Ontario Lt.-Gov. James Bartleman stunned the Air India inquiry yesterday with an assertion that Canadian authorities possessed intelligence only days before the 1985 bombing that indicated an attack on the airline was imminent.
The distinguished former diplomat testified he saw the information in an electronic intercept from the top-secret Communications Security Establishment, an arm of the defence department. When he brought it to the attention of the RCMP, however, he was told the force already knew 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.”
Air India Flight 182 left Toronto on June 22 and went down the next morning off the coast of Ireland, the victim of a bomb that took 329 lives.
The airline 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 police and security officers had no warning that any specific flight was in danger.
Bartleman, who was then head of intelligence and security at foreign affairs, said the CSE intercept was “raw, unevaluated information” that hadn’t been checked out.
He also 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 that he was worried enough to take the information to an RCMP officer, whose name he couldn’t specify, but who was at foreign affairs that day for a meeting on anti-terrorist strategy.
“His response startled me,” Bartleman said. “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.”
Bartleman said he let the matter drop, assuming the Mounties were on the case and taking all necessary precautions.
It was an assumption he held for two decades, keeping silent and never raising the issue again in the post-mortems that followed.
He had confidence in both the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, he said yesterday, since he had worked closely with them in his job.
“I expected they had done their job and that, despite their very best efforts, the plane had gone down.”
Government lawyer Barney Brucker, in a vigorous cross-examination, pointed out that the justice department has so far been unable to locate the document summarizing the intercept that Bartleman claims he saw. Nor have federal lawyers been able to find any other officials who remember being advised of the matter.
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