At issue were interviews CSIS conducted with Montreal teacher and alleged al-Qaida agent Adil Charkaoui, including one in which he purportedly discussed strategies for recruiting others to the terrorist cause.

General written summaries were retained, in keeping with standard CSIS policy, but the original tapes and notes were destroyed - a longstanding practice the Supreme Court said stemmed from misinterpretation of the law governing the spy service.

CSIS has always maintained that since the agency's mandate is to collect intelligence, not evidence, agents should keep their operational notes only in limited circumstances.

For five years, Rae was a member of the federal Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), the body that oversees CSIS. Rae's SIRC post began on April 30, 1998. According to the Weekly Voice, Rae is an insider "who knows the intelligence community well".

This is not an allegation of a conspiracy, but a query about odd circumstances and unanswered questions. At this time, no one has offered concrete proof of foul play, and there is every reason to believe that no one every will. The "guarding partner" and the female soldiers will be kept far from the media.

There is every motive to do so for the powers that be: an assassination attempt during an official ceremony for a visiting head of state would be a security failure of catastrophic proportions. Thus there is a national security interest in covering up a possible assassination attempt, so that foreign leaders will not think twice before coming to visit security-conscious Israel, the reputed world leader in personal VIP protection.

Dr Roger Coghill, who sits on a Government advisory committee on mobile radiation, has discovered that all 22 youngsters who have killed themselves in Bridgend, South Wales, over the past 18 months lived far closer than average to a mast.