How a secret spy file on PET was almost spared from destruction
OTTAWA — A secret spy service file on Pierre Trudeau came close to eluding destruction 30 years ago, newly disclosed memos reveal.
However, a late October 1988 recommendation that the dossier on the former prime minister be preserved for at least another decade was nixed just days later, sealing its fate.
The Canadian Press reported last month that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service scrapped the Cold War file on Trudeau in 1989 instead of sending it to the national archives.
The Trudeau dossier was among hundreds of thousands of files on a wide array of groups and individuals the newly formed CSIS inherited in the 1980s after the RCMP Security Service was disbanded.
CSIS said the file on Trudeau was destroyed because it fell short of the threshold for retention by either the service or the archives.
The news rankled leading historians, who said an intelligence file on a prime minister should be kept without hesitation given its significance to the national public record.
Though the contents of the Trudeau file are a mystery, the RCMP might have noted the future prime minister’s support of striking asbestos miners in Quebec or his exotic travels.
Trudeau, Canada’s third-longest-serving prime minister, left office in 1984 and died in 2000.
Internal CSIS documents, released this month under the Access to Information Act, shed additional light on how the decision to destroy the Trudeau file was made.
The intelligence service possessed files on people suspected of being subversives, spies or terrorists, as well as those who underwent security screening requested by foreign countries, required domestic security clearances or might have encountered a foreign intelligence service while travelling.
Reviewers who combed through the files in the late 1980s used general criteria to determine whether a file had archival value when no longer needed for operational reasons.
A newly declassified memo of Oct. 24, 1988, about the Trudeau file noted he “could be the object of future threats or acts of violence” given his high profile, or he might be the subject of threatassessment requests from allied agencies when going abroad — that is, that Trudeau’s file might be useful for understanding how best to protect him.
The unnamed reviewer therefore recommended the file “be retained for a further period of 10 years for VIP security related purposes.”
But a memo dated two days later said there was no “investigational requirement” related to the material, adding: “File does not fall within archival criteria. Recommend file be destroyed.”
Added another official: “Recommendation agreed with.”