Alleged spy ordered deported but Federal Court guards secret identity

Claude Whalen, one of the alleged spy's lawyers, said the Russian decided to give up his deportation fight, drop his Canadian facade and cut a deal after hearing the evidence against him.

"He wants to go back," Whalen said. "That's all I can say. He wants to go back." Whalen said he has worked on many immigration cases but none quite like this.

The Russian was carrying a fraudulent Ontario birth certificate, a Canadian passport and the equivalent of $7,800 in five different currencies when he was arrested at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Through previous hearings, he maintained he was a 40-year-old Canadian citizen born in Ontario. The man now says he is 45.

Canada's federal spy agency accused the man of being a member of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the successor of the feared Soviet KGB.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service says the man, who is alleged to have lived in Canada for more than a decade, is a danger to national security.

Under immigration law, the man could have fought to remain in Canada if his life was in danger.

Chris Mathers, a security consultant and former RCMP officer, says it's unlikely the man faces any threat in Russia as a spy with a blown cover.

"This isn't the old Cold War Russia where failed agents come home and are shot or sent out to some gulag," Mathers said.

"If he's a trained intelligence officer, they'll put him in some crappy job. If he's just a resource they co-opted at some point in time, they'll just cut him loose." If the man is a spy, Mathers pointed out his request for secrecy is probably aimed at hiding as much information as possible from view.

"I think that's a red herring, unless there's something very remarkable about this thing," he said.

"But that's the Canadian way, everybody's kind and gentle. This guy's been over here spying on us, and we still afford him the opportunity to hide his identity."

While the secrecy surrounding the man creates room for imaginative musings about his work in Canada, Mathers said the reality is probably quite boring.

If he was a spy, the man probably spent much of his time getting to know potential assets and his spying probably involved taking photos, obtaining technical journals and other mundane work, Mathers said.

"This isn't the Bourne Identity," Mathers said, citing the thriller novel and movie. "He's not getting paged while he's teaching piano lessons to go out and clip (kill) somebody. He'd be doing very boring mundane work which is 99 per cent of intelligence gathering." Mathers said spy agencies make a huge investment of time and money to put such an agent in place, he said.

Despite the man's secretive deportation, Mathers said his foreign spy career is probably over.

"Failure is not rewarded," Mathers said. "Chances are he's not going to resurface in another country.

"He's toasted."

Read the full article here

Broken Link? If the link to the original article is broken or has been altered you can view the article by clicking here.