:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am pleased to appear before this committee on the subject of the investigation the Privy Council Office recently conducted into unauthorized disclosures of sensitive diplomatic information. You have already introduced my colleagues, and better than I would have done.
On March 5, 2008, the Prime Minister asked me to launch an internal security investigation into allegations of unauthorized verbal disclosures by Mr. Brodie and Ambassador Wilson regarding the purported position of U.S. Democratic presidential candidates in relation to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the unauthorized disclosure of the diplomatic report sent from the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago on February 13, 2008.
[English]
On May 22, 2008, I delivered to the Prime Minister the report on the investigation into unauthorized disclosure of sensitive diplomatic information, which contains our findings and conclusions. And we'll get into that today. This report was made public the next day and is available on the Privy Council website for everyone.
The purpose of the investigation, as the report sets out, was to determine the timeline of relative events leading up to and following the disclosure of information; to determine, to the extent possible, the source or sources of the disclosure; to report on the findings of the investigation; and to make recommendations to minimize the likelihood of a reoccurrence of similar events in the future.
The investigation was led by the director of security operations at the Privy Council Office, Mr. Tardif. Independent professional services were contracted from BMCI Investigations & Security. We have two of the principals here today. Due to the scope and complexity of the investigation and the volume of information to be examined, we engaged BMCI.
As the report describes, the investigation was carried out in a comprehensive, systematic, and impartial manner in accordance with established investigative standards. And I'm sure that both Mr. Tardif and our two principal investigators will describe what they are.
[Translation]
The investigative process that was followed included examining documentation; conducting comprehensive interviews of 36 individuals; compiling and analyzing reliable source data; and examining salient comments received from various secondary sources during meetings and briefings. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Security and Intelligence Bureau, represented here by Mr. Paul Meyer, PCO's Informatics and Technical Services, PCO's Telecommunications Services, also represented here, and departmental security officers of four other federal departments also provided assistance in this investigation.
The investigation was extensive and independent. It involved obtaining and analyzing a vast amount of information in a relatively short period of time. The 36 public servants and political staff interviewed consisted of officials from the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Headquarters in Ottawa, the Embassy in Washington, the Consulate General in Chicago, and the Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Several officials were interviewed twice.
[English]
In addition to the interviews, the investigation involved checking logs of telephone calls placed by these officials of interest on their office land lines and cellular telephones for the relevant time period. These were examined to determine if any contact had been made with the media or with other numbers of interest in either Canada or the United States. Transmission logs for fax machines used by officials of interest during the same timeframe were similarly examined. All e-mails of the same officials were checked to determine who had knowledge of the information and at what point in time, the extent of that knowledge, and whether any inappropriate transmission of information had occurred.
Finally, unclassified, classified, and BlackBerry electronic mailboxes of the federal officials and ministerial staff who received the original diplomatic report from Chicago were examined to determine whether the report was retransmitted to others, and, if so, who those addressees were and whether it was inappropriate for them to receive the report.
During the course of the investigation, the names of a few U.S. citizens surfaced as possibly having been in contact with Canadian officials with access to the report. This fact was clearly outlined in the report on page 8.
As no Canadian government investigator, including the RCMP, has jurisdiction on U.S. territory without the consent of the U.S. government or U.S. law enforcement agencies, the approach of the investigators was to focus on ministerial staff and officials employed by the Government of Canada who may have been in contact with them. This approach included extensive interviews with these Canadian individuals and examination of telephone, fax, and e-mail logs, as well as e-mail correspondence.
The report of the investigation describes the methodology and process employed by the investigators, establishes a timeline of significant events that happened over this period, summarizes the investigators' analysis and findings, and makes recommendations for further strengthening the safeguards for the protection of information. The conclusions of the report are based entirely on the findings of the independent investigative team working with the Privy Council Office, director of security operations. Section 5 in the report, Madam Chair, provides the conclusions of the investigation. These are as follows.
First, any comments that Mr. Brodie may have made during budget lock-up 2008 on February 26 did not reveal any information tied to the diplomatic report of which he was made aware only on February 28. That's the value of the timeline. There is no evidence that Mr. Brodie disclosed any classified information.
