Accused RCMP leaker was intelligent, organized and often worked alone, colleague tells jury

Cameron Ortis was an intelligent, detail-oriented person who tended to work alone and rarely got involved in the nitty-gritty of his team’s intelligence projects, a former RCMP colleague told the jury in the trial of his former boss.

Dan Morris also said Ortis had a friendly relationship with the top Mountie of the day, then-commissioner Bob Paulson.

Ortis, a former intelligence official, now faces multiple counts of breaking Canada’s secrecy act by sharing special operational information.

For the second day in a row, the public was prevented from listening in on Morris’s testimony. Instead, a transcript of what the Crown witness told the closed courtroom was released to media.

A consortium of media organizations that includes CBC News fought the move to keep Morris’s testimony confidential, but lost. Other details of the secrecy measure are covered by a publication ban.

Morris, who joined the RCMP in 2003, worked as Ortis’s second-in-command at the RCMP’s newly created operations research (OR) unit.

The jury has heard the unit was separate from the force’s criminal investigations and was meant to brief senior leadership on emerging threats based on intelligence gathered by Canada and its allies, sometimes referred to as “high-side information.”

In 2015, Morris succeeded Ortis as director of the OR, which he described as a pilot program. The pilot has since folded.

According to the redacted transcript, Crown prosecutor John MacFarlane asked Morris on Monday afternoon about Ortis’s management style.

Morris, who was hired by Ortis, said the accused was focused largely on human resource management and the unit’s finances.

“I don’t think I ever saw any intelligence product produced by Mr. Ortis,” he said, according to the transcript.

“[He] tended to focus more on the big picture issues, strategic issues. And he tended to do most of this stuff on his own. Yeah, maybe I’ll leave it there.”

Morris said Ortis delegated intelligence research projects and usually got involved only when the unit was about to brief senior decision makers within the RCMP.

“But in terms of the actual development of these projects, working with the partners, going over to CSIS and going over to CSE, other partner agencies, actually developing these projects, that was rare for him to do,” he said.

“Which was in keeping with his role as director. That wasn’t his job, to be developing intelligence research projects.”

Morris says Ortis never said he was working undercover 

The Crown alleges Ortis shared special operational information with individuals who were on the RCMP’s radar as part of an international money laundering investigation. According to reports entered into evidence, police were tracking three men in the Toronto area for potential connections to Altaf Khanani, a Pakistani businessman accused by the U.S. State Department of laundering billions of dollars for organized crime and terrorist outfits.

He is also accused of leaking special operational information to Vincent Ramos, the head of a company that was accused of selling encrypted phones to criminals.

Ortis has pleaded not guilty to all six charges against him. The defence team has said Ortis has a “compelling story” to tell and that he had the “authority” to do everything that he did.

Morris, who said he used to drive Ortis to work sometimes, told the jury the accused never told him he was working on an undercover operation.

He said his former boss worked long hours during his first few years in the position.

“He was very often the first into the office and often the last out,” he said. “I’d say that began to change around 2013, where he seemed to keep more of his own schedule. He would come in maybe a bit later, maybe leave a bit earlier. He might say he was attending a meeting somewhere downtown.”

MacFarlane asked Morris if he considered Ortis to be intelligent, detail-oriented and organized. Morris said he did.

Relationship with Paulson

During cross-examination Tuesday, defence lawyer Mark Ertel asked whether Ortis “had a sort of an ongoing friendly relationship with the commissioner or not.”

Morris said that was his understanding.

“It appeared to you that they were sort of friendly beyond just chain of command,” Ertel said.

“You would see the commissioner, Bob Paulson, and Mr. Ortis in conversation even outside of their offices, or whatever.”

Morris said yes.

He also said it was “certainly possible” Ortis had one-on-one meetings with Paulson.

“And this actually is kind of a, a thing about Bob Paulson the commissioner, he would just call you and say he wants to see you. He didn’t always go through the chain of command, right?” asked Ertel.

“Correct,” said Morris.

Morris said that, over time, the OR’s mandate changed. He agreed with Ertel’s suggestion that those changes sometimes came from Paulson and other senior leaders.

“Them saying, ‘Why don’t you guys do this? It’s different than anything you ever did before, but I’m gonna give you permission to do this.’ That’s what’s happening. Right?” asked the defence lawyer.

Morris said yes but insisted the team wasn’t supposed to investigate criminal cases.

The Crown also asked Morris about Ortis’s interest in running.

“At one point, he told me that he ran about 14 kilometres a day, and that he would do this for about 14 days straight, and take one day off of running,” he said.

MacFarlane asked Morris if he could tell if Ortis was running during the work day as well.

Morris said he didn’t know.

That line of questioning didn’t go any further.

Cases hinges on whether Ortis had authority

The broad facts of the case have been agreed to by both sides. What’s in dispute is whether Ortis acted with authority. 

The Crown told the jury in its opening remarks he did not.

The defence team has not yet laid out its case in court. Ortis’s lawyers have told reporters they will look at the chain of command, the domestic and global threats facing Canada at the time and “the urgency of the situation.”

Under cross-examination, Ertel asked Morris if he had heard the term “primacy of operations.”

Morris said he understood the phrase to mean taking action was to be a priority for the RCMP.

“So, instead of just talking about things, actually doing things,” he said.

Ertel’s line of questioning then touched on the war in the Middle East, including Iran’s financial backing of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are considered terrorist entities by the federal government.

Ertel asked if the RCMP was concerned about Iran’s ability to evade international sanctions and finance terrorism. Morris said it wasn’t a file he worked on but he believed the RCMP had concerns.

“In the post 9/11 world, with the new approach of getting ahead of threats and trying to stop the threats, it would be a very significant threat, both to Canada, and I guess other parts of the world, if it turned out that money was being laundered in Toronto and it was winding up in the hands of the Revolutionary Guard,” said Ertel.

“That would be a significant problem and threat, right?”

Morris said yes.

‘A life is hanging in the balance here’: Ertel 

The jury has heard already that OR was set up to be separate from criminal investigations to prevent top-secret information from being exposed in open court.

Under cross-examination, Morris agreed with Ertel that RCMP senior leaders valued stopping illegal activity before it happened, not just arresting suspects after the fact.

“If you have that kind of high-side information that can be used in that way, to disrupt in some way, for example, a money laundering network … with banking measures or something … if you have that, and you can do that, then you can use that information to address a threat without ever arresting somebody, right?” asked Ertel. 

Morris agreed, according to the transcript.

Later in the transcript, he also agreed that Khanani was well-known to the RCMP.

“With a connection to Iran?” asked Ertel.

Morris said he didn’t know.

The transcript included a heated exchange between the witness and defence when Morris could not remember details, including dates of certain meetings, and had not reviewed his notes from the time.

“There’s a guy whose life is hanging in the balance here. It’s really important that everything you say is exact and that you don’t miss any details. And it never dawned on you that you might want to be able to refresh your memory with your notes?” asked Ertel.

“It did,” Morris replied.

He also told the court he “wasn’t happy” when the OR’s mandate expanded from counterterrorism to include transnational organized crime.

“You tried to maintain the national security work that you were doing, and others began to do the transnational organized crime?” Ertel said.

“That’s accurate, yes,” said Morris.