Pants on Fire?

The CSIS Director is recalled to the stand

CSIS Director David Vigneault has been called back to the FI Commission for an unscheduled repeat appearance, on Friday morning, April 12. It will be brief. It may be fiery. Whose pants may alight remains to be seen.

The specific issue concerns a small set of three documents that have been released in declassified format, all related to notes prepared for briefings delivered by the CSIS director on the foreign interference threat, between October 2022 and February 2023.^[1]

The broader context is the question of what the CSIS Director actually conveyed in his briefings, distinct from the notes. More importantly, the issue is whether CSIS intelligence portrayed the threat of foreign interference in ways that significantly challenged the government outlook. This has been a theme of media reporting on the foreign interference threat based on selective leaks of classified intelligence, including CSIS reports, and formed part of a Conservative party attack charge against the government.

To put it starkly, the CSIS Director is going to have to stand by the content of these briefing notes, or disavow them. Either path is going to have consequences for the reputation of CSIS and for the Director’s standing.

I am not going to predict which path the morning’s testimony will take. But I do want to provide a preview by examining the highlights of the documents in question and pointing to some deeply problematic elements.

The two most important briefing notes share similarities in language, which it itself significant, given that they were prepared months apart (October 2022 and February 2023). They suggest a fixed outlook on the part of CSIS.

In particular, conclusions in both documents share identical phrasing:

From October 2022:^[2]

“Ultimately, better protecting Canada’s democratic institutions against FI will require a shift in the Government’s perspective and a willingness to take decisive action and impose consequences on perpetrators.

Until FI is viewed as constituting an existential threat to Canadian democracy and the Government forcefully and actively respond, these threats will persist.”

From February 2023:^[3]

“Better protecting Canada’s democratic institutions against FI will require a shift in the Government’s perspective and a willingness to take decisive action and impose consequences on perpetrators.

Until FI is viewed as an existential threat to Canadian democracy and governments forcefully and activity respond, these threats will persist.”

Both briefing notes contain the identical statement that:

“State actors are able to conduct FI successfully in Canada because there are few legal or political consequence. FI is therefore low-risk and high-reward.”

Counsel for Michael Chong, the Conservative foreign affairs critic, called these documents “remarkable.” Counsel for the Attorney General’s Office tried to downplay them, stating that there was “nothing controversial” in them and that they were “boiler plate.”

They may be boiler plate, as their repetitive phrasing suggests. To argue that they are “not controversial” doesn’t pass muster.

So what is controversial about these documents, apart from the question of how exactly the Director delivered, or did not, deliver the message (on that we will have to wait for his testimony)?

To my eye, there are two very important issues.

One is the question of whether these briefing notes suggest that CSIS as an organization was exceeding its mandate and crossing an important red line for any democratic intelligence service.  Its mandate, contained in the CSIS Act, is to advise the government on threats to the security of Canada. The red line is that intelligence services advise, they do not try to make or insist on policy decisions. That role is rightly reserved to a government in office. An intelligence service is not democratically elected, it does not have a mandate to make policy. It is not expert on all the considerations that will go into making policy. To try to insist on policy action is a sure-fire way to undermine the status of an intelligence organisation with other senior officials, representing different elements of the national security and intelligence system, and with Ministers and the Prime Minister, to whom they are accountable. So, what is going on here?

The second question is the CSIS depiction of the threat of foreign interference. Both briefing notes describe foreign interference as an “existential threat” to Canadian democracy.  Is it?  Persistent and pervasive threat, yes. Serious threat, yes. But “existential, “ come on.   That’s nuclear war territory.

Incidentally, CSIS does not use this language in its public reports. The most recent one, for 2022, instead uses  much more measured language—"a threat”:

“Malicious interference undermines Canada’s democratic institutions and public discourse; and it is used to intimidate or coerce diaspora communities in Canada. That is why it constitutes a threat to Canada’s social cohesion, sovereignty, and national security.”^[4]

In a special report on “Foreign Interference Threats to Canada’s Democratic Processes,” published in July 2021, a representative sample of the description of the threat can be found in this passage:

“The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) continues to observe steady, and in some cases increasing, foreign interference activity by state actors. Foreign interference directed at our democratic institutions and processes can be effective ways for foreign states to achieve their immediate, medium or long-term strategic objectives. These activities can pose serious threats to Canadians both inside and outside Canada, and threaten Canada's prosperity, strategic interests, social fabric, and national security. Given the nature of today’s geopolitical environment, these activities will almost certainly intensify.”^[5]

None of the documentary evidence or testimony presented before the FI Commission on the foreign  interference threat buttresses a claim that foreign interference constitutes something much higher than “a threat” or a “serious threat”—but, doom scroll, an existential threat. Intelligence services have to be very careful about exaggerating or over-hyping threats. Why?  Its called, in intelligence circles, the ‘cry-wolf’ phenomenon. Basically, if you repeat inflated threat language too many times, and the reality on the ground doesn’t match it, you lose credibility and the opportunity to make future warnings stick when they matter.  (One famous historical example is provided by the series of warnings available to Israeli intelligence prior to the Yom Kippur war in 1973. These warnings, false alarms, helped inur the Israeli government to the reality of a devastating surprise attack when it did occur by the Egyptian and Syrian armies.) 

More broadly, an intelligence service that hypes a threat is in danger of getting tuned out by government.

If inflated intelligence assessments are a problem in terms of their reception and impacts on reputation, they can also illustrate significant ills within an organisation. How does the CSIS director end up with briefing notes that cross red lines and exaggerate the threat?  What is going on in the bowels of the organization to create this problem—inadequate supervision; poor assessment practices; siloed thinking; cloistered understanding of the broader threat environment; lack of political judgement? All of the above, none of the above?

Let’s see whether the CSIS Director’s pants catch on fire.

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^[1] The documents can be found on the FI Commission website. The reference numbers are CAN004495, CAN004079_R01, and CAN015842. https://foreigninterferencecommission.ca/documents/exhibits-and-presentations

^[2] CAN015842

^[3] CAN004495

^[4] CSIS Public Report 2022, https://www.canada.ca/en/security-intelligence-service/corporate/publications/csis-public-report-2022.html

^[5] CSIS, “Foreign Interference Threats to Canada’s Democratic Processes,” July 2021, https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/documents/publications/2021/foreign-interference-threats-to-canada%27s-democratic-process.pdf