Second, there's no evidence that Ambassador Wilson revealed any information tied to the diplomatic report or to any U.S. presidential candidate's position with respect to NAFTA, although his comments likely helped lead the reporter to the Senator Obama campaign. There is no evidence that Ambassador Wilson disclosed any classified information.
Third, the investigation was unable to determine who leaked the report, to whom it was leaked, and whether there was only one leak.
Fourth, the original diplomatic report from Chicago was incorrectly classified. It was actually unclassified and had an inappropriately broad distribution list of 232 addressees.
[Translation]
Madam Chair, there you have an overview of the facts.
[English]
I would be pleased to take questions from the honourable members of the committee and my colleagues as well.
Merci. Thank you.
:
Thank you very much, Chair.
I would like to thank the witnesses for coming. I greatly appreciate this.
As you know, this is a very important issue. This issue, this unauthorized disclosure of sensitive diplomatic information, has been dubbed “NAFTAgate” in the media.
We feel this is a very serious breach of security, which has damaged our international reputation. There are a lot of unanswered questions with respect to the mandate. The primary purpose of your coming before committee is to address some of the concerns and unanswered questions we have.
Mr. Lynch, you indicated that your mandate was really to look into the verbal leaks and specifically the leaked memo.
My first question is with regard to the CTV reporters who effectively reported this information. Why were they not directly contacted themselves? Why did you choose to go through CTV? Why weren't the reporters contacted directly? Obviously their testimony would be crucial to the process, especially with respect to what government officials were saying.
First, the role of the Privy Council Office is to provide non-partisan advice to whatever government is in power. That's their job. That's the role of the clerk. That's the role of every single official in the Privy Council Office. And that applies to every aspect of our daily jobs, whether it's investigations of this sort or anything else.
Secondly, this was a very extensive, independent, comprehensive investigation. I believe--certainly in my time as the Clerk of the Privy Council Office--it's the first time we have engaged an outside firm with the depth and the experience of BMCI to do such a thing. In fact, it's exactly the kind of rigour that I believe the Prime Minister asked us to bring, and also the independence that I insisted on. Mr. Tardif ran the investigation, worked with the two investigators, and the investigators are here today to talk to you. They did the investigation without constraint. The scope was clear. There were no constraints. The findings and conclusions that are in my report, for which I'm accountable, are validated by the investigators.
This issue really has to be put in context as to why it became such a firestorm, because I think it is beyond the fact that a functionary at an embassy made a mistake. The potential of a Democratic campaign that was raising issues of NAFTAgate certainly had major implications for a minority government here that was seen as very wedded to free trade. We had a campaign.... Mr. Obama, in particular, was seen as very much on the rise, surprising people; these primaries were coming down to the wire, and the issue of NAFTAgate was putting a great deal of pressure on this government here. In fact, on the domestic front, we saw that as of February 21, the government was doing damage control, saying the Democratic contenders weren't serious about this, not to worry, not to worry.
On February 25, Mr. Brodie goes to Washington. So right at the beginning of this he's meeting in Washington. On February 26, Mr. Brodie, in the lock-up, is telling reporters not to worry. He's basically giving them his word that this is not a serious issue because they know what the Obama and Clinton campaigns are doing; it's just a lot of talk. On February 27, the very next day, CTV is in discussions with Ambassador Wilson about whether or not they've spoken with the Obama and Clinton campaigns, and it's reported that it's been confirmed. And then on March 2, the Associated Press has a diplomatic report sent to them and we can't find the source of it.
It seems to me that each step of the way there's a pretty clear prima facie case that a government that was trying to derail a Democratic debate over NAFTAgate was doing what it could.... I can't see how you could tell us that Mr. Wilson, a man with that amount of political experience, knowing the sensitivity of speaking out in a primary that was so serious, could claim that he thought he was speaking off the record.
Do you expect us to just take it at face value that this was just a small cipher clerk who made a mistake, that there wasn't someone within the Prime Minister's Office who needs to be held accountable for what looks like a seeding of a story to influence the Democratic primaries and throw the NAFTAgate story on its heels?
:
Sir, I worked as an investigative journalist for a while, and I often didn't start out with the document; I started out with the source.
So Mr. Brodie returns from Washington, and he has a supposedly off-the-record comment saying not to worry, the Obama camp's not serious, and then Mr. Wilson, on February 27, has a conversation. Now the journalists are starting to look; they figure there is a story. So then they start contacting all their contacts, and someone produces a memo.
So I think talking about Mr. Brodie's not having seen the report prior to having that conversation and Mr. Wilson's not seeing the report is a complete red herring. Mr. Wilson would have known much more about what was happening in terms of the Obama and Clinton campaign than what's in a briefing note coming out of Chicago.
The question we have to get back to is why conversations were held by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Brodie on an extremely sensitive area, which basically forced the story to break before we had any leak coming out of Chicago.
This brings me to the recommendations. I find these recommendations to be like being stoned to death by popcorn. The first is that recipients of diplomatic reporting should be reminded on a regular basis of the sensitivity of such documents. I don't know why we'd have to remind diplomats of that.
Second is that any future undertaking signed by media representatives for admission to budget lock-up should clearly indicate that comments made by government officials or ministerial staff are on a background, not-for-attribution basis only, and be treated accordingly. This is basically saying that Mr. Brodie completely blew it, but we're going to blame the media for doing their job. Mr. Brodie was speaking about something that had nothing to do with the budget. He was seeding a story to undermine a democratic campaign. That has nothing to do with the budget. He should be responsible for any of those comments he made, whether they were made in a budget lock-up or whether he was saying it in a bar or on an airplane.
This leads me to the last recommendation. You're suggesting the response to this is to make a new online training course available to all users in the diplomatic corps so they understand how to deal with such situations in the future. I don't really know how the Canadian public could be expected to think that this is a report that addresses the seriousness of having an ambassador and a spin doctor for the PMO seeding a story that interfered with and undermined--and potentially could have completely damaged--the campaign of Mr. Obama.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to thank the witnesses.
Mr. Lynch, in the overview, the summary of your report, you basically concluded that the investigation was unable to determine who leaked the report, to whom it was leaked, or whether there was any one leak. In layman's terms, what you are saying is that the report was unable to get to the bottom of it.
The first four of your recommendations, as was already stated by my colleague, are extremely weak. They just remind everyone of their responsibilities and talk about training sessions.
Do you think that's acceptable for the public, given the fact that this is a serious issue here, a breach of confidential information and political interference in the U.S. democratic primaries? Do you not see that, given the nature of the scandal, the public was warranted, as were we, as parliamentarians, something much more substantial than asking people to be reminded of their responsibilities?
:
If I may start, in the Privy Council Office and across government, as senior officials we take the protection of sensitive information extremely seriously. It's a complex process, how to do it.
There were two elements to this. First there was the issue of the report itself--who had access to it, who it could be made available to, what its classification was. Clearly, one of the recommendations and one of the learnings from this is that sensitive diplomatic reporting has to be better classified and better controlled. So the fact that it wasn't strikes me as making the recommendation rather valid for the future. I don't find that to be an invalid or invaluable recommendation, but given the circumstances, rather essential. People change jobs, circumstances change. In a sense, security and protection of documents is an issue of continually reminding folks of the value of what they have and how to deal with it.
Second, it would be nice if every investigation found all the objectives. That's not the case. I think it's true, and I'm sure our two investigators would say, that in any world we don't always succeed. That's not to say the investigation wasn't of a high quality, wasn't comprehensive, wasn't definitive. I believe that to be the case.
It was not, though, notwithstanding all the efforts that Mr. Cummins and Mr. Tardif describe in the report, able to determine who leaked it to whom or in how many cases.
:
Let me go back to the nature of an investigation, actually. You can't operate on speculation; you can only operate on the basis of empirical evidence, and that's what the two investigators and Mr. Tardif were engaged in. We spent an enormous amount of effort to try to find who did the things.
As I indicated early on, there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing that came forward after the two months of work by the two principal investigators, both of whom are very seasoned investigators in national police forces. That is a lot of effort.
Secondly, I think the report does give people a much greater sense of what the timeline and sequence of events was relative to the various views and perspectives that were around at the time.
Thirdly, we're able to determine, to the best of our knowledge, what Ambassador Wilson may or may not have said—and Mr. Brodie.
So I actually think that for an area that was complex with a lot of unknowns at the time, the report has carried us forward.
