Zaccardelli’s RCMP officials protected him, say critics

Former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's apparent lack of knowledge about the RCMP's mistakes in the Maher Arar affair amount to a "cover up" on behalf of his officers to protect the former commissioner, critics say. "The reasoning for them not telling him was the argument that they felt they were protecting him. That perhaps is one of the possible explanations," NDP MP Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.), his party's public safety critic, said in an interview. "My own sense is that they were so incompetent at that time that they didn't even understand, initially, how serious it was, what they had done. And when they did realize it they just protected their own self interests." In a public speech last week, and then again before the House Public Safety and National Security Committee, Mr. Zaccardelli surprised many in Ottawa with a new statement saying he did not learn of the RCMP's mistakes in the Arar affair until after the release of Justice Dennis O'Connor's report this year. The statement came as a surprise because in a previous appearance before the Public Safety Committee on Sept. 28, Mr. Zaccardelli said that shortly after Mr. Arar's deportation from New York to Syria in 2002, he learned that the RCMP had sent incorrect information to American authorities, falsely calling Mr. Arar an "Islamic extremist," and that he then attempted to correct the record with the government. But former Liberal ministers, at the time in Cabinet, say they were never fully briefed on the matter. Mr. Zaccardelli, 59, resigned last week, one day after testifying before the committee and after hearing Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) say in the House that he was "surprised and concerned" about the commissioner's contradictory statements. Mr. Comartin said he is inclined to believe Mr. Zaccardelli's testimony last week, on Dec. 5. He said he believes the commissioner came to the original hearing on Sept. 28 unprepared and confused, and realized his mistakes afterwards, Mr. Comartin said. A former CSIS agent, who did not want to be identified, told The Hill Times that he believes Mr. Zaccardelli was never informed of the RCMP's mistakes because of what he called a common practice of "plausible deniability," in which top officials and ministers are told few details to keep them distanced from potential "blowback" if wrongdoing is exposed. He said Mr. Zaccardelli would not have "officially" known about the RCMP's mistakes, so that even if he had known informally, the paper trail would lead only to subordinate officers. "Why else would a subordinate be put in charge of the issue? His 'mistake' when he originally appeared before the Committee–in my opinion–stems from that," the former agent said. "He may have had a genuine slip, or may have been improperly prepared for such an appearance." Mr. Zaccardelli said last week that he learned "shortly after" the Sept. 28 committee meeting that he "may have said something that was not exactly correct," and wrote a letter to the House Public Safety Committee, dated Nov. 2, saying that he wanted to reappear to correct the record. "My opinion is that somebody at PCO picked up on the discrepancy, contacted the RCMP, and that started the ball rolling," the former CSIS agent said. He finds it interesting, he added, that Mr. Zaccardelli's testimony now conforms to that of senior CSIS agents, who told the committee this fall that they knew nothing about the RCMP's mistakes until the release of the report. Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering, Ont.) said in an interview last week that he is inclined to believe Mr. Zaccardelli's original testimony, in which he repeatedly said he knew of the RCMP's mistakes after Mr. Arar's deportation. "If I were to choose which of the two versions to believe that commissioner Zaccardelli told the committee, I believe the first," Mr. Holland said. "He said some things that were pretty clear. He had some very clear recollections of specific details and I don't really understand how you can un-know something." However, Mr. Holland added that he believes Mr. Zaccardelli is counting on a lack of a paper trail of briefings to the Commissioner's Office. "He's certainly counting on the fact that there isn't, but whether or not it exists is speculative. I don't know," Mr. Holland said. The O'Connor report, released in September, cleared Mr. Arar of any terrorist links and said that false intelligence about Mr. Arar sent from the RCMP to U.S. authorities "very likely" led to his extraordinary rendition from New York to Syria in 2002, where he was tortured, forced to make false confessions, and detained for a year. Mr. Arar has launched a lawsuit against the Canadian government for damages, and some have speculated that