SPOOKED BY CANADA: HOW THE CIA SAW THE FIRST TRUDEAU’S RISE
"Fifty years ago, U.S. officials had concerns about a ‘flamboyant’ Liberal leader rising to power and shaking up Canada’s defence and foreign policies. (Sound familiar?) Colin Freeze looks at how their recently declassified daily briefings to the president reveal Trudeaumania caught them off-guard
To the world’s most powerful spy agency, Canada is almost never considered a country worth bothering about.
Unless, say, a Trudeau is elected prime minister. Then the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency starts to raise high-level questions about its northern neighbour’s commitment to continental security and international military coalitions.
“Trudeau’s Liberal Party won handily in yesterday’s election,” reads a CIA briefing note sent to the president. “Trudeau can now move quickly to set in motion his promised review of Canada’s foreign and domestic policies.”
This note is from 1968, and it holds one of the rare mentions of Canada contained in the CIA-written Presidential Daily Briefs of that era. A recently released trove of nearly a decade’s worth of documents can be found on the spy agency’s website."
Pierre Trudeau signs autographs for crowd of admirers in Ottawa on April 20, 1968, the day of his swearing in as prime minister of Canada. Mr. Trudeau, who replaced prime minister Lester Pearson after his resignation, ran in a general election two months later and won a majority government.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/what-the-cia-said-about-flamboyant-pierre-trudeaus-rise-topower/article26926419/
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Hmmm. With Justin Trudeau's stated plans to scrap the F-35 purchases in Canada and to pull back airs strikes against ISIS, well, I wonder what the buzz at the CIA is right now.
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