When then Director of CSIS, Jim Judd, sat down with an official from the US Department of State in July 2008, he probably didn't know that the details of the conversation would be shared with the over 3 million people with clearance to view US documents classified “Secret”. He certainly couldn't have known that one of them would leak the file to the whistle blower website Wikileaks, who recently released the description of the meeting to the public.
If Judd had known, he might not have described Canadians and their courts as having an “Alice in Wonderland” view if the world.
Judd Spoke spoke with contempt about the rulings of Canadian courts:
“These judgments posit that Canadian authorities cannot use information that 'may have been' derived from torture, and that any Canadian public official who conveys such information may be subject to criminal prosecution.”
As well as expressing a sentiment that the courts were restricting CSIS from doing its job, other topics Judd commented on include:
-The release of a video showing Omar Khadr's interrogation
-The trials of terror suspects including the “Tororto 18”
-Concerns about Pakistan, and Canada's plan to develop a strategy on the country
-Concerns about Afghanistan
-CSIS began talking to Iran' intelligence service, but lacked an understanding of what Iran's motives for helping in Afghanistan were.
To read the full cable click here.
Wikileaks has only begun to release a large series of US diplomatic cables. Thousands of the cables will refer to Canada, but of the cables released so far, less than two dozen have any mention of Canada.