This article possibly contains original research .(October 2021) |
Wesley K. Wark (born 1952) is a Canadian historian, an associate professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto, [1] and an invited professor at the University of Ottawa. [2]
Wark earned a B.A. from Carleton University in 1975, an M.A. from Cambridge University in 1977 and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He was a faculty member at McGill University from 1982 to 1983, at the University of Calgary from 1983 to 1988, and at the University of Toronto from 1988 until his retirement in 2013. [2]
Wark was President of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) in 1998-2000 and 2004–2006. He served on the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on National Security (2005–2009). [3]
Wark is a frequent media commentator on national security and intelligence and contemporary security issues. Notably, writing in 2020, Mr. Wark appeared to be unaware that Canada's military had a medical intelligence unit, stating "The Canadian military appears to have no counterpart to the U.S. National Center for Medical Intelligence, which is part of their Defense Intelligence Agency.". [4] Later that year Mr. Wark stated "The Department of National Defence has a small medical intelligence unit, normally utilized to assist in determining health risk in overseas military deployments, but whose expertise could be pressed into service on COVID-19.” [5] Again in 2021, he discussed Canada's "military medical intelligence branch.". [6] Other scholarly interests include the popular culture of espionage in the contemporary history, the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism and modern and contemporary international relations. He was also a member of the Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. [7]
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage is called an espionage agent or spy. Any individual or spy ring, in the service of a government, company, criminal organization, or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law.
Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko was a cipher clerk for the Soviet embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, and a lieutenant of the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). He defected on September 5, 1945, three days after the end of World War II, with 109 documents on the USSR's espionage activities in the West. In response, Canada's Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, called a royal commission to investigate espionage in Canada.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is a foreign intelligence service and security agency of the federal government of Canada. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world and conducting covert action within Canada and abroad. CSIS reports to the Minister of Public Safety, and is subject to review by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.
Jack Lawrence Granatstein is a Canadian historian who specializes in Canadian political and military history.
Intelligence assessment, or simply intel, is the development of behavior forecasts or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organisation, based on wide ranges of available overt and covert information (intelligence). Assessments develop in response to leadership declaration requirements to inform decision-making. Assessment may be executed on behalf of a state, military or commercial organisation with ranges of information sources available to each.
George Parkin Grant was a Canadian philosopher, university professor and social critic. He is known for his Canadian nationalism, a political conservatism that affirms the values of community, equality and justice and his critical, philosophical analysis of the social and political effects of limitless technological progress. As a practising Christian, Grant conceived of time as the moving image of an eternal order illuminated by love.
Canada in the Cold War was one of the western powers playing a central role in the major alliances. It was an ally of the United States, but there were several foreign policy differences between the two countries over the course of the Cold War. Canada's peacekeeping role during the Cold War has played a major role in its positive global image. The country served in every UN peacekeeping effort from its inception in 1948 until 1989. This resulted in Canada provided the greatest amount of UN peacekeepers during the Cold War.
The Public Health Agency of Canada is an agency of the Government of Canada that is responsible for public health, emergency preparedness and response, and infectious and chronic disease control and prevention.
The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis of 1915 when there was much newspaper criticism of the shortage of artillery shells and fear of sabotage. The Ministry was created by the Munitions of War Act 1915 passed on 2 July 1915 to safeguard the supply of artillery munitions. Under the very vigorous leadership of Liberal party politician David Lloyd George, the Ministry in its first year set up a system that dealt with labour disputes and fully mobilized Britain's capacity for a massive increase in the production of munitions.
William Leonard Higgitt was the 14th commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), holding office from 1969 to 1973, and President of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) from 1972 to 1976. Leonard Higgitt's background in intelligence and counterintelligence with the RCMP during and after World War II made him the preferred choice as RCMP Commissioner at what was the height of the Cold War. Higgitt's tenure as Canada's top spy, first, and then as RCMP Commissioner, also coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States, which was part of a period of broader political unrest and social change in Canada, including the Quebec nationalist movement and first-ever diplomatic negotiations in Stockholm between Canada and Communist China. Higgitt's time as Commissioner was marked by his efforts to balance a traditional view of the Mounties in the eye of the public, and a trust in the RCMP attending that view, with more modern, high-tech, and legally complex policing methods, including surveillance and data-gathering practices that found the RCMP facing increasing media and judicial scrutiny.
The Government of China is engaged in espionage overseas, directed through diverse methods via the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the United Front Work Department (UFWD), People's Liberation Army (PLA) via its Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff Department, and numerous front organizations and state-owned enterprises. It employs a variety of tactics including cyber espionage to gain access to sensitive information remotely, signals intelligence, human intelligence as well as influence operations through united front activity targeting overseas Chinese communities and associations. The Chinese government is also engaged in industrial espionage aimed at gathering information and technology to bolster its economy, as well as transnational repression of dissidents abroad such as supporters of the Tibetan independence movement and Uyghurs as well as the Taiwan independence movement, the Hong Kong independence movement, Falun Gong, pro-democracy activists, and other critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The United States alleges that the degree of intelligence activity is unprecedented in its assertiveness and engagement in multiple host countries, particularly the United States, with economic damages estimated to run into the hundreds of billions according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), formerly known as the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, is a component of the United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) responsible for the production of medical intelligence and all-source intelligence on foreign health threats and other medical issues to protect U.S. interests worldwide. Headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the center provides finished intelligence products to the Department of Defense, U.S. Intelligence Community, Five Eyes, NATO, allies and partners, as well as international health organizations and NGO's.
The Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) is an electronic public health early warning system developed by Canada's Public Health Agency, and is part of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN). This system monitors internet media, such as news wires and websites, in nine languages in order to help detect and report potential disease or other health threats around the world. The system has been credited with detecting early signs of the 2009 swine flu pandemic in Mexico, Zika in West Africa, H5N1 in Iran, MERS and Ebola.
David Alexander Tetlow Stafford was projects director at Edinburgh University's Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars and is Leverhulme Emeritus Professor in the university's School of History, Classics and Archaeology.
Colonel Charles Frederick Hamilton (1879–1933) was a Canadian intelligence officer and newspaper journalist.
Gregory S. Kealey is a historian of the working class in Canada, founding editor of the journal Labour/Le Travail, and former vice-president (research) and provost of the University of New Brunswick, where he is Professor Emeritus of History. The author and editor of numerous books and articles on labour history, intelligence studies, and state security, Kealey is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Royal Society of Canada and served as president of the Canadian Historical Association. In 2016 the Canadian Historical Review published a memoir of his career. In 2017 he was appointed a member of the Order of Canada.
Werner Alfred Waldemar von Janowski,, was a captured German Second World War Nazi spy and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's first double agent. He is believed to have been a triple agent by some, underscoring the RCMP's inexperience in espionage. Due to power struggles between the Canadian and British intelligence agencies during the Second World War and the RCMP's inexperience, Operation Watchdog was a failure. Janowski provided little significant intelligence to the Allies: no Abwehr agents were arrested and no U-boats were captured, despite his apparent cooperation. Within a year the operation was shut down and Janowski was sent to a prison in Britain.
In December 2018, Canadian nationals Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were taken into custody in China. It appeared that their detention on December 10 and subsequent indictment under the state secrets law were linked to the arrest of Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada on December 1. In English-language media, the pair are frequently and colloquially referred to as the Two Michaels.
Irene (Irena) Rima Makaryk is a Canadian English-language academic, author, and distinguished professor at the University of Ottawa.
Richard James Aldrich is a British political scientist and a historian of espionage who has written intensively about intelligence and security communities.