:
I joined the RCMP in 1967. I retired in 2001. I have been working in various capacities since then.
I worked with Commissioner Roy Romanow on the health care commission.
I did an operational review of the RCMP international liaison and training program in 2002-03.
From 2003 to 2007, I was one of two investigators for the tribunal of inquiry into the An Garda Síochána with respect to certain misdeeds of the Gardai in the County of Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. My role was to conduct the interviews, do research, establish international best practices, advise the tribunal with respect to what these best practices were and where to find the subject matter, identify subject matter experts and where to get these subject matter experts, and arrange for them to attend in the Republic of Ireland. Among other things, the subject matter expertise was with respect to ballistics, handwriting, document examination, and, more importantly, interview techniques and interview questions as best practices from around the world. I arranged to have people from Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand attend as expert witnesses before the tribunal.
In the RCMP, I had considerable experience as a detective inspector on a number of high-profile document leaks, including the constitutional document, and some of you might remember the more recent alleged budget leak, otherwise known as the Doug Small affair. I was an investigator on the constitutional document leak. At the point of the Small affair, I was the director of national security investigations responsible for those kinds of investigations that potentially involve the Official Secrets Act.
I've done a number of other politically sensitive investigations on behalf of the Speaker of the House of Commons and others.
So my expertise in many cases was essentially in breach of trust, the former section 118 of the Canadian Criminal Code. There's not much more I can tell you.
:
Thank you very much, Chair.
Your report concludes that it is probable that Ian Brodie spoke to a reporter on the subject of NAFTA. In my opinion, I interpret that very clearly that he did speak to a reporter. And to the fact that he didn't reveal or convey any confidential information, he is a person who has sensitive diplomatic information, confidential information. He is the chief of staff for the Prime Minister. I don't think he needs to give specific memos or line items to convey a message. A simple comment from him carries a great deal of weight. So I think there is a bit of confusion here.
He might not have given a memo per se, but with even a comment made by him regarding this matter, it doesn't matter if he got the name “Clinton” or “Obama” wrong; the fact that he is a chief of staff who has confidential information...his indiscretion caused this leak, and I think that's a given from the report. That's the way I interpret it and many Canadians interpret it.
The motive is something I know, Mr. Lynch, you don't want to comment on, what the motive might be for the chief of staff of the Prime Minister, a Conservative chief of staff, with close ties to the Republican Party, to make this comment. Maybe that's an issue that can be discussed later.
:
Let me start with your last question: no, it does not. As I said earlier, my role is to be absolutely non-partisan in all my dealings with the Prime Minister and his office, including when the Prime Minister asks us to investigate.
What we did as well in this case was to ask Mr. Tardif to be the centre of this investigation, not me. I'm accountable for the results. I'm accountable for the report. I'm actually very pleased with the rigour of it. But it was a report that was done independently. We engaged a firm with, I think, a great reputation to do it. It was directed by Mr. Tardif. My instructions were that they should go where the investigation took them. So that is the independence of the report.
I'd like to go back to your earlier question about Mr. Brodie and what we say in the report. If you think back to that point in time, I think there was a lot of uncertainty and questioning about what Mr. Brodie may or may not have said. In the conclusions of the report, I think the investigators have brought much greater clarity than was available at the time.
They indicate that although there are differing views, the best evidence we have is that it's probable that Mr. Brodie spoke to the reporter, in the lock-up, on the subject of NAFTA, and that he may have told them that there had been contact between Senator Clinton's campaign and the embassy in Washington. That's not Senator Obama's campaign and what's in the report, and I think that's a substantial difference. I think the work of the investigators has helped clarify that.
:
The extensive--and I mean extensive--review of electronic communications over a 24-month period was done with respect to exchanges that may have transpired between certain parties and certain ministerial officials and others. I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing--and I mean absolutely nothing--in those exchanges over that 24-month period that would suggest in any way, shape, or form that those individuals' connections with any official of the Government of Canada were anything other than legitimate political exchanges and activities.
I would go further to say that, if anything, the documentation would suggest that the individuals had nothing to do with the disclosure as alleged. It's been my approach, all through my career in the RCMP and elsewhere, that it is quite improper for somebody to be approached on speculation, on unfounded speculation. There was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that this gentleman was involved in the unauthorized disclosure.
