Stirring it up again - documentation (for this blog post: Stirring it up again; see also Timeline)
February 26, 1994, Toronto Star: Writer probes world of organized hate
March 1994, Quill and Quire: [excerpt, notification of March, 1994 publication of Web of Hate]
March 19, 1994, Globe and Mail: Study of Canada's far right leaves some unanswered questions
August 14, 1994, Canadian Press NewsWire: CSIS informant helped start racist group, says newspaper
August 15, 1994, Ottawa Citizen: JEWISH CONGRESS: CSIS ties spark demand for probe
August 23, 1994, Hamilton Spectator: CSIS spy was guard for Manning says CBC
August 25, 1994, Vancouver Province: MPs to probe Bristow links: CSIS informant under fire
September 17, 1994, Edmonton Journal: Edmonton Evidence suggests dirty deeds behind party troubles
October 18, 1995, CTV: More information on the Grant Bristow affair
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Writer probes world of organized hate; [SA2 Edition]
Warren Kinsella. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Feb 26, 1994. Sec. E. pg. J.15
There is a tendency to dismiss far-right racist organizations in Canada as a lunatic fringe. But Warren Kinsella, author of the forthcoming book Web Of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network (HarperCollins), argues that vigilance is necessary.
Kinsella, 33, a former journalist, began charting the hate movement and terrorist organizations in Canada as a reporter for the Calgary Herald and Ottawa Citizen. His forays led to his first book, Unholy Alliances, on the Libyan government's support of terrorism and the Canadian connections.
But it also led him to organized racism and to his descent into the far-right movement in Canada of neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, and myriad groups devoted to purging the country of Jews and non- whites through violence.
"This is not a democratic movement. They function on the level of a terrorist movement," says Kinsella, who now works as executive assistant to public works minister David Dingwall.
Kinsella estimates that there are some 40 groups, such as Aryan Nations, Church of the Creator, or The Heritage Front, with a combined total of some 2,000 active members.
"They are radicals who favor violence to reject democracy," says Kinsella. Because they advocate violence, and because they recruit youths and convicts, or infiltrate the armed forces, he sees them as more dangerous than their numbers indicate.
"Since 1989, they've been growing at an alarming rate, largely because of the influx of young skinheads. The hate movement for young people operates much like a cult," he says, noting their tendency to isolate youths from family.
Where is the hotbed of racism? "Toronto is the capital of the hate movement in Canada," says Kinsella.
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[Excerpt] Spring announcements (English language titles)
Quill & Quire. Toronto: Mar 1994. Vol. 60, Iss. 3; pg. 28
WEB OF HATE: The Far - Right Network in Canada, Warren Kinsella; $26.95 cl. 0 - 00 - 255074 - 1, 288 pp., 8 pp. b&w illus. Kinsella documents the actions of far - right groups across Canada. HCP, Mar.
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Research, organization are strong, but analysis is weak in this impressive examination of CANADA'S GROWING WEB OF HATE; [Final Edition]
Charles Gordon. The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont.: Mar 20, 1994. pg. C.3
Ran with related article headlined "At 33, Kinsella has two books and three careers under his belt"
Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network
By Warren Kinsella
Harper Collins; 386 pages; $26.95.
Warren Kinsella's Web of Hate shows considerable research and considerable courage. It will be an invaluable reference work for years to come.
That said, there are things the book doesn't do that would have made it more valuable.
Kinsella, a journalist, lawyer and Liberal party factotum, knows the history of Canadian hate groups, the neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He knows the hate groups, their relationships; he has read everything on the subject, attended the meetings, interviewed the major players. He is convinced that hate groups are a genuine threat to this country. Their violence has increased in recent years: We have seen it on the streets of Ottawa; we have seen it in the armed forces in Somalia. The range of their victims has increased, Kinsella notes in his introduction.
"Anyone, in fact, can be one."
In Web of Hate , we meet the hate groups -- among them, the Aryan Nations, Heritage Front, Brotherhood of Racial Purity, Church of the Creator, Christian Identity, Final Solution Skinheads, Western Guard, White Power Canada. There are many more.
In Western Canada, racism and neo-Nazism were a factor in some Western separatist groups. The influence of Quebec's Ku Klux Klan was felt in the rocks thrown at Chateauguay in the summer of Oka. Older hate-mongers in Ontario form alliances with skinheads in their war against Jews, blacks and immigrants.
Kinsella is at his strongest when he sketches portraits of the more noteworthy individuals: Aryan Nation high priest Terry Long; Heritage Front leader Wolfgang Droege; George Burdi, Canadian leader of the Church of the Creator; Doug Christie, Western Canada Concept founder and courtroom defender of the Zundels and Keegstras (his chapter is subtitled "Counsel for the Damned"); New Brunswick schoolteacher and anti-Semite Malcolm Ross (whose book Web of Deceit , is ironically echoed in the title of this one). Their words and deeds make fascinating, if repellent reading.
The author is less strong in conveying a sense of the strength and scope of these people and their supporters. We are told again and again that they are powerful, but the statistical evidence is unconvincing.
Assembling some of the numbers scattered throughout the book, we find:
- Canadian membership in the Aryan Nations was 200 in the late '80s.
- An Aryan Fest in 1990 at Provost Alberta was attended by 30 or 40 skinheads.
