I happened to be reading John Sawatsky’s 1980 book, Men the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service when the government introduced their anti-terrorism bill C-51. The book provides a history Canadian security work in the 20th century until the creation of CSIS, an agency that grew out of people’s upset with exactly how the RCMP was going about their business. Because RCMP operatives were regularly caught breaking the law and behaving without regard for civil liberties, the alternate agency, CSIS, was created.
So what does a 35 year old book have to tell us about our current situation? Quite a lot about the human and political and legal aspects I think.
First: spies have a history of breaking the law and behaving in ways that the public and government find intolerable. The key events that Sawatsky details occurred in the 1970’s, many of them the result of the October Crisis of 1970. People found RCMP so egregious, that the tasks of national security were taken from the them and the force was disgraced.
Second: “Disruption” is a very nebulous term, and has meant everything from delaying mail to beatings and bombings. At times it has been carried out without any intention of gathering intelligence or interrupting hostile activity, but for the sake of just sending a warning. Some of the groups thus warned were political organizations with no ties to terrorism.
Third:The paramilitary structure of the RCMP contributed to some of its worst excesses. The hierarchical command structure and insularity meant that actions were never questioned by the people who had to carry them out. In other words, if we count on the police to police themselves, we’ll be mistaken. That’s not something they are set up to do.
Sawatsky devotes a section in Chapter 19 to the matter of illegal activity on behalf of intelligence gathering and those fighting enemies of the state. Here are points from that chapter:
*.*“From dozens of interviews, both with Mounties who have performed illegal acts and with civilians who have watched them, I am convinced that they do not see their acts as illegal. Such methods are accepted as the basic tools to protect Canada’s security. Security Service members do not philosophize about the deed; it a practical matter. When challenged, most members fall back on the old paramilitary excuse the the actions are approved by their superior officers and therefore are not illegal.”
*.*“They believe their acts are morally right and view impeding legal statutes only as technical barriers, not ethical ones. … They believe the lawmakers, although they want to preserve order, as so misinformed and consumed by politics that the results of their legislation does not meet their objectives.”
*.*“At no time did the Security Service make a formal decision to condone illegal activity It was embraced through a series of gradations over a number of years. . . . Without ever realizing it the RCMP had adopted illegal activity as a fundamental investigative technique.”
Sawatsky also notes in this chapter that politicians took measures to ensure that they did not know about illegal activity so they would not have to do anything about it. Officers involved expected that if caught there would not be criminal charges, and if the worst happened (charges and imprisonment), that their families would be taken care of. This matter was addressed by RCMP Commissioner W. L. Higgit in a August 1970 memo titled “RCMP Protection for Members Engaged in Sensitive or Secret Operations.” Sawatsky includes the entire text of that document. One excerpt:
*.*“8. It must always be born [sic] in mind, or course, that where a member is directed to perform a duty which may require him to contravene the law for any purpose or where the means required to achieve a specific end can reasonably be foreseen as illegal, a member is within his rights to refuse to do any unlawful act.”
What happens when our spies are freed from all restrictions and nothing is illegal? We can’t even rely on their own consciences to restrain them.
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