The Commons: Wait and see

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 5:23 PM - 73 Comments

The Scene. Bob Rae stood, with a number of papers in his right hand, and attempted to square what the Prime Minister seemed to say last week about the mandate of Justice Frank Iacobucci with what the government actually announced about Mr. Iacobucci’s mandate this weekend. Suffice it to say, Mr. Rae found the latter quite lacking.

John Baird was sent up to read from the script. “Mr. Speaker, here is what the Prime Minister did say in this place last week. He said that he had requested Justice Frank Iacobucci to undertake an independent, comprehensive and proper review of all the redacted documents related to Taliban prisoners. Justice Iacobucci will look at all the relevant documents going back not just to this government but even to the previous government,” Mr. Baird reported. “He will report on the proposed redactions, how they genuinely relate to information that would be injurious to Canada’s national security, national defence or international interests. We should have confidence in a man of this gentleman’s esteem.”

For all intents and purposes, this line of inquiry was thus concluded. Still, the opposition kept on. Continue…

The pivotal paperwork (VI)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 14 Comments

Two months after the government was first asked to explain why a reference to abuse in a 2006 field report was redacted in 2007, but released uncensored in 2009, the questions having been put to three different departments, an answer, of sorts, arrives from the Justice Department.

Those questions, for the record, were as follows: In regards to the redaction noted below, who oversaw, ordered or made that redaction? On what grounds was that reference to abuse redacted? Did those grounds no longer apply when Gen. Natynczyk disclosed the reference to abuse last week?

I reprint the response received this morning here in its entirety. Continue…

Connecting the dots

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 3:23 PM - 45 Comments

To recap, Stockwell Day is a winner, moving from International Trade to President of the Treasury Board to handle the difficult task of enforcing fiscal discipline on government operations. Peter Van Loan is a loser, demoted from Public Safety to International Trade because the Prime Minister was dissatisfied with his performance, even though Day’s move from Public Safety to International Trade a little over a year ago was seen as an important promotion to a pivotal file. Meanwhile, Vic Toews, who seemingly couldn’t be trusted to oversee the difficult task of enforcing fiscal discipline on government operations, moves from Treasury Board to Public Safety, where he will be charged with a massive review of national security.

Look at us, doing stuff (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 12:40 AM - 52 Comments

Sources tell CTV that terrorists might be headed to Canada with the intent to enter the United States.

Insiders say this potential threat — and what to do about it — was discussed with the prime minister and his national security ministers on Monday.

Wider ramifications

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 11:04 PM - 64 Comments

The Star covers today’s House debate. Canadian Press reviews the backroom battle. And with the Liberal motion now passed, the Globe considers what could come next.

The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois, which together outnumber the Harper Conservatives in Parliament, passed a motion by a 145-143 vote that seeks to compel the release of thousands of uncensored documents on Afghan prisoners.

If the Conservatives ignore the order, as expected, opposition parties could vote to find the government in contempt, sparking a battle that might result in the courts being asked to weigh the limits of parliamentary privilege.

Ministers or other MPs found in contempt could be admonished and embarrassed by being compelled to appear before the Bar of the House – the floor of the Commons – to face a grilling from MPs.

But this House order-to-produce is a rarely used power and one that is in potential conflict with laws – such as those concerning privacy and national security – that Parliament itself has passed.

'The national interest'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 3:35 PM - 69 Comments

The Department of Justice responds to the Parliamentary Law Clerk’s opinion of what Parliamentary committees are entitled to.

Will we ever know what happened in Afghanistan?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 11:21 PM - 5 Comments

Canadian Press chronicles the latest development—allegations of witness intimidation—in the Military Police Complaints Commission’s attempt to investigate allegations of torture in Afghanistan and what the Canadian military knew, or should have known, about it.

Hearings were halted last week amid a dispute over the inquiry’s jurisdiction. The Federal Court has already ruled to limit its scope. The chairman of the commission has been told he’ll be reassigned on Dec. 11, likely before the commission has finished its investigation, despite opposition demands that his term be extended. Citing national security, the Justice Department has advised that some witnesses will not be allowed to testify fully, including Richard Colvin, who claims to have “personal knowledge” of what military police knew or could have known.

The Liberals are pursuing a parliamentary probe of the issue, while the NDP wants the chairman and Mr. Colvin to testify before a Parliamentary committee.

