Or, A Canadian glimpse
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(Photo of MWO Robar from the Globe and Mail)
The world of counter-intelligence operations, with the catching of spies and ferreting out of insider threats at its core, has been described as a “wilderness of mirrors.” [1] Fun-house (remember those?) distortions, imaginary monstrosities, lurk at every turn. Cultivated paranoia is part of the workplace culture.
Exhibit A from this world is the CIA’s legendary spy catcher, James Jesus Angleton. [2]Angleton served as head of the CIA’s counter-intelligence branch from 1954 to 1975. He had a storied back story: Yale undergraduate poet and editor, friend of Ezra Pound, wartime service with the Office of Strategic Services in London and Italy, exotic orchid grower. Friendless, except for one friend who betrayed him—his Washington drinking buddy, MI6 station chief, and KGB double-agent, Kim Philby.
Angleton never got over the betrayal, took it for a sign of a massive ongoing conspiracy by the Soviets to penetrate every corner of the CIA, turned the agency inside out in his hunt for Soviet moles, jailed Soviet defectors whose stories he did not believe. He could tell convoluted tales of adversary intrigue. One CIA Director, James Schlesinger, said that listening to him was like “looking at an Impressionist painting.” [3] Ultimately, Angleton did so much damage through his zealotry that he was fired by the CIA Director, William Colby. He died in 1987. T.S. Eliot’s poem, Gerontion, was read at his funeral.
Now we are confronted by a Canadian version of the ‘wilderness of mirrors,” courtesy of charges laid against a Canadian armed forces counter-intelligence operative, Master Warrant Officer (MWO), Matthew Robar. Robar was the subject of a long-running investigation, but was ultimately arrested on December 10, 2025, and faces eight charges, the most serious of which concerns the allegation that he passed “special operational information” to a foreign entity, which carries a possible sentence of life imprisonment if Robar is convicted. He appeared before a military court on December 15 for a custody hearing. A court martial is pending in the New Year.
The Robar case has been the subject of some intense media coverage, including information from anonymous sources. [4] There is some light amidst the heat, notably thanks to court documents from the December 15 hearing, but much remains unknown. [5]
Here is what we do know.
Master Warrant Officer Matthew Robar is 43 years old. He joined the CAF in 2001, has worked in intelligence since 2007, and became a member of the CAF National Counter Intelligence Unit (NCIU) in 2019.
While working in counter-intelligence, he was led to engage with a person, denoted in the court records as a “foreign entity,” in 2023. The “foreign entity” was “affiliated” with a foreign intelligence service (unnamed). Working with this foreign entity, Robar developed a “project,” described as a “unconventional activity that involved sensitive techniques.” Robar attempted on several occasions in 2024 to get approval to work on the project with the foreign entity but was denied. Despite this, he persisted and attempted to get funding for the project. Investigators were told by witnesses that Robar became “obsessed” with the project. He managed to arrange a meeting with the foreign entity abroad in September 2024 and took along to that meeting a CAF member (identified in the court records only as CAF Member 1). CAF member 1 believed the trip had been authorized, but it was not.
Later in September 2024, CAF Member 1 tried to warn Robar about dealing with the “foreign entity.” In the course of that warning, CAF Member 1 shared an intelligence assessment about the foreign entity with Robar as well as “the planned movements of a foreign military partner.”
In the same month, September 2024, CAF members aware of Robar’s activities alerted “CAF leadership” about their concerns. At this point serious trouble began to descend on Robar’s head. He was confronted about his relationship with the foreign entity and forced to write reports on his interactions. It was determined that he lied in these reports, and he was temporarily relieved from duty in October 2024.
Robar’s situation only worsened when his putative project partner sent around a series of emails in mid-October 2024 about their work, which included some threats about exposure. If there was an element of blackmail to these messages, it was ignored. Instead, Robar was removed from the National Counter-Intelligence Unit and an internal investigation begun.
Search warrants were ultimately executed against Robar a year later, and in October 2025, his personal cell phone seized, which yielded evidence that he had shared “safeguarded” and “special operational information” with the foreign entity over the Signal app. This became the substance of the most serious charges laid against Robar in December.
Full details of what Robar shared is not known at this stage, but it is alleged to have included the intelligence assessment about the foreign entity, the planned movements of a foreign military partner, and the identity of CAF Member 1, who was engaged in covert collection.
Here is what we don’t know.
· Why Robar determined to engage, as a counter-intelligence specialist, with the foreign entity in the first place?
· What counter-intelligence information Robar was seeking by working with the foreign entity as a source?
· Who the foreign entity is (all we know is that they are not a Canadian citizen and do not hold any Canadian security clearances)?
· What was the nature of the foreign entity’s activities (how much free-lancing)?
· What the nature of the affiliation between the foreign entity and the foreign intelligence service might be? (the foreign entity was not an official member of the foreign intelligence service)
· What partner foreign intelligence service was implicated in the case
· Why government of Canada agencies constructed a negative intelligence assessment on the foreign entity?
· What the “project” was? Why did it become an “obsession” for Robar?
· Why MWO Robar was disaffected with his superior officers?
· Why MWO Robar felt that the CAF was not doing enough in the counter-intelligence realm?
· What MWO Robar’s state of mental health might have been? Court records indicated investigators believed he suffered from PTSD
· How damaging Robar’s leaks might have been (no damage assessment has yet been filed in court)?
· How significant the case might be? (but note that charges laid under the Foreign Interference and Security of Information Act require Attorney General consent).
· How damaging, if at all, the case might be to relations between Canada and the foreign intelligence partner to whom the foreign entity was “affiliated”
· How damaging, if at all, the case might be for Canada’s relations with close intelligence partners, including in the Five Eyes.
That’s a lot of unknowns. What more we might learn through a court martial process and the disclosure it brings remains to be seen. Two points are worth keeping in mind. One is that the prosecution in cases involving the FISOIA is not required to prove a motive for the offence. This was also a feature of the Cameron Ortis case. The other is that the government has the power to insist on the withholding of evidence deemed harmful to national security through the provisions of the Canada Evidence Act. That could include details on the interactions between the Canadian intelligence community and a foreign intelligence partner. The judge, in this case a Colonel who is a member of the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) office of the CAF, assigned to the case, can also seal classified records. So, we might ultimately never know what drove Matthew Robar, what his “obsession” might have been, or what exactly the counter-intelligence “project” was all about. But it does all carry with it the peculiar psychology of counter-intelligence work.
For now, and perhaps forever, we are firmly in the wilderness of mirrors. But I hope we can find an evidentiary path out, and I plan to write more about this case in future.
[1] A now classic account is David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (2003)
[2] CIA historian David Robarge published an even-handed account of Angleton and the literature about him in the CIA journal, Studies in History, “The James Angleton Phenomenon,” vol. 53, no. 4 (2009), https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Cunning-Passages-Contrived-Corridors.pdf
[3] ibid
[4] See, for example, Murray Brewster, CBC News, “Canadian Military intelligence operative accused of leaking secrets was trying to help Ukraine,” December 16, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-military-intelligence-ukraine-charges-9.7018645; Robert Fife, Steven Case, Mark MacKinnon, The Globe and Mail, “Canadian military intelligence officer allegedly shared classified information with Ukraine,” December 16, 2025, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-forces-intelligence-officer-classified-information-ukraine/
[5] Two court exhibits made available are particularly illuminating: Exhibit 5, “Annex to Account in Writing (DND 2879) in relation to MWO Robar,” and Exhibit 8, “Custody Review Hearing (CRH) between The Canadian Forces and Masgter Warrant Officer Matthew Robar, Agreed Statement of the Facts.”
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