CSIS agreed to share data, Air India probe told

Ottawa: The RCMP thought it had a deal with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to preserve key evidence related to the Air India bombing, a public inquiry heard today.
Retired superintendent Lyman Henschel said he conferred in the days following the 1985 bombing with Randy Claxton, then head of the B.C. regional office of CSIS, to discuss co-operation between police and security officials.
Henschel's notes from the conversations indicate he was assured by Claxton that "any incriminating evidence from CSIS installations (the common jargon for wiretaps or electronic intercepts) will immediately be isolated and retained."
At the time, Henschel didn't know CSIS had been wiretapping Talwinder Singh Parmar, who was to become the prime suspect in the attack on Air India Flight 182 that took 329 lives.
It later turned out that CSIS went ahead and erased hundreds of hours of the tapes before the RCMP had a chance to comb through them for clues that might help in its criminal investigation.
The inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major, is expected to spend most of this week tracking what went wrong and who was responsible for the mistake.
In retrospect, Henschel noted with striking understatement, it's clear that "things went awry." At the time of his initial contact with CSIS, however, he had no reason to think there would be any problems.
17/09/07 Jim Brown/Canadian Press/Toronto Star, Canada

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Categories: Air India - International Sep 2007, Foreign Sep 2007, Safety Sep 2007