Dick Cheney and the lessons of Watergate

By John Parisella - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 7:00 PM - 79 Comments

It will soon be 35 years since President Gerald Ford pardoned his disgraced predecessor, Richard Nixon, on September 8, 1974. It was the first and only time in American history that such an extraordinary act took place. Historians have rendered a mixed judgment on the wisdom of such a move. Some believe it mined the goodwill Ford was shown following Nixon’s resignation and conclude it was a deciding factor in his loss in 1976 to Jimmy Carter. Others look back on Ford’s action as a gesture of healing that permitted America to move beyond the dark chapters of Watergate and Vietnam. I subscribe to both interpretations—it was not the best move in the short term, but we have come to recognize that, whatever Ford’s motives were at the time, a prolonged process may have been more traumatic for the nation. Among some of those who lived through the Watergate travails as politicians or political operatives, a third interpretation took root. To them, Ford’s pardon amounted to a weakening of the executive branch of the United States government. One of those who believed this was Ford’s chief of staff, Dick Cheney.

Continue…

Moving on up

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 3 Comments

It was a favour, dressed up as a snub. When the United States cut a deal last week to send four Muslim Uighurs from Guantánamo Bay to Bermuda, it did so behind Britain’s back—not out of spite but compassion. Washington’s tin ear for Commonwealth protocol may be legendary. But even it knew London would bristle at being cut out of the loop on a matter of national security. Bermuda, after all, remains a self-governing protectorate of the United Kingdom, which means foreign governments doing business with it are supposed to give the mother country courtesy calls on issues that might carry foreign policy implications.

But as the former detainees roamed the beaches of their new island home, it became increasingly clear that Uncle Sam had spared Britain a massive diplomatic headache. The Guantánamo Uighurs are part of a Muslim separatist movement hailing from China’s far northwestern territory, which Beijing treats as a terrorist threat. Any country that took them in risked diplomatic or economic recriminations from China—though by all accounts the men posed negligible risk. By the weekend, senior U.S. officials were confirming that they had deliberately kept the transfer deal with Bermuda secret, providing the U.K. with some much-needed deniability.

Continue…

Cheney’s Impact

By John Parisella - Friday, May 22, 2009 at 4:59 PM - 20 Comments

As expected, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama squared off on Gitmo and national security on Thursday. Obama focused on fleshing out his plan for the coming weeks, standing resolutely behind his decision to close Gitmo while acknowledging there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the inmate problem. ‘Obama the teacher’ was on display, as the president made the case for his decisions by appealing to reason and depending on facts. It is likely that his address reinforced in his voters the belief that closing Gitmo and ending torture is the right policy. Yet, Cheney’s continued crusade in favour of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and keeping Guantanamo has led to a substantial increase in the former vice-president’s popularity (up eight per cent to 37 per cent, according to CNN). Never mind that Bush and a significant number of Republicans—including John McCain—were leaning in the same direction as Obama on those issues.

Rising support among stalwart Republicans is likely behind Cheney’s increase in the polls. He is not certainly not prompting any widespread nostalgia for the Bush-Cheney years. However, the question now is whether Cheney might be motivating Obama’s policy on national security. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd seems to think so, and an increasing number of left-leaning Democrats are becoming concerned about some of Obama’s Gitmo-related policies. If Dowd is right, it would seem to have exposed a serious flaw in the White House’s planning process. There is an air of improvisation being detected by some observers. At first, it was Limbaugh, and it now seems to be Cheney that is driving the Obama agenda on national security. Continue…

Security Watch: China, Iran, North Korea

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 5:53 PM - 2 Comments

The Intelligence Security Diary is a monthly compendium of open-source intelligence on global security matters distributed by Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. Its findings rely on freely available information gleaned from public, unclassified sources. Each month, Macleans.ca summarizes these findings.

CHINA:

• A once-reclusive China played a surprisingly active role at the recent G20 meetings in London, pushing its trade and anti-protectionism agenda while working to minimize concerns about the environment. China also indicated it wouldn’t hesitate to throw its economic weight behind its effort to maintain sovereignty over Tibet. As its economic clout grows due to its holdings of U.S., China is expected to emerge as a major player in global affairs. Its successful strong-arming of France into abandoning a clampdown on tax havens that could have targeted Hong Kong and Macau, as well its derailing of U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s bid to include environmental concerns in the summit communiqué, may provide a hint of things to come.

IRAN:

• Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi has been convicted of espionage in an Iranian court. Prosecutors alleged Saberi was transferring information gleaned from government documents and interviews to American intelligence sources. Should Iran’s Revolutionary Court find Saberi’s actions were part of an attempt to overthrow the government, she could face the death penalty. The case is expected to further dampen efforts at reviving diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S., though Saberi’s conviction could be an attempt at gaining leverage to secure the release of three Iranians accused of spying in Iraq. It may also be an attempt to deflect discussion away from its nuclear ambitions and delay a preemptive strike against it by Israel.

