The art of public reporting of classified intelligence
Comparing a published and a leaked report from July 2021 (or, less Victorian prudery?)
Intelligence agencies, like CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), face a challenge in reporting publicly using classified intelligence. There are many tensions at play. Care has to be taken not to provide even a glimmer of information that might harm intelligence sources and methods (CSIS calls this ”the mosaic effect”). The messaging of such reports needs to consider impacts on the conduct of Canada’s foreign and economic relations. A balance is often sought between calling attention to threats and avoiding alarmist statements. Then there is the overhang of a predominant culture of secrecy which is central to the work of intelligence services and which can inculcate a mindset of extreme caution and sometimes a dismissive attitude towards the value of public reporting.
So why do it at all? The simple answer is that a realization has dawned over the decades since the 9/11 attacks that an intelligence service in a democracy cannot work in splendid , secret isolation and that it needs a supportive and aware public. The public sphere needs its own capacity to understand and respond to threats, and it can serve as an important source knowledge and warning for intelligence services. That’s why tip-lines exist. As a CSIS public report states:
“all citizens need to know about the threats to Canada’s democracy and be equipped to protect themselves from foreign interference. We all have a role to play in protecting Canada’s democracy.”
OK, let’s take this statement as a recognition of the need for a national-security literate population. The real question is how to deliver on it.
A fascinating illustration of the gaps that exist between highly classified reporting and a public version is now available to us, courtesy of yet another news story from the Globe and Mail on a leaked CSIS document, “China views Canada as a priority for interference: CSIS Report.”
The classified CSIS report (which like all leaked documents made available to the Globe and Mail has not been published by the newspaper) is an Intelligence Assessment branch (IAB) report dated July 20, 2021. Its public twin, which is not mentioned in the Globe story, is a report that CSIS produced in the same month, “Foreign Interference Threats to Canada’s Democratic Process.”
Both were produced prior to the onset of the federal election campaign in late August. The timing was certainly not coincidental. The IAB report was, presumably, a feeder for the public report.
There are enough common threads between the media account of the IAB report and the publicly available CSIS report to indicate that they draw on the shared knowledge of CSIS. Comparing the two reports does not indicate an intelligence service at war with itself, with divided counsels on the threat of foreign interference, as the current spate of leakers have implied.
Among these common threads are references to the intensifying nature of the foreign interference threat, the reasons why Canada is a target for foreign state adversaries and their proxies, the widespread nature of domestic targets, and the diversity of methods used.
What really distinguishes the public reporting from the classified version are two things—the generalizations and lack of specific details in the public report; and the fact that China is not directly mentioned in the public report. The public report is, in bureaucrat-speak, “country agnostic.”
Before the cries of “cover-up” mount, let’s consider the pluses and minuses of a generalized, country-agnostic public report.
On the plus side, a general overview report can actually do a better job of capturing the broad threat posed by foreign interference and the motivations that underlie it. In the CSIS public report on foreign interference threats, Canada is deemed a target for a variety of reasons, from its economic base, including natural resources and advanced technology, to its allied status as a member of NATO and the Five Eyes, to its multicultural society. The reported contents of the classified CSIS report on Chinese interference appear to narrow the attractiveness of Canada as a target to Canada’s membership of the Five Eyes, its closeness to the U.S. and to U.S. policy decisions, and its “robust reputation.”
Curiously, the classified report, according to the media summary, suggests Beijing is looking to build Canadian support for its gargantuan economic outreach program, known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). If true, the Chinese government has little insight into Canadian policy. Support for the BRI has no present or future constituency.
The public report also takes a longer view of foreign state interference objectives, dividing them into immediate, mid-term and long-term goals. One could quarrel with whether mid and long-term goals are distinguishable (probably not) or even whether foreign adversaries have a strategic as opposed to disruptive plan for interference operations, but calling attention to possible end-games remains worthwhile. In the CSIS public report these end games are starkly presented: to achieve hard power advantage, advance authoritarian regimes, and disrupt the rules-based international order.
The public report sets out a range of techniques that foreign states may use against a population, including exploitation of personal contacts, coercion, financial corruption, cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns on social media, and espionage. This is accompanied with some basic guidance on how to avoid such threats. Several of these techniques are mentioned in the classified report.
Elected and public officials are represented as a particular target for foreign interference. Here the language of the CSIS public report and its classified version hit on the same interference methodology. In the public report we read that “State actors may use deceptive means to cultivate a relationship with electoral candidates or their staff in order to covertly obtain information to be used later to their advantage…” In the Globe and Mail story referencing the classified report, we learn that political staffers are targeted because of their status as gatekeepers for MPs, “thereby placing them in a position where they can deceptively control and influence the activities of elected officials in ways that support PRC activities.” There may be a subtle shift here in attributing a degree of wittingness to political staffers, but for that we would need to see the classified report in its entirety and not rely on a chosen excerpt.
In general, the public report and the classified report are telling the same story, albeit with different degrees of amplification.
