Edmonton Sun | 10Apr2009 | Orest Slepokura
Letters

RE: "Our oil industry is in al-Qaida's crosshairs and we'd be folly (sic) to dismiss the risk, warns Canada's spy agency," Sunday, April 09, 2009.

Andrew Mitrovica's 2002 study of CSIS methods Covert Entry describes how CSIS agents handled suspicious parcels sent to Nazi sympathizer Ernst Zundel after they were intercepted -- this after Zundel had already received a huge pipe bomb in the mail -- for thorough inspection by CSIS agents. Suspicious parcels, we learn, were shipped "by passenger plane to Ottawa" from Toronto. Mitrovica quotes a CSIS insider posing this rather redundant question: "So what do you think was likely to happen if a bomb went off while we were transporting his mail by commercial jet?" "Folly," anyone?

Orest Slepokura

(The list of CSIS mistakes over the years is not short.)