As Patel and Hoekstra Warned Canada Over CBC's 9/11 Guidance, FBI Personnel at U.S. Posts Were Sent Home, Source Says

OTTAWA – In the escalating controversy over CBC News guidance directing journalists not to describe the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, as terrorism, FBI personnel assigned to American diplomatic posts in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver were instructed to leave their workplaces and go home, according to a U.S. law-enforcement source with knowledge of interagency communications surrounding the incident.

When The Bureau presented the account to the FBI and asked detailed questions about its scope and operational consequences, the agency neither confirmed nor denied it.

“We will let the Director’s post speak for itself and have nothing additional to provide,” the FBI National Press Office responded.

The Bureau is withholding the source’s identity and agency because they were not authorized to comment on the matter.

It remains unclear whether the U.S. personnel continued working remotely, how long they remained away from their offices, who authorized the measure, whether it was intended as a protest, or whether any meetings, investigations or intelligence exchanges with Canadian agencies were interrupted.

The Bureau also sought information through other official channels including from U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, but received no confirmations.

What is firmly established is that the CBC controversy rapidly reached the highest levels of American law enforcement and diplomacy in Canada.

On August 27, FBI Director Kash Patel issued an explicit public threat to Canadian agencies that did not repudiate CBC’s guidance:

“Any agency in Canada that doesn’t publicly reject this bastardization of history, and an insult to the souls lost during our largest terrorist attack in US history will no longer have friend in this FBI.”

The following day, Hoekstra reposted Patel’s warning and referenced the FBI’s direct intervention against significant terrorist and violent criminal organizations operating within Canada.

“Just this year, FBI has been instrumental in or directly responsible for multiple disruptions of significant terrorist and violent criminal organizations operating within Canada,” Hoekstra’s post said. “Failure to recognize and confront radical and terrorist ideologies significantly endangers our efforts to establish and harmonize a shared national and economic security partnership.”

Taken together, the two posts show that serious concerns were circulating at senior levels of U.S. law enforcement and diplomacy. The FBI maintains its Canadian legal-attaché headquarters at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, with suboffices at the American consulates in Toronto and Vancouver.

The FBI says its overseas personnel provide a “prompt and continuous exchange of information” with foreign partners and coordinate investigations, intelligence leads and requests for assistance. It also says those personnel serve under the authority of the State Department’s chief of mission. In Canada, that position is held by Ambassador Pete Hoekstra.

The guidance at the center of the dispute appeared in a memo to CBC News reporters and editors from the broadcaster’s senior director of journalistic standards and public trust.

First reported by Toronto Sun columnist Warren Kinsella ahead of the anniversary, the memo stated: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.” It instructed staff instead to describe the hijackings that led to passenger-jet crashes in Washington, Pennsylvania and Manhattan, and the destruction of the World Trade Center.

CBC initially defended the memo as a reminder of its longstanding practice of using the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” with attribution—a convention it said was shared by other major news organizations.

CBC revised its guidance on August 28, shortly after Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said Canada had “always recognized 9/11 as the deadliest terrorist attack in history” and unequivocally condemned terrorism.

In a post on its editor’s blog that afternoon, Canada’s publicly funded national broadcaster announced that journalists would no longer require attribution when describing the September 11 attacks as terrorism.

Phil Gurski, a former senior strategic analyst for Canadian Security Intelligence Service who previously worked at the Communications Security Establishment and Public Safety Canada, has spent more than three decades analyzing terrorist threats.

His newly released book, 9/11: The Unfinished Battle — Why Jihadi Terrorism Is Stronger, Wider, and Far From Over, argues that Western governments transformed their security institutions after September 11 but failed to eliminate jihadist terrorism, mistaking an increasingly dispersed and evolving threat for a defeated one. The book also examines the convergence of terrorism with espionage, foreign interference and transnational repression.

In an August 28 column for The Bureau, Gurski applied that argument directly to the CBC controversy.

He wrote that the September 11 attacks satisfied the elements of terrorism in Canada’s Criminal Code: they were committed for ideological and religious purposes, intended to intimidate the public and caused mass death through violence. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility and remains a listed terrorist entity in Canada.

Against that background, Gurski told The Bureau that politicizing the Canada–U.S. security relationship could harm both countries. He did not independently confirm the reported FBI direction.

Gurski said his contacts indicate that cooperation at the operational level continues and “is working well.”

“Whatever the idiocy of the CBC statement, professionals at the ‘coalface’ have always collaborated closely to help thwart possible threats,” Gurski said. “Canadian and US agencies have long worked together and both nations have benefitted greatly.”

Meanwhile, today, the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Hoekstra is in Gander, Newfoundland, to thank the community that welcomed thousands of airline passengers stranded when U.S. airspace closed on September 11, 2001.

“The terrorist attacks of September 11 left a lasting mark on me and our nation, but during a very dark time, the people of Newfoundland showed us what true community really means,” Hoekstra told POLITICO. “On this 25th anniversary, I am returning to say a heartfelt thank you not just on behalf of those who were stranded, but for an entire nation that remains moved by Gander’s generosity.”