The Globe and its leakers:
Or, A bureaucratic fight from the secret world spills into the open
A little-known diplomatic reporting program is in the news. GAC’s Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP), although over two decades old, has hit the headlines for the first time, thanks to leaks from anonymous sources to the Globe and Mail.
These leaks regard a law suit launched by Michael Spavor, one of two Canadians detained by China on espionage charges in December 2018. Spavor has asked for a multi-million dollar settlement from the Canadian government, who he apparently blames for his imprisonment in China. The Chinese action, widely regarded as a form of hostage diplomacy, followed Canada’s arrest of Huawei Chief Financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in response to a US extradition request.
According to the Globe and its sources, Spavor believes his incarceration was the result of “intelligence work” conducted by his fellow detainee, Michael Kovrig. The GSRP angle? Mr. Kovrig served as a GSRP officer in China for GAC between 2012 and 2014. According to the Globe’s sources, Spavor’s law suit is based on an allegation that Mr. Kovrig passed on information gleaned from Mr. Spavor, presumably regarding his knowledge of North Korea, through GSRP reporting channels. This, Spavor alleges, was the basis for the Chinese charges against him for spying for a foreign entity and illegally procuring state secrets.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-spavor-kovrig-china-intelligence-background/
Here I am going to hit stop. I know nothing of the details of Mr. Spavor’s allegations, beyond what is reported in the Globe.
I want to pursue two other angles to this story. One is to give a little background on the GSRP program, which I hope might be supplemented in future. The other is to ask why this story has surfaced.
To say that the GSRP is little known to the Canadian public is no exaggeration. Its history can only be sketched in outline. The program was created in 2002 to enhance diplomatic reporting from Canadian missions abroad on security issues, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It began with 11 officials and grew to 31 by 2021. According to a brief description of the GSRP in a special report produced in 2022 by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, the GSRP provides reporting coverage “across the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East, Africa, and East and Southeast Asia.” Its annual budget in 2021 was $1 million.
https://www.nsicop-cpsnr.ca/reports/rp-2022-11-04/special-report-global-affairs.pdf
The NSICOP report further states that GSRP officers are not undercover but are “accredited and declared diplomats.” They collect information “overtly,” on Canadian intelligence priorities or requirements. “not covered by other members of the security and intelligence community.” GSRP officers do not recruit intelligence assets in the way an intelligence service would—they do not offer money, services or promises in exchange for information. Their sources can include government officials, journalists, academics and activists.
Nor does the GSRP operate as cowboys. Again, according to the NSICOP report, there is an interdepartmental coordination committee that oversees the program, established in 2008. In 2012, a handbook was prepared for the GSRP to govern its activities. Three internal evaluations of the program have been conducted (2008, 2013, and 2018).
The NSICOP description of the GSRP was not accompanied by any deep-dive into the program. The Committee left that (at least for now) to its counterpart review agency, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), which conducted its own study, covering GSRP from 2017 to 2019. In the NSIRA annual report for 2020 it noted that it made a number of recommendations to improve the program and that GAC had agreed to “positively address all the recommendations” (whatever that means). NSIRA also stated in 2020 that “due to the highly sensitive nature of this review, NSIRA will not be publishing anything further at this time.”
However, the release of the two Michaels in September 2021, allowed NSIRA to begin a process in 2022 to redact the report and release it. Obviously, to have taken this step while the two Michaels were still in Chinese custody could have imperilled them, given Chinese interrogators’ focus on the GSRP in questioning of both Spavor and Kovrig.
The NSIRA release process was, however, soon stymied by an Access to Information request for its report, which is now being handled by GAC, probably at the usual lightning speed. So we remain with barebones information about the GSRP.
The Globe and Mail stories have surfaced long-standing tensions within the Canadian security and intelligence system about the role of the GSRP. The Globe reporters, the duo of Bob Fife and Steve Chase, have quoted former CSIS officials who have painted the GSRP program as amateurish, or worse. Andy Ellis, a former assistant director of operations who retired in 2016, told the Globe that “I fear it evolved into people who neither had the training or experience to be collecting more confidential and protected information and doing so in a manner that appeared to be clandestine.” Another former CSIS official and terrorism analyst, Phil Gurski, who retired in 2013, was even more accusatory, telling the Globe that “I do know for a fact that…GSRP officers did some things that put some people in danger. That speaks volumes about the credibility of the program and the fact that they don’t really know what they are doing.”
Retired CSIS officials getting it off their chests about a GAC program that may have been perceived as intruding into their sphere of intelligence work (even though CSIS does very little overseas collection of intelligence and is not structured to perform the functions of a foreign intelligence service) has done little other than give a win to China. Most unfortunate and unsavoury.
But the spat does reinforce a need, emphasized in reports produced by the Centre for International Governance Innovation back in 2021 for a “comprehensive internal review” of “Canada’s national security capabilities,” with the aim of ensuring that Canada has the sovereign intelligence capacity it requires for decision-making. This is especially important as Canada tries to fashion policies towards disruptive powers such as Russia and China, quite apart from responding to the outbreak of yet another round of destructive warfare and terrorism in the Middle East.
https://www.cigionline.org/static/documents/NSS_Special-Report_web_eX1LDtj.pdf
Intelligence is a team sport. GAC has a role, as does CSIS, CSE, DND and other departments and agencies. There is a place for new thinking, even about old chestnuts such as the creation of an independent foreign intelligence service.
Headline promoting bun fights and sensation-tinged accusations won’t get us anywhere.
Just a response to Tom Deligiannis' question. The GSRP program was designed to reinforce the practice of analytical reporting from missions and embassies abroad, when that practice had frequently been undermined by other diplomatic duties (visits etc). The GSRP program moreover focused on security issues of relevance to Canada and in line with GOC intelligence priorities. But GSRP officers were declared and bound to operate openly, not in the clandestine fashion of intelligence operatives. The case of the two Michaels and, before that, the Garratts and their detention does raise some red flags about possible Chinese intelligence penetration of Canadian diplomatic communications.
Readers might want to have a read of an Op Ed published in the Globe and Mail entitled "When is a Spy not a spy?" by a trio of authors. They argue that "perhaps the biggest question...is whether Canada needs to take the plunge and actually create a clandestine Foreign Intelligence Service."
Bureaucracies complaining about "turf" is nothing new. The problem is usually weak or incompetent managers who don't know or care what is going on, and are only interested in getting the next promotion. The Chinese would have known who Kovrig was when he was designated as a GSRP officer by the Canadian government. My question would be why did Kovtig stay in China after he was no longer part of the diplomatic mission? The Chinese probably had him on their radar, and when they needed to pick up a pair of Canadians to retaliate they had those two already identified.