Official Secrets: The Story Behind the Canadian Security Intelligence Service

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of History at York University and author
of Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has had a difficult life
since its birth in 1985. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had had the
responsibility for counterintelligence ever since the term had been
invented, but in the 1960s and early 1970s the Mounties had been
involved in a series of scandals that completely discredited the
redcoats’ intelligence and competence. The Trudeau government,
literally as its last act, created csis to handle this most sensitive
area that touches so closely on national security and civil rights.

csis, unfortunately for it, had no option other than to take on most of
the rcmp’s counterintelligence officers. Where else could it have
found trained agents? Not surprisingly, many of the problems that had
bedevilled the Mounties soon erupted at csis, and the new agency quickly
became a political football. It will likely remain one until large
numbers of new officers can be recruited and trained, and have the time
to acquire seniority.

Cleroux’s book is the best we yet have on the agency. Generally well
researched, chatty in tone, and quite critical in its approach, Official
Secrets examines the agency’s origins, its failures and successes, and
its organizational problems. He gives proper attention to csis’s links
with American agencies, and he questions, quite properly, how dependent
csis is on the cia/nsc nexus. This is a most useful account.