The Golden Thread
Which leads us to the curious case of the dog that didn’t bark in the night — Warren Kinsella.Bill Dunphy broke the story of Grant Bristow’s infiltration – some would say, creation – of Heritage Front. He knows the people who were there and we need to pay attention to what he writes.Kinsella’s failure to even mention Bristow’s key role in creating and nurturing the HF — hell, his failure to even name him in the first edition of Web of Hate — is very curious and I’ve never been able to understand it. Either he was a sloppy researcher who exaggerated his intelligence community connections, or he withheld knowledge of Bristow deliberately.
Unfortunately both answers are possible — Web of Hate’s 1st edition suffered from a hysterical tone and more than a few critical errors of fact.
Perhaps the best way to judge is to understand that, whatever else he was by 1994, Kinsella was no longer a journalist. He had abandoned that role in favour of advocacy and the book, Web of Hate, should be read and understood as advocacy — not journalism. He fed the hysteria of the times (to sell more books? to advance his political views? for the hell of it?), he functioned as a partisan. And looking at his gleeful confessions in his later book on spin doctoring, we can safely assume that he would see nothing wrong with applying those tactics in Web of Hate.
Look at his response to your criticism here — a shamefully misleading distortion of the truth that he had the National Post print – telling readers there that he HAD mentioned Bristow numerous times in the 2nd edition of Web of Hate, but not telling any of his readers that:
1) Indeed he had failed to mention Bristow in the first edition and 2) The 2nd edition came out AFTER Bristow had been exposed.Compare his public comments with his private email to Kevin. ‘Nuff said.
Any real journalist who misled his editors and readers like that would be fired. Kinsella however, is not, and hasn’t been for a very, very, long time, a real journalist. bill dunphy guest posting at kevin steel
People might wonder why I am so interested in the early days of Heritage Front and the CSIS operation there. My interest is partially historical but also very contemporary. From those days in the early 90’s to the absolute present HF has presented a target for assorted hysterics lead by our old pal Kinsella.
In a sense, the golden thread which runs from Grant Bristow to Richard Warman seems to be Warren Kinsella. Kinsella knew perfectly well who Grant Bristow was when he published the first edition of Web of Hate. And we know he knew because he had filed a police complaint against Bristow in 1993 prior to the publication of Web of Hate. But there is no mention at all of Bristow in the 1st edition.
Kinsella is many things – most of them unpleasant – but even he is not dumb enough to miss one of the three founding members of one of the principle groups he was researching. Now, we could give him the benefit of the dumb or we can conclude that, for whatever reason, he deliberately left Bristow out of the book.
If Bristow’s omission was deliberate one has to ask why? Was Kinsella warned off by CSIS? In which case, was Warren a CSIS asset? In the SIRC inquiry into the Bristow affair, while Web of Hate is quoted extensively, Kisella himself was never called to testify. Why not?
Now, flash forward a decade. Kinsella is still flogging the human rights/anti-neo Nazi horse but now, due to changes in the Canadian Human Rights Act, he has a new hero: Richard Warman aka Lucy and a few other likely aliases. Now the war against neo-Nazis has shifted to the internet. The objective is to nail people for saying, rather than doing, nasty things.
Bristow infiltrated Heritage Front, Warman and Stacey and the ever vigilant investigators at the CHRC infiltrated chatrooms. Not quite as exciting, but a good deal easier what with aliases and “The Cloak” and whois lookups. But the MO was rather similar: get people to do or say things and then hit them with the law or, better still, the quasi-law of the CHRC.
Kinsella called keyboard warrior Warman something like the bravest man in Canada. He has joined him in litigation and they share a libel lawyer. Apparently his relations with Bristow were not as intimate but tight enough to have Bristow excluded from the 1st edition of Web of Hate.
Kinsella, an avowed admirer of Lenin, is very much from the “ends justify the means” school. So was Bristow and so, apparently are Warman and his creature Stacey. Which matters because it has infected the CHRC with a contempt for fairness, procedure, the presumption of innocence, freedom of speech (an “American concept”) and the rule of law so long as the end of ridding Canada of a few powerless, basement dwelling, neo Nazi freaks is in sight.
The idea of a secret police – a Cheka – charged with examining the purity of Canadians’ thoughts would be anathema to most Canadians; but not to an avowed admirer of the inventor of the Cheka.
April 27th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Dunphy makes his position based on a human element taking precedent over political plans on the basis that there is no evidence to support the political conspiracy route. Dunphy then goes on to state that “Bristow Affair” wasn’t properly investigated.
The ongoing CHRC conspiracy is an extension of the Bristow application, whether by early seeding or by opportunism.
April 27th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
A nice overview and it does explain a lot.
I have read the SIRC report and the links to Lucy and Worn also include Shane Ruttle Martinez of the ARA in Toronto.
