David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen reports in an article titled, “Forces grill reservists over Citizen.” Excerpt:
Military sleuths subjected part-time soldiers to lie-detector tests and tracked leads for seven months in an unsuccessful attempt to uncover how the Citizen got the inside scoop on a secret commando training mission at Ottawa airport.
Military police tried to determine how Citizen journalist Gary Dimmock found out about an Oct. 24 exercise in which the Joint Task Force 2 counterterrorist squad practised storming a passenger jet.
Investigators were particularly interested that Mr. Dimmock reported on specific details about what had occurred inside the plane.
This caused investigators to suspect his source was among the volunteer reserve soldiers on board the aircraft who were playing the role of hostages.
Police brought in a polygraph specialist to administer lie-detector tests to several of the young soldiers, according to the investigation report, obtained by the Citizen under the Access to Information law.
Others were asked whether they had relatives in the news media. One of the teenagers was quizzed whether he had told his fellow classmates at Woodroofe High School about the exercise.
The military launched the investigation a few days after the Citizen article appeared, and only suspended the probe in May after they failed to determine where the newspaper’s information came from.