The RCMP national security program depends on the trust of its intelligence gathering partners, a veteran of the force has told court in the trial of his former boss who allegedly shared secrets.
Daniel Morris, who began working for the RCMP in 2003, is a Crown witness who testified at the legal proceedings of Cameron Ortis, a former high-ranking civilian member of the force who had top secret security clearance. Mr. Morris worked in a national security unit known as operations research (OR) under Mr. Ortis’s leadership.
Mr. Morris’s testimony, which sheds light on the inner workings of the OR, took place in camera pursuant to a court order. A consortium of media opposed this exclusion. New transcripts from Mr. Morris’s testimony were released Wednesday.
Mr. Morris told court Monday that partners have to trust that the RCMP will handle intelligence material properly otherwise they will “stop sharing,” according to the transcript.
“If that happens, the RCMP can’t perform its mandate,” he said.
During cross-examination by Mr. Ortis’s lawyer, Mark Ertel, Mr. Morris told court that the OR could not support criminal investigations, unlike another unit in the force known as the National Intelligence Coordination Centre.
Mr. Morris testified that the NICC’s materials could be shared with investigation teams and uploaded to a system to which all investigators and analysts across the country have access. However, he said the OR’s products were restricted to a “handful of senior decision-makers, primarily working out of national headquarters.”
The OR and the NICC were separate, distinct programs that reported to the same assistant commissioner, he added.
An agreed statement states that upon Mr. Ortis’s return from language training in April, 2016, he was appointed to the position of director general of the NICC.
At the outset of his trial, Crown prosecutor Judy Kliewer said that the alleged actions taken by Mr. Ortis occurred during his time he was studying French.
Mr. Ortis’s defence lawyers, who have yet to make their arguments in court, have said that their client had the “authority” to do everything that he did. Mr. Ortis has pleaded not guilty to six charges, including four related to allegedly breaching the Security of Information Act.
The now 51-year-old’s arrest in September, 2019 created considerable concern among the Five Eyes – an intelligence pact which Canada is part of along with Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand – because of the level of access to classified information that he had access to.
Previously, jurors have heard testimony about a string of e-mails the Crown says were sent, beginning in March, 2015, from Mr. Ortis to B.C. businessman Vincent Ramos, who headed a company called Phantom Secure which produced encrypted phones. Copies of the e-mails show the exchanges culminate in an ask for $20,000 Canadian dollars for the full copies of classified documents (partial documents were disclosed).
Mr. Ramos pleaded guilty in the U.S. to providing his Phantom Secure devices to assist in the distribution of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine to Canada, the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Thailand and Europe. In May, 2019, he was sentenced to nine years imprisonment.
Mr. Ortis also faces charges for communicating with Greater Toronto Area businessmen Salim Henareh and Muhammad Ashraf, who were targets of police investigation in Canada, as well as for attempting to communicate with another, Farzam Mehdizadeh.
An agreed statement of facts for Mr. Ortis’s trial said that from at least 2014, the RCMP, along with multiple Five Eyes law enforcement and intelligence agencies, investigated money laundering activities conducted by various entities associated with Altaf Khanani, a Dubai-based money service businesses owner and the head of an international money laundering network.
The agreed statement said Mr. Khanani was arrested in Florida, and on Oct. 27, 2015, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was sentenced to 68-months in prison. It also said that he told police in 2019 that he had not received a message offering to provide intelligence.
On Monday, in response to Crown prosecutor John MacFarlane, Mr. Morris said Mr. Ortis never told him he was personally taking part in undercover operations.
Mr. Morris also told court that he did not know Mr. Ortis was contacting Mr. Ramos, Mr. Henareh or Mr. Ashraf, or that he was trying to reach out to Mr. Mehdizadeh.