ZGram - 9/18/2004 - "CSIS intercepted Zundel's mail, Ex-Agent says"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

To: irimland at zundelsite.org
From: Ingrid Rimland <irimland at mail.bellsouth.net>
Subject: ZGram - 9/18/2004 - "CSIS intercepted Zundel's mail, Ex-Agent says"
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ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

September 18, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Okay, one more time:

On May 8, 1995, the 50th anniversary of Germany's surrender to the 
Allies, the Toronto-based Zundel-Haus went up in flames.  The 
arsonist, a street punk, was caught on video and later identified by 
name and location by one of his ARA buddies, whom he had told he had 
been paid $200 by "someone" to pour a flammable liquid and set the 
Zundel-Haus  aflame.  This information was turned over to the Toronto 
Metro Police, but there was no follow-up.

Ernst Zundel was on a speaking tour in Vancouver when this happened, 
where he was awakened to watch on TV how his headquarters and private 
residence burned.  The damage was extensive - more than $400,000. 
Much of his library and archives, collected over a lifetime of 
research, perished in this fire.   Jews danced the hora in the 
streets. 

Ernst called me a few days later in San Diego where I then lived.  I 
had only met him for the first time a month before at an IHR 
conference.  During a very intense conversation by the ocean in Santa 
Barbara, where he and I had visited a childhood friend of mine, and 
where I offered I would help him in his struggle, he said to me: 
"There's a good chance that I will be assassinated.  All of Toronto 
is blanketed with posters calling for my death." 

That poster is still on the Zundelsite , as well as a picture of the arson. 

http://www.zundelsite.org/english/debate/bored3.html
http://www.zundelsite.org/english/debate/house2.html

Upon his return from the West Coast, a few days after the fire, Ernst 
received a badly spelled, anonymous letter in the mail that 
threatened:  "Next time it will be BOOM!"

A suspiciously heavy parcel arrived soon thereafter.  It had the P.O. 
Box address of a supporter in Vancouver whom Ernst had met about a 
week before.  That day, the Zundel-Haus was a beehive of activity - 
staff and volunteers who had rushed in from all over the world were 
busy dealing with the arson's aftermath.  Ernst put the parcel aside 
on his desk, warning his people not to touch it.  He would deal with 
it on the weekend when the house was quiet and he could find out what 
it was. 

He told me later - in fact, just a few days ago again when he 
recalled the terror unleashed in the streets of Toronto against him - 
how several of his people had been curious, had shaken that parcel 
because it seemed to rattle, and that especially one of his kitchen 
volunteers, Maggie, had wanted to open it right then and there. 
Ernst did not allow it - and actually forgot about it in the havoc of 
the emergency that was on his hands.

On the following weekend, as the house was quiet, he took the parcel 
from the window sill - and was just about to open it when the 
telephone rang.   Ernst put the parcel down and took the receiver. 
Talk about serendipity, a guardian angel, or interference from 
"above" - the caller was the very person whose name and address was 
on the parcel. 

Ernst asked this man if he had sent a parcel.  The man said NO, it 
was an inactive postal box number that had not been used for two 
years. 

That's when Ernst knew it was a bomb. 

He put the parcel very gently on a bed of birdseeds in the trunk of 
his Chrysler and took it to the police - who accused him of having 
sent to bomb to himself to make himself "more interesting"  and get 
himself back in the news!

This was ten years ago.  He called me that night and told me.  Of 
course I was plain horrified.  When I asked why he had done such a 
dangerous and even foolish thing, he gave a Zundel answer:  He said 
he did not want to disturb the quiet weekend neighborhood by having 
screeching police cars arrive at his door;  the arson had already 
upset them enough! 

Later that evening, he watched on television how the parcel bomb was 
exploded by a robot.  It ripped a huge hole in the earth.  It was so 
powerful it would have killed anybody in a radius of 300 feet.

Several years later a book was published in Toronto, titled Covert 
Entrly: Spies, Lies and Crimes Inside Canada's Secret Service, 
written by investigative journalist Andrew Mitrovica, based on 
interviews with a former CSIS agent, John Farrell, who spilled the 
beans about the illegal activities of Canada's civilian spy agency. 

In this book that won several awards for excellence in journalism, 
several pages describe how CSIS had surreptitiously intercepted 
Zundel mail for years, and how at one point CSIS undercover agents 
were warned not to touch a parcel that would arrive from Vancouver. 
That parcel traveled from Vancouver to Toronto on passenger airline, 
Canada Air, then from Toronto to Ottawa, again on passenger airline, 
and then back to Toronto where it was delivered by a regular postman 
to the Zundel-Haus - with CSIS knowing all the while such a parcel 
would be in transit, and without anyone having been warned!

This parcel could have exploded on any of the three airlines, in the 
various mail rooms, on postal vehicles, or in the Zundel-Haus, 
endangering and maybe killing hundreds of people.  How did CSIS know 
it was coming?  And since they knew, why did they not intercept it? 
Why did they not alert police?  Why did they not warn the airlines, 
the postal employees, Ernst and his staff?  

The man in the street will proffer his opinion that, at the very 
least, whoever knew about his parcel in transit at CSIS and did not 
warn authorities or potential victims, was an accessory to an 
attempted assassination of Ernst Zundel.  In fact, a later police 
report called it "attempted murder" of Ernst Zundel, but that phrase 
and his name were also dropped from the file of an investigation that 
likewise fizzled out.

