US secrets compromised by Canadian spy working at HMCS Trinity

According to a report in the globeandmail.com US secret intelligence could have been compromised by a Canadian spy feeding secrets to agents of the Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR), who were working under “diplomatic cover”. This is based on the fact that Canada asked more than one “Russian diplomat” to leave in connection with the Delisle case.

 Russain officials in Canada and Moscow denies this, saying “several envoys who left recently did so well before the naval intelligence officer was arrested”…

In mid-January, Canadian Forces Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Delisle was arrested and charged with spying. The 40-year-old worked at HMCS Trinity in Halifax, a naval intelligence hub.

HMCS TRINITY – BACKGROUND INFORMATION

HMCS Trinity is the name of the organization housed at Stadacona which is tasked with maintaining MARLANT communications with vessels and other Canadian Forces and allied units, as well as developing strategic and tactical operational intelligence for unit commanders.

HMCS Trinity operates two remote radio transmitter/receiver stations near Halifax:

    Naval Radio Station Newport Corner

    Naval Radio Station Mill Cove

HMCS Trinity also hosts the Canadian Forces IUSS Centre or CFIC which operates two remote SOSUS arrays in support of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance Systemfor the United States Navy.

SOSUS, an acronym for Sound Surveillance System, is a chain of underwater listening posts across the northern Atlantic Ocean near Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom — the GIUK gap. It was originally operated by the United States Navy for “tracking Soviet submarines”, which had to pass through the gap to attack targets further west.

Other locations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceanalso had SOSUS stations. It was later supplemented by mobile assets such as the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS), and became part of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS). Many other listening posts are still in operation around the world.

SOSUS development was started in 1949 when the US Navy formed the Committee for Undersea Warfare to research anti-submarine warfare.

The panel allocated $10 million annually to develop systems to counter the Soviet submarine threat consisting primarily of a large fleet of diesel submarines.

They decided on a system to monitor low-frequency sound in the SOFAR channelusing multiple listening sites equipped with hydrophones and a processing facility that could detect submarine positions by triangulationover hundreds of miles.

SOSUS was gradually condensed into a smaller number of monitoring stations during the 1970s and 80s. However, the SOSUS arrays themselves were based upon technology that could only be upgraded irregularly. With the ending of the Cold Warin the 1990s, the immediate need for SOSUS decreased, and the focus of the US Navy also turned toward a system that was deployable on a theatre basis. The SOSUS components are now used for scientific projects such as tracking the vocalisations of whales and other ocean mammals in various study projects and as a data network for undersea instrumentation packages, and for acoustic thermometry.

The SOSUS system was declassified in 1991, although by that time it had long been an open secret.

Commander Undersea Surveillance (CUS), head of the IUSS, was elevated to an echelon IV command 28 February 2007 (see article: Undersea Surveillance Aligned Under Naval Oceanography http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=28072).

CUS at NAS Oceana Dam Neck Annex operates under the operational guidance of COMPACFLT. Naval Ocean Processing Facilities in Oak Harbor, Washington, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, still monitor SOSUS and FDS, and they provide SURTASS connectivity around the world.

At Trinity military surveillance gleaned by NATO of which the US is a prominent member are collated into a “real-time” picture of global security for Canadian policy makers.

Some sources characterize the damage (particularly to relations with the United States) as “grave”, meaning very serious, while others say they hope bad feelings will blow over.

ESPIONAGE CASE

The “espionage case” is a nightmare for federal security agencies, which benefit disproportionately from sharing state secrets with big players such as the United States and the United Kingdom despite the fact that Canada gives relatively little in return.

Various federal officials have openly attested over the years that being a “net importer” of intelligence breeds “fears” that allies could cut off the information flow should Canada ever be seen as an untrustworthy junior partner.

The first person criminally charged with violating Canada’s Security of Information Act, SLt. Delisle is accused of “multiple” counts of leaking secrets to a “foreign entity” starting in July, 2007.

“That foreign entity is of course Russia”, says Matt Farmer of Charlotte. “That means SVR”, he said.