Front Burner - A reporter’s long, failed fight to keep his work on ISIS from the RCMP

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

For the last four years, Vice reporter Ben Makuch has been fighting to keep communications he had with a suspected ISIS fighter from the RCMP. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and last week, Makuch and Vice lost their final appeal on this case. Ben Makuch talks to host Jayme Poisson about that journey, and what it might mean for press freedom in Canada.

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Hey, I'm Jamie Poisson. So for the last four years, Vice Reporter Ben McCoo has been locked in this battle. The RCMP wanted him to hand over communications he had with a suspected ISIS fighter who used to live in Calgary. And RCMP wanted him to hand over communications he had with a suspected ISIS fighter who used to live in Calgary, and Ben refused to do this. The fight took Ben and Vice all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and on Thursday, they lost their final appeal, which was essentially a last-ditch attempt. Vice has now made the decision to hand the materials over to

the RCMP. Ben McCoo is on the podcast today and we're going to talk about this case and the issues that it raises around press freedom in Canada. This is an issue that hits really close to home for me. This is FrontBurner. Ben, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me. So this latest ruling and final appeal, the decision came down on Thursday. Ben McCoo has lost his last-ditch attempt in Ontario courts as the RCMP has valid reasons to demand the information. And I know that it comes after a four-year fight over this case.

And what went through your head when you found out the news? You know, it was, I think, for me, this is such a personally trying thing that's lasted for four years. The personal price it's taken on myself, my family, my personal relationships, and just knowing that it's over, it was sort of this extremely overwhelming release of emotion. It's almost like mourning. Clearly, we didn't win. So it was sort of this defeatist feeling where I tried everything I could. And it wasn't good enough. And that's a lot.

And I want to unpack that with you a little bit more later in our conversation, because I know this has had a tremendous impact on you personally. But first, this particular case, the ruling that came down on Thursday, Vice was arguing that it was unreasonable for you to give up any materials because your source was likely dead, correct? Correct. And Vice and myself. So I had my personal representation and Vice represented itself as well. And we both were aligned that this person had been killed in a CIA drone strike in 2015. This was confirmed by the US military, who is, through my reporting and my experiences around the world, is very good at killing terrorists. very good at killing terrorists. And they said, we've, this target is no longer alive. And we thought that that was extremely reliable evidence, but turns out it might not have been. Right, right. I know the judge ruled that the RCMP hasn't been able to confirm the veracity of these statements by the US. And I want to talk to you today about how you got to this ruling, which is really a series

of challenges and appeals that wound its way up to the Supreme Court. But just so that people can understand, let's talk about this source who is most likely dead. You published three stories about Farah Mohammed Sheridan in 2014. And tell me about Sheridan and why you thought it was important to tell this story. Rewind this back to 2014, and I myself was a 26-year-old from Canada. And I started seeing that these individuals who are about my age were advertising their exploits fighting for terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria. terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria. And they were advertising it in such a way that was completely, you know, a revolution of what a terrorist does online and in media.

You know, before it was bin Laden, he had, you know, a cord with an old school microphone and he was, you know, talking about how he was going to target America and he would have to take the tape and mail it to Al Jazeera. My message is about the captives that you have taken from us. Your friend in the White House has been following the footsteps of his predecessor in many important issues. And instead, we had this real-time social media of terrorist activities. And it was all online and they were all reachable. So I thought to myself, I mean, this is wild that this is happening and it was all online and they were all reachable. So I thought to myself, I mean,

this is wild that this is happening and it shows the changing media landscape, but also these guys are my age. Why are they going over there and why are they doing this? And I really wanted to know why. And what I did was I found myself getting into personal contact with these individuals and it led me to one who's named Farrah Mohammed Shirdan. He went by various aliases. And he appeared in a famous ISIS video where he appeared burning his passport, his Canadian passport, saying, you know, I'm joining the caliphate. I'm part of this new thing. This is a message to Canada and all the American Tawaghi.