CSIS is now the very agency that has supplied the "secret evidence" 
on which Ernst Zundel is to be convicted as a "security risk to 
Canada."  John Farrell was this week's witness who had to be tracked 
down and forced to testify.  Farrell is a teacher in a private 
Catholic school - we can assume his salary is modest.  He has one of 
the most expensive Canadian lawyers by his side whose job is to 
smother the inquiry. 

The hearings about the "security certificate" have now concluded. 
Ernst, having been kidnapped in the U.S. in a rendition, we now know 
involving at least three, possibly four countries, has now been in 
prison as a "suspected security risk" for almost two years.  Just 
whose "security" is Ernst Zundel risking?  Or is it, blatantly, the 
other way around?

On the agenda later this year are summations by both sides and oral 
argument.  Judge Blais, a former CSIS boss, has run interference for 
CSIS throughout.  How will he rule?   Nobody is holding his breath. 

In the meantime, the Zundel case has reached the Supreme Court of 
Canada and is the object of much behind-the-scenes diplomacy.   If 
Zundel loses, so does Canada.  His deportation will enshrine the 
power of a secret agency that operates by rules all its own, just 
like in Soviet Russia.  Truth won't be a defense.  Secret hearings 
will be backed by law.  Defense witnesses will not be allowed.  If a 
victim is sentenced, there won't be an appeal.  

Ernst told me several days ago:  "Even if I walked on water, it would 
not make a difference.  Shylock wants his pound of flesh."

Regardless.  We are fighting on.  We have a court date coming up in 
Knoxville.  NO SURRENDER!

Below is the most recent write-up about the Zundel hearings:

[START]

CSIS INTERCEPTED ZUNDEL'S MAIL, EX-AGENT SAYS
By Kirk Makin - The Globe and Mail (Toronto) -
Friday, Sept. 17, 2004

Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials intercepted Ernst
Zundel's mail and used commercial flights to send packages they were 
worried could have contained bombs to Ottawa for analysis, a former 
CSIS agent testified yesterday.

In compelled testimony at a deportation hearing for the Holocaust
denier, ex-agent John Farrell said he warned his superiors several 
times that using commercial flights to send the packages was highly 
risky.

"You were personally aware of this?" asked Mr. Justice Pierre Blais 
of the Federal Court of Canada.

"Yes," said Mr. Farrell, 37.

"CSIS ignored you, putting the lives of Canadians at risk?" asked
defence lawyer Peter Lindsay.

"Yes," Mr. Farrell said. "To the best of my knowledge."

Mr. Zundel did receive a package containing a pipe bomb during the
period in which CSIS was monitoring his mail. He took it to police.

Mr. Lindsay grilled Mr. Farrell throughout the day about illegal mail
opening and possible law breaking by CSIS. Mr. Farrell confirmed
statements he made in a recent book - Covert Entry - that Mr. 
Zundel's mail was intercepted for several years.

However, Mr. Farrell distanced himself from some statements in the 
book that author Andrew Mitrovica attributed to him, including an 
opinion Mr. Farrell allegedly expressed that CSIS intentionally 
violated the law in its campaign against white supremacists.

"I didn't write that. And I didn't say that," Mr. Farrell testified.

However, Mr. Farrell conceded that in his view, CSIS's motto ought to 
be: "Lie, deny, and then act surprised."

Asked why he felt that way, Mr. Farrell said: "Because that was 
typical of what was going on in the service."

Mr. Lindsay hopes to expose CSIS as a rogue agency that will stop at 
nothing to attain its goals, which would taint the evidence it has
assembled to justify deporting Mr. Zundel under a rarely used 
security certificate.

Under the security-certificate procedures, the evidence was presented 
in strict secrecy to Judge Blais. The defence must guess at what CSIS 
is alleging in its attempt to portray Mr. Zundel as dangerous to 
national security.

After 18 months of legal jousting, the hearing has increasingly taken 
on a surreal quality, its participants noticeably punchy. Yesterday, 
Mr. Farrell issued a sharp warning to Mr. Lindsay at one point not to 
be high-handed with him. Shortly afterward, Mr. Lindsay rebuked Judge 
Blais for ignoring Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence. Meanwhile, 
Judge Blais, a one-time solicitor-general of Canada with 
responsibility for CSIS, took turns upbraiding just about everyone.

Early in the day, he demanded that Mr. Farrell's lawyer, John Norris,
move to a distant seat where he would be less inclined to make legal 
objections. He also chastised CSIS lawyer Murray Rodych for making 
baseless objections.

Mr. Lindsay, meanwhile, went after Mr. Rodych himself. "I see my 
friend, Mr. Rodych, is laughing again; snorting like a rat," Mr. 
Lindsay
observed angrily.

Judge Blais also launched a tirade at Mr. Mitrovica, who was sitting 
in the back of the courtroom and apparently signalling his reaction 
to testimony. "You have a concern, Mr. Mitrovica, expressed with your 
body language?" the judge said sharply.

As Mr. Mitrovica began to defend himself, Judge Blais grew angrier. 
"You seem to laugh, to smile," he said. "I do care about managing the 
courtroom. It's not a show."

Prosecutors spent much of the day jumping up and down to object to 
questions, often on the grounds that responding to a question might 
jeopardize national security. Mr. Farrell was sent into the hallway 
so many times that Judge Blais apologized for the mileage he was 
putting on his shoes.

Mr. Zundel shook his head silently several times and stared at the
courtroom clock.

[END]

See also: "Who is Ernst Zundel and Why Is He in Jail?"
(http://www.ihr.org/news/030923Zundel.shtml), and "Some Good News in 
the Zundel Case" (http://www.ihr.org/news/040326zundel.shtml).