FOREWORD

Conspiracy theories endure. There are hundreds of examples of this, the 
most poignant and well-known being the many conspiracies believed to be 
behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There is a simple 
reason: it is impossible to prove a negative proposition.  

Several independent groups of well-qualified people have concluded that 
the Loch Ness monster does not exist. But, for true believers, these 
conclusions simply show that the investigation was not sufficiently 
thorough, or that the people involved were biased from the start.  

Our report faces the same obstacles. That is why we described under 
'Methodology' the efforts we made to ensure that nothing remotely 
relevant escaped our attention. We realize that even this will not 
prevent some people from demanding another "independent" investigation, 
because our conclusions may not match their preconceived convictions. 
There will undoubtedly be others who, based upon the facts set out in 
this report, come to conclusions that differ from ours; we certainly 
have no quarrel with them.  

The Review Committee took the decision to investigate the Heritage Front 
affair on Sunday, August 14, 1994. The investigation commenced the 
following day. Sometime later, at the request of the Reform Party of 
Canada, we expanded our usual investigative mandate to include an 
examination of allegations concerning the infiltration of the Reform 
Party. We followed a variety of leads in this area. Almost all our staff, 
and we ourselves, have been pre-occupied with the inquiry ever since.  

What sets this report apart from all the other reports we have sent to 
the Solicitor General is the fact that most of it, perhaps all of it, will 
be made public. This will occur because the allegations against CSIS were 
so serious that the Security Intelligence 'system' established by 
Parliament in 1984 was in danger of losing the public's trust. Readers of 
the "Heritage Front Affair" will be able to judge for themselves the 
effectiveness of the accountability procedures put in place by the CSIS 
Act, and the Review Committee's role in that structure.  

The report contains quite a melange of information. Much of it is 
objective fact based upon a thorough cross-checking of sensitive 
information, Source reports, CSIS files, and interviews. Some of it is 
presumed fact because of the preponderance of evidence. Some of it is 
what we believe to be the most likely correct version of events based 
upon our judgement of the weight to be given to each individual's 
evidence.  

   We have consciously limited the report in two areas only:  

-  we have tried to avoid providing too much 
   information about CSIS' methods of operation 
   so as not to endanger the Service's effectiveness  
   in the future; and 

-  we have not broken the law, section 18 of the CSIS Act, 
   by identifying the CSIS Source who was active in the 
   white supremacist milieu.  

Because of the vagaries of our two official languages, the personal 
pronouns "he" in the english version and "she" in the french version are 
used when referring to sources. These pronouns are used without regard 
to the actual sex of the sources.  

The last chapter of the report contains our findings. We took great care 
in reaching these conclusions and, for our part, are confident that they 
are well-founded.  

Finally, because there are passages in this report that could be construed 
as impugning the characters of certain individuals, we have attempted to 
contact all of them, given them the nature of passages which refer to them, 
and taken full account of their comments. In some cases, their comments 
have led to changes in the text, in others, a footnote puts their 
objections or clarifications on the record. 

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