Appearing before the public safety committee on Tuesday, CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O'Brian testified that Canadian intelligence agencies would make use of information obtained by torture from foreign agencies in the "one-in-a-million" eventuality that "lives were at stake".
In fact, said O'Brian, who has been with CSIS since its inception in 1984, "we would be bound to do so."
Under further questioning from aghast committee members, he admitted that agencies often "have no idea under what conditions info received from foreign agencies is obtained" and "just because a country has a questionable or even abysmal human rights record does not mean info received from them is necessarily extracted by torture".
That would be the old don't ask, don't tell Syria defence. CSIS Director Jim Judd gave that very same defence about intelligence from Syria on Arar back in November 2006.
So are we still trading info with Syria and Egypt? Yes we are, but now "with caveats".
The committee members pressed on : "What Canadians want to hear is that we do not condone the use of information derived from torture."
O'Brian :
"I would love to give you a simple answer. The simple answer is that we will never use info from torture. I cannot say that because recipients of info do not know how that info was obtained. I can say we do not knowingly" - and he stressed this again -"knowingly use info extracted by torture."
Huge resulting stink in the Star, G&M, and CBC.
Then yesterday CSIS Director Jim Judd and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan went before the same public safety committee to
"I think it's unfortunate that Mr. O'Brian may have been confused in his testimony. He will clarifying that via a letter to this committee. I know of no instance where such information has been made use of by our service."and
"He [O'Brian] ventured into the hypothetical. In the past we used information received obtained by torture. Such information is not to be relied upon. We've changed our policies. Our policy now is under no circumstances do we condone the use of torture for any reason."Judd went on to explain that the intelligence agencies are directed in this policy by the federal government.
Ok, that seems pretty straight forward, right?
Next up - Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan responding to Bloc MP Mourani - italics mine :
"We do not condone the use of torture in intelligence gathering and our clear directive to our law enforcement agencies and intelligence services is that they are not to condone the use of torture, practice torture, or knowingly use any information obtained by torture."Uh oh.
And here's the relevant quote from O'Brian's "clarification" letter - again, italics mine :
"I wish to clarify for the committee that CSIS certainly does not condone torture and that it is the policy of CSIS to not knowingly rely upon information that may have been obtained through torture."Uh oh. Anybody see any difference between Tuesday's "confusion" and Thursday's clarification"? Because I don't.
As O'Brian points out, if we have no clue how the info we get is obtained, we're free to go ahead and use it. And this would presumably be just as true on Thursdays as it is on Tuesdays.
I'd also like to point out that the RCMP got a completely free ride here in the media coverage.
In his opening statement to the commitee on Tuesday, RCMP spokesman Gilles Michaud rejected the use of torture as repugnant and the information obtained thereby as unreliable, but explained the RCMP position on the use of intelligence obtained from foreign agencies :
"I want to be clear here - there is no absolute ban on the use of any information by the RCMP."Uh huh.
O'Brian lost control of the spin there for a moment here - and that's all that happened.
Cross-posted at Creekside
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