SIRC Executive Director is former CANSLO/W
Interesting tidbit about Michael E. Doucet, the new Executive Director of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the group that reviews the activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service: as it turns out, Doucet used to work at the Communications Security Establishment, and he even served at one time as CSE's Senior Liaison Officer to the NSA. See his bio here.
CSE and NSA have posted liaison officers to each other since the beginning of the 1950s, with the practice formalized in 1954. The U.S. official is known as the Senior United States Liaison Officer/Ottawa (SUSLO/O), and the Canadian is known as the Canadian Senior Liaison Officer/Washington (CANSLO/W) (sometimes spelled out as Canadian Special Liaison Officer).
[Update 19 December 2013: A recent CSEC document that discusses the roles of these officers uses the terms Canadian Special Liaison Officer and Canadian Special Liaison Office in several places, but in one case it also uses the term Canadian Senior Liaison Office, so it appears that the Special/Senior confusion exists even inside CSEC. The same document uses the term Special United States Liaison Office for the U.S. equivalent. H/T Colin Freeze.]
I posted a partial list of earlier CANSLOs here. [Updated list here.]
The CANSLO/W after David McKerrow was Toni Moffa, I believe. Michael Doucet probably held the job after her, around the 2004-2007 period, give or take a few years.
I get the feeling that SIRC's laudable new interest in the workings of the CSIS-CSEC relationship and in the risks that are run when CSIS information about Canadians (and others) is fed into the Five Eyes SIGINT system may have been at least in part a result of Doucet's December 2012 hiring.
CSE and NSA have posted liaison officers to each other since the beginning of the 1950s, with the practice formalized in 1954. The U.S. official is known as the Senior United States Liaison Officer/Ottawa (SUSLO/O), and the Canadian is known as the Canadian Senior Liaison Officer/Washington (CANSLO/W) (sometimes spelled out as Canadian Special Liaison Officer).
[Update 19 December 2013: A recent CSEC document that discusses the roles of these officers uses the terms Canadian Special Liaison Officer and Canadian Special Liaison Office in several places, but in one case it also uses the term Canadian Senior Liaison Office, so it appears that the Special/Senior confusion exists even inside CSEC. The same document uses the term Special United States Liaison Office for the U.S. equivalent. H/T Colin Freeze.]
I posted a partial list of earlier CANSLOs here. [Updated list here.]
The CANSLO/W after David McKerrow was Toni Moffa, I believe. Michael Doucet probably held the job after her, around the 2004-2007 period, give or take a few years.
I get the feeling that SIRC's laudable new interest in the workings of the CSIS-CSEC relationship and in the risks that are run when CSIS information about Canadians (and others) is fed into the Five Eyes SIGINT system may have been at least in part a result of Doucet's December 2012 hiring.
posted by Bill Robinson at 2:31 pm
2 Comments:
Another source says the Canadian job is called "Special Canada Liaison Officer" (SCALO) - is there an official name, or were both used?
I haven't seen SCALO before. I have seen CANSLO in official documents, but I'm not sure I've seen it spelled out in those. And you see both "Senior" and "Special" in the bios of individuals (e.g., http://www.sirc-csars.gc.ca/abtprp/exddex-eng.html versus http://www.rpic-ibic.ca/en/component/content/article/39-en/extra-info/134-robert-brule-bio and http://rmlilienthal.com/Lilienthal/Mark.html). Maybe the job is Senior Liaison Officer in the Canadian Special Liaison Office. Or maybe both terms have been in use at various times.
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