Last week, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency released nearly one million declassified documents online. Spanning an era from the Second World War all the way to the 1990s, the release includes more than 12 million pages of briefings and top-secret cables giving a behind-the-scenes look at U.S. policy during the Cold War.
And every once in a while, the documents mention us. The National Post did a comprehensive search of all 2,000 documents mentioning “Canada.” The highlights are below, some of which are being published for the first time.
All in all, they’re a pretty sobering inoculation against any notion that Canada is an influential power. According to the CIA, we’re really more of an easily offended younger brother who happens to own a lot of oil.
Please come to our trade show
This is easily the most sycophantic item in the collection. It’s a 1982 letter from the Canadian consulate in Philadelphia, and it’s practically begging the CIA to come to their electronics trade show to buy some “state-of-the-art capability from Canada.” The letter notes that the U.S.-Canadian exchange rate is favourable, Canadians are great to do business with, and that “the location is easy to reach, and ample free parking is available.”
Central Intelligence Agency
They won’t care if we spy on them
Just as they prepared to fill outer space with spy satellites in the early 1960s, the United States suddenly had a thought: Would any of their friends get suspicious if the night sky was suddenly filled with U.S. espionage satellites? So, the CIA commissioned a report on the “Free World attitudes” towards seeing the night sky filled with U.S. spy satellites. Their conclusion? People are too dumb to care. Reconnaissance satellites are “intrinsically too sophisticated to arouse interest in the general public anywhere.” Even in a civilized place like Canada, “meager and mostly routine press coverage” assured planners that opposition to spy satellites would be negligible.
Canada who?
While we Canadians may like to assume the U.S. has teams of analysts studying every twist and turn of our frozen dominion, the agency’s daily intelligence briefings are stunning in how little they mention Canada. If Canada was mentioned at all, it was in the “if we have time” section near the end — and it usually focused on Canada’s adorable attempts to shrug off U.S. “dominance.” A 1963 briefing noted that “Ottawa’s concern with the ‘domination’ question has reached the point of obsession.” The bulletin then advocates “vigorous countermeasures” to set the Canadians straight. Another report on North American defence noted that a “growing Canadian sensitivity and feeling of national destiny” meant that the U.S. military should probably start being nicer to Canada.
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Bombers over Canada
If nuclear war had broken out, Canada might have seen some of its cities vapourized for the simple reason that they were easier to bomb. In an early 1960s estimate of Soviet bomber strength, CIA analysts note that the Soviet Union’s vast fleet of medium bombers could only hit U.S. territory in Alaska or Seattle — but they would have their pick of the litter in Canada. Many Canadians have probably not heard of Tiksi, Russia, but the CIA suspected the Arctic city would be the staging ground from which the Soviets would bring nuclear armageddon to Canada.
Wikimedia Commons
Counting our VCRs
There was a time not too long ago that the ability to videotape a TV show was an issue of national security. In the 1950s, home VCRs were still 20 years away, and recording a video could only be done with giant, room-sized machines incorporating nests of reel-to-reel tapes. Just to be sure that the KGB agents weren’t threatening the Free World by pirating Father Knows Best, the United States kept strict tabs on who was buying these proto-VCRs. In Diefenbaker-era Canada, it turned out, we owned 10 of them.
Canadian commies
For decades, keeping an eye on communists was a key CIA responsibility. Naturally, this included regular check-ins to see how many commies were running around in Canada. At the height of the 1950s Red Scare, a CIA warning note spoke of a Soviet-led “hemispheric co-ordination-mechanism” to stir communist action “from Canada to Argentina.” But as the Cold War progressed, Canada turned out to be a pretty disappointing place to be a communist. In its 1968 report, “World Strength of the Communist Party Organizations,” CIA analysts wrote that the Communist Party of Canada had “little or no political strength.”
