OTTAWA - A top CSIS official insisted in the days following the Air India bombing that the fledgling spy agency had the information needed to help police crack the case, a public inquiry has heard.
But Bob Burgoyne, a former counter-terrorism officer, testified Tuesday that he thought Archie Barr, then deputy director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was likely just trying to boost morale with the statement.
"We're going to solve Air India,'' Burgoyne quoted Barr as telling colleagues just after Sikh terrorists downed Flight 182 in June 1985, killing 329 people.
Burgoyne, who then served on the Sikh desk of CSIS, said he interpreted the words to mean that "we had the knowledge base . . . a pretty good idea who the perpetrators were behind this.''
Former Supreme Court justice John Major, the head of the inquiry, interjected to suggest that Barr may have been delivering "a sort of rallying cry rather than a promise.''
"I believe so,'' replied Burgoyne. "The comment that he made, I believe, was probably to encourage us.''
CSIS had been created just a year earlier to replace the old RCMP security service, which had been heavily criticized for its excessive zeal -- and in some cases outright lawbreaking -- in the name of fighting Quebec separatism.
But the new spy service, largely staffed by ex-Mounties, came in for criticism itself following the Air India attack.
It's now known that CSIS had key suspects under surveillance before the bombing but failed to piece the puzzle together in time to head off the plot. The service was also slammed for erasing wiretap tapes that could have helped in the post-bombing criminal investigation.
Burgoyne acknowledged that he had only a year of experience on the Sikh desk and received little training for the job. But he insisted CSIS did a creditable job with the resources at its disposal.
"They were hectic times back in that first year,'' he said. "But I think -- and I hope -- that we laid the cornerstone for other successful investigations that followed.''
It wasn't clear what investigations he had in mind. Only one man, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was ever convicted, on a reduced charge of manslaughter, for his role in the bomb plot.
The suspected mastermind, Talwinder Singh Parmar of the militant Babar Khalsa sect, left Canada and was shot dead by police in India in 1992. Two others were acquitted at trial in Vancouver in 2005.
Previous evidence has shown that it took CSIS five months to obtain a wiretap warrant on Parmar before the bombing, even though it considered him "potentially the most dangerous Sikh in the country.''
Glen Gartshore, then Burgoyne's immediate superior, testified Tuesday that in retrospect "it was probably not being processed in a timely way, I can see that now.''
By contrast, he recalled, it took just two days to get an urgent warrant in another anti-terrorist case the service had on the go. It's known that case focused on a threat from Western Europe, but details haven't been disclosed.
Barr, long since retired from CSIS, is in bad health and is not expected to testify in person. Commission counsel say he will likely give a written statement.
Another key CSIS player -- Mel Deschenes, former head of counter-terrorism -- was also described last week as "infirm'' and unable to testify. But government lawyers said Monday that's not the case and he could appear after all.
Graham Pinos, a former Justice Department lawyer, has testified that Deschenes told him -- over drinks at a Los Angeles hotel just days before the bombing -- that he feared Sikh extremists were going to bring down an airliner.
In a written statement in 1988, Deschenes said that, although the general threat level against Air India was high, he never had any solid evidence a particular plane was being targeted.
