The Arar Affair And Beyond: What Else Is There?

Considering the newly released information regarding the Arar affair, which intimately implicates CSIS and the RCMP, coupled with the recent history of the government of the U.S.A. in conducting illegal spying and monitoring activities, in addition to the recent gutting of FISA, this Canadian citizen asks the questions which no one is apparently asking, such as to what extent are we Canadians being illegally spied upon and monitored by the CIA, FBI and NSA, with the complicit consent of the RCMP, CSIS and the CSE - if not of our own government?

By now, we all know the story of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was detained by U.S. officials in September 26, 2002, on the suspicion of being involved in terrorist activities. Initially detained in New York, Mr. Arar's requests for a lawyer were dismissed by U.S. officials on the basis that he was not a U.S. citizen, and thus did not have the right to receive counsel (remember: that was before the Military Commissions Act and the gutting of habeas corpus). Despite his denials of being a terrorist, he remained in U.S. custody for two weeks before being sent to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured. The Canadian government was notified by the U.S. of his rendition on October 10, 2002. As the plight of Mr. Arar gained increasing public awareness, pressure mounted on the Canadian government to investigate Mr. Arar's rendition and seek his release - the affair even prompted Canada to issue a travel advisory (October 29, 2002) to all Canadians born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Syria to reconsider entering the United States - an advisory which by all appearances remains in effect today. In the end, Maher Arar was finally released in October, 2003.

Through it all, government secrecy and disinformation - both Canadian and American - were de mise. For instance, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) initially denied any knowledge and involvement in Mr. Arar's rendition by the U.S., in addition to their blatant lack of cooperation in shedding light in the matter. They even purposely "edited" documents more or less to this effect. CSIS went as far as to release a heavily censored portion of a classified report which, conveniently enough, stipulated that the agency was not aware the U.S. planned to arrest and deport Mr. Arar to Syria. Meanwhile, U.S. officials floated the notion that Mr. Arar was simply "deported" to Syria (despite him pleading to be sent back to his country of citizenship - Canada) because he had been put on a terrorist watch list after information from "multiple international intelligence agencies" linked him to terrorist groups. Even after his release, "senior government officials" circulated the information that Mr. Arar had provided much information on terrorists through his "interrogations" (re: enhanced interrogation techniques) while jailed, thus obliquely implying that he was indeed involved - regardless of the fact that he had been released without charges. In addition, the then Solicitor General (Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Attorney General) refused to hear the calls for a public inquiry into what had become known as the Arar affair - quite a dubious stance on his part, considering that he was in charge of CSIS at the time of Mr. Arar's initial detention and rendition. Likewise, the Prime Minister of the time, Jean Chrétien, resisted calls for a full, public inquiry.

But by January 2004, public pressure had continued to mount in support of such an inquiry. Leaks began to occur - the RCMP even raided the home of a journalist to recover leaked "secret documents" related to the Arar affair, in an obvious bid to protect itself. Ottawa finally relented, then Prime Minister Paul Martin promising at last a public inquiry about the same time Mr. Arar launched a lawsuit against the American government.

The public inquiry opened on June 21, 2004, headed by inquiry commissioner Justice Dennis O'Connor, and concluded its main phase of public hearings on October 27, 2005. Not surprisingly, the U.S. flatly refused to cooperate through it all.

As it turned out from the public hearings, the RCMP and CSIS were actively responsible for providing faulty intelligence concerning Mr. Arar, intelligence which was (and remains) fully available to U.S. officials - such a database was furthermore revealed to contain the names and information of many innocent people. U.S. officials initially offered to return Mr. Arar back to Canada, but solely on the condition that he be charged and incarcerated - without solid evidence to even charge him, Canada understandably refused to do so ... and thus the U.S. turned around and sent Mr. Arar to Syria because they were convinced (wrongly) of his guilt. Thereafter, Canadian officials were very much in the know that Mr. Arar was being "interrogated" in Syria - the Canadian Ambassador to Syria at the time even reporting on the progress of this and passing on the intelligence thus gained to the RCMP and CSIS - most likely to this effect, the RCMP even went as far as to hamper as best as it could the efforts of the Foreign Affairs ministry to bring Mr. Arar back to Canada. Furthermore, Canadian officials were quite aware that the U.S. had already embarked on a path of using extraordinary renditions, of which Arar was but one unfortunate victim. Of course, the Bush administration (largely via Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice) first denied that such a process was used, but thereafter put aside any pretensions and actually defended such a practice. And despite the continued claims that extraordinary renditions were not used to outsource torture, let alone actually using torture in enhanced interrogation techniques (to this very day), the public inquiry's fact-finder report proved otherwise.

In September 2006, Justice Dennis O'Connor released his first report on Canada's involvement in the detention, deportation and torture of Maher Arar. Months before, Mr. Arar's lawsuit against the U.S. government was dismissed by a U.S. Federal Court Judge on the basis for the need to maintain secrecy of the U.S. government's tactics in the Global War on Terrorism(TM). Interestingly, and in sharp contrast, Justice O'Connor's second report of December 12, 2006, stressed the critical need for independent oversight of the RCMP and CSIS (among other crucial recommendations) in order to avoid any other such tragic injustices as suffered by Mr. Arar. The full inquiry report can be read here.

