The destabilization of a friendly neighbor by infiltrating and radicalizing secessionist groups. It happened closer to home than you might think. by Wayne Madsen

 The destabilization of a friendly neighbor by infiltrating and radicalizing secessionist groups. It happened closer to home than you might think.

A nuclear-armed superpower deployed intelligence operatives to a neighboring country. The intelligence agents immediately set about the infiltrate a radical secessionist movement in order to push it toward committing acts of kidnapping, assassination, and other violence. After the kidnapping of a foreign diplomat, the central government invoked draconian national security and war measures statutes, suspending civil liberties. The secessionists, who demanded their language, cultural, and political rights within a supposed “federal” system, were demonized by the foreign-led infiltration and radicalization of their movement.

This scenario is not Ukraine in 2014 but Canada, and, particularly Quebec, in 1970. That year, the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) launched a campaign of violence against the Quebec provincial government and the federal government in Ottawa. The radicalization of the FLQ was largely carried out by agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency who were infiltrated into Quebec in an effort to portray Quebec nationalists as radical “terrorists.” Today, the United States falsely accuses Russia of carrying out a similar scenario in Ukraine. However, what the United States is claiming is coming from one of the most hypocritical nations in recent world history. And, as far as the Obama administration is concerned, what the CIA carried out in Quebec and Canada in 1970 is a long forgotten footnote of history, however, the same destabilization playbook being used by the United States and Canada in the late 60s and early 70s is being copied today by the CIA and its partners in Kiev.

By the late 1960s, the CIA became concerned about the possibility that the majority French-speaking province of Quebec may opt for independence from the rest of Canada. An independent Quebec, which the CIA believed would drift to the left and withdraw from NATO, was a nightmare for the trans-Atlantic status quo enthusiasts at the CIA and its affiliated think tanks, as well as the Pentagon brass and the Wall Street minions of the Bilderberg Group.

The warnings signs for the CIA included a series of events. On July 24, 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle, declared “Vive le Québec libre!” (Long live free Quebec!) from the balcony of the Montreal City Hall. That same year, de Gaulle withdrew France from the military command structure of NATO and ordered NATO headquarters and other activities to leave France. De Gaulle, arriving in Montreal on the French warship “Colbert” to help celebrate the opening of Expo 67, bypassed the federal capital Ottawa, and was wildly cheered by Quebecois who used the occasion to loudly boo the Governor General of Canada during the playing of “God Save the Queen.”

De Gaulle’s proclamation gave a morale boost to Quebec’s nascent separatist movement. However, in Ottawa, the French-speaking Justice Minister and future Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, along with Prime Minister Lester Pearson, grew alarmed at what they considered French involvement in the domestic affairs of Canada. Secretly, the Security Service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, at the time, Canada’s primary foreign intelligence agency, contacted their colleagues in the CIA for assistance to deal with what was perceived as an existential threat to Canada posed by the Quebec nationalists.

The CIA was fearful of the leftward drift of Quebec nationalism, as shown by the nationalization of Quebec’s hydro-electric resources by Hydro-Quebec, owned by the province of Quebec, and the rising popularity of Rene Levesque, a former Liberal Party member of the Quebec National Assembly, who, in the euphoria surrounding De Gaulle’s 1967 visit and proclamation, founded the Mouvement Souveraineté-Association that same year. Levesque merged his party with another autonomist party, theRalliement National, forming the Parti Québecois (PQ).  

The RCMP Security Service and the CIA decided to begin infiltrating a small radical Quebec secessionist movement, the Front de libération du Québec(FLQ).  Almost overnight, the FLQ, which had only been a nuisance, began carrying out serious bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations, culminating in the “October Crisis” of 1970. Targeted for kidnapping by the FLQ were James Cross, the British Trade Commissioner to Canada, and Pierre Laporte, a vice premier in the Liberal government of Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa. Laporte was murdered a few days after his kidnapping.

Not only Bourassa, but clandestinely, the CIA and RCMP joint Quebec task force convinced Prime Minister Trudeau to invoke the War Measures Act in Quebec. Canadian rule of law was suspended and police began rounding up Quebecois who were strong supporters of Quebec independence. Of the 497 people detained by police, 435 were later deemed to be innocent and were freed. The invocation of the War Measures Act by Trudeau proved to the CIA that the vocally anti-U.S. prime minister could be counted on to support a status quo that was beneficial to the United States and NATO. Trudeau’s son, Justin Trudeau, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party today, is viewed in much the same light as someone who will continue to carry Washington’s water domestically and internationally if the sycophantically pro-U.S. Stephen Harper ever leaves office.

Although the FLQ collapsed after the October Crisis, the damage sought by the CIA and RCMP to the cause of Quebec sovereignty was accomplished. Levesque’s PQ failed to win control  of the Quebec National Assembly in the 1970 and 1973 elections and Levesque, himself, failed to win a seat in the assembly in both elections. However, in 1976, Levesque and his PQ won control of the National Assembly and the new government and carried out a plebiscite on sovereignty association with Canada in 1980. After a concerted propaganda barrage by Ottawa, Washington, and Montreal’s influential Jewish community, the referendum resulted in a 60 percent vote against and 40 percent vote for the sovereignty-association status. The following year, federal Justice Minister Jean Chretien hammered out a new Canadian constitution with the agreement of all the provincial premiers except for Levesque, the British Parliament and Queen Elizabeth, and the Canadian Supreme Court, which ruled that a new constitution of Canada was legal even though it did not have the approval of Quebec.  To this day, Canada’s constitution was never approved by Quebec.