We are coming and we will destroy you, bithnillahi ta'ala. And through a source, I was able to make contact with him. It was this prime opportunity to ask this person how he got there, what he was doing there, what was ISIS's plan, what was their plan online to recruit. And does he answer all these questions for you? He answered all these questions for me very candidly. There was one moment where I asked him,

did any authorities ever contact you before you left? And he said, yeah, three days before I left, CSIS got in touch with me and I just lied to them. And I said, how did you get away with it? And he said, well, I'm an actor, homie. Lol. Wow. All of their intelligence workers are imbeciles fbi so the canadian police someone that has extremist terrorist ideologies sitting in front of you and you didn't capture

the next time they saw me they saw me ripping up my they saw me ripping up my passport The next time they saw me, they saw me ripping up my passport. And so you end up publishing stories on Shirdan. Yes. When does the RCMP come into the picture for you? There's the official way they came into the picture, which was to say they subpoenaed me. And I say subpoena because it's much easier to sort of explain that process through that word. But issued me with a production order in, I believe, February. I was reporting in Russia at the time.

It's February of 2015. But the unofficial pressure started much earlier through sources. I found out that the RCMP was very interested in my reporting and wanted to discuss that with me. So you get this production order or like a subpoena sort of in February of 2015. And what does the RCMP want from you? They want all of my communications to do with Farah Mohammed Sheridan, who was under various aliases online. So all of my communications, any of my notes, literally got to the point where it could have been if I'd written his alias on a piece of paper, that was subject to the production order. And they want this obviously because they're investigating Sheridan. Yes, exactly. They're investigating him. He's become a big

name at this point as well within ISIS. He became kind of one of their top spokespeople. It was obvious that they were interested. I don't blame them for being interested in this person. And he was connected to, I believe, fouradians who had made made hijra which is uh the pilgrimage to the caliphate to fight but i was quite frankly shocked that they needed my information to to go after this person the argument being you think there was enough information out there that they could have gone after him themselves absolutely and I think this is part of the conversation in that I think they targeted me specifically because I was with Vice. And this is at the time it was kind of, it was still sort of an upstart media company within Canada.

And I think that they thought I would probably roll. I obviously didn't. The RCMP has charged a 22-year-old Calgary man in absentia with several terror-related offenses. Participation in the activity of a terrorist group, enhancing ISIS's ability to commit terror acts, instructing others on how to carry out terrorist activity. Just some of the charges. Can I ask you, did you ever think to yourself, maybe I'll just cooperate here, right? Like this guy is a self-proclaimed ISIS fighter. No, I never once thought that.

And how come? As a journalist, I'm not supposed to be speaking with sources that I think are good. I'm supposed to be speaking with sources and collecting information I think is relevant to the public interest. I worked on Parliament Hill for two years. I spoke to politicians. I didn't like some of them, but I wouldn't have rolled on them either. Yeah, fair. You say no to the RCMP. Vice backs you on this and you do what you have to do with the production order, which is fight it in court. And so this goes to the Ontario courts. And you make the argument, essentially the argument that you just made, that this is about protecting sources and also that this would put a damper on the willingness of sources to speak to journalists

in the future, would sort of like have a chilling effect. And you lose in the Ontario courts. Why do you lose? You know, I think it's the same reason we've been losing. We've lost every single time I've been in court. I think this goes back to 2001 and the Patriot Act in the United States. Today, the president signed a big new anti-terrorism bill that would expand the government's ability to track down terrorists, but at some cost. Existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law that I signed today will allow surveillance

of all communications used by terrorists, including emails, the internet, and cell phones. I think the public hysteria around terrorism is that the interests of the state and national security will always outrank any other interests. And I think that that's really short-sighted. and national security will always outrank any other interests. And I think that that's really short-sighted. Let's talk about the Supreme Court decision.

So you lose in the Ontario courts, it winds its way up to the Supreme Court, you make a similar argument. Lawyers representing the RCMP pointed to its submission to the court. The police are seeking to obtain highly reliable evidence relating to serious terrorism offenses, which they cannot obtain from any other source. I want to unpack this decision with you a little bit. So Justice Michael Moldaver, he writes in the court decision, which was a unanimous decision, that your work didn't involve things like off the record or not for attribution, conversations with your source. So, you know, essentially the records that they were asking for wouldn't reveal the identity of a source. He's saying that all the stuff you collected, you could have published it all on

Vice's website. It wasn't information where you're trying to protect someone. So do you think that he has a point there? Like, what's your response to that? What's being asked of me is, yes, granted, you know, it's not a confidential source. However, I went to collect information from a source. The RCMP didn't have that. So then what do they do? They issue me with a production order to forcibly give it up. What does that do? They issue me with a production order to forcibly give it up. What does that do? Well, it makes me an investigative tool of the police. And at what point are we willing to allow that to happen in a free and open society?

