Juno News - April 10, 2023


Former CSIS intelligence officer speaks out on Han Dong reports

Topics
leaked documents
Mentioned
Andrew Lawton Show Andrew Kirsch Doug Ford INSERA
Canada’s ongoing war against legal gun owners (ft. Tracey Wilson) Trans activists want to ban Fox News in Canada

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

200.24

Word count

4,237

Sentence count

233


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, former CSIS analyst Andrew Lawton talks about the leak of documents to the Globe and Mail and Global News, and the implications for the intelligence community and the 5 Eyes community. Andrew also talks about his own experience in CSIS and how he handled the leaks.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:08.260 Andrew, good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today.
00:00:11.460 Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here.
00:00:14.140 Yeah, it's good to talk to you again. I enjoyed our last chat, which was that higher level discussion and some specifics as well about your experience in CSIS.
00:00:23.680 And I wanted to actually use that experience as a jumping off point for this story, because obviously I've been covering on this show the Chinese interference stuff for several months now it's been.
00:00:35.060 And I think the political side of it and the global geopolitical side of it has been well covered.
00:00:39.900 But we haven't actually talked about the I think the fundamental question here of what is in these reports, these documents that have now been leaked to the Globe and Mail and to Global News.
00:00:51.420 And just to put some context around how people should be interpreting what they're reading about these things.
00:00:57.340 So let me just ask you, generally speaking, as someone who devoted your life for a time to service in CSIS, how did you feel when you learned that there was a leak?
00:01:09.040 Yeah, I wasn't too happy about it. You know, I've been very defensive about the organization.
00:01:14.920 I'm not happy with the leaks. You know, I don't think that's a whistleblower. I think they're leakers.
00:01:19.400 I, you know, we take explain that difference because I know there's been so I think a whistleblower and I'm not a lawyer, so don't quote me on the legal definitions, but where there is a blowing the whistle on legal activities or wrongdoing or where I think there are some there's some protections around releasing otherwise sensitive information where it's in this very specific circumstances.
00:01:43.400 circumstances, whereas in this case, I think it was just a situation where the person took sensitive classified documents and kind of dumped them on the public.
00:01:51.400 And I don't think they exposed certainly no wrongdoing of the organization.
00:01:55.400 You know, these were reports that were sent out and through appropriate channels.
00:01:59.400 And this this person felt like they wanted more people to read them, which, you know, is not in our independent.
00:02:05.400 We're not allowed to make those decisions independently on the collection side. Right.
00:02:09.400 Like CSIS has its role, which is to collect, analyze and advise government on threats to national security.
00:02:14.400 And then the deciders decide. Right. We might not always be happy with what they decide, but that's the way it kind of works out.
00:02:20.400 That's how the system works together.
00:02:22.400 So, you know, when I see somebody kind of breaching on the, you know, the advising part because they don't feel like the deciders made the right decision.
00:02:29.400 I said, well, that's not, you know, that's not our job. That's not on people's.
00:02:33.400 That's not their decision to make.
00:02:35.400 And that's why I felt I said not not very comfortable because there are repercussions ramifications, right?
00:02:41.400 And we are out there when I was out there.
00:02:43.400 We're talking about last time as an intelligence officer knocking on doors and asking people to give me confidential secret, you know, information that I can then, you know, put in reports and investigate national security.
00:02:53.400 I'm promising confidentiality. I'm saying the things you tell me and all will be protected and take that oath.
00:02:59.400 And when we work with our partners and Five Eyes community, we give them the same promise of protection and maintaining the integrity of the information.
00:03:05.400 So when it gets out, it's a really bad look.
00:03:08.400 Now, in this case, I think it's our own information that we've compromised.
00:03:11.400 So I don't know if our partners will be upset with us, but it's, you know, this is sensitive stuff.
00:03:17.400 These are things and I'm not sure the specific sources of them, but it really does get into sources and methods.
00:03:22.400 And maybe people can make some observations about how this information was collected.
00:03:26.400 And so those people were investigating can better protect themselves from our investigative measures, right?
00:03:31.400 Which is, you know, what we don't want to happen.
00:03:34.400 So I mean, it's a long answer, but I don't like it.
