CSIS wiretap erasures to be scrutinized at Air India Inquiry

I find it amazing that these tapes were erased. The explanation hardly makes sense since surviving notes show that they did have significant information on them. It is incompetence and negligence such as this and the resultant lame excuses that inevitably gives rise to conspiracy theories. I am inclined to think that it really is possible that CSIS is sometimes incredibly negligent and that they lie every time they find it convenient to avoid difficulties. The Arar affair also shows how incredibly insensitive they are and how they jump to conclusions based upon the flimsiest evidence. What is most unfortunate is that the Canadian public by and large is indifferent to wrongdoing and violation of citizen rights by the CSIS (and RCMP at times)

CSIS wiretap erasures to be scrutinized at Air India inquiry
RCMP expected to testify about tapes' value as inquiry resumes
Last Updated: Sunday, September 16, 2007 | 11:39 PM ET
CBC News
The Canadian security agency's erasure of wiretap recordings of the prime suspect in the 1985 Air India bombing will be scrutinized as the inquiry resumes in Ottawa on Monday.


The probe, reconvening after a summer break, will now turn its attention to the investigation that took place after the bomb destroyed Air India Flight 182 near Ireland as it was en route from Canada to India. The blast killed 329 people, including 280 Canadians.

The inquiry, which began in June 2006, has already heard about what intelligence officials may have known about a conspiracy to bomb an Air India flight.

Now, amongst other things, the inquiry will look at a question that has long been central for the families of the Air India victims: Why did the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS) bug the telephone of the main suspect and then erase the tapes?



Deepak Khandelwal, whose two sisters died in the bombing, put it this way in September 2006: "How could anyone think that it was right to erase the tapes, regardless of protocol, unless they were trying to hide something?"

That suspicion still lingers, despite years of denials from CSIS.

CSIS tapes covered months before bombing
The tale of the tapes began in the suburban home of a self-styled Sikh holy man named Talwinder Singh Parmar, who had once lived in a house on Howard Street in Burnaby, B.C.


Talwinder Singh Parmar, founder of the Babbar Khalsa, as portrayed on a Vaisakhi parade float in Surrey, B.C., on April 7, 2007.
(CBC)
The house changed hands long ago, but back in 1985, CSIS described Parmar as a leader of a terrorist organization: the Babbar Khalsa, which was trying to get an independent Sikh state in northern India.

Parmar was wanted for murder in India. He preached death to Hindus and authorities soon came to believe he was the mastermind behind the Air India bomb, which was allegedly planted in baggage that was loaded in Vancouver and then transferred to Flight 182, which departed from Toronto.

The Indian police killed Parmar in 1992 — an event that the inquiry will also examine soon. First, though, John Major, the commission chair, wants to know what happened to those tapes of Parmar chatting to his contacts around the world, on his phone at Howard Street.

The tapes rolled on those calls for three months before the Air India bombing on June 22, 1985 — and, as soon as the explosion occurred, CSIS agents knew Parmar was the prime suspect.

By then, they had hundreds of wiretap recordings. Even so, the tapes were quickly erased.

Standard procedure to erase tapes, CSIS says
CSIS has always said that there was nothing of value on the Parmar tapes and that erasing them was routine procedure. At the Air India trial in 2003, defence lawyers forced the government to concede that it was a case of "unacceptable negligence."

Even so, former CSIS director Reid Morden told the CBC at the time that "there was a policy in place that said, if these don't have intelligence value, then, at a certain point in time — very short span of time — out they go because, otherwise, they represent prying into the affairs of private Canadian citizens."

The problem, from the RCMP's perspective, was that there was, indeed, valuable evidence on those tapes — and the translator's notes survived to prove it. Two RCMP officers are expected to testify about the tapes on Monday.

A second problem was that there was, indeed, a policy in place at CSIS that governed tapes — but it said they had to be kept, not erased, if they contained any sign of "subversive activity."

Tapes could have brought 'successful prosecution,' RCMP says
And a 1996 memo by the head of the RCMP's Air India task force, Insp. Gary Bass (now the force's deputy commissioner) said this: "There is a strong likelihood that, had CSIS retained the tapes … a successful prosecution of at least some of the principals … could have been undertaken."

The inquiry was called because the investigation into the bombing was the most costly in Canadian history yet no one was ever convicted of murder in the case.

The RCMP's key surviving suspects were acquitted in 2005, and Parmar was killed in 1992.

The only person to be convicted was bomb-maker Inderjit Singh Reyat, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003 and received a five-year sentence.

Another connected bombing killed two luggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport.