CSIS chief pushes back against PMO claim about mistake in intelligence report

The head of Canada's spy agency says he has a «different interpretation» of an alleged mistake in an intelligence briefing cited by the prime minister's chief of staff during testimony before the foreign interference inquiry.

Katie Telford, who has served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's chief of staff since 2015, told the inquiry in April that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service raised a red flag about a «threat linked to an MP» that «didn't seem right» to her.

«And to the credit of the officials involved, they went and they worked through the night and they came to us the next day and reversed their assessment because they had made a mistake in how they were looking at the information,» she testified.

Telford said the experience taught the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) not to have «first blush trust» in CSIS's information.

In a recent interview with CBC News, CSIS director David Vigneault pushed back carefully against Telford's version of events.

«I would have, maybe, a different interpretation of that specific event that was referred to in the testimony,» he said.

Vigneault didn't elaborate but said there is a difference between getting something wrong and re-assessing an intelligence report.

«Intelligence is like building a puzzle. Sometimes you're at the beginning of the puzzle, you're not really sure what it's going to look like and that's how you present your intelligence,» he said.

«Sometimes, when you have more pieces of the puzzle, you're able to be more definitive in your assessment.»

Vigneault did say CSIS could do a better job of explaining that distinction to government officials.

«So when they read our intelligence, they will understand what we mean by that and the limit of what we're saying,» he said.

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