complicated by differing interpretations of what a ‘foreign intelligence agency’ was actually for, and by a blurring of the concepts of ‘foreign’ and ‘security’ intelligence.”

Barnes reports this period was marked by competition between Canada’s foreign ministry and CSIS over which organization should take the lead in intelligence collection activities outside Canada.

“This rivalry currently seems to be in abeyance, but the question has not been settled,” the paper says. “Both organizations likely believe that they are best placed to take on the task if a future government decides to expand Canada’s foreign intelligence collection activities overseas.”

Barnes says the question of money was instrumental to the failure of a mid-1990s proposal for a foreign intelligence agency.

The various proposals over the years for such an agency did not include a full consideration of the cost, he writes. “Most papers downplayed this question, or put it off for later study.”

The most fundamental element missing from those proposals was clarity about what specific information Canada needed to formulate foreign or defence policies “that could only be provided by a new foreign intelligence agency, at an acceptable financial and political cost,” the paper says.

“Most of the proposals put forward only a very general idea of the kind of information that a covert agency might provide, or simply assumed that such an agency would be useful.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2026

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press

Full article: To spy, or not to spy: Canadian government consideration of a foreign intelligence agency, 1945–2007
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/11926422.2026.2634670

BBC News - March 04, 2026 - Dan Haygarth & Davied Maddox

Three men – one of whom is the partner of a sitting Labour MP and former ministerial special advisor – have been arrested on suspicion of spying for China. 

The men were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of assisting China’s foreign intelligence service, the Metropolitan Police confirmed. 

Counter Terrorism Policing London arrested a 39-year-old man at an address in London, a 68-year-old man in Powys in mid-Wales, and a 43-year-old man in Pontyclun, south Wales. 

Labour MP Joani Reid, whose husband David Taylor is one of the people arrested, said: “I have never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law. 

“I am not part of my husband’s business activities, and neither I nor my children are part of this investigation, and we should not be treated by media organisations as though we are. Above all I expect media organisations to respect my children’s privacy.

The Labour MP (Joani Reid) said: ‘I have never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law’

Those arrested were taken into police custody, where they remain.

 

Officers have searched the addresses where the men were arrested and have also carried out searches at three other addresses in London, East Kilbride, and Cardiff. 

Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said: “We have seen a significant increase in our casework relating to national security in recent years, and we continue to work extremely closely with our partners to help keep the country safe and take action to disrupt malign activity where we suspect it. 

“Today’s arrests are part of a proactive investigation, and while these are serious matters, we do not believe there to be any imminent or direct threat to the public relating to this. Our investigation continues, and we thank the public for their ongoing support.” 

In a statement released after her spouse’s arrest, East Kilbride and Strathaven MP Ms Reid said: “I have never been to China. I have never spoken on China or China-related matters in the Commons. I have never asked a question on China-related matters. 

“As far as I am aware, I have never met any Chinese businesses whilst I have been an MP, any Chinese diplomats or government employees, nor raised any concern with ministers or anyone else on behalf of, even coincidentally, Chinese interests.

“I am a social democrat who believes in freedom of expression, free trade unions and free elections. I am not any sort of admirer or apologist for the Chinese Communist party’s dictatorship.” 

Mr Taylor is the director of policy and programmes at the London-based Asia House think tank, but was previously a senior political advisor for the Labour Party and a special advisor to the then-Welsh Secretary Peter Hain in 2010. Among his current roles, he is also an advisor to the Central Asia All Parliamentary Group, chaired by Labour MP Pam Cox. 

A spokesman for Asia House said: "We cannot comment on a live investigation, but no further information has been provided to us beyond what has been made public." 

The arrests come at a time of heightened concerns about China trying to spy on British democracy after recriminations over the collapse of a court case last year involving a parliamentary researcher and a teacher. Both denied any wrongdoing. There have also been concerns expressed in the Commons over China being permitted to build a super embassy in London just days before Sir Keir Starmer made a trip to Beijing. 

Addressing the latest arrests in parliament, security minister Dan Jarvis warned there will be “severe consequences” if it is proven that China attempted to interfere with UK sovereign affairs. 

Mr Jarvis said the investigation “relates to China” and “foreign interference targeting UK democracy”. 

He told MPs: “Let me be clear, if there is proven evidence of attempts by China to interfere with UK sovereign affairs, we will impose severe consequences and hold all actors involved to account. 