00:03:38.400 I know many of my former colleagues don't like it.
00:03:41.400 I'm sure the organization doesn't like it.
00:03:43.400 And whatever we think about the value of the information we have, you know, a lot of people say, well, this is this is good that we know about these things.
00:03:50.400 It's important. Remember, there's a cost to that as well.
00:03:53.400 There's a risk when our information gets out like this.
00:03:56.400 So I just don't want to forget that.
00:03:58.400 Now, I would just point out here, you're a former conservative candidate provincially in 2018.
00:04:04.400 So I don't know how you identify politically now, but you're not a partisan liberal.
00:04:09.400 This isn't coming from a place of supporting the liberals, which is I think we're a lot of the defensive of your position on that has come from the last couple of months.
00:04:16.400 You know what? It's really been interesting.
00:04:18.400 So I put out a tweet on tweet on tweet a lot.
00:04:20.400 I don't love social media, but that's probably good.
00:04:22.400 That's probably why I know.
00:04:24.400 So I may be a bad candidate, but I put a tweet about how I did not appreciate the leaks.
00:04:30.400 I did not like the whistleblowers, you know, column there in the Globe and Mail saying, you know, this is why I did it.
00:04:36.400 The person who called himself a whistleblower, I just said he was a leaker.
00:04:39.400 This is why I did it and all these things.
00:04:41.400 So, you know, I wrote what I think was a harsh but fair kind of a Twitter thread, and it was retweeted by liberal and liberal supporters and partisans.
00:04:49.400 I'm sure some bots, and I kind of joked by the way they find out that I ran for the PCs.
00:04:54.400 You know, there's a lot of things with I hate Doug Ford and the hashtags, and I was like, I ran, you know.
00:04:59.400 So in my opinion, this is a nonpartisan issue.
00:05:02.400 It shouldn't be a partisan issue.
00:05:04.400 You know, all parties are at risk.
00:05:06.400 All levels of government are at risk.
00:05:07.400 It doesn't have to be a partisan issue.
00:05:10.400 It's become one, unfortunately.
00:05:12.400 But but yeah, it's definitely been a talking point on one side.
00:05:16.400 And I said coming from a from a former PC candidate in 2018.
00:05:21.400 Yeah, by no means a partisan liberal supporter.
00:05:25.400 I think you can safely say that.
00:05:27.400 But but let's take the position you've put forward and advance it a bit, because I agree that whistleblower protections generally are when someone is exposing legal wrongdoing and generally within their own organization.
00:05:38.400 And in this case, I think actually ceases comes off quite well in the leak, and it's the government that comes off not particularly well.
00:05:44.400 But assuming we take it every take it all at face value, and we'll get into that in a couple of moments.
00:05:49.400 We have allegations that China was interfering, that CSIS knew about it, that they had some very specific examples of politicians and candidates that were either involved or were the passive beneficiaries of this support.
00:06:03.400 CSIS takes this to the government, and it looks like the government did not take this seriously.
00:06:08.400 I think that's what the reports that we've seen have shown.
00:06:11.400 So what is the proper recourse?
00:06:12.400 Because because there's a part of what you're saying that it sounds like it's just to say, oh, well, the government had that call and maybe another government will take it differently.
00:06:21.400 Well, you're saying on behalf of the leaker, the people who are so you're I'm trying to understand what your position is on what should have happened in this case.
00:06:30.400 If anything, if someone was very frustrated that this was getting handed to the government and they weren't taking it seriously.
00:06:37.400 Well, look, it kind of goes to our previous point there. I ran for office. You want to be a decision maker, you go and become a decision maker.
00:06:43.400 You want to go work for a political party, you think that things are not happening and you want to see happen.
00:06:48.400 You volunteer, you get involved, you be a public person, you advocate for your positions.
00:06:52.400 You know, they you don't have to necessarily put your name on the ballot, but you can go be a staffer and try to go to a ministry or some area that you're passionate about and knowledgeable about and say these are the policy positions that I think that we should take.
00:07:04.400 I think that, you know, more than anything, is probably my frustration, because if this person and I don't know who this person is or whether they work for CSIS or not, I think it's a lot of people, I guess, is what we're seeing, too.
00:07:16.400 But they were a very public senior person that had access to this information and they resigned their post and said, the reason why I'm resigning is because I don't think we're taking this issue seriously.
00:07:26.400 There are a lot of public reports that they can point to that would demonstrate that.
00:07:30.400 And we have what INSERA, I always get the acronyms wrong, so apologies for that.
