Full marks for a crafty media leak

News Report: CSIS alleges India organized support for Poilievre’s 2022 Conservative leadership bid

If you want to survive more than a few weeks in the Prime Minister’s Office, assume that there are “no coincidences.” It may be cliche to say that things happen for a reason, but when it comes to media leaks, it’s not as though the confidential documents leak themselves.

Back in the day, if you wanted to uncover the “leaker,” my starting point was always: who benefits from said information getting into the public domain?

That may not be PhD-level inquiry but I’d argue the question is a timeless one — and certainly served us well during my time in the Langevin Block. I was reminded of that frame of reference when I saw this morning’s Globe and Mail, featuring a story about India allegedly trying to curry favour during the Conservative leadership race in 2022.

ICYMI, the Globe’s Robert Fife and Steven Chase led the charge on that paper’s coverage of Foreign Interference writ large, leading to the publication of an extended series of important stories in 2023. You may recall the Government of Canada ultimately established the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in September 2023, with Justice Marie-Josée Hogue as Commissioner.

You can thank the paper for that.

Justice Hogue reviewed endless documents and interviewed scads of people, both inside and outside the Canadian security services. If today’s story was truly a big deal, I don’t understand why it didn’t attract any attention during — you know — an inquiry into alleged foreign interference. Seems fair to assume that it wasn’t above-the-fold stuff at the time because whatever “Agents of India” were allegedly up to had no actual bearing on the 2022 Conservative leadership race, as per the Globe’s own report this morning (also by Messers Fife and Chase):

…Indian agents were involved in raising money and organizing within the South Asian community…but the CSIS assessment did not indicate that this effort was done in a sweeping and highly organized way….

With an election now underway, I’m interested in the timing of the leak, not the substance of reportedly disorganized (Ed. note: you mean the opposite of “highly organized?”) manner of the alleged activity. If you read today’s story carefully, you’ll notice that the germane bits were “according to a source with top-secret clearance.” Let’s compare that description to how the Globe depicted their source (and associated research) in a May 2023 story regarding a leaked CSIS report regarding “Canada as a ‘high priority’ for interference” from China:

A national-security source, whom The Globe is not naming because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act….

The nine-page document, seen by The Globe and Mail, is the latest example of the warnings published by Canada’s security service in recent years that lay out a problem – and a solution. It’s marked top secret and for Canadian eyes only.

Describing confidential sources is tricky business, and journalists must balance their promise of confidentiality with the need to ensure that a reader knows enough to judge for themselves whether or not the source in question is credible. The Canadian Association of Journalists spells out the ethical approach in a very clear fashion:

Confidential sources should be identified as accurately as possible by affiliation or status. (For example, a “senior military source” must be both senior and in the military.)

If we assume that common practice was followed here, it must also be fair to say that: i) today’s Globe source is not from the “national security community,” unlike the one in the representative story from 2023; ii) there is only one person involved in today’s leak, as the singular was applied: “according to a source with top-secret clearance;” and iii) no source documents were reviewed for today’s story, again, unlike the example of CSIS-related reporting by the same journalists from 2023.

(This last point is important, as my Dad would remind any J-school student, as reviewing primary documents allows you to substantially bolster your story in the event you don’t have a corroborating human source.)

Today’s Globe story went to some effort to describe the old news around Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s decision to not seek a security clearance coincident with the Foreign Interference Inquiry: “CSIS did not share this information with Mr. Poilievre, the source said, because he does not have the necessary security clearance to access secret documents and receive classified briefings on foreign-interference activities in Canada. Mr. Poilievre is the only federal party leader who has declined an offer to obtain a security clearance.”

It should have come as no surprise, given Justice Hogue saw this incident as a nothingburger, to read the Globe describe that “CSIS also did not have evidence that Mr. Poilievre or members of his inner circle were aware of the alleged actions of India’s agents and their proxies, said the source, who has national security clearance to see top secret reports.” Nor was it news that CSIS “had provided a classified briefing to Ian Todd, chief of staff to Mr. Poilievre, ‘about foreign interference threat activities and tactics, including allegations of interference in the leadership race.’”

On the timing front, a team of talented journalists can’t knock off a 1,085 word piece in an afternoon. The election was called for Sunday, although the date wasn’t a secret, and the story appeared on the second full day of the campaign. Whomever gave the Globe this leak, and I’m being charitable, intentionally timed it so that the authors would have just enough time — but not too much time — for the “news” to appear following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to Government House less than 72 hours ago.

Speaking of the PM, here’s what he had to say during one of his few media availabilities last week in response to a question from The Globe’s Stephanie Levitz regarding the financial holdings within his Blind Trust:

I will remind you and I will remind Canadians again that the Leader of the Opposition…look at the nature of the discussions that I had with the President of France, with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Leader of the Opposition could not be capable of handling those discussions because the Leader of the Opposition refuses to get his security clearance. Something that took me a few weeks to get. And he has been the Leader of the Opposition for three years.

So, I comply with my responsibilities. I comply with the rules well in advance, and the Leader of the Opposition doesn’t take his responsibilities at a time of, you should take these responsibilities at any time, but it’s particularly remarkable given the stakes in global geopolitics at the moment.”

Interesting. Ask me about Blind Trusts during an overseas tour and I’ll pivot to security clearances, as though foreign leaders might be sharing notes about the outcome of confidential NATO war gaming sessions while sharing their first cup of coffee as peers. Obviously, if it were Mr. Poilievre as the PM in that same Presidential Palace coffee meeting, he’d be in no different a situation than Mr. Carney vis-a-vis the need to go through the 20-year background check process (yes, CSIS agents did indeed go to Humberside Collegiate and ask around about me).

In terms of who may have leaked today’s info, the Globe’s description of their source’s security clearance would include most senior members of the PMO under both Justin Trudeau and Mr. Carney, certain PCO staffers present and past, as well as Ministerial Exempt Staff associated with the current and former Minister of Public Safety (who has oversight of CSIS). If it were someone at CSIS who was worried about Mr. Poilievre being compromised and called the Globe’s Ottawa bureau with such info, I assume the Globe would have used the same source description (“national security community”) as 2023.

But they didn’t.

It seems fair to deduce that the confidential source is a Liberal political staffer with Top Secret clearance. There’s an election underway, and someone wanted to get a second week out of the same issue that Mr. Carney tried to put in the front window during his recent trip abroad.

There are no coincidences in Ottawa.

MRM

(this post, like all blogs, is an Opinion Piece)