“The government is taking robust action to ensure the UK’s democratic institutions and processes are a hard target for this activity. The National Security Act provides our intelligence agencies and law enforcement with the modern legal tools they need to deter, detect and disrupt the full range of state threats. 

“The action counter-terrorism police have been able to take this morning is an example that legislation is working well.” 

But Tory shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said: "Here we are again, another year, another Chinese spy scandal, and the backdrop to it is this government's failed policy of appeasement. 

"The government must now surely be coming to the realisation that unless the United Kingdom stands up to these threats, our country will continue to be treated with disdain." 

Mr Burghart referenced the previous collapsed spy scandal case involving China and the recent approval of the Chinese mega-embassy in central London and recalled Sir Keir Starmer's visit to Beijing for trade deals. 

He added: "We in this House watched as these things happen, and the Chinese state watched too and saw that it could act with impunity. The minister says there is no trade-off between our democratic and national interests, and security interests, and our economic interests. But I'm afraid that is exactly what has happened."

English - Pillar Talk Winter 2026.pdf

French - Nouvelles Pillar Hiver 2026.pdf

A Bug Sitting At A Desk

Every so often problems with the intelligence culture in Ottawa come crashing into the open. By intelligence culture, I am talking about a process to ensure well-informed and well-crafted intelligence is greeted by decision-makers with respect and understanding. I mean the ability of the intelligence community, with its many independent actors, to arrive at an agreed picture of a threat, the ability to disseminate its threat intelligence, the ability of decision-makers to receive and read it, and, because reading is never enough, finally the good judgement of decision-makers in deciding what it means and how to apply it to policy and action, including in any public discussion. It’s a complex process that often suffers from divides between intelligence and its consumers, each failing to fully understand the other across the secrecy and professional experience barriers.

The intelligence-policy maker gulf is not unique to Canada, but it is often said that the Canadian intelligence culture lacks maturity and sophistication. That’s probably too blanket a statement, but there are clear challenges in the de-centralized architecture of Canadian intelligence, its competing centres of authority (CSIS, CSE, RCMP, PCO, DND, GAC, Public Safety), its relative weakness when it comes to intelligence assessment, and the presence of an intervening layer of political staffers who inhabit in growing numbers Minister’s officers and, above all, the PMO, and whose grasp of intelligence may be deficient. Political staffers may feel, as might their bosses, that they know best, or even have better sources. At the top we have a new Prime Minister, without political background, whose response to intelligence remains an enigma.

Problematic intelligence culture on recent display.

During a background briefing to the media on the eve of Mark Carney’s trip to India, a “senior” (unnamed) Canadian official is reported to have made a series of remarkable statements. They are reported to have said that the government believed that Indian government transnational repression and foreign interference had ceased and is quoted as saying “if we believed that the government of India was actively interfering in the Canadian democratic process, we probably would not be taking this trip.” This senior official cited the new channels for engagement with India on national security issues, and appeared to argue that because of these channels, there could be confidence “that the activity [foreign interference and transnational repression] is not continuing.” ^[1]

A media story by CTV correspondent, Annie Bergeron-Oliver, who also attended the briefing, has a slightly different account of the statements made, citing two separate government officials, both of whom emphasised the engagements with India on security matters and the mechanisms in place “to detect and disrupt threats.” The CTV story also quotes one of the unnamed officials as saying “I really don’t think we’d be taking this trip if we thought these kind of activities were continuing…” ^[2] The language quoted is slightly different from that in the Globe story cited above, but the message is the same.

Over at CBC News, Evan Dyer also quoted one official as saying “I think we could say we’re confident that the activity is not continuing,” adding that, “If we believed that the government of India was actively interfering in the Canadian democratic process, we probably would not be taking this trip.” ^[3] Word perfect with the quote in the Globe and Mail story.

There is no public transcript of the background briefing, so no way of checking what was actually said and in what context.