00:07:34.400 But INSERA and ENSICOP, we've been doing, CSIS has been putting out reports on foreign interference for years.
00:07:41.400 The CSIS has been reviewed and the recommendations have come from parliamentary committees or ENSICOP that is nonpartisan, that's chaired by a Liberal MP.
00:07:53.400 And they're saying their recommendations, things that we should be doing.
00:07:56.400 Those recommendations haven't been adhered to.
00:07:58.400 So there's plenty of public information that suggests that this is a problem that should be actioned without just kind of dumping this sensitive reporting on it into the public.
00:08:12.400 And I think that so, yeah, I that was one of my points to the to the person to say, hey, look, come on out.
00:08:17.400 Put your name to it.
00:08:18.400 Like, let's talk about if you want to talk about it and not in a threatening way, but like I think that would almost do better.
00:08:23.400 I was in a meeting and I don't think we did a good job with this and we should do better.
00:08:28.400 For me, that's a more convincing argument, to be honest, than letting this play out this way.
00:08:35.400 Yeah. And I mean, to be honest, my view on this and you may have some people that whether you call them a leaker or whistleblower, they think they're smarter than the system and they think they can leak it and keep their identity guarded and never be outed.
00:08:46.400 But you would have to assume that someone doing this, knowing what they're doing, would be doing it with the full expectation that they're going to be identified and they're going to be punished in some way, whatever that is.
00:08:58.400 And and in that way, it almost looks more favorably upon you if you do just come out and name yourself before someone else names you.
00:09:05.400 Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to, you know, harp too much on the one person and I don't know the situation and who that person is. Right.
00:09:12.400 But this is coming from somebody who wrote a book. I mean, I wrote a memoir about about working for CSIS.
00:09:19.400 And you better believe that I was concerned about my, you know, considered and was concerned about my Security Information Act obligations.
00:09:26.400 And, you know, I they say you're only kind of guilty when the judge finds you, finds you guilty.
00:09:32.400 But I had my name and my face in the book. And so I was ready to say this is why I said it.
00:09:37.400 This is what I think it's not in violation. I I didn't do names of former colleagues or any operational, you know, information that give things away.
00:09:45.400 But I I acknowledge people might be mad at me. You know, I acknowledge that the the CSIS was not going to be happy about the book being written.
00:09:54.400 So, yeah, it's not a great feeling. I'm sure the person has got all all sorts of stuff going on inside of them about what they feel they need to do, what they feel they want the public to hear and what their obligations are.
00:10:07.400 But, yeah, I think that maybe would have been if they really wanted that conversation, you've got to kind of have it.
00:10:16.400 You've got to lead it. You've got to be in front of it, because what's happened with with things are coming left and right and showing up in newspaper articles one day and the next article the next day, it kind of gets away.
00:10:26.400 You know, it can get a little muddled. I assume there's not, you know, one centralized database of CSIS documents and information and reports that any of the, you know, three thousand some odd employees at CSIS can go and peruse at their leisure.
00:10:39.580 Things are, I assume, quite siloed and segmented. So let's talk about just the logistics of how many people would likely have access to information of this nature on a particular file.
00:10:51.260 And I'm assuming it would vary. But when you're getting into this level of specificity, are we talking about five people, 50 people, 500 people?
00:11:02.000 Well, you know, I don't know the exact numbers or could I probably say, but I'll say this, that, you know, these the classified or sensitive documents that were leaked, those were distributed to a large number of people.
00:11:19.140 I think there were across the five eyes. So the number of other intelligence services to, I think, PCO, PMO, like there's a there's a big list once the once kind of those get out of your organization.
00:11:30.780 And I don't know how many people are on that mailing list, but it's not you know, it's not one. Right. It's it seemed like they were a few.
00:11:37.220 And when you start getting into specific reports that were sent out, yeah, you can probably drill down who's in the receiving list of a report, who is on the inside of a case file, working specific investigations.
00:11:49.980 Absolutely. That stuff is pretty tightly controlled. I think if you work with or for the service and you can be pretty confident that they do a good job of protecting it.
00:12:03.060 And to your earlier question about will this get out, the more information the people reveal about what they know, the easier it's going to be to narrow down, you know, who had access to all of that information.
