OTTAWA — In an organized smackdown rarely seen in Ottawa, the government turned inward on Thursday to attack a new enemy in its Afghanistan conflict — senior Washington embassy intelligence officer Richard Colvin.
After 15 years of steadily rising through the foreign service ranks, Mr. Colvin now stands accused of being a Taliban stooge, someone so easily duped by torture complaints that he shredded his diplomatic reputation by passing along their accusations.
Mr. Colvin became fodder for such accusations the minute he told MPs that a full year of warnings about detainee torture had been ignored at the highest levels of the military and public service.
He even hinted at tentative, but unproven, connections to the government itself. That made his testimony very, very dangerous — and that’s why the Conservatives have launched a campaign to discredit Mr. Colvin.
But it faces a big problem. Every action by this government to date has only enhanced the diplomat’s credibility.
Mr. Colvin was promoted to the Washington job under a Conservative reign after 16 years of unblemished duty in hotspots like Sri Lanka, Russia, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan. While serving in Kandahar, he was told his insights were too sensitive to be put in writing, he says. His emails have been declared off limits on national security grounds. And he’s been told to shut up on this file or risk being charged under the Canada Evidence Act.
Those actions all speak to the significance and sensitivity of his input, not the ramblings of a rogue diplomat spreading stories from his imagination.
Conservatives shoot the messenger over torture allegations
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