Obviously, I was acting in good faith. I put the stories out almost as soon as I had them. I contacted authorities. I did my due diligence. So they were aware. And this is right after. And this is the other thing, too. The hysteria really went. It went to a fever pitch because of the Parliament Hill attacks.

With people already on edge after the killing of a soldier near Montreal two days ago, armed police roamed downtown Ottawa. Another soldier had been killed. This week's events are a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world. And as soon as that happened, I thought to myself, there might be some conversations going on with authorities. They might be contacting me. What about the argument that the justices made as well,

which essentially boiled down to this was the only way for the police to obtain hard copies of what they said. So they need your stuff to be able to prosecute this guy. What do you say to that? Well, there's two things there. I think, you know, thank you for the compliment. I am, I'm pretty good at my job and I was good at my job too. I was a 26 year old who got this information through all of the capabilities I had using the internet online. The question should be going the other way. What do we demand from our national security apparatus that they're actually able to thwart these attacks

and stop them? I can tell you that I've had conversations with FBI here who have said they were shocked that they did that. Shocked that they did that because they thought it would be a better use of the national security intelligence's resources to simply go out and try to get evidence against Sheridan themselves. Yes.

I understand after this long and arduous journey that you've been on, you have a lot of animosity towards the RCMP. But could I put forward the idea that this is an agency that believes that what they are doing is so important to the national security that they look at these principles that journalists hold dear, as a journalist hold dear, and they think that it is so low on the list of priorities. Well, that's the problem with the RCMP. You know, I think that they don't consider these things enough. It's no surprise that people don't like going to the authorities with information because they feel like they will be subject to an investigation or subject to the problems that could go along with reporting a threat. And this is sort of exactly what it goes back to. And I understand that, but they have to

start weighing these things a lot more firmly than they have in the past. It's quite clear that they're not behaving in the same way that even our American allies and partners behave themselves. Right. And I mean, you have also made clear in this conversation how disappointed you are with the Supreme Court as well, which essentially also weighed this issue of like national security and press freedoms. Can we talk about what impact you think this case might have on press freedoms in Canada? Well, I can tell you, I've spoken to journalists in Canada throughout this process, and they've said the same thing to me.

They said, do you think if I did this, the same thing that happened to you will happen to me? Out of fear. And this is a conversation I've had several times. That's not good. You want your journalists of your country to go after hard information, to go after difficult information with difficult people. And also what strikes me as a possible consequence of this, and I should note the CBC also intervened in this case in support of you and Vice, is that it could dissuade sources from coming forward to journalists as well, because they might fear that the state could become involved. Yes, I mean, fear that the state could become involved. Yes, I mean, it definitely could. It definitely could. Let's go back to this idea that journalists might be worried about pursuing these sources in the future,

what has this experience been like for you over the last four years? You know, it does a lot of things to you. It really grinds down your belief and your respect for the institutions that are supposed to protect us. The other part of it is the paranoia that comes into it afterwards, that you're being watched, your communications have to be more secure, what you say in public has to be more tightly controlled. You know, I don't use certain types of chat apps because I know that they could be watched. I've had legal advice to this exact effect that you will be watched to make sure that you put things on secure lines. This is not a very nice way to live your life and to think about things. And it really does, it grinds you to a place where you don't have much faith

in how fundamental institutions and basic codes of ethics and morality you thought were so entrenched in the country that you came from are devolving. It also seems to have really influenced her worldview as well. Absolutely. I think it definitely has. I mean, that said, it has not dissuaded me from trying to pursue the stories that I believe are fundamentally necessary to society and for society to be aware of. Do you think, Ben, that there were any positive aspects that came out of your case? Yeah, I mean, I think regardless of the outcome, I think this brought these sorts of abuses or potential abuses to the limelight in Canada.

Maybe not everyone heard about it, but I think a lot of people did. And I think that's important. I think it's also important for other journalists to know that you can stand up and fight authorities coming to you and trying to poison what you do best. And I think that, I see that as a win. I'm not really, I don't look back at this and regret it. I don't whatsoever. I think I would go back and do it again. I would do it all over again. Ben, thank you. Thanks. Thanks a lot for having me. Just a note to mention that we reached out to the RCMP for comment on this story, and at the time that we recorded this podcast on Sunday, they had yet to respond. But back in November of 2018, when the Supreme Court of Canada came down with their decision,

the RCMP said in a statement that it, quote, respects judicial process and the ruling determined by the Supreme Court of Canada and will not comment any further. That's it for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe.

As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.