I'm not sure. At least at first I didn't get the sense there was—well, maybe in the military there was a directive. I think it was seen as just a very sensitive issue and people didn't really want to engage, and there were certain things that they didn't want to hear.
There was one episode that I found quite surprising. In March of 2007 I happened to be in Ottawa, where I went to an inter-agency meeting on detainees. There were maybe 12 or 15 people in the room from a range of agencies. And this was after the complaint from Amnesty and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, so it was obvious this issue was going to be a serious problem, and I felt that perhaps I hadn't been clear enough in conveying to people how bad it was.
So I said, “Look, you know, the NDS tortures people, that's what they do. And if we don't want our detainees tortured, we shouldn't give them to the NDS.” I was a bit taken aback to see the CEFCOM note-taker stop writing. She didn't write that down and then she put her pen down, so the official records of our meeting I think would not reflect those comments.
There are episodes like that that suggested that there was some information that was seen as too hot a potato and no one wanted to be responsible for grasping that hot potato.