At least not a history of Canada’s. This is stupid:
History of Canada’s spy community remains a secret, and we can’t tell you why
What concerns did Canadian government spymasters have about efforts to break the Japanese military’s secret code in 1944?
What hindered the development of a Canadian secret service in the 1950s?
After the federal government spent $40,000 to answer those questions and others for a study on the history of Canada’s intelligence community, the results remained locked behind the doors of the Privy Council Office.
And in a new twist, the Privy Council Office has now declared that the reasons for the secrecy surrounding the historical study are secret as well…
At issue is an official history of the Canadian intelligence community that was finished around 2001 by professor Wesley Wark at a cost to taxpayers of $40,000.
Wark, an intelligence specialist and a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa, had received support from federal bureaucrats in his quest to publish the study he wrote as a book. He has argued that such a book would educate Canadians on the valuable contributions the country’s intelligence agencies have made over the decades.
But nine years after it was completed, the history — which covers the period from the Second World War to 1970 — remains in limbo.
“I think it’s a good news story so it’s all the more bizarre to bury it away in locked cabinets in Ottawa,” says Wark…
Wark said he wrote the history with the intent to have it made public. With that in mind, he was careful in what he included — for example, removing the names of individuals who served with foreign intelligence services.
Wark said the censorship is even more baffling as the history study did not bring any “scandals or terrible deeds to light.” Much of the study is about the bureaucratic manoeuvers, discussions and infighting that went along with the development of various intelligence organizations and policies…
The government’s continued insistence on keeping much of the study secret seems even stranger in light of the fact that allied intelligence agencies have produced and publicly released similar histories, Wark noted.
The official histories of the CIA and the National Security Agency, both in the U.S., have been published, as has that of the MI5 security service in Britain [I've read it, then there is the multi-volume official history, British Intelligence in the Second World War, scroll down]. The official history of the British MI6 intelligence service will be published next year, Wark added…
There has been some writing about our intelligence history, and CSIS has been more open of late–notably about its foreign activities, more here.
Unlike Prof. Wark (2008 video here) I do not think a separate Canadian foreign intelligence agency (i.e. HUMINT) should be formed; the Conservatives thankfully dropped their 2006 election promise to create one. Early in the campaign they had pledged to “Expand the Canadian Foreign Intelligence Agency”–then they realized one didn’t exist (see “Securing our borders…The plan” at link).
Mark
Ottawa
“then they realized one didn’t exist”
***
Excerpts from the National Defence Act
273.61 The following definitions apply in
this Part.
“foreign intelligence” means information or intelligence about the capabilities, intentions or activities of a foreign individual, state, organization or terrorist group, as they relate to international affairs, defence or security.
273.64 (1) The mandate of the Communications Security Establishment is
a.to acquire and use information from the global information infrastructure for the purpose of providing foreign intelligence, in accordance with Government of Canada intelligence priorities;
Note also:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?pub=bill&doc=c-409&parl=37&ses=2&language=E
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/sites/lop/legisinfo/index.asp?Language=E&query=3954&List=aka&query_2=3365
Entre nous: CSE obviously is primarily (these days) a foreign intelligence agency, and CSIS is becoming one in terms of “security intelligence”–which can be a broad canvas. The CF do have a HUMINT role too, see CANFORGEN around middle here:
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/005697.html
Thanks very much for the link to the 2003 “Act to establish the Canadian Foreign Intelligence Agency” (HUMINT amongst other things clearly, oddly similar to the CSIS Act itself,
http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/pblctns/ct/cssct-eng.asp
first reading only it seems), of which I was unaware and which seems to have been introduced and then vanished without media–or any other trace. But that bill was just
http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo7/no2/parkinson-eng.asp
“David Pratt’s Private Member’s Bill, C-409, An Act to Establish the Canadian Foreign Intelligence Agency.40″
So no government legislative action has been taken to establish a distinct Canadian HUMINT service such as SIS or CIA or…
Not quite sure of your point. In late 2005 there was no Canadian Foreign Intelligence Agency (HUMINT) as such–which the Conservatives first thought actually existed, then promised to create, and then gave up on. Wisely to my mind.
Mark
Ottawa
The point is Canada has an FI agency (CSE); CSIS has a mandate for FI within Canada, and for Security Intelligence overseas. FI and SI are distinct mandates and functions.
The CPC policy statement reflects the perennial paralysis and ambiguity on the question within the bureaucratic organs over whether the FI HUMINT function should be done by a new, separate agency as outlined in C-409, or by CSIS with additional authority to do the “CFA” role. It’s unfair to cast the CPC as stupid for referring to the role that way when its policy statement was simply reflecting the policy syntax au courant within the Security and Intelligence community.
FI and SI are fundamentally different (SI within the law, FI fundamentally breaking other countries’ laws) and should be performed in democracies by separate agencies, like ASIS/ASIO, SIS/Security Service, CIA/FBI.
And unlike the KGB.
Yet the Conservatives maintained at first that a CFIA already existed. They did not know the subject, as you clearly do, yet were willing to make a nonsensical pledge.
See the “Daimnation” links here for my reasons against a CFIA:
http://forums.milnet.ca/forums/index.php/topic,2334.msg567372.html#msg567372
I maintain a British pragmatism as to whether separate SI/FI agencies are needed, for legal and whatever reasons (KGB aside). Remember the Brits started out with one, then rapidly split:
http://www.amazon.com/Defend-Realm-Authorized-History-MI5/dp/0307263630
And during WW II the FBI did FI/SI in South America, keeping the OSS out:
http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/history/worldwar.htm
“While most FBI personnel during the war worked traditional war-related or criminal cases, one contingent of Agents was unique. Separated from Bureau rolls, these Agents, with the help of FBI Legal Attaches, composed the Special Intelligence Service (SIS) in Latin America. Established by President Roosevelt in 1940, the SIS was to provide information on Axis activities in South America and to destroy its intelligence and propaganda networks. Several hundred thousand Germans or German descendants and numerous Japanese lived in South America. They provided pro-Axis pressure and cover for Axis communications facilities. Nevertheless, in every South American country, the SIS was instrumental in bringing about a situation in which, by 1944, continued support for the Nazis became intolerable or impractical.”
It all depends on how much FI Humint a government needs; I don’t think ours needs that much, independently gathered.
There is an awful lot of OSINT about the US after all. Why the Russkies do some things…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070901956_2.html?sid=ST2010070901965
Mark
Ottawa