OTTAWA -- A former top official with Canada's spy agency says he regrets that critical wiretaps of Air India suspects were erased in 1985, igniting more than two decades of controversy.
But James Warren, who retired as deputy director of Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the Air India inquiry Wednesday that the tapes were innocently erased according to policy without verbatim transcripts ever being made.
"I wish dearly that they had not been destroyed. I think we all wish that they had survived for whatever value they might have had," Mr. Warren told Commissioner John Major.
CSIS wishes Air India tape survived: inquiry
