Sexting and our national security
Tony Clement’s not so ‘isolated incident’
The news that Tony Clement’s sharing of explicit images online had led to an extortion attempt conjured up a comment attributed to the Greek poet Sophocles, who once compared the male libido to being chained to a lunatic.
I’ll leave moralizing on the story to the chaste and righteous who appear to predominate on social media. But there is a public-policy component to this story of private failure and humiliation.
Clement, who issued a statement late Tuesday that he was being extorted by someone to whom he had sent sexually explicit images and a video of himself, was one of two Conservative members on the new 11-member panel of parliamentarians appointed to oversee the secret activities of Canada’s national security and intelligence agencies. The committee will scrutinize the activities of CSIS, the RCMP and every other agency involved in intelligence-gathering.
Extorting those secrets from a member of the committee would be a major coup for a foreign intelligence service.
There is no confirmation that Clement was the victim of a honey-pot sting arranged by Russia or China. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said he asked Clement to resign from caucus Wednesday because there were indications “this was not an isolated incident.”
But Justin Trudeau’s refusal to comment — and silence on the substance of the matter by normally talkative sources — only feeds suspicions that Clement may have been targeted.
Andy Ellis, a former assistant director of operations at CSIS who now works at intelligence event detection firm EVNTL, said sexual entrapment is an age-old tool in espionage.
While foreign entities have been more prone to influence-peddling than blackmail, luring politicians into compromising positions has been used in the past in Canada and elsewhere, he said.
As recently as 2011, it emerged that Bob Dechert, a junior foreign affairs minister in the Harper government, had sent “flirtatious” emails to Shi Rong, the Toronto bureau chief of Xinhua News Agency, a media organization controlled by the Chinese government. A former Chinese intelligence officer suggested that while she may not have been a spy, Beijing does have agents in Chinese news agencies who would view senior politicians as targets.
That Clement would engage in such risky pursuits and put himself in a situation where he could be successfully blackmailed was breathtakingly dumb.
Rennie Marcoux, executive director of the secretariat established to support the new National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, said each member was given a “comprehensive” security briefing by the Privy Council Office and other security agencies.
Perhaps the imprudence of sending penis pictures by email to someone you don’t know was so obvious it was overlooked in the briefing. But it is concerning that someone who appears to have been an accident waiting to happen was not flagged by the security services.
Marcoux said all committee members and staff at the secretariat were subject to the same “stringent” security and confidentiality requirements as the security and intelligence community.
Yet Ellis said in his experience security checks for politicians are “superficial,” lacking the depth and breadth of top-secret security checks applied to others. He said regular security-clearance checks include a full search of social media and interviews with friends and colleagues going back at least 10 years.
Stephanie Carvin, a former national security analyst with CSIS who now teaches at Carleton University, said MPs and senators were vetted for committee membership but there would have to be some serious red flags flying before the security agencies would intervene to block a parliamentarian.
The news comes at a bad time for a committee that is trying to build public confidence. Carvin said she welcomes parliamentary oversight but it will be a real problem if the national security agencies view the committee with caution. “If the agencies feel they can’t trust the committee, it will damage its credibility,” she said.
The incident is likely to signal an undignified end to a near 30-year career in politics for Clement. He was a key figure in Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution in Ontario and held three ministerial portfolios in Stephen Harper’s government. He has learned the hard way that respect is hard-earned and easily burned. The broader question is whether damage has been done to Canada’s security apparatus. Ellis thinks not, as long as committee members appreciate they are now a higher level of target for foreign entities.
“This is not a critical national security issue,” he said. “I think it’s a gentle nudge, an early warning. It was nipped in the bud and the question is: Can we learn from it?”
CLEMENT, TO USE A GOLF TERM, DID NOT GO TO SCHOOL ON THE MANY MEN WHO WENT BEFORE HIM. HE MUST HAVE IMAGINED THAT HE WOULD BE THE ONE GUY WHO WOULDN’T GET CAUGHT OR TRAPPED OR FOUND OUT. — CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD