TORONTO – A firestorm of criticism that followed a rare television interview with the head of Canada’s intelligence service was the unintended consequence of an otherwise carefully crafted strategy aimed at burnishing the agency’s image, internal documents show.
It was during that appearance on the CBC in 2010 that Richard Fadden, then-director of the Canadian Intelligence Security Service, suggested certain politicians had become too close to the Chinese government, an assertion he was forced to backtrack on.
The public relations offensive that preceded that interview — and an earlier major speech Fadden gave — came at a time CSIS was feeling hard done by because of reporting on the case of suspected terrorist Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian the federal government had left stranded for six years in Sudan.
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