00:12:16.340 I think that's also what you're getting kind of getting down to. They are they are tightly controlled. Not everyone gets access to everything.
00:12:23.700 There's this you need to know principle you hear. You may be familiar with it, but even if you have the highest levels of national security, even if you're cleared to to whatever the highest clearances, if you don't need to know that information, then you should not be provided that information.
00:12:38.420 You know, you don't get read in on every file. I can't walk down the hall at CSIS and say, hey, what do you, you know, what are you working on?
00:12:45.620 Hey, what's happening in China today?
00:12:47.200 Yeah, like what's Afghanistan today?
00:12:48.860 What's going on? You know, what's, you know, what's going on over there, right? You're generally restricted to what you have specific access to.
00:12:56.180 Now, certain areas would have, you know, that can be broad. You know, when I was, when I was working there and I was in a support desk, that can mean a lot of different files in a very kind of shallow level, a lot of different investigations or someone working one investigation, but with a tight team will have all the information on, you know, very, very small investigation.
00:13:16.260 So, yeah, it's interesting to see as these can come out, I make assessments about, okay, like how close was this person to the reporting versus, or the collection of the information versus the reporting, which would be on, was this distributed to a decision maker?
00:13:32.720 And therefore, you know, they're getting selective intelligence and saying, why am I the only one who got this and more people need to hear? Or is it somebody who is, you know, collecting this information, passing it up and feel like it's not going anywhere? I think those are, you know, those are different things.
00:13:47.960 I saw a Twitter thread from, from someone recently, and I can't recall who it was. And I think they probably had some connection to the intelligence world that said intelligence reports are not to be taken as, you know, 100% ironclad fact. They're, they're meant to be reports that are then taken along with other various inputs. We saw that during the Public Order Emergency Commission, where CSIS had this report and the government ultimately found something else. So I'm just curious if you should could shine some light on that. I mean, these documents, and I don't know the formal title of,
00:14:17.960 of them, and there are probably several, what is the proper way to receive those? Are they, are they, is there a margin of error on these things? Or is it as certain as it comes, or as certain as CSIS is, when these things are put in paper?
00:14:31.540 Yeah, I mean, the nature of intelligence, it's dynamic, it's evolving, you can have, you're building a picture, and you're trying to provide information and assessment of that information, you're processing information into, you know, tell in this case, intelligence assessments to say, this is,
00:14:47.960 you know, what we think is, is happening, this is the picture, but yeah, it's, you know, getting it right or wrong, or just making, making informed links, and then later on information comes up that challenges that hypothesis, or changes it a little bit, or put some context and nuance onto reports. So, you know, in a case,
00:15:07.960 in a case like this, or in the fact that this is a threat like this, that CSIS is a core part of CSIS's mandate, that's, you know, foreign influenced activities, that is kind of a nuanced threat,
00:15:21.040 you will see reporting that comes out that is just trying to provide people a picture of what's going on that they can make decisions based on, right? And that's why it is great, right? It is, you make the best decisions you can, you make risk informed decisions,
00:15:37.820 threat informed decisions. And I think that's one of the concerns you have is, well, did this person who is, who is access to information, they have access to everything?
00:15:47.800 Or are they selectively getting access to it? Do they know what risk mitigation is put in place? So, you know, what decisions were made with that, with that information?
00:15:57.260 We don't, that is, we don't know, that's not always provided what, what kind of is happening behind the scenes, we kind of see, okay, well, they, they, they got this, and they did that, but we don't know everything they got, we don't know everything they did, right?
00:16:11.260 And that's, I think one of the challenges of getting selective leaks of, of, of documents is, it's, yeah, it's not going to provide the whole picture. I'm not saying the information passed along is wrong.
00:16:21.480 I'm not saying that the documents given weren't like, at the time, accurate pictures of what we knew then or about the specific threat then. But it's, it's hard to say, like, this is the smoking gun, right? It's, that doesn't always the case in this type, these types of investigations.
