Top Mountie not involved in ex-con Carson’s security clearance: source

A senior intelligence official denies the RCMP commissioner green-lighted a security clearance for Bruce Carson, despite his criminal past.

News reports late Tuesday said William Elliott, now the top Mountie, approved Carson’s Secret-level clearance in 2006, paving the way for his job as a top adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

At the time, Elliott was national security adviser in the Privy Council Office.

But the senior security source, speaking to The Canadian Press on condition of anonymity — both before and after the reports surfaced — said Elliott was not involved in the file.

The official, who has direct knowledge of the matter, says the national security adviser keeps a close eye on threats to Canada but rarely plays a role in security screening. It would be “very unusual” for him to “be directly involved in questions of clearances.”

The Canadian Press reported Sunday that Carson was convicted on five counts of fraud — three more than generally known — and received court-ordered psychiatric treatment before becoming one of Harper’s closest aides.

Harper says he never would have hired Carson had he known the full extent of his past.

During his PMO stint, it was publicly known that Carson had been jailed and disbarred by the Law Society of Upper Canada in the early 1980s for two counts of defrauding clients. But court documents uncovered by The Canadian Press show he had another run-in with the law in 1990, while he was working as a researcher for the Library of Parliament.

He was charged with defrauding a rental-car outlet of a 1989 Toyota. He was also charged with defrauding two banks of sums exceeding $1,000 each.

In June 1990, Carson pleaded guilty to all three counts and received a suspended sentence and 24 months probation on condition that he continue treatment at the Royal Ottawa Hospital – a psychiatric institution – and make restitution of $4,000 within 23 months to the car-rental company.

The disclosures raised new questions about Harper’s judgment in taking Carson on as his chief policy analyst and problem-fixer, roles he held until 2008.

The PMO asked the RCMP last month to investigate Carson after a probe by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network alleged the 65-year-old may have illegally lobbied the federal government on behalf of a company that employed his girlfriend, a 22-year-old, one-time escort.

Carson told The Canadian Press in an interview this week that he didn’t hide anything when filling out the security-clearance application form in January 2006.

It remains a mystery precisely who gave Carson the clearance.

Harper has said responsibility lay with the Privy Council Office and on Tuesday the former clerk of the Privy Council accepted that responsibility.

“The PCO is responsible for security clearance and the clerk is responsible for what happens in PCO,” Alex Himelfarb, who was clerk when Harper took office, said in an email.

But insiders who are familiar with the situation say Himelfarb wouldn’t necessarily have been informed about Carson’s criminal record, which is not in itself grounds for denying security clearance. Treasury Board guidelines say in such instances, “an official of the (PCO) security office may brief the manager regarding the nature and the severity of the offence.”

Just who was Carson’s manager depends on whether he received the clearance as part of the transition team that smoothed Harper’s takeover of government or only after he formally joined the Prime Minister’s Office.

In the first case, his manager would have been former diplomat Derek Burney, who led the transition team, and in the latter case, it would have been Harper’s chief of staff at the time, Ian Brodie.

Brodie has denied knowing anything about Carson’s 1990 convictions.

Burney said Tuesday that he knew nothing about security clearances for any member of his team.

“I was completely unaware of security clearances for him or anybody else,” Burney said in an interview. “The issue never came up.”

Burney said he became aware “long after the (2006) election” of Carson’s initial two fraud convictions from the early 1980s. And he “certainly didn’t know anything” about the three 1990 convictions until he read about them a few days ago in a news story by The Canadian Press.

Burney also served for a time as chief of staff to former prime minister Brian Mulroney. He said information about potential security problems with PMO staff “was never brought to me.”

Mel Cappe, Privy Council clerk during the Chretien era, said in his time the security clearance process worked generally like this:

The chief of staff would give a list of prospective PMO staffers to the PCO security office, which would forward the names to the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Canada Revenue Agency for background checks. The agencies would look for tax, criminal or security problems and report back with an assessment on each person.

The security office would then report back to the chief of staff and, if there was a potential problem with an individual, would make recommendations as to the level of security clearance that should be given. (Carson was given Secret-level clearance). Normally, Cappe said it would not be up to PCO security to deny clearance to someone deemed problematic.

“It would be for the chief of staff to say we’re prepared to bear this risk,” Cappe said.

Only in a case involving a potentially serious risk to national security would PCO refuse to grant clearance. In most cases, he said neither the clerk nor the prime minister would normally be aware of the process.

Cappe stressed that he has no specific information on Carson’s case and that the security clearance process may have changed since he was clerk.

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