Two Stories, Two Truths

Take your pick, the version unfolded in the media by the recently resigned head of SIRT, the oversight body for CSIS, Dr. Arthur Porter, or the man with the rather repugnant reputation as a 'fixer', a lobbyist, an enabler, an arms dealer and undercover man, Ari Ben Menashe who has revealed his version of a tawdry tale.

Dr. Porter's casual disregard for the post he was assigned that gave him exposure to top secret documents while at the same time he consorted with questionable characters in questionable causes, led to his being outed by the National Post as an inappropriate office-holder of an extremely sensitive public-security position. Scurrilous character-assassination as far as Dr. Porter is concerned.

The revelations were sufficient to portray Dr. Porter as incautiously unsuited to remain as head of SIRT. While Dr. Porter asserted his innocence of wrong-doing, even of having embarked on a mission that compromised his post, the resulting uproar served to unsettle him from any determination to remain, allowing the prime minister to accept his proffered resignation.

But here is Mr. Ben-Menasha, as unsavoury a character as any a novelist could conjure up for an interesting book on fly-by-night ethics that manage regardless to engage with people in high places, telling the story from his perspective. That Dr. Porter had given him reason to believe that aid money he might secure for Sierra Leone from Russia would be used by its government.

Portraying his family's AIG corporation not as a private enterprise but as a government entity to which the resulting Russian-derived aid money would be deposited. In turn for $200,000 supplied to Mr. Ben Menashe's lobbying company, $120-million was to be raised in aid funding from Russia to help build national infrastructure projects.

According to Mr. Ben Menashe - whose long experience in shady dealing obviously enables him to sniff out more of the same - he became aware that the AIG in question was Dr. Porter's own business. Dr. Porter had represented himself to Mr. Ben Menashe as Sierra Leone's official representative; and he was that, appointed as Ambassador Plenipotentiary by the country's president.

"He [Porter] represented that as a government agency", Mr. Ben-Menashe explained, of the link to AIG. When Mr. Ben-Menashe returned the $200,000 fee telling Dr. Porter he wanted nothing more to do with the contract, suspecting that any aid money that came through would go into private pockets, Dr. Porter attempted to persuade him otherwise.

"I'm a very powerful guy, Ari. I'm a very powerful guy." We can be grateful that one power has been removed from Dr. Porter. He is no longer chairman of the country's Security and Intelligence Review Committee, overseeing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.