Spy agency rebuked for denying post to consul-general, citing national security
Ottawa - Canada's spy agency received a rebuke yesterday from its civilian watchdog, which concluded that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was wrong to block a diplomatic appointment to India over national security concerns.
The Security Intelligence Review Committee confirmed yesterday that it had issued its report into the matter after a closed-door investigation that heard from the CSIS agents involved in the decision and former cabinet minister Herb Dhaliwal, who had lobbied for his friend Bhupinder Liddar to get the newly created position of consul-general to Chandigarh, India, in the fall of 2003.
Mr. Dhaliwal, who has seen the report, said SIRC has delivered a "devastating" critique of the spy agency that should raise serious concerns about how Canadians can wrongly be listed as security threats without their knowledge. "This report is devastating to CSIS," he said. "It's extremely critical of the way they've conducted themselves, the way they did the evaluation, the conclusions they came to. "If I was in government now, I would have some very serious questions for CSIS and the way they operate. I think that it's really unbelievable if people knew the whole story about the conduct of CSIS."
[ Read the rest ... ]