Not surprisingly, the arrogance and hubris of the Bush administration quickly reared its ugly head: "(...) we're going to have to respectfully but firmly go our own way and the Arar matter, at least for now, is one of those", said Paul Rosenzweig, acting assistant secretary for international affairs for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), on December 20, 2006. In this respect, and even to this day, the DHS stubbornly refuses to remove Maher Arar from its terrorist watch list, despite a public pledge to look into the matter by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in December 2006 - which turned out to be nothing more than empty air, considering her subsequent infamous words in February 2007: "Well, we respect the decision of the Canadian Government concerning Mr. Arar. The United States, of course, makes decisions based on information that we have and based on our own assessment of the situation (...) But sometimes, we will have different assessments of situations." In addition, at the insistence and public expression that there is nothing in the DHS files which indicate that Mr. Arar is a threat and therefore should be removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list, the ugly U.S. ambassador to Canada fired back at (current) Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day on January 24, 2007: "It's a little presumptuous of him to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country."

Nevertheless, two days later, (current) Prime Minister Stephen Harper did the right thing and officially apologized to Mr. Arar on behalf of the Canadian government for all he had gone through, in addition to granting $10.5 millions in compensation.

End of the story? For Mr. Arar, perhaps. But for the exposure of the full ugly truth as to how far the Americans have gone into appropriating for themselves Canada's intelligence gathering and databases, along with the complicit consent of the RCMP and CSIS - one last chapter remained.

You see, numerous omissions and "blacked out" portions were to be found in Justice O'Connor's public inquiry reports - a decision made by the Harper government with the claim that the hidden words could damage Canada's national security or foreign relations. A court challenge was issued for the full disclosure of the missing words and sentences - a challenge which the Harper government finally gave up on fighting. Thus, Federal Court Justice Simon Noel's order for disclosure was respected - the uncensored documents can be read here (pdf file).

And what do these reveal? Among other things:

1) CSIS suspected all along that the U.S. would "deport" Mr. Arar to be tortured;

2) Although CSIS knew of extraordinary renditions and torture by the U.S., including that this was what occurred to Mr. Arar, they willfully left the government in the dark about such knowledge;

3) The CIA was responsible for Mr. Arar's extraordinary rendition and torture;

4) The RCMP and CSIS knew of the CIA's involvement, as they all kept constant contact;

5) Information gleaned under torture of another Canadian in Syria, Ahmad Abou El Maati, was used by the RCMP to persuade a judge back in Canada to let it tap someone's telephone (Mr. El Maati was detained by the U.S. on 08/16/2001 and thereafter rendered to Syria, whereby he "confessed" to many a thing and then released in 2004, without charges - this is the subject of another inquiry) - in fact, the RCMP regularly failed to inform judges who granted the warrants that they were relying on information that was likely the product of interrogations involving tactics forbidden in Canada;

6) Mr. Arar had been "fingered" to the RCMP and the CIA by the same Ahmad Abou El Maati, again under torture;

7) Even though the RCMP was made aware that the confession of Mr. El Maati was extracted by "extreme coercion," they insisted that it was "still accurate and continues to be true";

8) Some Canadian (RCMP/CSIS) agents came to believe on their own that jurisdiction walls which had separated their investigations from U.S. ones had to come down - and acted accordingly, without oversight;

and 9) The RCMP and CSIS kept silent on the CIA role, as well as its rendition of Mr. Arar without Canadian permission, on account of a cardinal rule in intelligence gathering - namely the Third-Party Rule, whereby the work of foreign spies must not be compromised through public mention of their work.

Altogether, here is how this boils down to: through incompetence on the part of Canadian security agencies and lack of oversight upon their activities, the CIA was given free reign in rendering and torturing an innocent Canadian - and despite his demonstrated innocence, the U.S. government says "we do what we want, when we want, we know more than you do and won't tell you what, and even if we do actually make mistakes, we say STFU and go fuck yourselves".

And all of this nauseatingly nightmarish litany of incompetence, injustice, barbarity, arrogance and mendacity brings me to this:

Considering A) the propensity of the current Canadian (neocon) government to not only follow in the footsteps of the Bush administration, but to actually emulate it; B) the clearly established propensity of the Bush administration to spy and monitor (illegally or not) and, as in many other things, lie and lie about it, then ask for more; C) the demonstrated stance of the Bush administration to demand full information-sharing from Canada and yet arrogantly refusing to disclose all its knowledge (if it really has any) concerning Maher Arar in support of its decision to keep him on the terrorist watch list; D) the demonstrated propensity of the RCMP and CSIS to unquestioningly share data with the FBI and the CIA; E) the still remaining lack of oversight of the RCMP and CSIS; F) the fact that the Canadian Security Establishment (CSE) — the functional equivalent of the NSA — may be authorized once again to perform the same kind of domestic spying in Canada as in the U.S.A., as it was authorized before; and G) the now-apparent primacy of the Third-Party Rule in Canada;

I am now compelled to ask the following questions:

I) To which extent is the privacy of Canadian citizens being illegally invaded, through indiscriminate sharing of private information and data, for the benefit of the FBI and CIA - in clear violation of our privacy of information laws?

II) To which extent Canadian citizens are being illegally spied and monitored, either by the RCMP, CSIS, the CSE, the FBI, the CIA or the NSA, in clear violation of our constitutional rights?

And last, but not least, III) Why is there not a single Canadian MSM journalist currently asking these questions?

The Arar affair uncovered the banality of injustice, incompetence and mendacity - on both the Canadian and American sides of the 49th parallel.

Furthermore, it is what lies beyond the Arar affair, that which still hides in the deepest reaches of the darkness of secrecy and which begs the unsettling question: what else is there?

These questions are critical because - and regardless of claims to the contrary - the security agencies of Canada and the U.S.A. have been exposed not as seekers of truth, but as seekers of guilt.

And this altogether constitutes a drastically different game from the innocent until proven guilty one that we cherish so - Canadians and Americans alike.

More than ever, it appears that Canadians and Americans are riding fast down the same road to perdition with regards to their human rights, their civil liberties and their constitutions.

All in the sacro-sanct name of Security.


(Cross-posted at DKos, at Diatribune, at Progressive Historians and at NION)