Hélène Laverdière on Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

With respect to the characterization of persons in the care, custody or control of the Canadian military as Persons Under Control (PUCs) or use of like categories, whether or not such terms were or are used officially or unofficially: (a) in relation to a statement by Donald P. Wright et al. in A Different Kind of War: The United States Army in Operation--ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) October 2001-September 2005 (Combat Studies Institute, 2010), at p. 221: “Detainees in Coalition hands in Afghanistan were referred to as persons under control (PUCs) instead of EPWs or detainees,”, does this reference to “Coalition” apply to the Canadian military, including special forces in any part of the 2001-2005 period in question; (b) in relation to a claim by Ahmed Rashid in Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation-Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia (Penguin, 2009), at pp. 304-305: “In spring 2002, …CIA lawyers further twisted legal boundaries by establishing a new category of prisoner: Persons Under Control, or PUC. Anyone held as PUC was automatically denied access to the ICRC, and even his existence was denied...PUCs were flown around the world to different locations on private jets belonging to dummy companies owned by the CIA.”, is the government aware of whether this is an accurate statement of one use to which the category of “PUC” was put by the United States; (c) in relation to an observation in Center for Law and Military Operations (United States Army, Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School), Lessons Learned from Afghanistan and Iraq: Volume I - Major Combat Operations (11 September 2001--1 May 2003) (August 1, 2004) [Lessons Learned]: “[P]ersons detained were either classified as ‘persons under control’ (PUCs) or simply as ‘detainees.’… Persons captured on the battlefield were initially brought to the classified location to establish their identity and determine if they met the criteria for potential transfer to Guantanamo. During this phase, detained personnel were classified as ‘PUCs’.”, is the government aware of whether, during such windows of time, CIA agents or persons working for the CIA would sometimes take custody of PUCs from the US Army before they could be officially designated as “detainees” by the Army; (d) in relation to a claim in Chris Mackey and Greg Miller, The Interrogators: Task Force 500 and America’s Secret War Against Al-Qaeda (Back Bay Books, 2004), at pp. 250-251: “In June [2002]…our [US Army] command in Bagram …came up with a whole new prisoner category called “persons under U.S. control”, or PUCs. The whole idea was to create a sort of limbo status, a bureaucratic blank spot where prisoners could reside temporarily without entering any official database or numbering system.”: is the government aware of whether or not this US Army PUC category was created in concert with and used by the CIA as a way to secure custody of PUCs while they were still in a “bureaucratic blank spot”; (e) in relation to the observations in Lessons Learned that “the term ‘PUC’ did not develop until the [US] XVIIIth Airborne Corps arrived in Afghanistan” in 2002, did Canadian Forces, including special forces, ever conduct joint operations with the US’ XVIIIth Airbone Corps in which captives were taken; (f) is the government aware of whether the commanding officer of the US’ XVIIIth Airborne Corps, Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, was a direct source of, or conduit for, the notion of “PUC” and if so, whether Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill was working in concert or tandem with the CIA in introducing this term into the Afghanistan theatre; (g) after General Walter Natynczyk was seconded to command 35,000 US forces in Iraq during the US’ Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq from January 2004 to January 2005, did he bring any knowledge of the use of PUC practices or a PUC system from Iraq to the Canada-Afghanistan context when he became head of the Canadian Forces’ Land Force Doctrine and Training system in 2005 and when he was appointed Vice-Chief of Defence Staff in 2006, and if so, was such practices introduced in any way to this doctrine and training system; (h) prior to August 2015 by which time the first Canadian Forces troops had arrived in Kandahar, were there meetings between Canadian Lt. Gen. Michel Gauthier and US Under-Secretary of Defence for Intelligence Steve Cambone or any other officials in the US Department of Defense or in the Pentagon in which they discussed, inter alia, Canada aligning or otherwise coordinating its policy and practices in Kandahar with those of the US, including in relation to detainees, as a condition of the US agreeing that Canada be assigned Kandahar; (i) prior to August 2015 by which time the first Canadian Forces troops had arrived in Kandahar, were there meetings between Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier and any officials in the US Department of Defense or in the Pentagon in which they discussed, inter alia, Canada aligning or otherwise coordinating its policy and practices in Kandahar with those of the US, including in relation to detainees, as a condition of the US agreeing that Canada be assigned Kandahar; (j) prior to August 2015 by which time the first Canadian Forces troops had arrived in Kandahar, were there meetings between any Canadian Forces officers apart from Generals Gauthier and Hillier in which they discussed, inter alia, Canada aligning or otherwise coordinating its policy and practices in Kandahar with those of the US, including in relation to detainees, as a condition of the US agreeing that Canada be assigned Kandahar; and (k) is the mini-biography of Mr. Gauthier on The Governance Network’s website correct in saying Gauthier “[l]ed Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, responsible for all CF operational missions abroad, the Canadian mission in southern Afghanistan” and if so, did this include authority over policy and decisions related to the transfer of captives to other states?