FRANK MAGAZINE AUGUST 12, 2021
SOURCES: RCMP, FEDS ’STONEWALLING’ MASS CASUALTY COMMISSION
BY PAUL PALANGO
The RCMP is stalling the release of as many as 50,000 documents or pieces of evidence pertaining to the Nova Scotia massacres that are being sought by the Mass Casualty Commission, according to various sources close to the Commission.
Although public hearings are slated to begin in October, it appears that the RCMP, backed by federal government lawyers, is deliberately balking at being anywhere close to transparent about the role its members played before, during and after the massacres in which 22 people were killed on April 18 and 19, 2020.
“There is frustration inside the Commission over the obvious stonewalling by the RCMP,” said one source familiar with the internal operations of the MCC, which is technically a creature of both the federal and provincial governments.
“The province is finding that it can’t get answers to anything,” another source said. “The feds are controlling everything.”
These new sources confirm and expand upon what another source, dubbed True Blue, has previously told Frank Magazine about what the RCMP is and has been doing.
All the sources have sought anonymity out of fear of retaliation by the RCMP and/or the federal and provincial governments.
In June, True Blue described to Frank Magazine how there are approximately 60 lawyers and investigators operating on behalf of the RCMP and the federal government. At that time, he said that the Commission’s investigators have had difficulty obtaining key evidence which the RCMP is refusing to disclose.
Up to that point, for example, True Blue said the Commission had virtually no information about killer Gabriel Wortman’s common-law wife, Lisa Banfield, other than her driver’s license and vehicle registration.
“Banfield was apparently the last person to be with him before he began his rampage,” one source put it. “She is the most important witness and the RCMP won’t tell the Commission anything about her.”
It is not known if the Commission has received more information about Banfield since that point.
The 50,000 documents being sought by the Commission fall into a wide range of categories, including old case files and RCMP procedures, but among the most sensitive would be the encrypted conversations between Mounties on April 18th and 19th as well as any information about whether Wortman or someone in his circle of friends and acquaintances was a RCMP informant or agent, as sources have suggested may have been the case.
Early on, the RCMP pushed the story that Wortman’s 13.5 hour killing spree was sparked by a domestic violence incident involving Banfield that was sparked by an innocuous comment during a virtual party. Subsequent evidence has thrown that scenario into doubt. For example, the RCMP’s own court documents state that an FBI agent in Maine could find no evidence of such a party and that, contrary to what the RCMP had first stated, Banfield suffered “minor injuries” at the worst.
Furthermore, 911 tapes from April 18th and video of Wortman being shot and killed on April 19th show that the RCMP lied to the public about when it first discovered that Wortman was dressed as a Mountie and that he was driving what appeared to be an RCMP cruiser.
Normally, one would expect such obvious indiscretions to be investigated and cited by the Serious Incident Response Team headed by former judge Felix Cacchione. However, Cacchione’s two official reports to date not only failed to detect problems with the RCMP narratives, but also found no reason to challenge the force, in spite of apparently incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
Destruction order not carried out
The RCMP’s encrypted communications records seem to be one thing the force is adamant about not releasing.
True Blue revealed to Frank recently that the force ordered the encrypted tapes to be destroyed last fall under the guise of it being “a normal housekeeping matter.”
The destruction order was not carried out, but only by happenstance, True Blue said.
Copies of the communications were being stored on hard drives at two locations. One was at the fortress-like Bell Aliant building on North Street, just south of Robie Street. Another set of communications was being kept at a similar building in downtown Saint John, NB.
“The RCMP and CSIS have space in those buildings,” True Blue said. “The order was to destroy the hard drives, but an employee botched the job and instead put the hard drives on a shelf.”
Two events happened last fall which appear to relate to the hard drives and their contents.
On October 15, 2020, the RCMP quietly announced a “Moratorium on the destruction of information involving Gabriel Wortman ….”
When the existence of the moratorium was leaked to the podcast Little Grey Cells and then Frank magazine in November, the RCMP described the ongoing destruction as something normal – nothing for the public to worry about.
But, True Blue says, this was anything but true.
“They are particularly worried about what is on the encrypted communications,” the source said.
On November 13, 2020, the city of Saint John was hit by a massive cyber attack that shut down many operations in the downtown core.
“The Mounties and, maybe, CSIS, used that attack as an excuse to seize the hard drives in New Brunswick,” True Blue said. “No one is sure where they are now.”
The determination by the Mounties to resist any form of accountability, be it from governments, the Mass Casualty Commission or the general public has been readily apparent from the outset.
The RCMP held four paltry press briefings shortly after the massacres. It described at various times how it was withholding information to protect a supposedly massive ongoing investigation, the results of which, if it actually existed, have never been disclosed.
The RCMP attempted to insinuate the husbands of Assistant Commissioner Lee Bergerman and Chief Superintendent Janis Gray as gatekeepers between the force and the Commission. After the appointments of the two men, Chief Superintendent John Robin and former Mountie Mike Butcher were first revealed in Frank and later elsewhere, and Bergerman announced her retirement would take effect just before the Commission begins its hearings. The RCMP then announced that the appointments of Robin and Butcher had been rescinded.
We don’t know what is on the encrypted communication logs, but the public has a hint of what might be there after the disclosure of similar information was found eight months ago on the archived records of the Pictou County Public Safety Channel. Those recordings, also from the early morning hours of April 19th, provided much information about RCMP personnel at the original scene and what they were doing there, much of which contradicted what the RCMP has been saying.
The RCMP and the federal and provincial governments want the public to believe everything is moving along as expected as the inquiry approaches, but every indication suggests that Commission investigators are becoming disgruntled about the way things are unfolding.
“The mood there is foul,” said a source close to the commission.
Meanwhile, a provincial election campaign is well underway and not a word about all this has been spoken by any of the leaders.
paulpalango@protonmail.com
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