The Spy Who Felt The Heat

"I showed them my ID card and they asked me a bunch of questions, took my name and off I go."
"The day I flipped sides ... from that day on, that was the end of my days as Jeff Delisle".
Canadian navy intelligence officer Jeff Delisle

Working at HMCS Trinity, a military intelligence facility on the East Coast, he had been privy to quite a lot of data, secrets that Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand had no idea were being shared with Russia.

But, not to worry.  His lawyer insists that former Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle took great care to ensure that nothing that might harm anyone was transferred to Russia.  One may then assume that Russia was more than happy to pay Mr. Delisle $3,000 monthly for the charade of handing over worthless documents.

For four years he handed over classified information.  Mr. Delisle has pleaded guilty to espionage charges.  Which plea allowed for release of details on the situation, formerly withheld.  No harm done; Canada has no concerns over the fact that its key intelligence allies may now be deliberately withholding important security documents.

For an initial $5,000 monthly Mr. Delisle became handily adept at scrutinizing references to Russia which he would cut and past onto a floppy disc, copy to a USB and haul home for transmission.  The information ran the gamut from military data, to organized crime and even the Chief of Defence phone and contact list; a "who's who of military personnel", complete with email addresses.

Perhaps the quality of the transferred information began to falter, and that's when the payments were reduced to $3,000 monthly.  Mr. Deslisle's finances were in a parlous state after a divorce.  Much like many other men's, but he presumably had a fine salary at his level of competence and involvement in the military.

Eventually the RCMP became involved and captured the email account Mr. Deslisle was forwarding messages to his Russian contact with, and it was they who were examining the transferred data finally.  He was wed to ideology, he confessed when he was arrested, and it wasn't quite the money involved that led him to become a traitor.

"Jeff was in a dark place personally when this started.  When it started rolling, there was no getting out of it", his defence lawyer summarized.  The information he fed his Russian contact was "innocuous".

"It's forced everybody in governments in the West and mostly the Five Eyes (Canada, Britain, U.S., New Zealand, Australia) to rethink" commented the former assistant deputy director of intelligence.  "The whole thing was a good wake up call for us internally in the business to go, 'Are the taps open too wide?'" 

"Delisle put into jeopardy the identity of the confidential sources of information and the means by which the [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] collects information.  Delisle's unauthorized disclosure to the Russians since 2007 has caused severe and irreparable damage to Canadian interests."                            Federal prosecutor Lyne Decarie