Mr. Zaccardelli's change in testimony could have been intended to reduce government liability. But Lorne Waldman, Mr. Arar's lawyer, said in an interview last week that three internal audits were conducted in the RCMP before the release of the report, and that if Mr. Zaccardelli remained uninformed despite them, the RCMP's mistakes amount to gross negligence. Prof. Wesley Wark, a specialist in Canadian intelligence and security at the University of Toronto, said there is a "historical tradition" in Canada in which ministers are not shown details of national security issues to avoid leaks of information from ministers offices. He said this kind of tradition may explain Mr. Zaccardelli's recent statement, but added that he does not consider it plausible that the commissioner did not know of the RCMP's mistakes until the release of Justice O'Connor's report. "It's totally mind boggling. I can't see a rational explanation for this," he said of Mr. Zaccardelli's conflicting testimonies. Prof. Wark said that in 2002, the RCMP was convinced of a Syrian-based al-Qaeda cell operating in Ottawa, and that "the deeper they pursued it, the more convinced they became, quite apart from the evidence. The hunt itself produced the target." But after Mr. Arar returned to Canada in 2003, pressure grew for the RCMP to rethink its investigation, and in 2004, the public inquiry was called. These events should have prompted more detailed briefings for Mr. Zaccardelli, he said. He said that it would be "impossible" that Mr. Zaccardelli was also not extensively briefed before his testimony before the Arar Commission of inquiry. Repeated security leaks to the media between 2003 and 2005 also falsely linked Mr. Arar to terrorism activities. The RCMP, under Mr. Zaccardelli, launched an investigation to find the leakers but they were never identified. "That all of that time could have elapsed without any internal review and thinking about what was known in the RCMP? The notion that he learned nothing until opening the pages on a freshly minted O'Connor report? I just can't believe that. I just find that totally unbelievable," Prof. Wark said. "The notion that Zaccardelli would not have been briefed on this intensively in this period?" he asked rhetorically. If that were the case, he said, "that's a cover-up itself, to protect the pristine reputation of the commissioner." Although Mr. Comartin said he believes the commissioner spoke honestly last week, he also believes Mr. Zaccardelli may have been briefed on the RCMP's mistakes as early as 2004, well before the release of the O'Connor report this year. Once the commission of inquiry began its work, he said, it would have requested the declassification of information that would likely have been cleared by the senior ranks of the RCMP. He said the commission's requests for information and government responses would have happened in 2004 and 2005. These declassifications of information, plus the verbal testimony before the inquiry, would have included consultations or briefings with Mr. Zaccardelli, he said. "The point of all of that is that he would not have been aware of this in 2002 and 2003, when Arar was in custody. He would have only become aware of it, at the very earliest, in probably late 2004," Mr. Comartin said. At a news conference at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa last week, Mr. Zaccardelli said that after Mr. Arar's deportation to Syria in 2002, he attempted to "inform" himself about the case. "I informed myself. I was told certain things about him. I was told that he was a person of interest. I was told that we could not charge him. I was told that we shared information with the Americans about him. I was told that we could not prevent him from coming back into Canada. That's what I learned in September of 2002. I did not learn about the mistakes then," he said. Mr. Zaccardelli added that he could not have been properly briefed on the situation because even the RCMP officials in its special intelligence unit, Project A-O Canada, who testified before the Arar commission of inquiry, said they believed they had done nothing wrong. "The investigators themselves, they testified before Justice O'Connor, they said to Justice O'Connor, 'Justice O'Connor, we did not believe that we made an error,' when in fact he concludes after examining that, it was an error. He makes a judgment on that," he said. "So, I couldn't have known, and I couldn't have been briefed because, rightly or wrongly, they didn't believe that they had made an error." sdoyle@hilltimes.com The Hill Times

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Zaccardelli’s RCMP officials protected him, say critics

But NDP MP Joe Comartin says Guiliano Zaccardelli should have learned about the RCMP's mistakes from his 2004 briefings.

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