- "Members and supporters" of the Heritage Front are believed to number 2,000.
- B'Nai Brith's League for Human Rights estimates that there are more than 1,000 neo-Nazi skinheads.
- A 1989 Canada Day festival in Minden, Ont., attracted 200 neo-Nazi skinheads.
- An 1992 Aryan Fest at La Plaine, Que., in 1992 drew 100 neo-Nazis.
These are not impressive numbers. And these are not, in many ways, impressive people. It is with a sense of shock that one reaches the middle of the book, where the photographs are, and finds pictures of kids -- kids dressed up in silly uniforms, kids doing Nazi salutes for their friends behind the cameras. In the text we see Canadian Klansmen saving up their money to send away to the States for the full set of robes; we see other Canadians buying and selling the rights to Klan symbols.
So it is easy to dismiss them, easy to conclude that the book that really needs to be written is about the more respectable right -- the people with suits and normal haircuts who are behind the assault on our social programs, the growing resistance to immigration and the cutbacks in foreign aid. Recent public opinion polls show their influence and it can be argued that they are more dangerous because because they hide their fanaticism behind a cloak of respectability. The racists and neo-Nazis, on the other hand, are right there where we can see them and hear their blunt words.
It is not, however, fair to criticize an author for a book he didn't right. Further, as Kinsella argues, assessing the strength of extremists by counting heads is misleading: They are not running for office; their violence, rather than their numbers, is what is frightening.
In Kinsella's context it is more relevant to look at the words of Keith Rutherford, an Edmonton man who was visited by neo-Nazi skinheads at midnight one night in 1990, savagely beaten and left blind in one eye. Thirty years earlier, as an employee of a Winnipeg radio station, he had played a minor role in the exposing of a Nazi war criminal living in that city. That seemed to be the reason he was chosen.
"They didn't know anything about me," Rutherford said. "And yet they were willing to go out and maim me because they thought it was necessary to further their cause. Unless you're on the receiving end of that hate and that violence -- the violence that results from hate -- you can't fully understand. Now I understand."
Web of Hate is strongest in assembling and putting together facts. The book is fully indexed and has detailed chapter notes. It is weaker in analysis. Kinsella sketches the backgrounds of some of the main players but fails to make us understand what turned them to hate and what causes others to follow them. The study of authoritarian political movements is full of suggestions that certain personality types are prone to this kind of activity. Something in their upbringing makes them receptive to the message; spreading it, either violently or not, fills a need for them.
Kinsella stays away from that kind of analysis until his concluding chapter. Then he says that a number of forces are at play: memories of the Second World War are fading; economic realities are harsh; immigration patters are changing; technology allows the message of hate to be spread easily, and across borders; young people are marginalized by unemployment and the selfishness of society.
Analysis does emerge by inference in the words of some of the skinheads. Here is one talking about a house in Edmonton where the Final Solution skinheads, followers of Aryan Nations leader Terry Long, lived:
"There were parent problems, with parent abuse and stuff like that. They would talk about suicides in the family and stuff like that. There was lots of that. Lots of it. Skinheads have problems, and they only person they can turn to is Terry Long. And Terry Long knows that."
Web of Hate concludes strongly with some recommendations for dealing with the phenomenon. New laws are not needed, Kinsella says; there are plenty of laws now -- although it would help if those who are injured or libelled by hate groups had access to the civil courts, as is the case under the Manitoba Defamation Act and in the United States.
Boards of education can help, Kinsella says. So can the media -- not with "Geraldo-type exposes" but with detailed, well-researched journalism. Web of Hate is a good example of that.
Charles Gordon is the Citizen's books editor.
BIOGRAPHY: At 33, Kinsella has two books and three careers under his belt; [Final Edition]
Charles Gorden. The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont.: Mar 20, 1994. pg. C.3
Ran with related article headlined "CANADA'S GROWING WEB OF HATE"
Warren Kinsella is only 33 but has published two books, despite parallel careers as, first journalist, then lawyer and now political aide.
He began his newspaper career as a summer student with the Calgary Herald in 1986, moving to The Ottawa Citizen in 1988.
Kinsella left the Citizen after a year and a half as a reporter to practise law. Shortly thereafter he moved into the office of then-Opposition Leader Jean Chrtien.
Kinsella writes for two hours every night and on weekends. "I've written 1,000 words a day since I was 12," he says, when asked how he manages to combine a full-time career with the writing and research demands of an author.
His present job is as executive assistant to Public Works Minister Dave Dingwall. It was while he was working for Chretien, then in opposition, that Kinsella learned about the presence of neo-Nazis in the Armed Forces, the subject of one the chapters in Web of Hate. He felt a conflict -- "Do I save it for the book?" -- but eventually fed the information to senior Liberal MPs, who challenged then-defence minister Kim Campbell on the issue.
"I guess I was being a good citizen," Kinsella says now.
Kinsella says his employers -- Chrtien and now Dingwall -- have been helpful and encouraging to him, but he is taking a leave of absence while he promotes the book, so as to keep his duties as an author at arms length from his duties as a poitical aide.
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Study of Canada's far right leaves some unanswered questions WEB OF HATE: Inside Canada's Far Right Network
ERNA PARIS. The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ont.: Mar 19, 1994. pg. C.20
WEB OF HATE: Inside Canada's Far Right Network
BY WARREN KINSELLA HarperCollins, 386 pages, $26.95
Review by ERNA PARIS
WARREN Kinsella has the dope on these guys, the haters who live among us. He details their organizations, old and new, whose names are gradually becoming familiar to the public: Heritage Front, Aryan Nations, Identity Christians, the Ku Klux Klan (granddaddy of them all), and Skinheads of various ilks. And their "heroes": Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, Jewish-conspiracy obsessive James Keegstra, lawyer Doug Christie, teacher Malcolm Ross, Heritage Front leader Wolfgang Droege, self-described "High Aryan Warrior Priest of the Aryan Nations" Terry Long, goose-stepping, garbage- mouthed Carney Nerland, and Ann Hartmann, president of the Northern Foundation, to name just a few. According to Wolfgang Droege, the first meeting of Hartmann's Northern Foundation in 1989 was "the start of it all for the Heritage Front." According to Kinsella, Hartmann - a legal adviser and active member of the anti-feminist organization, REAL Women of Canada - maintains connections with neo-Nazis across North America. Connections is, in fact, the fact at issue: The fascist right in Canada emerges as a club of old buddies.
The crew of self-aggrandizing creeps who inhabit these pages call varyingly for the extermination of Jews, the repatriation of non-whites, and the end of multiculturalism and wimpy liberal democracy, among other things. And in spite of cross-burnings, synagogue defacings and carefully provoked public demonstrations that will lead (they hope) to a brawl and massive media coverage, they deny that they are anti anyone or anything. Au contraire, they are only for their own kind: downtrodden, victimized white Christians.
Ottawa journalist Warren Kinsella has tackled an important, disturbing subject. The week I read his book a poll told us that public attitudes toward immigration are hardening. There is growing talk of a lost generation of young people who may never catch up, even when the jobs reappear. Traditional multiculturalism of the sort that has made Canada internationally famous is coming under attack from unexpected quarters. All this signals possible trouble ahead.
So why is Web of Hate so unconvincing and even dull? For one thing, the author tries too hard to persuade us that Armageddon lies ahead, and in his eager, relentless compilation of anecdote upon anecdote, fact upon fact (no detail is too irrelevant to be omitted) he neglects to situate the problem of the ultra-right in a recognizable social context. Just how many people are there swaggering around in home-made Nazi costumes, screaming racist and anti-Semitic obscenities and recording hate messages on their computers and answering machines? Kinsella never grapples adequately with this question, presumably because the numbers are so small. However, his occasional references to 20 people at this meeting and 40 at that suggest that the fascist right is still a marginal fringe, and largely a U.S. branch-plant phenomenon. Only occasionally does an interface emerge between the far right and mainstream Canadian culture, and even then the contact is tenuous: connections with the Reform Party, for example, that leader Preston Manning has seen fit to disavow. In an overly zealous attempt to establish this relationship, Kinsella appears to flirt with guilt-by-association. For example, one is left to infer the worst from the fact that a British Columbia ultra-rightist worked as a financial adviser to former premier William Vander Zalm. And in his chapter on Quebec, Kinsella leaves the impression that a handful of nutty Ku Klux Klanners are a present and dangerous continuation of widespread prewar fascism in the Adrien Arcand mode.
Kinsella's brief profiles of ultra-rightist leaders further undermine his Armaggedon thesis. These men are just what we thought they were: misfits and losers. They are described by family, neighbours and by each other as "weirdos," "loners," and "different." Many are paranoid - frankly delusional - and confused about their sexual identity. (One spent his days attacking gays and his nights sleeping with his male lover.) Many adhere to crack-pot fundamentalist sects that believe white Christians are God's chosen people and the Jews are literal devils.
Kinsella conveys but does not discuss the theatrical agitprop tone of many ultra-rightist activities - a quality mirrored in at least one case by militant anti-racist opponent Harvey Kane. In this spirit the Alberta Aryan Nations organize a well-publicized barbecue and "Fest" in September, 1990. The media obediently show up along with a few Jewish protesters, including Kane, executive director of the Jewish Defence League of Canada. The Aryans shout insults, the protesters shout back. The Aryans reportedly point guns. At one point Kane approaches one of the skinheads and suggests they all have a barbecue together "as long as we're not the main course." Big laughs all around, until an Aryan barbecuer discovers that a reporter is taking pictures. If this sounds nuts, so do the warriors - of all stripes. This does not mean we should ignore them. Only see them in perspective.
Kinsella is more effective in his final conclusion, where he defends existing hate laws (he offers a convincing rebuttal to the stale civil libertarian defence of absolutely unfettered free speech) and proposes other non-legislative means of stopping violent hate groups, including attacking perpetrators in their wallets with civil suits. These few pages alone make the book worth reading. However, in spite of his legitimate concerns for the future, concerns that many of us share, Kinsella's claim that "our far right can no longer be dismissed as a mere lunatic fringe" remains unproved after 386 pages. Call me a stickler for balance. Yes we must be vigilant, but in dealing with a sensitive subject such as this, breathless reportage that eschews comparative numbers as well as context misses the mark.
Erna Paris's last book was The Garden and The Gun: A Journey Inside Israel.
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CSIS informant helped start racist group, says newspaper
Canadian Press NewsWire. Toronto: Aug 14, 1994.
TORONTO (CP) - A paid informant for Canada's spy agency helped create and direct this country's largest and most successful neo- Nazi group, the Toronto Sun reports.
Grant Bristow not only helped found the white racist Heritage Front, he directed a harassment campaign that may have contributed to street clashes between racists and ant-racists, the newspaper said Sunday.
Bristow, intelligence chief and co-director of security for the white racist Heritage Front, has been a paid informant for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service since early 1989 - before the Heritage Front's inception, the Sun said without naming sources.
But six months after Bristow was put on the CSIS payroll, the Front was conceived.
Four years later CSIS was identifying the Heritage Front and its offshoots as a potential threat to national security.
Describing the group's tactics, former Front member Ken Barker said, "Grant brings the wood, he brings the kindling, he brings the match and says'Light it.' "
Intelligence sources say that during 1993, Bristow was paid $50,000 to $60,000.
Heritage Front members, unaware of Bristow's double role, have consistently desribed him as a "founding father" of the organization, together with Wolfgang Droege and magazine editor Gerry Lincoln.
As the group's intelligence director, Bristow broke into voice mailboxes and answering machines to steal names and phone numbers of Front enemies, information he passed out in a fitful harassment campaign in 1993, the Sun says.
Solicitor General Herb Gray, the fderal cabinet minister ultimately responsible for CSIS, would only say: "I'm going to read the story and see what further can be said."
However, anti-racist activists were outraged and called for a review of the spy agency.
"Instead of investigating security threats, they're creating them," Anti-Racist Action member Kevin Thomas said. He called for full disclosure of CSIS activities within the Heritage Front.
CSIS was formed after revelations of an illegal dirty tricks campaign run by the RCMP's security section in the 1970s.
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JEWISH CONGRESS: CSIS ties spark demand for probe; [Final Edition]
Dale Brazao. The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont.: Aug 15, 1994. pg. A.4
TORONTO -- Reports that a paid government informer was a chief organizer for the white-supremacist Heritage Front are shocking and beyond belief, the Canadian Jewish Congress says.
Hal Joffe, national community relations chairman for the congress, was commenting on reports that Grant Bristow, a paid informant for Canada's spy agency, had helped create and direct the neo-Nazi group.
"If the reports are true, then this is scandalous, Joffe said from Calgary.
"We have to know if we as taxpayers have been funding the creation of hatred in this country.
Joffe called for an "immediate and full inquiry into the allegations, and that the results be made public.
Paid informant
Published reports say Bristow, the Heritage Front's intelligence and security chief, has been acting as a paid informant for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) since early 1989.
He is said to have received $50,000 to $60,000 in payment from CSIS for his work in 1993.
Police must infiltrate to gather intelligence on groups considered a threat to national security, Joffe conceded, adding he's not surprised law enforcement agencies must sometimes pay for information.
But the Jewish congress is concerned about the possibility that federal monies may have been used to fund the Heritage Front's hate campaign.
"Incredible resources have been used at various levels of government to try and preserve the peace of this country, said Joffe.
"To now discover that we may have been paying both ends of the piper is shocking.
A Heritage Front spokesperson said Sunday night that Bristow was one of the organization's founding members, and had "contributed more than his fair share to the cause."
Hotline continues
Gerry Lincoln said he didn't know where Bristow got the money he donated to the group. The Heritage Front isn't surprised by allegations that Bristow was a paid government informer.
"Everybody thought he was a cop, Lincoln said, adding that Bristow left the organization two months ago.
Calls to CSIS went unanswered Sunday night.
But the Heritage Front was using its telephone hotline Sunday to spew recorded messages making hay of the event.
In one, a male voice mockingly praised the spy agency and Bristow for a job well done.
"And what a great job he did. CSIS created something that can't be stopped and white Canada should be grateful to the spy organization, said the voice.
"And as far as Grant Bristow goes, give that man a raise.
The Toronto Star
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CSIS spy was guard for Manning says CBC; [Final Edition]
The Spectator. Hamilton, Ont.: Aug 23, 1994. pg. A.8
1994 The Hamilton Spectator. All rights reserved.
A man reported to be a paid informant for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service also worked as a volunteer security guard for Reform party Leader Preston Manning, the CBC reports.
Grant Bristow was part of a team guarding Mr. Manning during the leader's first swing through Ontario before the last federal election, the network said yesterday, citing unnamed sources.
Mr. Bristow was among several members of the racist Heritage Front who volunteered to provide security for Mr. Manning, the CBC said.
Reports earlier this month alleged Mr. Bristow was a paid informant for CSIS who went on to help create and direct the Front, Canada's largest successful neo-Nazi group.
The CBC quoted former colleagues as saying Mr. Bristow was adamant about staying as close to Mr. Manning as possible, and later bragged about how close he got.
Ron Wood, Mr. Manning's press officer, said he doubted an outsider was able to obtain any information about the party that may be considered sensitive.
But he said he worries about CSIS's intentions.
"What is a guy who is working for a federal spy agency doing trying to infiltrate a legitimate political party in a democratic society and whose blessing did he have?" Mr. Wood said.
CSIS has always denied spying on political groups. Last spring, CSIS officials told a Commons committee the law specifically forbids the spy agency from watching Reform or the Bloc Quebecois.
The CBC report is the most recent in a series of media stories during the last two weeks about possible domestic spying by the agency.
The Toronto Sun reported Mr. Bristow became a paid informant for CSIS in 1989 -- six months before the Front was conceived.
The Reform party, human rights advocates and Jewish groups have separately demanded investigations into what role Mr. Bristow played in the Front.
Last week, Solicitor General Herb Gray said he also wants a quick and thorough investigation into the allegations.
Last Friday, the Toronto Star reported CSIS was spying on the CBC -- a report that the normally silent agency took pains to deny in an unusual public statement.
Yesterday, CSIS cited the Official Secrets Act in demanding that the Star surrender certain documents by 5 p.m. tomorrow.
Toronto Star managing editor Lou Clancy said the paper is consulting with its lawyers.
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MPs to probe Bristow links: CSIS informant under fire; [Final Edition]
The Province. Vancouver, B.C.: Aug 25, 1994. pg. A.16
(Copyright The Province (Vancouver) 1994)
OTTAWA -- A Commons sub-committee will hold public hearings into whether a CSIS informant spied on the Reform party, the CBC and a white-supremacist group.
Liberal MP Derek Lee, chairman of the sub-committee on national security, said MPs want questions answered about Grant Bristow, reportedly a paid informant of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service while also a member of the right-wing Heritage Front and a security guard for Reform leader Preston Manning.
The hearings could start in about 10 days, Lee said.
The security intelligence review committee, a civilian watchdog overseeing CSIS, has already said it wants to submit a report on the Bristow affair, and Lee said his subcommittee would try to co- ordinate its probe with the civilian group.
Manning welcomed public hearings, calling them "a step in the right direction" that might help Reform shake off lingering questions about whether it harbors racist attitudes.
Bristow also tried to get data on the Canadian Jewish Congress and some affiliated groups.
Bernie Farber, spokesman for the congress, said Bristow posed as an Ottawa Citizen reporter doing research for author Warren Kinsella, who at the time was writing Web of Hate, a book about extremist right-wing activity in Canada.
Kinsella said he filed a complaint with police, who investigated and concluded they did not have grounds to lay a criminal charge.
The Toronto Star reported a confidential government document said CSIS was informed by a "reliable source" about a CBC investigation into possible connections between the Heritage Front and the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia.
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Police investment in informants earns good dividends; [Final Edition]
The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont.: Sep 2, 1994. pg. A.11.OP
Background: Recent news reports say Canadian police agencies use paid informants to infiltrate neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. Ottawa lawyer and author Warren Kinsella says much of the public outrage is unwarranted.
On the evening of June 18, 1984, at about 9:00 p.m., the Denver radio talk show host named Alan Berg stepped out of his Volkswagen Beetle and onto the driveway outside his home. As he did so, a volley of .45-calibre bullets slammed into his torso and head -- severing his spinal column, ripping apart his heart and turning his brain to pulp. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Berg had been assassinated by Bruce Carroll Pierce, a member of a secretive neo-Nazi group known variously as the Bruder Schweigen, the Silent Brotherhood or the Order. Using a silenced MAC-10 machine gun, Pierce had murdered Berg because the radio personality -- known for his on-air tirades against racists and racist groups -- had apparently insulted a member of the Order who had phoned in one night.
Before Pierce and his colleagues in the Order were brought to justice in the Fall of 1984, the Pacific Northwest of the United States would witness a string of murders, armed robberies, kidnappings and bombings. All done in the name of a far-right revolution against Jews, homosexuals, non-whites and the disabled. All done in furtherance of what the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the most serious "domestic terrorist threat" the United States had ever faced.
For my recently-published book, Web of Hate , I interviewed dozens of FBI agents, police officers, lawyers, judges and journalists who had been involved in the pursuit and prosecution of the two dozen-odd men in the Order. And, with varying degrees of emphasis, all agreed on one point: the Order would have been brought to justice a lot sooner -- and Alan Berg and others would likely still be alive -- had there been an informant inside the neo-Nazi organization form the very start.
Not long after the Berg assassination, U.S.-based police agencies recruited a high-ranking member of the Order, Tom Martinez, to act as an informant. By making use of Martinez, the FBI was able to track down the Order's leadership. Within a few short weeks, its entire membership was either behind bars or dead. All members -- including Bruce Pierce -- would go on to serve lengthy prison terms. Tom Martinez proved to be a very worthwhile investment.
In Canada, many people have recently been grappling with a similar issue: should police agencies make use of paid informants to infiltrate neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups with criminal tendencies? According to some unattributed media reports, this is precisely what police agencies did in the case of Grant Bristow, the former security chief to the neo-Nazi group known as the Heritage Front.
Bristow, the media say, was paid to pass on information about the Heritage Front to the police. This "revelation" has whipped otherwise-respectable citizens into a frenzy of outrage and indignation. "OUTRAGEOUS," screamed one tabloid headline.
Is it? The answer depends upon what we expect of our police agencies. If we want to know what organized criminals such as those who populated the Heritage Front are up to before they do it, then employing the likes of Grant Bristow is far from outrageous it is eminently reasonable. If, on the other hand, we would prefer an environment in which men and women like Alan Berg -- men and women who raise their voices against racism -- are slaughtered like cattle every few months, then by all means prohibit the use of all future Grant Bristows. In that way, police officers can learn about the activities of organized criminals when the rest of us do -- after the fact.
Because neither Bristow nor the police agencies in question are talking, no one knows for certain how the former Heritage Front security chief spent the monies he allegedly received. But that apparently has not stopped a number of media outlets from trumpeting -- occasionally from their front pages -- that Bristow used the funds to "set up" the Heritage Front. The media stories, in turn, have convinced a great many people that their tax dollars have made criminal activity possible.
As one who has probed Canada's far right movement for about a decade, I have learned that it is leadership ability -- not money that propels our home-grown hate groups. Take, for example, two Toronto-based haters: Ernst Zundel and Donald Clarke Andrews. Zundel is a German-born publisher who has made millions through the sale of pro-Nazi propaganda around the world; Andrews, who has led groups with names such as the Edmund Burke Society, the Western Guard and the Nationalist Party of Canada, is the well-to-do owner of several rental properties in the Toronto area.
While both men are outspoken, wealthy and committed to National Socialism, neither has been able to build a hate group of any lasting significance. Despite their riches, Zundel and Andrews remain marginal players in the far right -- often mocked and ridiculed by those they purport to lead.
Grant Bristow and the man he followed -- Heritage Front founder Wolfgang Droege -- were known for many things, but personal wealth was not one of them. Their relative poverty did not, however, prevent Droege and Bristow from building a neo-Nazi organization that was larger and better-organized than anything Canada has seen in the post-war years.
But, some say, there are other controversies swirling above the controversy that now carries Grant Bristow's name. Media reports -- some attributed, many not -- have suggested that Bristow spied on the CBC and the Reform Party. How reliable are these claims? In the latter case, in fact, Bristow and his Heritage Front colleagues were more interested in joining the Reform Party than they were in spying on it. Ask any one of them -- as I have, on the record and in taped interviews -- and they will cheerfully admit that they liked the Reformers' views on immigration.
At the end of the day, the most important question remains largely unanswered: do Canadians wish their police agencies to make use of paid informants to investigate organized crime? Do they want police to be proactive or reactive?
Ask Alan Berg's widow -- she'll tell you: paying people to inform on organized crime makes sense.
Warren Kinsella is an Ottawa lawyer and author. His book, Web of Hate, is published by HarperCollins.
Credit: CITIZEN SPECIAL
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Evidence suggests dirty deeds behind party troubles; CAST OF CHARACTERS; [FINAL Edition]
NORM OVENDEN Journal Ottawa Bureau. Edmonton Journal. Edmonton, Alta.: Sep 17, 1994. pg. A.10
Journal Ottawa Bureau, Ottawa
Preston Manning was sounding paranoid.
It was early 1992 and the Reform party had launched a panic probe after a Toronto newspaper revealed several known racists had secretly joined party riding associations in Toronto.
"You could see some people with a vested interest in getting some bad names on our list," Manning said, raising the spectre that a rival political party might be behind the recruitments.
Reform was already having trouble selling its message to Canada's ethnic and immigrant communities. The new linkage to the neo-Nazi Heritage Front was damning.
"What worries us about this is these guys are members of organized groups and they're all members of the same group, which makes you think this isn't some random thing," Manning said in late February 1992.
The conspiracy theory went nowhere. He wasn't believed.
But those comments are worth reviewing now that five high-level parliamentary and police investigations have started into whether Canada's national spy agency was in any way involved in undermining a legitimate political organization, as well as a host of other dirty deeds.
To start with, there's not much concrete evidence to support the current Reform allegation that Grant Bristow, an apparently well-paid informer for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, intentionally helped his Heritage Front buddies infiltrate Reform. Or that he then arranged for that information to be passed along to the ruling Conservative government as part of a dirty tricks campaign.
But there's too much circumstantial evidence to pretend there wasn't something funny going on.
Let's go back to those events in the late winter of 1992.
As a result of the internal Reform inquiry, five people were ejected from the party early that March. They were Wolfgang Droege, the Heritage Front's boss; James Dawson; Peter Mitrevski; and Nicola Polinuk, who had tried to become a Toronto school trustee in 1990 when running on the racist Nationalist Party ticket.
Also tossed out was Alan Overfield, an executive on the interim Beaches-Woodbine constituency association who had signed the others up. Overfield owned a Toronto bailiff company and had a long association with ultra right-wing causes.
The attachment to Bristow, who worked for other security companies, only became known in the past month as the CSIS scandal erupted.
It turns out Bristow, along with Droege, Dawson, Mitrevski and Polinuk -- and about a dozen other extremists -- had attended a 1989 conference in Libya at the invitation of Moammar Ghadafi. That's when Droege and Bristow dreamed up the Heritage Front and began organizing it on their return.
Two years later, the Front was a small and shadowy group, little known to anyone in the public except those organizations it hated like the Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario police intelligence units and CSIS.
In June 1991, Overfield was asked by Ontario Reform organizers to provide security for Manning at a huge rally in Malton on the outskirts of Toronto. There were rumors anti-Reform demonstrators planned to storm the stage.
In January 1992, shortly before he was turfed from Reform, Overfield also provided similar volunteer security assistance at another Manning speech in the Toronto suburb of Pickering.
The people Overfield brought with him were Droege, Mitrevski and Bristow. The CSIS agent was filmed with a home video camera, apparently by another Heritage Front member, at Manning's shoulder escorting him to the stage.
The conspiracy claiming Tory involvement is more tenuous. Certainly prominent Conservatives were flinging mud at Reform and accusing it of extremist views. So were the Liberals and NDP.
But there are odd coincidences.
In February and March of 1992, at the same time the Heritage Front membership mess fell into Manning's lap, a nasty set of anti-Reform radio advertisements hit the airwaves in the southern Ontario riding held by Solicitor General Doug Lewis. Lewis was also head of the Tory Ontario re-election campaign.
Initially, radio stations were told their client for the slick $15,000-campaign was the Government of Canada, although the Tories later 'fessed up and paid the bill.
The ads warned of secret Reform plans. "Maybe it's time to question all that hot air, ask some questions about the Reform hidden agenda," whispered an announcer. Lewis later called the one-month campaign "test marketing."
There's more to the theory that the Heritage Front was used to infiltrate Reform as a long-term plot to discredit the Calgary-based party which posed such a threat to the Tories.
Reform organizers know $10 memberships were purchased for some neo-Nazis who only later found out they had taken out memberships. They know Bristow never personally took out a membership although most Heritage Front associates were encouraged to.
They pass on tips that Droege is boasting he was hired to do mischief by the Tories. Manning's press secretary Ron Wood says John Beck, the Toronto Reform candidate fired during last fall's election campaign for making anti-immigrant statements, may have been a Tory plant.
Wood says the night the Beck story broke, an anonymous caller phoned a Reform staffer in Ottawa to warn the party had been suckered.
Manning and B.C. MP Val Meredith wonder just where the trail will lead.
"The fact the solicitor general of the day didn't tell the Reform party that white supremacists were trying to infiltrate the party would indicate that information was used for political purposes rather than the protection of the security of the country," Meredith says.
The danger with some of the accusations now in the public domain is that some originated with the less-than-credible Heritage Front. The Front is probably angry at CSIS, the former Tory government and at Reform, which has shown a distressing tendency to oust Front members it discovers within its ranks.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Preston Manning: Reform party leader
Grant Bristow: CSIS informer, white supremacist organizer
Wolfgang Droege: boss of the Heritage Front neo-Nazi hate group
James Dawson, Peter Mitrevski, Nicola Polinuk: white supremacists
Alan Overfield: Owner of a Toronto bailiff company with a long association with ultra-right-wing causes
[Illustration]
Black & White Photo; Journal Stock; Preston Manning Grant Bristow
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CTV Television Network Ltd. Oct 19, 1994
HOST: Valerie Pringle
GUEST: Val Meredith, Reform MP; Philippe Bibeau, Former Deputy Director, CSIS
PRINGLE: Former Solicitor-General Doug Lewis testified yesterday -- keeping a pretty tight lip about CSIS activity while he was in charge, offering nothing new about alleged informant Grant Bristow or alleged spy activities of CSIS on the Reform Party or the CBC or postal workers. Where does this committee go from here? And what do they expect to find out ultimately perhaps? In Ottawa today, one of the committee members -- who's a Reform party member -- Val Meredith is with us and a former CSIS deputy director, Philippe Bibeau.
Let me ask both of you. I'll start with Val. What did you learn from Doug Lewis yesterday?
MEREDITH: Not very much, Valerie.
PRINGLE: Anything?
MEREDITH: Well, he did identify that CSIS was investigating the Heritage Front. I don't know if he meant to identify that, but he did. And he did confirm or affirm that CSIS did not target the Reform Party, although he would not confirm whether or not he had ever seen any reports where the Reform Party was mentioned. So, I have to believe that CSIS did not deliberately target the Reform Party, but there still is an unclear message as to whether or not there were reports going back and forth about the Reform Party's --
PRINGLE: Okay, I want to ask you a bit more about that last statement you just made, but let me ask Philippe Bibeau. What did you learn from Doug Lewis?
BIBEAU: Well, I learned that Mr. Lewis is a law-obedient citizen. Section 18 of the CSIS Act completely forbids the revelation of anything learned as a result of association with the service. So Mr. Lewis is simply agreeing with the law that Parliament passed in 1984.
PRINGLE: Was there any point even having him there then if that's the case?
BIBEAU: Well, not really, but I suppose it satisfied the purposes of the subcommittee. I think the subcommittee should wait to get the SIRC report, and then perhaps a more meaningful debate can take place.
PRINGLE: Now, Val Meredith, there have been quotes from Reformers -- as this story has built and been played up, I guess -- that the Reform was the target of (what?) quote, "KGB-style CSIS/Solicitor- General plot to spy on and blacken Reform". You now don't think this is the case? Why? What's changed your mind?
MEREDITH: No, I don't know that we've ever been that condemning. What we have suggested is that an employee -- or rather a source working for CSIS -- was deliberately trying to discredit the Reform Party by placing Heritage Front members in the Reform Party's membership.
BIBEAU: I find this totally out of possibility of happening because CSIS sources are seen in situations like this almost daily, definitely two or three times a week. And if a CSIS source had been involved in that type of activity, it would have come to the attention of his handler. It would have come to the attention of Ottawa and there is no way -- absolutely no way -- that this would have been allowed to happen. Now, I'm not saying that the human source may not be involved in political activities. They're Canadian citizens like everybody else. But definitely not on behalf of a party in particular.