Mr. Chair, I'm not disputing Mr. Bains' characterization of the confidential information, although I would invite the committee to consider that the comments made by Mr. Brodie were comments that were in the public domain. They were not confidential. It was not confidential diplomatic information.
The investigation established that those kinds of observations and comments were swirling around the Capitol in Washington at the time. It was a topic of conversation in the same way that the World Series would be, or the Stanley Cup would be in Canada, in terms of who was saying what. There were commentators on both sides of the spectrum making observations, whether it was serious or not.
So I'm not here to replace--
:
Am I allowed to refer to a document here?
It's standard practice that you clearly set out the scope of the activity, your mandate, what is being sought, and the direction your activity is going to go. You agree in advance to the methodologies that are going to be used to determine how this is going to be done. You familiarize yourself with the work practices and the activities of the client. In this sense, since it was the Government of Canada, with which both Mr. Bird and I have considerable experience, it wasn't a question of learning about the operation of the machinery of government or international investigations. It was using the accepted practices with respect to ensuring the main objective and sticking to fact-based findings, avoiding speculation. In effect, you can substantiate with a
[Translation]
supporting document
[English]
one way or another.
I'm jumping ahead here, in effect. Then once you've actually gathered the information from all the different sources, whether those are open sources, data communications, fax logs, telephone logs, BlackBerry logs, or several thousand pages of electronic data, which is reviewed and analyzed and timelined, then you prepare your report.
I must say, sir, the easiest thing in the world is to prepare the report once the timeline is concluded. The timeline is the bugbear of everything. The timeline establishes what can be in the report.
You do that, and then in the case of BMCI, once we've done that, there's the quality assurance process during which the president makes sure that every statement we have in that document can be backed up by a primary source of one nature or another. It could be an interview note. It could be a newspaper article, Associated Press information, or whatever. But every statement in that report must be capable of being backed up by some substantiating document.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Gentlemen, at the beginning I said that I could not correctly assess your report. Having listened to you for an hour and a half, I can, nevertheless, share with you my vision and my conclusions on this issue. I am going to make some comments, but you are not obliged to respond.
Mr. Lynch, in your opening remarks, you said that the investigation was comprehensive and independent. I believe that it was independent. However, I doubt that it was comprehensive, since as you said yourself, the deadlines were too short. Because you did not have enough time and there was not sufficient investment in this investigation, your report contains a great deal of "maybes".
For example, in the second-last paragraph on page 6, it says:
[...] there are indications that information about the meeting between Senator Obama's advisor and Consul General Rioux was known to the media prior to this date, possibly as early as February 28.
There it says "possibly". In the second-last paragraph on page 8 it says: "there are indications that". On page 9, it says, in paragraph 5.1: "it appears probable". There are a great deal of "may haves" and "it appears". Never does this report, except perhaps when it addresses the facts, mention that you have found such and such a piece of information, and never do you make definitive statements. I find that there are a great many "may haves", but that is an opinion.
Mr. Cummins, I do not think that you were given all of the necessary authority. The Canadian press at the time reported that representatives of the government had indicated that they were not looking to discover the source of the initial leak. Perhaps there could have been an agreement with the U.S. government to contact Associated Press. When you receive a fax, there is always a number that enables you to trace the origin. I don't think that you were given all of the necessary authority to conduct a comprehensive investigation which, in my view, was well done. I believe, like the journalists of the day and everyone else, that it was in the interest of someone somewhere to leak the information. History may perhaps reveal more about this.
The Department of Foreign Affairs, staff and officials seem to have made a considerable number of mistakes over the past few years. I find that very damaging and astonishing. I have travelled, and I have met these people. They seem to me to be highly competent and professional, but for some time now, they are always mixed up in situations that show some incompetence or lack of experience and professionalism. Moreover, the recommendations in the report are always made with reference to staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs. However, I am not convinced that these people are responsible for all of the leaks and the mistakes made by the Department of Foreign Affairs that are currently in the news.
I will stop here, and I thank you for having appeared before us.
[English]
There were four basic points that you made; first, that there was not enough time. I suspect investigators would always say they'd like more time, but I believe Mr. Cummins and Mr. Bird were absolutely definitive that they had found no evidence whatsoever to suggest criminal activity. The definitiveness of their conclusion in that timeframe to me suggests that the timeframe was adequate for them to arrive at their conclusions and the findings in the report.
