CSIS ex-chief slams courts, Canadians: WikiLeaks

A U.S. officialreported that formerCSIS director Jim Judd said Canadians and their courts had an "Alice in Wonderland" worldview, according to a 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

Judd and the U.S. official were discussing threats posed by violent Islamist groups in Canada,as well asrecent developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In the cable, which was sent by the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa to the U.S. government, the official states that Judd said Canadian judges have "CSIS 'in knots,' making it ever more difficult to detect and prevent terror attacks in Canada and abroad."

Judd said the situation "left government security agencies on the defensive and losing public support for their effort to protect Canada and its allies," the cable states.

The cable is one of hundreds of thousands of cables released by the websiteWikiLeaks.

The dispatch goes on to state that Judd "derided" recent Canadian court judgments that threaten foreign governments' intelligence-sharing with Canada.

"These judgments posit that Canadian authorities cannot use information that 'may have been' derived from torture, and that any Canadian public official who conveys such information may be subject to criminal prosecution," the cable says.

Judd credited Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government for " 'taking it on the chin and pressing ahead' with common sense measures despite court challenges and political knocks from the opposition and interest groups," according to the document.

The cable said that Judd stated CSIS had responded to recent, non-specific intelligence on possible terror operations by "vigorously harassing" known Hezbollah members in Canada.

But Judd said he viewed Mohammad Momin Khawaja convicted in Ottawa in October2008 of five charges of financing and facilitating terrorism and two offences related to building a remote-control device that could trigger bombs as not typical of the Pakistani community in Canada.

Judd said that Canada's ethnic Pakistani community "is largely made up of traders, lawyers, doctors, engineers and others who see promise for themselves and their children in North America, so its members are unlikely to engage in domestic terror plots," the cable said.

Judd also said that sections of a court-ordered release of a DVD of Guantanamo detainee and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr "would likely show three adults interrogating a kid who breaks down in tears."

Judd stated that the video "would no doubt trigger knee-jerk anti-Americanism" and "paroxysms of moral outrage, a Canadian specialty," the cable said.

In discussing the situation in Afghanistan, Judd complained about "[President Hamid] Karzai's weak leadership, widespread corruption, the lack of will to press ahead on counter-narcotics, limited Afghan security force capability" and theSarpoza prison break, the cable said.

The Taliban attacked the prison in June 2008 and freed an estimated 1,100 inmates. CSIS had seen that the prison attack was coming, but didn't know when,Judd said.

Juddwas the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service from 2004 to 2009.