- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 410
(I've always thought the origin of the word "quisling" is remarkable - the actual name of a Norwegian traitor who handed over defence plans to the Nazis in the Second World War - his name became so reviled, it actually became a word in the dictionary ... in stark contrast to how traitors appear to be dealt with in Canada ... where they are allowed to retire and draw their pension, subsidized by loyal Canadians.)
Batman's spy plan unmasked
DON MACPHERSON
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
There are at least two possible indignant reactions to the recent revelation that sometime after the 1970 October Crisis, a military officer leaked plans to Jacques Parizeau for the army to come into Quebec once again.
One of them is:
"That's terrible! The army was planning to come into Quebec even after the FLQ no longer posed a threat!"
Another is:
"That's terrible! The separatists had a mole in the army!"
Post-October Crisis Quebec was an exciting place, full of intrigue, as rife with spies, it seems, as post-Second World War Europe. The federals were spying on the sovereignists, and the sovs were spying on the feds.
We learned long ago that the federal RCMP spied on the Parti Qu颩cois, looking for evidence of links between the PQ and either domestic terrorists or foreign agents, namely French.
Then the singular case of Claude Morin, double agent, came to light. The former cabinet minister admitted that, while he was a key PQ referendum strategist, he was a paid informant of the RCMP.
Parizeau network
But, he insisted, this was only to gain the Mounties' confidence, so he could try to find out what they knew while they were trying to get him to tell them what he knew. Morin's self-assigned mission was so secret there is some question as to whether he informed the late PQ leader Ren頌鶥sque that he was on the Horsemen's payroll.
Now, in the newly published second volume of a biography of Parizeau, we learn more details about the "Parizeau network," which he set up in the early 1970s to gather information about the federal government's anti-separatism political activities.
Excerpts from the book, entitled Le Baron: 1970-1985, by journalist Pierre Duchesne, are published in the current edition of L'Actualité Âagazine.
In 1971, Parizeau got the rest of the PQ executive to agree to set up a "Bureau d'assistance technique"- Technical Assistance Bureau - to mask his intelligence-gathering activities. He said the party couldn't afford to pay his sources of information, or to provide him with more than an office, a telephone and a credit card with which to do his work.
Parizeau described the BAT (which inevitably earned him the name Batman around PQ headquarters) as a means of giving the party advance warning of Ottawa's intentions. He said its techniques consisted of "listening to people who talk too much, because generally people talk too much."
This conjures up images of Pé±µiste Mata Haris plying federal officials with wine and encouraging them to talk about the more impressive aspects of their work.
Parizeau even organized his network according to the principle of "compartmentalization," so that each link in the chain of information that led to him knew the identities of only the two links on either side.
But the most important information Parizeau received didn't come from his network. Instead, it was leaked to him in 1972 by a whistle-blowing officer in the Canadian Forces named Joseph René ?arcel Sauvé®Å
Show of force
It was what Parizeau described as detailed plans for the military occupation of Quebec in case of insurrection, code named Neat Pitch. They called for the army to respond to civil disorders rapidly and with a massive show of force, including the use of armoured equipment and the firing of rubber bullets at rioters.
Sauv鬠appalled at the plans, had sneaked them out of a top-secret briefing for senior officers also attended by British army anti-terrorism experts from Northern Ireland. He later leaked other documents to the PQ.
After the PQ disclosed one of them, the Forces immediately suspected Sauv頯f being the source. He was investigated but was never charged, possibly so as not to make him a political martyr in Quebec. He was retired from the Forces in 1976, whereupon he promptly joined the PQ and later that year organized a campaign visit of L鶥sque to the Saint-Hubert base.
As for the Parizeau network, it disintegrated after its spymaster quit the PQ executive in 1973. Or so Batman would have us believe.
- Don Macpherson is The Gazette's Quebec-affairs columnist, based in Montreal. His E-mail address is dmacpher@thegazette.southam.ca.
Batman's spy plan unmasked
DON MACPHERSON
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
There are at least two possible indignant reactions to the recent revelation that sometime after the 1970 October Crisis, a military officer leaked plans to Jacques Parizeau for the army to come into Quebec once again.
One of them is:
"That's terrible! The army was planning to come into Quebec even after the FLQ no longer posed a threat!"
Another is:
"That's terrible! The separatists had a mole in the army!"
Post-October Crisis Quebec was an exciting place, full of intrigue, as rife with spies, it seems, as post-Second World War Europe. The federals were spying on the sovereignists, and the sovs were spying on the feds.
We learned long ago that the federal RCMP spied on the Parti Qu颩cois, looking for evidence of links between the PQ and either domestic terrorists or foreign agents, namely French.
Then the singular case of Claude Morin, double agent, came to light. The former cabinet minister admitted that, while he was a key PQ referendum strategist, he was a paid informant of the RCMP.
Parizeau network
But, he insisted, this was only to gain the Mounties' confidence, so he could try to find out what they knew while they were trying to get him to tell them what he knew. Morin's self-assigned mission was so secret there is some question as to whether he informed the late PQ leader Ren頌鶥sque that he was on the Horsemen's payroll.
Now, in the newly published second volume of a biography of Parizeau, we learn more details about the "Parizeau network," which he set up in the early 1970s to gather information about the federal government's anti-separatism political activities.
Excerpts from the book, entitled Le Baron: 1970-1985, by journalist Pierre Duchesne, are published in the current edition of L'Actualité Âagazine.
In 1971, Parizeau got the rest of the PQ executive to agree to set up a "Bureau d'assistance technique"- Technical Assistance Bureau - to mask his intelligence-gathering activities. He said the party couldn't afford to pay his sources of information, or to provide him with more than an office, a telephone and a credit card with which to do his work.
Parizeau described the BAT (which inevitably earned him the name Batman around PQ headquarters) as a means of giving the party advance warning of Ottawa's intentions. He said its techniques consisted of "listening to people who talk too much, because generally people talk too much."
This conjures up images of Pé±µiste Mata Haris plying federal officials with wine and encouraging them to talk about the more impressive aspects of their work.
Parizeau even organized his network according to the principle of "compartmentalization," so that each link in the chain of information that led to him knew the identities of only the two links on either side.
But the most important information Parizeau received didn't come from his network. Instead, it was leaked to him in 1972 by a whistle-blowing officer in the Canadian Forces named Joseph René ?arcel Sauvé®Å
Show of force
It was what Parizeau described as detailed plans for the military occupation of Quebec in case of insurrection, code named Neat Pitch. They called for the army to respond to civil disorders rapidly and with a massive show of force, including the use of armoured equipment and the firing of rubber bullets at rioters.
Sauv鬠appalled at the plans, had sneaked them out of a top-secret briefing for senior officers also attended by British army anti-terrorism experts from Northern Ireland. He later leaked other documents to the PQ.
After the PQ disclosed one of them, the Forces immediately suspected Sauv頯f being the source. He was investigated but was never charged, possibly so as not to make him a political martyr in Quebec. He was retired from the Forces in 1976, whereupon he promptly joined the PQ and later that year organized a campaign visit of L鶥sque to the Saint-Hubert base.
As for the Parizeau network, it disintegrated after its spymaster quit the PQ executive in 1973. Or so Batman would have us believe.
- Don Macpherson is The Gazette's Quebec-affairs columnist, based in Montreal. His E-mail address is dmacpher@thegazette.southam.ca.
