Diplomat Says He Warned Mounties 5 Days Before Air India Bombing
Posted May 3, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
He suspected it was coming. But he couldn’t get anyone to listen to him.
There have been more startling and disturbing allegations that Canadian officials knew the Air India disaster was coming – but no one acted on the information.
The latest revelation involves a name very familiar to Ontarians – James Bartleman, now the province’s Lieutenant-Governor.
Bartleman, who was a diplomat at the time, told the inquiry looking into the terror attack Thursday that he received information about the plot five days before it happened on June 23, 1985.
He recalls receiving an electronic intercept from the top-secret Communications Security Establishment, part of the Defence Department, which suggested the airline was going to be attacked.
It came in the form of what he termed “raw intelligence that hadn’t yet been checked out.” But it seemed credible enough that he felt it necessary to turn it over to the RCMP for further analysis.
And in a reaction that seems similar to one outlined at the inquiry last week, Bartleman remembers the Mountie’s reaction stunned him.
“He flushed and told me that of course he had seen it, and that he didn’t need me to tell him how to do his job,” he told the committee.
Bartleman admits he didn’t come forward sooner because he assumed the RCMP already knew the information.
The Justice Department insists it can’t find any document or evidence to back up the claim.
Less than a week after Bartleman claims to have delivered his warning, Air India Flight 182 was blown up off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people onboard.
It was the worst terror attack in Canadian history, and senior officials have always maintained they never had a clue it was coming.
The inquiry was called not to assign blame but to see if and where a failure in intelligence might have contributed to the tragedy.