Second, I think Mr. Cummins and Mr. Bird actually said quite the opposite concerning whether or not they had enough authority. They felt they were given complete independence, and indeed our instructions were that they could go wherever they thought the investigation should go, as seasoned, extremely experienced investigators.
Third, on the United States, I think we have described that it's not a matter of authority but a matter of law and treaty, and therefore it's not an issue that either the investigators or we could affect.
Fourth, may I say concerning the Department of Foreign Affairs that I think we have talked about the specifics, but I must say, I would not generalize this. I have just come back from Afghanistan, where I spent ten days with not just the Canadian Forces but with men and women of Foreign Affairs. I think they're doing some absolutely remarkable things around the world. In no way, shape, or form would I generalize from the specific instance here, for which I think we have a remedy plan.
Thank you.
I want to say how much I appreciate the time you have taken here, gentlemen. When I'm asking questions, it's not that.... I think you have done a very thorough job, given the task at hand. My question is, are we looking for the same thing?
I think the issue of timelines is crucial here. There's a ten-day period when this story begins to take off, from February 21, when the government is doing damage control over the Democratic primaries, to March 1 or March 2, when AP says they have the memo. Now, you've chosen to focus on the memo, but I think the real issue here is the seeding of the story.
I'm a big fan of movies. I watched Wag the Dog I don't know how many times, and in Wag the Dog they bring in Robert De Niro to offset a politically damaging issue. He begins to seed the story. Of course, there's no such thing as a B-3 bomber; who said anything about a B-3 bomber? And the next thing we know, we're talking about the B-3 bomber, as opposed to the scandal.
So we have Mr. Brodie in Washington on February 25, at the same time as this issue of NAFTA and the Democratic primaries becomes a hot political issue, and he says he doesn't remember getting briefed on anything to do with NAFTA and says perhaps there was an informal discussion on NAFTA. So we're to take it that the Prime Minister sends Brodie to Washington to discuss everything under the sun but NAFTA, but maybe they discussed NAFTA.
On February 26 he spoke to a reporter in the lock-up. We know that. Either the reporter is lying or he just doesn't do his job.
On February 27, Ambassador Wilson gets a call from CTV and is asked to confirm whether it was Clinton's camp who was sending the messages not to worry about the position on NAFTA, and Mr. Wilson doesn't really give us a sense of what he told them, but CTV goes on the news that night saying that it was a top staff member from the Obama campaign who telephoned Michael Wilson and told him not to take this rhetoric seriously.
Now someone had to clarify that story. Someone had to clarify what Mr. Brodie said, and CTV is very clear that it was Michael Wilson who did it.
On February 28, Mr. Wilson speaks with them again. Of course, this time he has someone in the office with him when that phone call takes place. But CTV stands by their story--
:
I can start by saying what I said at the outset.
The scope was to look at both, to look at the allegations of alleged verbal disclosures, what they may or may not have been, who they may have been delivered to, and the issue of the unauthorized disclosure of a sensitive diplomatic report, both of which were important at the time and became the scope of what the Prime Minister asked us to look at.
If you look at our report, Mr. Angus, you'll see that in the timeline we and the investigators have tried to sort out, in a sense, the various kinds of interactions and now provide a much greater clarity about what people may or may not have said than was available as speculation at the time. I think that's why it's very mportant, as Mr. Cummins mentioned, to establish the timeline first and foremost.
I guess my concern is that in the recommendations, who gets the blame? It's the unknown staffers. There is nothing in this that says that there has to be responsibility taken by the Prime Minister's spin doctors and by political appointees who are ambassadors not to shoot their foot off and influence and interfere with the U.S. primary. That, to me, is the fundamental recommendation that's missing.
Speaking of recommendations, I was very interested when Mr. Cummins said very clearly—and I think he's correct—that Mr. Brodie hadn't done anything wrong. You said that his comments were in the public domain, that they weren't confidential, and that it was just as though people were talking about the World Series. He didn't leak anything. No, he didn't leak anything; he was seeding a story.
