CSIS man says key tipster on Air India was mishandled by Mounties

Ottawa: A former intelligence officer says he thought he had a source who could help Canada's spy agency penetrate the Sikh extremist movement in the wake of the 1985 Air India bombing.
But Neil Eshleman told a public inquiry Wednesday that his superiors at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service ordered him to cut off contact and turn his source over to the RCMP - who promptly concluded the man was of no use to them.
"It was a lost opportunity that shouldn't have occurred, and it was detrimental to both organizations," said Eshleman.
"CSIS lives through sources of information. It's pretty exasperating when you develop sources and then are directed to relinquish them."
It was the latest case - though far from the only one - in which the inquiry has heard of investigative tensions and confused lines of communication between CSIS and the RCMP in the aftermath of the bombing that took 329 lives.
The blast was blamed on the militant Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa, but only one man has ever been convicted. Another was shot dead by police in India and two more were acquitted at trial in Vancouver.
Eshleman acknowledged that his source, identified only as Mr. A., was egotistical and self-centred and made demands of Canadian authorities in exchange for collaborating with CSIS.
He wanted government assistance in resolving certain personal "difficulties" that weren't explained in the heavily censored record of the case made public Wednesday. Details were withheld at the insistence of federal lawyers on national security grounds.
But for all his failings, said Eshleman, Mr. A. was potentially the best source CSIS had discovered, at that point, in its effort to get inside the Sikh extremist groups operating in British Columbia.
He termed it "pretty tragic" that the source was never fully exploited. "I think that he would have moved this investigation forward significantly."
Eshleman said that when he first made contact with Mr. A. the man told him he feared for his safety, needed an iron-clad assurance of anonymity and insisted he would never testify in court.
CSIS passed the early tips he provided on to the RCMP in sanitized form without disclosing the source's identity. But the Mounties eventually demanded direct access to him, and orders "came from Ottawa" to try to talk Mr. A. into meeting with the police, said Eshleman.
When the man refused, Eshleman was told to break off contact and let the RCMP make their own approach to the man.
Documents show they did so by sending two officers to knock on his front door, flash their badges and say they wanted to talk to him.
Mr. A. was uneasy because there were other people in the house who might wonder why he was talking to the police, but eventually he agreed to accompany them to the local RCMP office.
The Mounties concluded that Mr. A. lacked firsthand knowledge of the Air India bombing and that, since he was piecing his story together from what others had told him, he wouldn't make a credible witness in any court prosecution.
But it was wrong to believe that he couldn't be helpful in other ways, said Eshleman. Even if Mr. A. couldn't provide direct evidence, he still had access to other people who were of interest to the Mounties.
14/11/07 The Canadian Press

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