In response to these media reports, two former National Security and Intelligence Advisers to the PM, Jody Thomas and Vincent Riby, both expressed doubts about the prognosis. Jody Thomas is quoted as saying “It would be lovely to know that all of the threats and the interference have ended. That would be a really positive thing…” “but it would surprise me.” ^[4] Vincent Rigby, while supporting the Carney trip to India as an example of “pragmatic diplomacy at its best,” urged political leaders not to make security intelligence a footnote and not to dismiss the concerns of the Sikh community in Canada. ^[5]

Media reporting on these statements by government officials have sparked outrage in the Sikh community and denunciation from some Liberal MPs. Sukh Dhaliwal, who represents the Surrey-Newton riding in BC, with a large Sikh population, called the claims of the cessation of Indian government foreign interference “totally irresponsible” and asked for heads to roll. He wants an investigation into “the judgement and responsibilities exercised by the individual who made these remarks,” adding that their “conduct and suitability for their role must be reviewed.” ^[6]

A coalition of Canadian Sikh groups have issued an ultimatum to a list of 20 MPs and to the leaders of the three major federal parties, demanding that there be a full disclosure of all intelligence on transnational pressure campaigns, the continuation of a parliamentary study into Indian government interference, and a public inquiry into the 2023 murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. ^[7] Their anger is palpable, but their demands unlikely to be met. Intelligence will not be released and the RCMP continues its criminal investigation into the Nijjar murder, foreclosing any public inquiry.

What do you do with a hot potato? Catch it, and dance to avoid being burned. There has been lots of that on display, including statements from both the Public Safety Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, from PMO and from CSIS.

Here is the Public Safety Minister, Gary Anandasangaree’s, version of the dance. One day after the background briefing, he stated that “there are certainly issues around safety and security of Canadians that we continue to engage in.” He added, “what I’m suggesting is that there’s still more work to do, and we will do that work.” ^[8]

PMO’s version: a reminder that Canada and India have established regular top-level channels on security and law enforcement. “Canada will continue to take measures to combat any forms of transnational repression, transnational organized crime and any contravention of the Criminal Code or rule of law on Canadian soil.” ^[9]

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand: “We are raising the issues relating to public safety and security and will do that on this trip [to India]…We need to be at the table to raise the concerns relating to transnational repression, to the rule of law.” ^[10]

CSIS. The security dialogue with India is an important step. According to the CSIS spokesperson, “CSIS takes all allegations of foreign interference and transnational repression seriously and we consider threats in a country-agnostic way. This hasn’t changed.” ^[11] Country-agnostic? Code-word meaning can include India.

As the government searches for the (Orwellian) memory hole to consign the message from the background briefing into the flames, what can we learn from this incident about the intelligence culture in Canada? First, it must be said that we don’t have the full picture of who exactly made these statements, who authorized them to make these statements, and on what intelligence basis the statements were made. This will all probably go into the memory hole.

But what is concerning is the question of who is authorized to speak, on or off the record, for the assessments of the Canadian intelligence community about transnational threats. There is only one official that holds that responsibility. It rests in the office of the National Security and Intelligence Adviser. ^[12] It is the duty of the NSIA to speak on behalf of the intelligence community to government decision-makers and to the PM. The NSIA is also responsible for transparency efforts—getting the intelligence community message out to the public.^[13] That is the nature of the job. It can involve some tough calls when the community may be divided in its views or when, as will be true in many cases, the intelligence picture is far from complete or clear. It can involve some head-butting with senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, who may want to convey a different, more politically convenient message. Tant pis. The NSIA must be the final and over-riding voice on the threat picture. That is not to say that a PM or his Ministers must be dictated to by the intelligence community’s assessment of threats, only that they must pay attention and be respectful of the intelligence message.

This should never have been hard in the context of the PM’s trip to India. The message that should have been conveyed is that we have an ongoing security dialogue with India, itself a break-through, that we continue to monitor foreign interference threats and will not hesitate to call them out, that the security of Canadians will always be a top priority, and that “guardrails” will always be in place, as PM Carney has said in relation to deal-making with China, when we negotiate trade pacts with foreign countries. Easy.

But here’s the rub. We are in an interregnum when it comes to the NSIA. The current office holder, Nathalie Drouin, is leaving the job shortly to take up a post as ambassador to France. ^[14] Rumours swirl about a replacement but no announcement has been made. ^[15]

There is also the question of whether the Cabinet National Security Council, chaired by the PM, is being used effectively to ensure that the government is getting the best strategic intelligence picture available.

To ensure a strong intelligence culture in Canada, you need a strong NSIA, heading a strong intelligence machinery, you need high-quality intelligence reporting flowing regularly to Cabinet and the PM, you need a Cabinet table where intelligence is discussed and any temptation to intelligence politicisation set aside. You need a system where professional officials sit above political staffers.

The suggestion from the background briefing on Indian foreign interference is that all is not well with Canadian intelligence culture. Let’s hope it doesn’t reflect a bug deep in the system.