Liberals admit staffer behind Twitter smears
Rae apologizes to Toews; Baird says sorry to NDP
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae has admitted a party staffer was behind the Vikileaks30 Twitter account that aired details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ divorce in retaliation for an online surveillance bill, and that the staffer has resigned. A subdued Rae offered Toews an unconditional apology in the House of Commons on Monday.
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae has admitted a Liberal staffer was behind the Vikileaks30 Twitter account that aired details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ divorce in retaliation for an online surveillance bill, and that the staffer has resigned.
A subdued Rae, who identified the staffer as Adam Carroll, made the admission in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon before offering Toews an unconditional apology.
“I want to offer to the minister my personal apology to him,” Rae said. “Matters of personal and private conduct are not to be the subject of political attack or political rhetoric.”
Carroll, who is married with children, was working in the Liberal party’s research bureau when he set up the Vikileaks30 account. He had served previously on the staff of several Liberal MPS on Parliament Hill and had worked as head of the Canada-israel Committee’s Pacific region office in Vancouver before returning to Ottawa last year.
The Vikileaks30 Twitter account surged into public prominence after the tabling of new legislation this month that would have allowed increased police surveillance of the Internet and those who use it.
A string of tweets posted online offered up alleged details relating to Toews’ divorce proceedings. The tweets were posted directly in response to the tabling of the government’s online surveillance bill.
An Ottawa Citizen investigation traced the account to a House of Commons IP address, which led to a subsequent investigation by the Speaker’s office. Rae said he learned of Carroll’s activities on Sunday after the probe.
With the Liberals admitting responsibility for the Vikileaks30 account, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird was forced to apologize for accusing the NDP of being behind it.
“At time emotions get strained in this House,” he said. “They get particularly strained when you have a friend and a colleague who is under attack.”
Rae described Carroll as a “perfectly nice, hardworking individual who showed a real error in judgment.”
He said Carroll had been upset with recent comments by Toews suggesting a link between opposing the online surveillance bill and siding with child pornographers — as well as Conservative MP Larry Miller’s speech comparing those opposed to the long-gun registry with Nazis.
“But we all agreed that was no excuse,” Rae told reporters. “Nastiness begets other forms of nastiness, and at some point you have to stop.”
Toews accepted the apology. However, he also noted that some Liberal MPS had been encouraging the public to participate in personal, online attacks on him, and he asked the Speaker to look into that issue separately.
“While I’m prepared to take (Rae’s) comments at face value that he had nothing to do with it,” Toews said, “I think the evidence is clear on the public record that there was at least one member who advocated on a continuous basis the use of that.”
Liberal MP Justin Trudeau had participated in a Twitter campaign entitled Tellvic everything that followed the emergence of Vikileaks30 and saw Twitter users post random information about their activities. But he said Monday he never endorsed Vikileaks30 or its personal attacks. “Appalled to find out Vikileaks came from us Liberals,” Trudeau wrote on his Twitter account. “Yes, I tweeted about it, but I did not endorse it. Personal attacks are always wrong.”
Toews later wrote to Trudeau directly on Twitter, saying: “when did you learn this was a Liberal staffer? What did you do to stop this personal attack?”
Meanwhile, the government asked House Speaker Andrew Scheer to investigate a series of videos directed at Toews by an online hacker group called Anonymous. The videos promised further action unless the minister backed off of the online surveillance bill.
Scheer did not respond to the request, but Toews said he would be pressing ahead with the bill.