MEREDITH: Well, the interesting thing is that we do know that Grant Bristow was buying memberships for the Heritage Front members -- those who could not afford to buy it on themselves -- and was definitely promoting the Heritage Front members being in the Reform Party. They were not doing it on their own accord.
PRINGLE: But this is where it gets tricky. Whose accord were they doing it on? There were some allegations and some people in your party said CSIS was behind it. Who do you think was behind it?
MEREDITH: Well, you know, I'm asking some questions because I want to know, and I'm not getting the answers. I mean, I would like to know how involved the handler was, how involved the management of CSIS was in what their human source was doing and --
PRINGLE: But we don't even know -- just to interrupt here -- we don't even know (and correct me, Mr. Bibeau, about this information) if Bristow was in fact working for CSIS.
BIBEAU: That has not been confirmed, and that too would be against the law for anyone to confirm, even a former Solicitor- General. But at this moment, allegations have been made; nothing has been proven. And I'm absolutely convinced that nothing has happened. Now, the chairman of the SIRC committee will come forward with a report. And I think everybody should sort of relax and wait until that is produced because he has access, as an independent outside the CSIS organization, to whatever CSIS may have gathered from -- [overtalk]
PRINGLE: No, and it's interesting -- just to cut in here. I remember Jacques Courtois -- the head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee you just referred to, who are doing a report now -- saying basically, "You have to trust us. I'll tell you what you need to know."
MEREDITH: Right. Well, and the thing is that their responsibility is only with CSIS, with the department, with the agency. They don't have any mandate to go into the Solicitor- General's portfolio or into his office and investigate what happened there. And that's part of our concern -- the information that somebody, who was paid by CSIS, went through the system. How was it used? And we're not getting the answers as to --
PRINGLE: Well, if you're not getting them now. Let me --
BIBEAU: No, that information cannot go through the system. Information on a political party would not be allowed to go through the system. So therefore, it's not going to reach the Solicitor- General's department in any way, shape, or form.
PRINGLE: Where will it reach, Mr. Bibeau? Will we ever get a full picture of this?
BIBEAU: It never gets put on paper. Members of CSIS, who are (most of them) former members of the RCMP security service, remember what happens when you break the law. Careers are ruined; lives are terribly upset. So nobody will do anything illegal. And it would be illegal to write a report about the activities of a political party. So therefore, it was not done.
MEREDITH: So, that's the difficulty we have, is that --
PRINGLE: Make it quick, Val.
MEREDITH: -- instead of having the stuff on paper, it's all done through word of mouth and discussions with people. That doesn't mean it's not happening. It's just not written down where it can be put in front of a person.
PRINGLE: Well, I thank you both for your time today. And I'm sure we'll talk about this again. That's for sure.
MEREDITH: Thank you, Valerie.
PRINGLE: We'll be back.
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More information on the Grant Bristow affair
CTV National News - CTV Television. Scarborough: Oct 18, 1995.
Copyright CTV Television Network Ltd. Oct 18, 1995
HOST: LLOYD ROBERTSON
LLOYD ROBERTSON: CTV News has obtained an explosive report prepared by a House of Commons Committee and it raises some new and disturbing questions about how Canada's spy agency handled one of its most infamous informants. Grant Bristow was paid by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service to infiltrate the white racist racist group known as the Heritage Front. But was it a misuse of taxpayers' money. His mission was supposedly to undermine the organization's activities. But according to the still confidential report he did exactly the opposite. George Wolff reports on this latest chapter of the Grant Bristow affair in this CTV Inquiry.
GEORGE WOLFF (Reporter): He was a secret agent spinning out of control, working for Canada's spy agency CSIS. His job - infiltrate the Neo-Nazi Heritage Front. But a damning report on Grant Bristow and his CSIS handlers obtained by CTV News concludes Bristow didn't undermine the Nazis he made them stronger. The confidential report prepared by the Commons National Security Subcommittee accuses Bristow of breaking the law, of being an agent provocateur, a spy who fostered, nurtured and implemented a harassment campaign against anti-racists. But it never should have happened. By 1990 the report concludes CSIS knew the Heritage Front was not a threat to the security of Canada. At worst it was involved in petty criminal activity which should have been investigated by police not by secret agents. But CSIS was determined to keep Bristow undercover. In fact he became a key leader of the Heritage Front. He harboured white supremacist fugitives, shipped weapons and spearheaded neo-Nazi political action. Bristow, the committee reports, was not investigating the problem he was creating it and CSIS did very little to stop him.
DEREK LEE (Commons Security Subcommittee): The draft you've managed to locate is a, we believe it's heading in the right direction but it does need some refinement.
WOLFF: The report is in sharp contrast to an earlier investigation by the spy agency's watchdog SIRC, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which found no serious fault with CSIS or Bristow. While the new report stops short of calling that a whitewash the Commons subcommittee says SIRC did not provide a sufficiently critical review of these events.
VAL MEREDITH (Reform Subcommittee Member): SIRC referred to Bristow as deserving some reward, some award, Canadian award of excellence and service to the country. I would say that he fell far from that.
WOLFF: The report is now in its third draft and still committee members can't agree that it's ready for public scrutiny. Sources say some members want it toned down. Others insist Canadians should know how CSIS bungled the Grant Bristow affair. George Wolff, CTV News, Ottawa.
Copyright CTV Television Network Ltd. 1995 All Rights Reserved.
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