The real advantages held by the classified report are its ability, for an internal audience, to call out China as a key perpetrator of foreign interference activities, its operational focus on specific actions undertaken by Chinese state actors, and its ability to suggest weaknesses in the Canadian response. In the Globe’s reporting based on the classified IAB document, specific interference actions include the targeting of Canadian MPs who voted in favour of a Parliamentary motion condemning the PRC’s genocidal actions against China’s Uyghur minority, actions by the Chinese consulate in Calgary to influence a Conservative MP, an espionage operation against a provincial MP staffer, attempts using a cut-out to identify dissidents opposed to Chinse policies towards its so-called “five Poisons” (Taiwan and Tibetan independence, Muslim Uyghurs, The Falun Gong and Hong-Kong’s pro-democracy movement), and efforts to manipulate social and Chinese-language media. The likely intensification of foreign interference is linked to what are called the “absence of “real disincentives” and the perceived low-risk environment presented by Canada.
The public report captures the width of the problem; the classified report captures more of the depth. But does something need to be done to ensure that both a strategic overview and a more detailed examination of aspects of the foreign interference threat can be communicated to Canadians?
The answer has to be yes—the gap between the public report and the classified intelligence needs to be narrowed to achieve the objective of enhanced public knowledge.
To achieve this, a ‘country agnostic’ approach needs to be abandoned. While there are a variety of states that engage in clandestine foreign interference in Canada, the two key sources of concern are China and Russia. The activities of both need to be called out in public. In the case of China this comes, admittedly, with a price tag in terms of potential retaliation against Canadian diplomatic and business interests. When warranted that price will have to be paid. Where real concern needs to be focused is on blowback against people-to-people exchanges between Canada and China. It cannot be repeated too often that the Canadian effort to counter foreign interference is addressed at a regime in Beijing, not at the Chinese people, and certainly not at a diaspora community in Canada.
Forgoing ‘nice’ country-agnostic reporting may be the easy step.
More difficult is the question of conveying the specifics of foreign interference activities. Intelligence sources and methods have to be protected, as do future opportunities for intelligence gathering and threat reduction measures. So the first rule of thumb has to be not to tell an adversary anything not already known to it. A second rule of thumb is not to name names—that’s for a courtroom and a judicial process dedicated to fair and open procedures. The exception, of course would be in the removal of foreign officials declared ‘persona non grata’ for abusing their diplomatic privileges.
Keeping these rules of thumb in mind, more specifics can be conveyed through ‘case study scenarios’ drawn from actual foreign interference operations. The Australians do this better than we do. Time to catch up.
For one illustration we can go to the recent annual threat assessment statement delivered by the Director General of ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation—the counterpart of CSIS). I discussed this threat report in a previous substack:
https://wesleywark.substack.com/p/two-spy-agencies-common-threats-different
Mike Burgess stated that “it is important to explain what political interference actually looks like,” and proceeded to cite the case of the “puppeteer.”
https://www.asio.gov.au/resources/speeches-and-statements/director-generals-annual-threat-assessment-2022
While some details were carefully airbrushed out, the main lines of the ‘puppeteer’ plot were illustrated, involving a wealthy person who used an offshore account and channeled funds on behalf of a foreign power through an employee to a select network of (unwitting) political candidates with the idea of advancing their careers and creating opportunities for future exploitation. The plot was disrupted by ASIO, so a happy ending.
But not all such plots are discovered and disrupted in time by state security agencies. That is where greater public awareness comes into play, and where greater national security transparency and public story telling become so important. There will be aspects of the intelligence story that cannot be told; but more that can and should be communicated.
Less Victorian prudery; more jazz age?
“all citizens need to know about the threats to Canada’s democracy and be equipped to protect themselves from foreign interference. We all have a role to play in protecting Canada’s democracy.”
Who can quarrel with that platitude? But does CSIS really believe it; and I wonder how Michael Chong feels about it today?
I wonder, too, whether citizens who face threats, don’t just “need” to know, but have a legal “right” to that information. Not as matter of bureaucratic or political discretion, but as a matter of law.
Or would that just be furthering the mission of the improper influencer – particularly when there may be no the institutional means or political appetite to take prophylactic action, and there is nothing that the individual could plausibly do either. Which, of course are very different things and are not self-evident.
So, is that the case in the Chong situation? Because threats of harm are per se unlawful, even if the person making them has diplomatic immunity.
Suppose that there were a direct threats to Chong. Could political or public authorities ignore them, because it might ruffle Chinese feathers or prejudice sales of canola? Who would know if they did? And are such decisions unreviewable?
Or, suppose that there was an active Chinese program of political interference, directed only at Conservative candidates. Could public authorities ignore it for the same reason? And is that unreviewable too?
I would have thought that that was the kind of thing, which might engage the attention of NSICOP or NSIRA, although perhaps I am wrong; and in any case, it is remains unclear (I think) what their remedial authority might be.
However, quite apart from that: does Michael Chong have a legal right to be told about a threat? Or put differently: is there a duty to warn him, as the Courts found in cases like Patrong v Banks et al., 2015 ONSC 3078 (CanLII); or Doe v. Metropolitan Toronto (Municipality) Commissioners of Police, 1990 CanLII 6611 (ON SC). And could he make a claim against “the government” for their calculated silence, as Jane Doe successfully did, some years ago?
In any event, thanks for giving a retired lawyer something to think about on a rainy day, that is far far afield from his usual bailiwick.