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ABSTRACT
The Canadian signals intelligence effort during the Cold War was forged in the late 1940s and 1950s with a focus on the interceptions and processing of communications from the Soviet Arctic. Canadian authorities struggled hard to build capacity for this important mission, win bureaucratic battles at home, and convince our key SIGINT partners, the US and UK, that Canada should be granted status as the controlling agency for signals intelligence against the target-rich Soviet north. The story of the origins of Canada’s Arctic SIGINT mission has remained highly classified until now.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Jim Bronskill, a senior reporter for Canadian Press, for his assiduous efforts in obtaining the release of my official history through Access to Information requests spanning more than a decade. The project to commission an official history of the Canadian intelligence community was the brainchild of Tony Campbell, who served as Executive Director of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat in the Privy Council. Without his imagination and drive the history project would never have come into being. The author wishes to thank, once again, Bill Robinson, author of the blogpost Lux ex Umbra, for his perspicacious reading and comments on an earlier draft of this article, and for his corrections and improvements to the map of Canadian intercept sites.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The actual number of personnel set as the initial strength for the peacetime CBNRC in 1946 remains classified.
2. Canadian deliberations about the future of a signals intelligence capacity after 1945 are documented in Chapter Two of the official history of the Canadian intelligence community by Wesley Wark, “Do Gentlemen Read Each Other’s Mail?: The Debate over a Postwar Canadian SIGINT Agency.” A partly-redacted version has been released under Access to Information legislation. For the story of the CBC expose regarding the CBNRC, see Templeton.
3. Wark, “The Road to CANUSA”.
4. Petersen.
5. This study concerns only the “strategic” intercept stations located in Canada, operating under the control of Canada’s SIGINT agency, CBNRC, and manned by Service personnel. There were additional stations dedicated to military direction finding and other tasks separate from SIGINT collection. Bill Robinson has compiled a list, “Canadian SIGINT sites past and present 2.0,” published on his blog site Lux ex Umbra, May 1, 2006, updated in 2013, https://luxexumbra.blogspot.com/2013/05/canadian-sigint-sites-past-and-present.html.
6. “The Web pages of Jerry Proc,” http://jproc.ca see also Robert Lynn Wortman and George T. Fraser, History of Canadian Signals Intelligence and Direction Finding (privately printed, 2005).
7. Wark history, p. 34, endnote 20.
8. “Positions” was a slightly mythologized standard adopted by the Canadian authorities after 1945, based on wartime capabilities. It signified interception at a site of a variety of communications from a target and was related to the number of operators deemed required to monitor these communications. The standard number of operators attached to “positions” was 4.5, a figure that was helpful for establishing manning levels but had little real-world application. Drake’s 100 positions target remained elusive for the period of time covered by this account (the 1940s and 1950s). On the meaning of “positions” see O’Neill, Chapter 5, 5.1-5.2.
9. O’Neill history, vol. 1, chapter 5.
10. O’Neill history, chapter 5.37.
11. Volume Two of the O’Neill history, which dealt with “Special Collection and Analysis” contains some further discussion of the aerial SIGINT project, and has been redacted in its entirely.
12. Wark history, p. 32.
13. O’Neill history, chapter 5.39.
14. Subsequent technological changes, including the arrival of SIGINT satellites, have reduced the need for intercept stations. The Canadian roster of intercept stations now numbers only four—Leitrim at the hub and the three remotely operated stations at Alert, Masset and Gander.
15. For a quick survey of the committee system that governed Canadian SIGINT policy in the early years, see O’Neill history, Chapter 2.
16. Wark history, Chapter 5, p. 12.
17. ibid.
18. ibid., p.13.
19. ibid., p. 21. Pages 15-20 of the history relevant to this issue, remain redacted in their entirety.
20. Ibid, pp. 20-21.
21. Bill Crean had been the driving force behind the CANUSA agreement with the US in 1949, see Wark, “The Road to CANUSA.”.
22. Wark history, p. 29.
23. ibid.
24. ibid, p. 30.
25. ibid.
26. ibid., p. 31.
27. O’Neill history, 4.13.
28. Wark history, pp. 24-25, text partly redacted.
29. ibid., p. 24.
30. The definition of the Arctic target was later altered to specific Soviet SIGINT entities in the Russian far north rather than the sweeping geographic designation of everything north of 60.
31. ibid, pp. 25-26. Some text redacted.
32. Ibid., p. 27. Some text redacted.
33. Ibid.
34. ibid, p. 28, text partly redacted.
35. O’Neill history, 11.83.
36. It was, of course, known to Canadian officials that our allies had “third party” intelligence sharing relationships, outside the tripartite grouping, with other countries working on the Soviet Arctic, especially the Nordics. On the Norwegian SIGINT effort see the official history by Olav Riste, The Norwegian Intelligence Service, 1945-1970 (London: Frank Cass/Routledge, 1999). Also Journal of Strategic Studies, vol 29, no. 4, August 2006, special issue on “Cold War Intelligence in Scandinavia.” C.G. McKay and Bengt Beckman, Swedish Signals Intelligence 1900-1945 (London: Routledge, 2002).
37. For the latest expression of Canada’s policy towards the Arctic region, see “The Arctic and Northern Policy Framework, “(2019), chapter on “Safety, Security and Defence,” https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1560523306861/1560523330587.
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Wesley Wark
Wesley Wark is a Visiting Professor at the Centre on Public Management and Policy at the University of Ottawa where he teaches courses to Canadian federal government officials on intelligence and security issues. He retired from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, where he had taught since 1988, in 2015. He served for two terms as President of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) and was previously an editor of Intelligence and National Security.