He was to young to be in the original investigation of the Hertitage Front but the ARA was and Lucy had very close ties to the ARA. He was up front and centre in denouncing and harrasing both Zundel and Fromm.
Martinez ran in Toronto as a candidate for the Marxist – Leninist party and also worked with Lucy and Steacy posing as “Mark lV” on Stormfront and other boards. In fact he and a group out of S.Ontario was involved in a Section 13.1 complaint against BC WEhite Pride.
To the best of my recollection and amazement.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Hmmm very interesting;)
April 28th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Breaking News – in the Globe and Mail and CanWest. Also cross posted on SmalldeadAnimals if this holocast cuts me off.
The plot thickens. No apology, techinques will be explained away at a later date LOL. Civil suit a possibility = another fund raiser but for Nelly this time.
Internet hijacking ‘disturbing’ says Ottawa woman
COLIN PERKEL
Canadian Press
April 27, 2008 at 2:42 PM EDT
TORONTO — A woman caught up in a mysterious Internet hijacking scandal that has sparked a federal privacy investigation into the Canadian Human Rights Commission says she was shocked, angry and confused at suddenly finding herself publicly associated with white supremacists.
Speaking out for the first time, Nelly Hechme told The Canadian Press she was appalled to learn commission investigators might have hacked her Internet connection to post messages on supremacist websites.
“It’s horrible,” Ms. Hechme said. “You never want something like that attached to your name.”
Last month, an investigator with the Human Rights Commission told a hearing into a hate complaint that he made postings on websites under the password-protected pseudonym “Jadewarr.”
In response to a subpoena, Bell Canada linked “Jadewarr” to Ms. Hechme’s personal Internet account, and provided her address and telephone number at the public hearing.
The revelation quickly found its way into the media and became the Internet buzz among opponents of the rights commission.
Ms. Hechme, 26, who lives close to the commission’s offices in Ottawa, said she was “completely shocked” when a reporter contacted her about the disclosure.
“It was like the “Twilight Zone.” I didn’t know what the heck was going on,” said Ms. Hechme, an administrative assistant with Bell Canada.
“I don’t like the fact that my information was just put out all over, including my age, where I live, pictures of where I live. It’s very disturbing.”
So far, the commission has not explained why or how its investigators might have commandeered Ms. Hechme’s connection or offered any alternative explanation for how Ms. Hechme and “Jadewarr” became linked.
Ian Fine, senior general counsel with the rights commission, said he was unable to comment on the specifics of the case in light of ongoing investigations but denied any wrongdoing.
“We are quite confident that, at the end of the day, it will be established that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has done nothing untoward, nothing wrong, in this whole scenario,” Mr. Fine said.
Ms. Hechme disputed an initial media report that her wireless Internet access was unsecured and therefore easily hacked. In fact, she said, it required an encryption key that could not have been guessed or casually cracked.
When she forgot the key, even she couldn’t access the connection, she said.
“It was so secure to the point I couldn’t get into it (so) I’m not sure how they got into it. It’s very bizarre.”
Ms. Hechme said no one from the commission had contacted her. She has complained to the federal privacy office, which is formally investigating.
“To say that I was surprised and shocked . . . is of course a huge understatement,” Ms. Hechme wrote to the privacy commissioner of Canada.
“To find out that it was an agency of the federal government that was responsible brings the level of concern to a whole different level.”
Mr. Fine said the rights commission would speak in June about its “investigative techniques” during closing submissions in the hate case involving Toronto website operator, Mark Lemire.
Mr. Lemire has filed a criminal complaint against the commission, alleging theft of telecommunications and unlawful computer interference.
Ms. Hechme, meanwhile, is pondering civil action, saying it’s not fair she’s been caught up in the murky web.
She’s particularly distressed at finding her name associated with white supremacists and wonders whether that link — now firmly forged through the reach of the Internet — might come back to haunt her.
“This is the part that bothers me the most. I don’t know if my name is going to be flagged if I want to cross the border, if I apply for a job,” she said.
“I don’t even want anyone questioning my name. Ever.”
April 28th, 2008 at 4:35 am
sherlock holmes i remember could differentiate between 52 bicycle tyre tracks left in the mud when sleuthing some dastardly afooting plot….
i’ve always found it curious….odd really, that the superduperK-man….was and apparently still IS only able to identify ONE type of bicycle tyre…..
to my mind it makes him appear to be an monomaniacal ‘enthusiast’.....which apprehension usually makes me run like the giant rat of Sumatra in the opposite direction….unless of course the neo-nazi villains were simply a handy foil….which is nausea making to think someone would fabricate and enhance reality to suit their own ends….
April 28th, 2008 at 4:40 am
which observations i pass on the strictest sense of honest inquiry not impugning or defaming the sterling reputation of a man who is in likelihood simply an honest broker of the ‘facts’ as he finds them…..
...and more in that vein as much as you care for but i’m running late for a root canal….