OTTAWA - A claim by former diplomat James Bartleman that Ottawa had advance warning of the 1985 Air India bombing was initially troubling, but ultimately confused and wrong, say government lawyers.
Bartleman rocked a public inquiry with dramatic testimony last year in which he recalled seeing a confidential report, just days before the plane went down, saying Air India was about to come under attack.
The information came from the Communications Security Establishment, the super-secret federal eavesdropping agency, he told the inquiry headed by former Supreme Court judge John Major,
But the federal Justice Department , in a written brief made public Thursday, berates Bartleman for "some of the most surprising and, it is submitted, inaccurate testimony at the inquiry."
The brief, prepared by lawyer Barney Brucker on behalf of deputy justice minister John Sims, notes there were many intelligence tips in the months preceding the bombing that Air India was under a generalized threat of attack by Sikh separatists.
But nobody at CSE or anywhere else in the government has been able to find a document with a specific threat for a specific date.
It's likely that Bartleman saw some of the general warnings and got mixed up in his recollection of events, wrote Brucker.
"Any other explanation simply inconceivable. The fact is the CSE document that Mr. Bartleman believes he saw never existed."
Bartleman, who was head of intelligence analysis at Foreign Affairs at the time of the bombing, went on to serve as an adviser to Jean Chretien during his term as prime minister and later as lieutenant-governor of Ontario.
He told the Major inquiry he called the attention of an RCMP officer to the purported Air India warning and was told the Mounties already knew about it. But he couldn't recall the name of the officer and acknowledged he never took the matter up with his superiors at Foreign Affairs.
The formal rejection of the story by the Justice Department formed part of the government's closing submissions to Major, filed with the commission months ago but not made public until now.
The brief acknowledges there were strained relations at the time of the bombing between the RCMP and the fledgling Canadian Security Intelligence Service created less than a year before.
But Brucker warns against the urge to point fingers at any individuals for intelligence or law enforcement failures.
"This commission enjoys the benefit of hindsight," he writes. "The government actors confronted with the tragic events which occurred, and their aftermath, did not have that benefit."
The brief claims co-operation between the Mounties and CSIS has grown steadily over the years and current relations are the best they've ever been.
Brucker steered clear of any concrete recommendations for legislative or structural changes in anti-terrorism efforts, saying it's "in the government's interest" to wait for Major to draw his own conclusions and make his own reform proposals.
The 1985 downing of Air India Flight 182 took 329 lives among the passengers and crew, while a related bombing the same day at Narita airport in Japan killed two baggage handlers.
It was by far the worst terrorist incident in Canadian history, but most of the suspected plotters have never ben convicted, in part because of well-publicized turf wars between CSIS and the RCMP that hampered the investigation.
Major, who wrapped up hearings in February after listening to more than 240 witnesses, is not expected to deliver a final report until sometime this fall. He has no power to hold anyone criminally responsible, or to revisit past court decisions, but hopes to draw lessons for current anti-terrorist policy.
