Confederate Wing

The story of Canadian naval intelligence officer Jeffrey Delisle, however, does not seem quite so glamourous. Accused of selling secrets over the weekend of January 14, our very own international man of mystery doesn’t seem to have enjoyed smoky cafés on cobbled European streets or caches of foreign banknotes and doctored passports. After his arrest by the RCMP at his suburban Halifax home, merely his charge and a trickle of his domestic details have emerged in lieu of any concrete answers.

“He worked at a communications hub in Halifax called HMCS Trinity,” said Wesley Wark, professor at the Munk Centre for International Studies, of the few facts known thus far. “He also spent some time in the office of the Chief of Defence Intelligence in Ottawa, so he’s someone who over the course of his career has had access to a lot of sensitive Canadian–and probably Allied–information.”

What exactly this sensitive information is has caused widespread speculation since the story broke nearly two weeks ago. “It may be that the government doesn’t know the exact details of what he had access to,” continued Wark. “We don’t have a job description for him, we don’t know what he gave away. But whatever it was, it’s something that the Canadian government regards as very damaging.”

The fragmentary nature of the evidence has created a contrast rather curious in a public eye typically more interested in the romance of espionage than in stuffy procedure. The Russian spy ring exposed in New York 18 months ago touted its very own Bond girl in Anna Chapman (born Anna Kushchyenko), and it recently came to light that the Brits bugged a Moscow street with a glorified pebble seemingly willed from the fictional Q Branch in early 2006.

But Delisle is neither a femme fatale nor a crafty piece of future tech. He is a troubled man, once bankrupt and now divorced, with custody of three children. Bereft of fantasy, what is there to do beyond search for the truth? Delisle’s case is a humanly tragic spy caper, one the media has mired in pathos for lack of anything substantial to anchor it.

“We’re all speculating about what he could have had access to and what he might have sold,” Wark said, mindful that “lots of mysteries still surround the case.” Despite many outlets, including both The National Post and The Toronto Star, eyeing Russia as the “foreign entity” with which Delisle was sharing secrets, Wark is keen to note that it “has been confirmed neither by the Canadian government nor by the Russian government.”

While what little truth known of Delisle’s alleged espionage may not quite be stranger than fiction, his charge will nevertheless have considerable repercussions. “[This case] is going to test The Security of Information Act—legislation which has never been used since it was passed in 2001—so there are legal issues of potentially great significance depending on how the legislation stacks up in the court process,” Wark added.

As regards Canada’s international relations, Wark believes there is going to be “some period of friction between a government that has been spied on and the government doing the spying.” More troublesome is how Canada has many secrets that are not necessarily made in Canada. “If some of that material leaks out, then our allies are going to be very concerned about what it is exactly that Paul Delisle gave away and how this could happen,” Wark cautioned.

Although the facts may presently be few and far between, there is nevertheless hope that all will be revealed. “A lot is bound to emerge once this case is in court because there’s a fair trial process that has to take place,” Wark concluded. “The government loses control of the secrets of this case, and it becomes a matter of the courts to decide what’s in the public’s interest to know.” Fortunately for us, courts tend to recognize such pervasive public interest, and government claims for secrecy are often stretched.