Is There Intelligence in Intelligence?

Isn't this a story we're simply re-visiting? The non-cooperation that is, between CSIS and the RCMP? Wasn't that an issue with the occurrence of the worst terrorist attack to afflict Canada, the Air India bombing? Wasn't it mandated that the RCMP and CSIS would form closer ties. Close enough at least to share intelligence? Considering that much depends on it?

About as much, although not with quite the same consequences as what occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001, when Islamists had been identified and tracked entering the United States with very suspicious connections but the CIA and the FBI weren't on close enough speaking terms to share information. That too was supposed to have been solved. And then repeated itself with the Tsarnaev Boston Bombing?

And didn't Moscow just put on a great display of contemptuous ridiculing, an absolute farce of identifying an American intelligence agent on its soil, intent on (clumsily attempting a) recruit of Russian agents? Virtuous indignation swept through the Russian capital as they waxed righteous over the spy incident. Obviously an activity that present-day Russia would never stoop to.

Which brings us to Canadian Naval sub-lieutenant Jeffrey Delisle who had access at the Trinity intelligence centre in Halifax, to a data bank of classified secrets shared by the Five Eyes community (Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand), and who was being paid for espionage activities on behalf of Russia, betraying his country for a paltry few thousands in payment for selling his soul.

Delisle was arrested on January 13, 2012 on charges of violating the Security of Information Act. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to the charges. He had dishonourably earned $110,000 over a period of four years, paid out to him by Russia in exchange for secret, classified material. Material that not only compromised Canadian intelligence, but hugely that of the United States as well.

And he could have been arrested much, much sooner, long before he began to surrender truly highly sensitive material, much of it originating from the United States. "The information he gave up caused grave damage -- grave damage -- to the U.S. We're getting into the category of sources, techniques and methods of the most sensitive nature", one information source explained.

In fact, it wasn't even CSIS that discovered what Jeffrey Delisle was involved in. It was, in fact, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that undertook to alert the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to the illicit activities between Delisle and Moscow. CSIS undertook an investigation, secured evidence, but hesitated to share the file with the RCMP.

CSIS, acting on legal advice that held that in sharing the thick file implicating Delisle in espionage activities, Canadian and American secrets of the intelligence trade would be aired in open court proceedings. So . they . did . nothing. Just sat on what they had accumulated. And all the while Delisle continued his activities, sending on extremely sensitive information to Moscow, including classified U.S. materials.

At one point the exasperated FBI contacted the RCMP themselves to inform them that a Canadian military man was lifting sensitive information and handing it over for payment to the Russians. And the RCMP, newly advised, went about repeating what CSIS had already investigated, acquiring a file of their own, as Washington, recognizing that their secrets were continuing to be lifted and handed to the Russians, stewed over the delay in apprehending Delisle.

Delisle had walked into his deal with Russia in 2007, entering the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, volunteering to provide them with western intelligence's valuable secrets, for a price. He spied while at National Defence headquarters, the nerve centre of the military, the Strategic Joint Staff, and at the office of the Chief of Defence Intelligence. He was arrested in January 2012 after the December 2011 tip-off of the FBI to the RCMP.

Much earlier, however, senior CSIS officers were invited to Washington where they were informed by U.S. security officials that a naval officer in Halifax was providing Russian agents with intelligence for cash payment. Which inspired CSIS to receive court approval to begin electronic surveillance of the suspect. And clasp it close to their bosom.

"CSIS had already made the case. But RCMP had to do it again."