Yet the one recommendation that's very clear is that when people like Mr. Brodie seed stories to the media, they are not to be named. That's very clear in here. Mr. Brodie is to be exempted so that he can go into a lock-up or he can go anywhere and seed stories to influence a media story. Yet the media are being told to treat this as confidential when clearly the investigators didn't see Mr. Brodie's position as confidential. Why the contradiction?
:
It appears there may be a vote. We will find out the length of the bells.
We will take a break to vote, and if we're finished with these particular witnesses, we will come back for the next witness. There are more questions.
I'm going to make a comment here. There are thousands and thousands of these diplomatic notes that float everywhere around the word every day. It's passing strange that somehow this one surfaced just at the right time.
Unfortunately for you, gentlemen, you made a report about the machinery of government. From what I can see, there's a lot more politics than machinery of government. You can only make comments on machinery of government. Therefore, your report is as complete as you can make it. As Mr. Cummins said, you cannot go and interrogate the Americans.
Politics has really been at play here rather than the machinery of government, and somehow the leak of the particular document happened at a very opportune time for some.
An hon. member: That's speculation.
The Chair: It is speculation on my part, but it's a fact that your report cannot go into politics; it's not your job.
:
It was reasonably complex. I mean, you had missions around the world. The clerk has indicated that there were 232 recipients, literally around the world, so the complexity of recovering end data was.... I'd have to defer, as I'm not a technical expert with respect to data recovery and what not. I have been involved in a number of investigations that have required it, and I always relied on experts to do it.
I can tell you that the Department of Foreign Affairs, through the PCO and the IT, managed to recover an incredible amount of all the data that was requested, which we had identified as we felt it was appropriate during the time period. Sometimes we'd go back and they'd have to reload. As far as the technicalities, I would leave it up to them. But we got that information.
At the same time, the PCO provided all the information we had requested with respect to the telephone logs and the fax logs from the embassies, the missions around the world. Everywhere that document had been sent or received, that information was recovered and analyzed. In that sense, you may not say it was complex, but it was quite complex from my perspective.
Plus, you have the distinction of the different roles between the embassies and the PCO, and the PCO and the PMO, and the information. But I can tell you that everybody, without exception, was incredibly cooperative. We did not meet a reluctant witness who wouldn't come forward. As far as Mr. Bird and I were concerned, they were open and honest and forthright with respect to what they knew and what they didn't know.
I think it's important to reflect that the embassy personnel, the consulate personnel, the PMO's office, the PCO's office, DFAIT, literally everybody we approached responded in an expeditious and forthright manner. We found no reluctant witnesses. We didn't find any flubbing. We did go back to some witnesses on more than one occasion. I think it's important, Madam Chair, to indicate that was not because they were suspected of anything; it's because as a result of subsequent interviews they were in a position to add clarity. I went back to one young staffer four times because he was in a position to provide me with additional details in certain matters.
They were very, very cooperative, and I might say extremely distressed over the consequences of this unauthorized disclosure.
:
Of course we rapidly involved remedial measures.
I would like to underline that in context this is extremely rare. We have thousands of communications going daily, and a leak of this nature in diplomatic reporting is extremely rare.
That having been said, clearly we have a system based on individual responsibility and we can't have a policeman standing behind every diplomat who is originating a message. We rely on those individuals to show good judgment. Obviously they get initial training, but we need to have refresher training. We need to improve the recommendation regarding the online security course, for instance. We think it is a valid recommendation. We are looking at developing that. We already have one relating to our classified communication system, the so-called C-5 system; if you are entrusted with a C-5 account, you have to pass an online security course before that account is activated.
In April we had our two deputy ministers send a broadcast message out to all staff reminding them of the importance of protecting information, referring them to the detailed guidance available on our Internet sites for all employees, and reminding them of protection-of-information courses available to employees. Obviously it's an ongoing effort to ensure that all those who handle such information are using it in the appropriate way, using the appropriate systems, and exercising good judgment. Clearly human beings are not infallible, but I think we can ensure that a high standard is maintained through such an active training program.
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Brown makes his point that there's some sort of conspiracy that this interfered in the U.S. elections. Ambassador Wilkins very clearly stated that this was interference. So I wanted to make that point.
