PUBLICATION: Edmonton Journal
DATE:
2004.01.23
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Opinion
PAGE:
A18
COLUMN:
Lorne Gunter
BYLINE:
Lorne Gunter
SOURCE:
The Edmonton Journal
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Mounties
were out to bully reporter: The question is: who ordered the over-the-top raid?
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Ten
officers!
Ten
RCMP officers to search the private home of one reporter for simple documents
relating to anti-terrorism intelligence work. The police don't send 10 officers
into a home to end a hostage standoff or to take down a grow-op.
Scott
Anderson, editor-in-chief of the Ottawa Citizen, for whom the reporter, Juliet
O'Neill, works, said Thursday the police "raid" was a blatant attempt
at intimidation. He's right.
The
RCMP have made it as tough as possible for O'Neill to work as a reporter by
taking away the tools of her trade. Her notebooks are gone, her address book and
daytimer. Her entire hard drive has been copied. Boxes of her files have been
carted away to be sifted through by investigators. Police even used tape to
cordon off O'Neill's house while they were inside, for crying out loud. What did
they expect to find, a dead body?
They
couldn't possibly have worried an intruder was going to enter and tamper with a
crime scene. And even if officers had twisted their own logic to the point they
had convinced themselves O'Neill's home was a crime scene, it couldn't possibly
be that kind of crime scene, the kind on CSI or Law & Order in which anyone
trampling through might disturb the angle of the body or the location of the
murder weapon or the hidden blood droplet that proves to be the one bit of
evidence that leads to the bad guy.
It
should not have been a raid. What is should have been was a search. But it
appears O'Neill was given no advance warning and no chance to comply
voluntarily.
Raids
are something police do on drug dealers or biker gangs or gunrunners. They use
large numbers and surprise tactics because of a solid fear of one of two things:
destruction of evidence or violent retaliation. A raid is a lightening strike,
in force, designed to overcome suspects before they can flush the drugs or burn
the documents, and before they can shoot back.
There
was little chance O'Neill would suddenly spring to her computer as police came
through the door and begin frantically deleting files with one hand while using
the other to toss brown envelopes into a fire in her trash can - assuming she
even has possession of leaked documents or computer files.
But
just who is behind the intimidation? "The Mounties" in general? Just
the politically correct brass at the top? Or does it go higher up, into the
RCMP's political bosses in the Liberal government?
I'm
not going to claim this marks the death of freedom in Canada or betrays this
country to be a police state, both characterizations that have been made in the
past couple of days. This raid certainly is an egregious violation of freedom of
the press and a black mark against the Mounties. Yet what it is more than
anything is a ham-handed overreaction.
But
by whom? These sorts of controversial tactics are not authorized at the
detachment level. They have to have been approved, in advance, at the very least
by senior commanders within the RCMP, and very possibly even within the
government itself.
Comments
by the prime minister's press secretary, Mario Lague, claim no involvement - the
PM was "surprised" by the raid - but seem at the same time to imply
advanced knowledge. "As you know, we don't direct the RCMP in what they can
or can't do. At the same time, in this case, the whole point is to make sure
that these kinds of leaks that damage the reputation of individuals don't happen
again." Hmm.
O'Neill
wrote a story back in November containing information from a confidential source
in the Canadian intelligence community (likely the Mounties or CSIS). The story,
about Maher Arar, the Syrian-Canadian shipped off by the Americans to Syria,
indicated Canadian officials thought Arar was involved with an al-Qaeda cell
plotting attacks in or from the Ottawa area.
The
revelations in her story later came to be seen as proof Canadian officials knew
more than they had been telling. The implication of that was that they might
have provided this information to the Americans, which in part led to the
Americans' deportation of Arar to Syria.
That
implication ran contra to the official Ottawa line that Canada was in no way
responsible for Arar's detention or expulsion by the Americans.
Since
then, police have no doubt been looking for O'Neill's source without success, as
yesterday's events would indicate. (If they'd identified him or her, they
wouldn't had to have been such louts at O'Neill's private residence.)
But
just who is embarrassed by what O'Neill revealed? Certainly not the ordinary
RCMP and CSIS agents who compiled the information on Arar.
Perhaps
senior Mounties who now seem to spend as much time ingratiating themselves with
their political masters as they do upholding the Mounties' reputation for
decency and objectivity.
But
the people most likely to be embarrassed are the politicians who have
steadfastly denied any Canadian involvement in Arar's arrest and who have made
such a show of demanding of the Americans that they never treat a Canadian in
that manner again.