The Canadian 9/11
In a chilling note from the 1990s, analysts warn that a French-speaking terrorist may be planning to slip into the United States from Canada in order to crash an explosives-laden “Lear Jet type” aircraft into the U.S. Capitol. The would-be pilot, who was apparently planning to enter the U.S. from Canada on a fake French passport, was said to have a name that sounded like “Jerry, Gerard or Geraldo.” The plot never materialized, of course, but the warning eerily predicts a much more damaging terrorist attack that lay only 20 years in the future. That time, however, the threat wouldn’t come from Canada.
BombardierA Bombardier Learjet 40 XR.
Atomic whoops
Canada attracted a bit of CIA attention for our worrying penchant to accidentally give away nuclear weapons capability. When India detonated its first atomic bomb in 1974, they did it with material created using a Canadian research reactor. By 1975, a report noted that the Canadian government was iffy about selling nuclear reactors to South Korea because they were worried it might happen again.
AFP/Getty ImagesA Russian Tu-95 Bear photographed in 2008. In a nuclear war, these aircraft would have bombed North American targets by flying over the North Pole.
Canadian dream telepathy research
It’s not all spying and secret microphones in the CIA. A big part of “intelligence” is simply reading through newspapers, parsing through economic data and keeping up on the latest Canadian telepathy research. CIA files include this study from Laurentian University studying how electrical storms affect the ability of clairvoyants to communicate telepathically using their dreams. “There is some evidence … that spontaneous telepathy-clairvoyance experiences have occurred when the geomagnetic activity was lower,” it reads. The report can now be safely labeled as “pseudo-science,” but the CIA apparently couldn’t take any chances that a Clairvoyant Dreams Gap could suddenly open between them and the Russians.
The Great Northern Breadbasket
The CIA keeps a close eye on the food supplies of foreign nations. That way, if a war breaks out, they’ll know exactly how many sacks of flour the enemy is working with. In at least two documents, the vast amounts of food being exported from Canada throw a wrench into CIA plans to starve an enemy. A secret 1965 proposal to flood North Vietnam’s rice paddies was offset by the fact that China could have simply fed Vietnam by importing some of Canada’s record-setting grain. In 1979, Jimmy Carter’s grain embargo against the U.S.S.R. in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also lost some of its impact because the Soviets were still bringing in ample supplies of Canadian wheat.
Not really standing on guard for thee anymore
Canada has been phoning in its national defence for quite some time now — and CIA documents express occasional exasperation that their northern neighbour doesn’t really seem to be taking the Cold War seriously. A top-secret 1975 intelligence bulletin noted of Canada that ”only Iceland and Luxembourg spend less per capita on their NATO commitments.” That same year, a briefing lamented that Canada’s personnel shortfall and that it was scaling back its peacekeeping commitments in Cyprus due to cost. In 1980, a secret cable noted that with the Liberal government’s unwillingness to make “hard” budgetary decisions, “Canadian military preparedness could erode further.”
Central Intelligence Agency Image of Pierre Trudeau from a CIA brief.
Trudeaumania is over
Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau is easily the most mentioned Canadian in the released CIA documents, and he usually doesn’t receive the most favourable reviews. A briefing on Canada’s 1972 election noted that “Trudeaumania … has not been apparent this year.” Another 1972 bulletin found it odd that the Liberals kept portraying a man in his late 40s as a “youthful but brilliant playboy.” By 1978, analysts were writing of Trudeau’s “long-standing fascination” with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and noting that while many Canadians “dislike and distrust” Trudeau, he still seemed to be the “most able” leader Canada could muster.
Not down with Vietnam
While CIA reports are constantly fretting about what the Soviets may do next, it’s extremely rare that they pay the slightest worry to Canadian political or public opinion. Two of the only exceptions are in regards to the Vietnam War. A 1966 update on the Vietnam War noted that “protest meetings against US policy in Vietnam are scheduled in major Canadian cities on 26 March.” A report on the “pros and cons of the bombing of North Vietnam” similarly noted that the actions had generated “adverse” attitudes in Canada, among others.
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