In 1995, the PQ, once again in power, held another referendum on independence. It failed with a 50.6 percent vote of “no” and a “yes” vote of 49.4 percent. A clear majority of French-speakers voted for separation from Canada but the same coalition of English-speakers and Montreal Jews who were able to defeat the 1976 plebiscite did so again. Premier Jacques Parizeau blamed the 1995 loss on “money and the ethnic vote,” meaning the wealthy Jews who were concentrated in the posh Mont Royal neighborhood of Montreal. This year, PQ Premier Pauline Marois and her party lost the election to the Liberal Party, although most major polls predicted the PQ would easily win re-election. There were suspicions in a number of political quarters that the Harper government in Ottawa, working with the U.S. and the Mont Royal clique, pulled off a massive election fraud. But with the defeat of the PQ and Marois, who lost her own seat, the notion of Quebec independence was, once again, dead on arrival.


Not Ukrainian troops on the streets of Donetsk or Odessa in 2014 but U.S.-backed Canadian troops on the streets of Montreal in 1970 after the Nixon administration conspired with the Trudeau government to impose the War Measures Act. The CIA working with the RCMP attempted to kill off the Quebec sovereignty movement in order to protect NATO's northern flank.

The repeated repression of the PQ in Quebec is directly tied to CIA activities. A CIA agent named Jules “Ricco” Kimble was later reported to have not only infiltrated the FLQ in the 1960s but maintained a CIA station in the Mont Royal neighborhood. In 1964, when the FLQ was known as the Quebec Liberation Army, professional teams managed to steal a large cache of weapons, including guns, ammunition, mortars, and grenades from two Canadian armories in the heart of Montreal, the Armory of the Fusiliers Mont Royal and a military command building at Trois-Rivières. That same year, thousands of crates of dynamite were discovered in the hands of the Quebec Liberation Army hidden in Hydro Quebec trucks at the Expo 67 construction site in Montreal. Other weapons that ended up in the hands of the Quebec Liberation Army and later, the FLQ, were sent by the CIA to Quebec to be used by CIA contractors against Cuban targets in Montreal. On April 4, 1972, a bomb exploded at the Cuban consulate in Montreal. The police actually arrested the Cuban diplomatic staff and permitted RCMP and CIA personnel to conduct a sweep of the premises. The CIA took possession of classified Cuban government documents and communications encryption coding material and equipment.


Washington practices hypocrisy over Ukraine. Who can remember when the CIA triggered a crisis in Canada by infiltrating and radicalizing Quebec separatists?

Kimble said he committed two murders that were pinned on the FLQ, although it is not known if one of them was the assassination of Laporte. Kimble was also reported to have been the Montreal point-of-contact for New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. Shaw was accused by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison on being involved in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Garrison, while serving on the Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, affirmed that Kimble was the real deal. Garrison said, “Every statement of Kimble is true . . . Kimble does not lie. This is a link in a chain, but a valuable link." Kimble was also reported to have been the Canadian point-of-contact for the alleged assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, James Earl Ray. After the assassination of King in 1968, Ray traveled from Canada to the United Kingdom on a Canadian passport issued to “Ramon George Sneyd.” Ray was arrested after he attempted to fly from Heathrow to ultimate exile in white-ruled Rhodesia.

In 1991, a former Quebec minister, who spoke anonymously, confirmed Kimble’s status as a CIA agent. The ex-minister said, “I ​​heard about this place on Mont Royal and its work with the CIA."

In 1971, the Montreal Star published a TOP SECRET CIA memorandum dated October 16, 1970, which stated that the CIA was behind the violence committed in the name of the FLQ. The memo stated, “Some sources recommend that we take urgent measures to temporarily cease contacts with the measures of FLQ militants because of Canadian undesirable consequences with the Canadian government." In other words, the CIA admitted to have conducted “false flag” terrorist operations in Canada. As expected, the Richard Nixon administration and Trudeau denounced the CIA document as a forgery.

The chief of counter-intelligence for the RCMP Security Service, Leslie J. Bennett, confirmed, in 1973, that Montreal was infiltrated by a number of CIA agents during the October Crisis of 1970. Shortly after he made this statement, Bennett was falsely accused by the RCMP of being a Soviet KGB mole and he was forced to move to exile in Australia. It was not until 1993 that the Canadian government admitted that its charges against Bennett being a Soviet double agent were a fabrication. The Canadian Solicitor General exonerated Bennett and he was given a $100,000 payment. Former Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer and journalist Peter Worthington suggested that in 1977, the RCMP authorized the publication of a novel in which a Soviet mole, known only as “S,” had risen to senior ranks within the RCMP. They claimed that the RCMP was libelously alleging that “S” was Bennett. KGB officials, including General Oleg Kalugin, later stated that although they had a mole in the RCMP, it was not Bennett.

Bennett was targeted in the vicious campaign engineered by the RCMP and its CIA colleagues to counteract his charges about CIA involvement in terrorist acts in Quebec.

The entire gamut of false flag operations currently being waged in eastern and southern Ukraine by the CIA and its Ukrainian partners should be viewed through the lens of the CIA’s sordid activities in committing terrorist acts, libeling innocent people, and, perhaps, illegally manipulating elections in Quebec from the early 1960s to the present day. There is only one nuclear-armed country that has destabilized a neighboring region that has demanded linguistic, cultural, and political rights. That country is the United States.