00:16:37.040 Yeah, and I, it's funny, because I, I know that some of my audience right now is, like, seething, because we've been going hard on this story based on these reports for the last, not at you, just probably at me more than anything, because they, you know, they know I've been talking about this, and it's one of these things, as a journalist, I'm inclined towards more information, and the more the better, and then we can decide from it.
00:16:55.220 And, and I, I realize there is a, I mean, perhaps it's a philosophical point more than it's a legal point about what the limit is. At what point does it become justifiable to do this?
00:17:04.940 And, and I think, you know, there is one sort of takeaway of if you feel it's worth staking your life and your career, and the legal punishments on, then, okay, let the cards fall where they may.
00:17:15.920 Well, and I want to say this to folks, too, because, you know, I get asked a lot about the leaks, the documents, those types of things. And I feel like I want to present that, that context, which is these have, you know, threats and risks, and let's add nuance to it.
00:17:30.920 But I dedicated 10 years of my life to investigating threats to national security, and many of my colleagues have as well. And this is one of them, right? So I do not want to discount the risk, I do not, and the threat, I do not want to come across in any way that's saying that, you know, there's nothing to see here, and nobody, no, that is absolutely not the case, right?
00:17:52.700 The CSIS has been putting in their public reports, there have been recommendations coming out of government bodies that this is a threat, this is a concern, this is something we should do more about.
00:18:01.320 And there are legitimate questions to be asked 100% about what did the government know, and what did they do? And was that appropriate, right? And if they did, you know, and then there's the nuance, which is, well, look, if they didn't do more, is that because they benefited, right?
00:18:19.480 And I think everyone wants to get, and those are absolutely 100% fair questions that we should be asking, which people are calling for public inquiry, or more sunlight and more transparency, and I agree.
00:18:31.860 So, you know, I don't want to discount that and be used to say, well, you know, the leaker is not a whistleblower, and therefore, you know, this is a big brouhaha about nothing. Absolutely not. You know, we have an intelligence service that's been working on this, we've been sending reports up, and it is a real threat, and we should do more 100%.
00:18:49.800 So yeah, I, you know, I get the blowback, I get the frustration, I'm, I always feel like because I'm from the intelligence community, I need to say, look, guys, you know, don't put my former colleagues at risk by dumping, you know, sensitive intel out.
00:19:03.100 But my goodness, we, you know, there's plenty of public information that says this is a problem that we should be doing more about. This has sparked a conversation about that. And yeah, I'm not saying there's no public benefit. I'm just saying I wish we didn't get here because of leaks.
00:19:19.800 Yeah, and I agree process is important. I mean, it's the old thing about, you know, if police search someone without a warrant, and they find something there, but they weren't allowed to have searched in the first place, there's a remedy available to that person. So I know it's not a perfectly analogous situation, but you can't just take this Machiavellian approach to these things, which I think we can agree on in principle, if not necessarily in the specific case here.
00:19:42.280 You might like this link, you might not like the next one. And if we're going to rely on individual people who feel empowered to do it, I don't think that's a great system.
00:19:50.360 Yeah, so whatever we feel about this, but once again, foreign interference, that's a core CSIS mandate threat since 1984, that our Security Intelligence Service been asked to investigate and advise government on, and they've been doing that.
00:20:07.000 And now we've got to figure out, say, what do we do? What we not do? Why? And what should we do going forward? Now that we are having this conversation, because that will, you know, that will require further action.
00:20:18.980 And look, as a political candidate, I have some insight in how nominations work, and those are messy things.
00:20:27.560 That's no easy solutions, how to tidy those things up with the political process. But clearly, clearly, you know, I think there are steps that we can and should take.
00:20:36.620 All right, well, the fantastic book written by this gentleman, Andrew Kirsch, is I Was Never Here, My True Canadian Spy Story of Coffees, Codenames, and Covert Operations.
00:20:45.820 You can, in the age of terrorism, you can get that on Amazon and Indigo, and I would encourage you to read it.
00:20:51.380 It was a lot of fun, and you can also check my interview with Andrew from several months ago to get a little bit more information about that.
00:20:57.760 Andrew, thank you so much for your time and candour, sir.
00:21:00.440 Thank you. Thanks for having me.
00:21:01.720 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:21:04.140 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.