NORTH KOREA:

• Leader Kim Jong Il was re-appointed as the country’s defense chief, a post he has occupied since 1998, when North Korea began testing long-range missiles.
• Intelligence sources indicate North Korea may have as much as $5 billion stashed away in a secret slush fund known as “Division 39.” The fund was set up in 1970s to further Kim Jong Il’s political career and is also linked to North Korea’s weapons programs. Analysts believe that freezing it could be the key to regime change in North Korea. “Division 39″ is believed to be made up of two principal arms—one to fund legal activities undertaken by the Daesong Group, the Daesong bank and Golden Star Bank, the other to fund illegal activities, such as trafficking in heroin and amphetamines. The money is doled out primarily to key military officials and Workers’ Party leadership figures.

SOMALIA:

• Somali pirates have reportedly agreed to financial deals with a local Islamist terrorist group known as al Shabab (“the youths”). The group once worked as the military wing of the Islamist Courts Union, which controlled Somalia for six months in 2006, and is intent on implementing Taliban-style Islamic government in Somalia. Al Shabab’s leadership is partially made up of graduates of al Qaeda’s training camps and its membership is said to include several veteran al Qaeda figures.

U.S.:

• The Manhattan District Attorney’s office have indicted Limmt Economic & Trade Co. on 118 charges related to accusations it engaged in “illegal financial transactions to allow Iran to import a number fo proscribed materials used in weapons programs, including metal alloys and tungsten copper plates.” The charges date back to activities that allegedly took place between November 2006 and September 2008. Limmt is accused of using at least eight aliases or front companies to cloak their identity.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates released a “strategic Pentagon blueprint” last month that calls for wholesale changes to the way the U.S. military establishment conducts its business affairs. The most noteworthy element in Gates’s blueprint is his call for the U.S. to abandon the production of the American-made F-22 Raptor fighter jet. Gates also wants purchasing decisions to reflect current needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than the hypothetical needs that might emerge from future wars. Congress, however, could be reluctant to implement Gates’s proposals—he’ll need significant bipartisan support and that may be hard to come by as politicians begin preparing for the 2010 mid-term election.
• The Pentagon announced it has spent over $100 million responding to cyber attacks in the past six months. Last year alone, there were 5,500 attacks against government computers, up from 3,800 the year before. Reports also surfaced the U.S. electrical grid could be vulnerable to attacks that could potentially cause major service disruptions. It has been sugggested that the majority of the cyber attacks against the U.S. originated in China.

'So, you're the Transport Minister, how was this allowed to happen?'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 13, 2009 at 7:12 PM - 22 Comments

CTV’s Tom Clark has some questions for John Baird. Hilarity ensues.

Security Watch: Afghanistan, India and the U.S.

By Macleans.ca staff - Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 2:34 PM - 9 Comments

The Intelligence Security Diary is a monthly compendium of open-source intelligence on global security matters distributed by Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. Its findings rely on freely available information gleaned from public, unclassified sources. Each month, Macleans.ca summarizes these findings.

Afghanistan:

Colonel Ian Hope of the U.S. Army War College and a former battalion commander with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry criticizes the command structure used by international military forces in Afghanistan in a recently-released paper for the Strategic Studies Institute. Hope argues that the unprecedented splitting of “control of the ground fight… between several unified or ‘supreme’ commanders in charge of U.S. Central Comman, the North Atlantic Treat Organization, and U.S. Special Operations Command” has been a mistake. In its place, the U.S. should put a single “supreme commander” in charge of the Operation Enduring Freedom Joint Operations Area, a move which would be consistent with the time-tested principle of “unity of command.”

Continue…

Incidentally …

By kadyomalley - Friday, May 23, 2008 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

UPDATE: Here is the relevant section of the Canada Evidence Act.

Some key definitions:

• “potentially injurious information” means information of a type that, if it were disclosed to the public, could injure international relations or national defence or national security.
• “sensitive information” means information relating to international relations or national defence or national security that is in the possession of the Government of Canada, whether originating from inside or outside Canada, and is of a type that the Government of Canada is taking measures to safeguard.

The federal judge who will, as per today’s ruling, make the final* decision on which documents will be disclosed to Omar Khadr’s legal team, and which may be redacted or withheld for reasons of national security grounds is Richard Mosley — the same Richard Mosley who, during a previous incarnation as associate deputy minister at the Department of Justice, was responsible for drafting much of Canada’s current anti-terrorist legislation, which has raised concerns over potential conflict of interest in the past.

(For more on Richard Mosley, check out “Judging his own work”, by Chris Selley and yours truly, which ran on macleans.ca last year as an exclusive online feature.)

*According to a kind law-talking guy who gets to remain nameless, but who is only too happy to impart wisdom on demand, the decisions can be appealed to the Federal Court of Canada, and, ultimately, the Supreme Court.