CSIS and the lure of secrecy

Poor CSIS, damned if it does, damned if it doesn't. Communicate with the Canadian public that is. Show transparency. Allow us common folk a peep into the "wilderness of mirrors" that is the intelligence business.

Want an example? Look no further than the explosive controversy surrounding CSIS director Richard Fadden's statements last week, comments that may yet lead to a parliamentary inquiry.

Before retracting parts of what he said, Fadden stated clearly that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service believes foreign agents are infiltrating at least two provincial governments and several B.C. municipal councils; and that this concern had been communicated to the most senior levels of the Canadian government.

A horde of critics rushed in to proclaim Fadden had no right being so public about such a potential threat. Such secrets, they insisted, should remain strictly hush-hush between CSIS and the appropriate people in the prime minister's office.

So long damned for obsessive secrecy, CSIS is now being blasted for loose lips.

This is the irony we have to keep in mind in this affair. For years, CSIS and its directors have been severely criticized for NOT being more open and transparent.

Its image has been that of a paranoid, frozen-lipped and turgidly obtuse spy service with virtually no capacity to communicate about ongoing threats and operations.

The most notorious failure was CSIS's inability to communicate adequately with the RCMP before the Air India bombing 25 years ago, a weakness the recent judicial inquiry concluded has not entirely been overcome.  

CSIS, however, has come a long way since Air India and recently worked closely with the RCMP, for example, on the Toronto 18 arrests. But communication with politicians and the public remains a glaring weak spot.

Striking the balance

Now, no one questions that security and intelligence gathering must operate largely in secret in order to protect sources and methods of operation.

The challenge has always been how to find the balance that preserves vital secrets while achieving the required amount of healthy transparency.

For when a spy service takes secrecy to extremes, it creates its own seeds of decay. In those situations, its mistakes will be headlined while its successes go unheralded and won't be available to demonstrate its worth.

In those situations, suspicions of abuse will inevitably cluster around an ultra-secret  agency, which does, after all, wield extraordinary power to poke into the lives of Canadians.

Says who? Well, for starters, a consultant's report prepared for CSIS three years ago, which amassed the views of a wide range of outside intelligence experts as well as the CSIS watchdog, the Security Intelligence Review Committee.

The consultants also reviewed the practices of allied services and its final report — obtained by Canadian Press through a freedom of information request — was a blistering attack on the culture of secrecy that the previous CSIS director, Jim Judd, and now Fadden have sought to shake up.

Petrified of publicity

We need to keep this study in mind as we try to make sense of last week's firestorm of criticism.

The report painted a CSIS so petrified of publicity that it was a danger to its own relevance.

It found that the CSIS annual report — when there even was one, some years the organization simply didn't bother — was viewed by media and decision makers as "dull, timid and full of recycled information."

It warned that "if CSIS does not move to increase its openness about operations, its reputation and credibility may suffer."

Canadian Intelligence looked particularly stuffy when compared to the security services of other democracies such as the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

One example: In 2006, the director of MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service, went public with the number of terrorist cells and persons being watched. It took CSIS over three years to follow suit, this spring.

No innocent

The organization's slow, and agonizing move towards transparency accelerated when Fadden took over the director's chair last August.

He was known as a highly experienced and savvy senior public servant, very well connected with the Ottawa power loop. No innocent, no lightweight.  

But this move to become more open about the operation caused bitter division within CSIS, division between those factions that want to stay in the shadows and those that feel times simply have to change.

When I interviewed Fadden for my documentaries in the CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, I noted the impressive light and cheerful architecture of the place. His response was interesting.

"I think it reflects to some degree the schizophrenia that we have," he said. "We are really in many ways an organization that looks inward.

"Yes, we have to protect how we do things, but if we don't tell the government the outcomes of our work, if we don't talk about how we do, or what we do with the public, we're not going to be effective.

"So we really have to be two things at once."

Counter-reformation

I fear now in the aftershocks of Fadden's statements about foreign intrigue here in Canada that CSIS will be driven back into its shell.

The faction that has always preferred the Canadian public to know nothing about its ways will likely stage a counter-reformation to bring back the darkness.

'When you've got this veil of secrecy around you, you find yourself sort of having this aura as well, that demands a certain respect and at the same time commands maybe a certain amount of budget. At the end of the day it's about power in Ottawa.' —Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former head of CSIS Asia Pacific

Nobody should underestimate the appeal of secrecy in the federal bureaucracy.

It makes their jobs seem more interesting, mysterious, even sexy, as several agents have told me.

If knowledge is power, holding tight to important secrets is a huge part of that elixir.

If the Fadden controversy drives CSIS backwards, I will regret it, as will Canadian society over time, I'm sure. 

The two documentaries I did for CBC's The National last week only came about because we received quite unprecedented access to the security service over months.

In the process, we were able to show a highly professional operation struggling with serious challenges on both the terrorism and espionage fronts, at a time as it was undergoing transformation within.

Transforming moment

Expanded dramatically since 9/11, the CSIS staff turned out to be an impressive bunch, enormously dedicated to a service that is regularly voted to be one of the best 100 employers in Canada by its employees.

Its popularity as a place to work ensures it gets around 16,000 applications from university grads every year, from which it picks about 100.

As for Canada's ethnic communities, far from smearing them with talk of espionage and foreign influence, as some politicians have raced to allege, we found CSIS agents to be some of the biggest defenders of these communities.

Indeed, they have been trying to intercede to prevent some of the bullying and harassment tactics on the part of foreign agents trying to force their will on certain ethnic communities here in Canada.

To never mention this kind of aggressive espionage and influence pushing that is taking place within certain Canadian communities, as some politicians seem to prefer, seems both dangerous and delusional.

Like all institutions, CSIS has its flaws and knows that.

Fadden clearly thinks it's too stuck in the old ways and needs more fresh air to blow through its defensive mentality.

Perhaps, given the brouhaha of the past week or so, it may be getting more than it can take at the moment.

I hope not. The point of our documentaries was to give viewers an unprecedented look inside CSIS and, also, to nudge the organization towards greater openness.

Because of the unexpected controversy surrounding Fadden's remarks, I think we achieved the first goal, but may have lost the second.   

If so, and CSIS slams its shell shut, then we all lose.