CSIS Slammed

The watchdog of Canada's spy agency recently issued what the Canadian Press has characterized as a "damning government report." The following brief article appeared on page A8 of today's Sudbury Star:

OTTAWA (CP) -- Canada's security and intelligence investigators routinely destroy screening interview notes and are not above lying, making it difficult for anyone to scrutinize their work, warns a damning government report.

And when they don't destroy them, notes by officers from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, can be inaccurate or incomplete, or both, says the Security Intelligence Review Committee.

The watchdog's June 2005 report, dubbed Top Secret and obtained by The Canadian Press, offers rare and disturbing insight into a security agency it says is not above lying and manipulating information to achieve its ends -- even if in the process it destroys the reputation and career of an innocent person.

Written by SIRC chair Paule Gauthier, the report says Bhupinder Singh Liddar was denied a consular appointment to India's Punjab because a rushed assessment by a rookie CSIS investigator was "inaccurate and misleading."

And though this is nothing new for the Canadian security and intelligence apparatus, it is important to take note when even government sources admit it. No wonder more and more people are objecting to the indefinite, arbitrary detention of five Muslim men based, pretty much, on CSIS saying, "Because we said so!"