Secondly, with all due respect to you, Mr. Lynch, and to all your colleagues, who have done good work, this is not targeted at you. This is incredibly frustrating. The purpose and the mandate of this particular investigation was to find the leaked memo and the source of that leaked memo, and the fact that you were unable to contact or even call the Americans who had access to this information is very frustrating, incredibly frustrating. That's really one of the purposes of our sitting here today: it's to find out how we could have avoided it or what else we could have done to essentially.... You could just pick up the phone and call them and say, “Look, I know there is this jurisdictional issue, but because of the nature and the seriousness of the concerns raised by this investigation and the fact that you are our number one friend, trading partner, and ally....”
As you said, Mr. Cummins, many of the people you contacted and called and spoke with were very cooperative. I understand jurisdiction is an issue, but because of the nature of this investigation it would be very easy to pick up the phone and ask. If they chose not to respond, that's a separate issue, but the fact that an effort wasn't made.... Consideration was given, but actually nothing was done about it, and that's the frustrating part.
I say this with the utmost level of respect to you and your staff in the work that you've done.
My question is with regard to the point I made earlier with regard to Mr. Sensenbrenner. I'm not here to smear any individual's name. I mention it because it came up in the media report and it speaks to the question. The report states that the names of a few U.S. citizens were raised as having access to the report. I'm just putting out names that we think have come up. Can you speak to those names and to who those people were? That would help us with our committee work here.
:
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
My name is Ian Brodie. I'm the Prime Minister's chief of staff. I've been Mr. Harper's chief of staff for nearly three years now. Before that, I was executive director of the Conservative Party of Canada, and prior to that, assistant chief of staff in the opposition leader's office. I am also on leave from the University of Western Ontario, where I am an associate professor of political science.
Earlier this year there were allegations in the House of Commons that I had leaked a memorandum from our consulate general in Chicago relating a meeting between one of our diplomats and an adviser to Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign. These allegations were and remain completely false.
In response to the allegations, the Prime Minister tasked the Clerk of the Privy Council with investigating the unauthorized disclosure of the sensitive information in question. His investigation was given free and full access to everyone in the Prime Minister's Office, as well as all email records, telephone logs, fax logs, and any other information the investigators wished to review.
I myself met on two occasions with the investigators for a total of several hours and answered all of their questions. Eight other PMO staffers also met with the investigators and answered all of their questions. We cooperated with the investigation fully.
The report on the investigation, as you know, was made public on May 22 and contains a full report of the facts and conclusions it was able to draw. I draw the attention of committee members to page 9 of the report, where it concludes there is no evidence that I disclosed any confidential information in regard to this issue.
I can confirm to this committee that the Prime Minister was furious about the leak of the report from Chicago and remains furious about it to this day.
:
Thank you for that question.
I did discuss this in some detail with the investigators during the course of our two meetings. From time to time, as a result of my responsibilities, the Department of Foreign Affairs or the foreign policy staff in the Privy Council Office do have occasion to share diplomatic reporting with me on a variety of issues, and I appreciate that.
I would say I have a good familiarity with the classification system that's used to protect different categories of diplomatic reporting that we get from our missions overseas. It has been my experience that information of the sort that was in the report that came from the Chicago consulate general to me on February 28 is typically classified at the confidential or secret level.
So on February 28, when I finally received the text of the Chicago consulate general's report, I must admit it was a busy day. As you'll recall, I think I spent that morning here at this committee, asking to be heard on the Soudas investigation, and the committee declined to hear from me at that point. But I had spent the morning sitting here watching that committee hearing unfold.
I received the report from Chicago. The date and time are listed in the appendix of Mr. Lynch's report. Although I read the text of the report carefully, I assumed that it was classified at the confidential or secret level. It wasn't marked that way, and I must admit, I guess I didn't read the top routing information on the message. I assumed it was like other diplomatic reports I had seen in the past on the same sorts of subjects.
I handled it as if it were a secret document, printed it, read it, and then disposed of it by putting it in the confidential information shred box in my office here in the Centre Block. It was later taken by the authorized folks from the office, shredded and pulverized, destroyed.
So I read the report. It took me probably five or ten minutes to read it over a couple of times and absorb the report, and before I had even put it down, I walked over to the shred box and disposed of it securely.
That's my normal practice in dealing with diplomatic reports.