First Meeting Files: Inside Project Ace's interview with the RCMP mole

On September 12, 2019, RCMP detectives confronted the force's Director of Intelligence

In his first interview with Project Ace detectives, Cam Ortis said “I live by my to do lists.”

In an extraordinary eight-hour interview detectives from Project Ace matched wits against Canada’s Director General of police intelligence, a Chinese cyberspace expert who had tight relationships with Mountie brass.

Transcripts of the RCMP anti-corruption unit’s Sept. 12, 2019 interview with Cameron Ortis can now be reported on, after a jury in Ottawa convicted the 51-year-old of leaking Five Eyes plans to four organized crime targets in Toronto and Vancouver.

The interview conducted on the day of Ortis’ arrest puts his ultra-sensitive trial in context, and hints at arguments that will be made against him in sentencing hearings early next year.

While Ortis was tried for leaking Five Eyes intelligence to large-scale money-launderers with links to Iran, the jury had no idea RCMP was much more concerned about his cache of “Gamma Special Intelligence” documents relevant to China.

Ortis never faced charges on the second part of Crown’s case, which alleged he was poised to deliver national security secrets to “foreign entities” in September 2019. A judge dismissed these charges to protect Canada’s national interests, apparently ruling the records were too sensitive to be exposed in court.

Based on remarks made by Crown prosecutors the day Ortis was convicted, they will argue he should be jailed for about 20 years, due to damaging information retained in his mind and potentially in encrypted cloud files, that could benefit hostile states for many years to come.

“Very Scary”

The Project Ace interview records show that officers told Ortis an August 26th search had discovered materials that pointed to “very scary” documents they didn’t expect to find.

Project Ace, a small unit tasked to find an RCMP mole based on knowledge shared from the FBI in 2018, knew that an insider had leaked intelligence to the CEO of Phantom Secure, a Vancouver company that provided “uncrackable” Blackberrys to organized crime and terror-financing kingpins.

But the August 26th search of Ortis’ Ottawa bachelor pad gave Project Ace investigators glimpses of a much bigger compromise.

“The first time we got in, we were able to take an image of a lot of electronic devices in your apartment,” an officer named Constable Vezina told Ortis. “And the analysis of that, kind of scared us a little bit.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Ortis responded. “And here we are.”

“Exactly. There's a lot of stuff that we found on some particular devices that was very scary,” Constable Vezina continued.

“Yes it is,” Ortis said.

“So we went back on September 9th and we took another image of that computer. And we were able to find some differences. That indicates that you were still working on those documents.”

“I would've been at work,” Ortis responded. “That's right.”

“That folder was called, I'm sure you know: First Meeting Files. You recall what's in that folder?”

Ortis said yes, and confirmed the records were of such high-classification, that Project Ace investigators would not be permitted to even read them.