By Jorge Barrera
APTN National News
RCMP Commissioner William Elliott was not involved in giving Bruce Carson Secret-level security clearance to work in the Prime Minister’s Office, according to the Privy Council Office.
Two reports this week claimed that Elliott was the one who gave Carson, now the subject of an RCMP investigation, his Secret security clearance despite the criminal record of the former aide to the prime minister.
The PCO, which is essentially the prime minister’s department, issued a statement Thursday to APTN stating that Elliott, who was national security advisor in 2006, was not involved in granting security clearance to Carson, 65.
“The national security advisor does not approve security clearances,” said Raymond Rivet, a spokesman for PCO. “I would add that no senior officials in PCO, including the national security advisor at the time, and no PMO officials, were involved in granting the security clearance to Mr.Carson.”
Rivet said Carson was cleared at the level of director for security operations.
The statement clarifies an issue that was beginning to cast a shadow over the ongoing RCMP investigation into Carson’s activities.
The RCMP is currently in the initial stages of its probe which was triggered by a letter from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s principal secretary to Elliott requesting an investigation.
The request followed a meeting between a PMO official and APTN reporters investigating Carson’s lobbying for an Ottawa-based water filtration company that had a financial arrangement with Carson’s 22-year-old fiancee, a former escort.
The company was trying to sell filtration systems to First Nations communities hard hit by dirty water.
The Halifax Chronicle-Herald and CBC both reported that Elliott had been involved in giving Carson his security clearance.
The Canadian Press, which has interviewed Carson and uncovered his three criminal convictions in 1990, reported that Elliott was not involved.
Questions have been raised over how Carson could have obtained his security clearance given his criminal record, which included convictions in 1990 and in the 1980s.
Carson has also faced two bankruptcies.
Harper has said he would never have hired Carson if he knew about his three 1990, fraud-related convictions.
