Air India attack warning stuns inquiry

Ottawa: A distinguished former diplomat -- now the lieutenant-governor of Ontario -- has stunned the Air India inquiry with an assertion Canadian authorities possessed intelligence, just days before the 1985 bombing, that indicated an attack on the airline was imminent.
James Bartleman testified yesterday that he personally saw the information in an electronic intercept from the top-secret Communications Security Establishment, an arm of the Defence Department.
When he tried to draw it to the attention of the RCMP, however, he was told the force already knew about it and was advised to butt out.
"In the week of June 18, the week of the bombing which took place on the 23rd, I was going through the daily intercept package from CSE," Bartleman told the inquiry headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major.
"And I saw in there a document which indicated that Air India was being targeted that weekend -- specifically the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd."
The airline's Flight 182 left Toronto on June 22 and went down the next morning off the coast of Ireland, the victim of a terrorist bomb that took 329 lives.
Air India had been considered a potential target of Canadian-based Sikh separatists for more than a year. But ever since the bombing, the government has insisted that police and security officers had no advance warning that any specific flight was in danger.
Bartleman noted there had been so many erroneous tips and false alarms raised in the previous year that "I suppose it would be possible for someone to say this is just another one of these cry-wolf events."
But he recalled he was worried enough to take the report containing the latest information to an RCMP officer, whose name he couldn't specify, but who happened to be at Foreign Affairs that day for a meeting on anti-terrorist strategy
"His response startled me," said Bartleman. "He flushed and told me that of course he had seen it, and that he didn't need me to tell him how to do his job."
04/05/07 Jim Brown/CP/London Free Press, Canada

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Categories: Air India May 2007, Foreign May 2007, Safety May 2007