Opposition MPs continued their push Tuesday for an inquiry into what involvement CSIS had in the 1985 Air India bombing. And Canada's solicitor general continued insisting there was no need for one.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service "did not have information to believe a terrorist incident was going to happen to Air India Flight 182," Wayne Easter told reporters Tuesday after a cabinet meeting.

Solicitor General Wayne Easter
Solicitor General Wayne Easter

Nor did CSIS have "what you call a mole," he said.

Easter said questions about the agency's involvement in the Air India case were answered in the early 1990s by the Security and Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC).

That committee issued a report in November 1992 that did find many problems with CSIS's performance, but concluded the agency was not in a position to predict the bombing attack.

In an internal 1996 report marked "secret," RCMP Inspector Gary Bass also declared that SIRC report "grossly inaccurate."

Air India Flight 182 blew up in the skies off the coast of Ireland in 1985. All 329 people aboard died. Earlier the same day, two baggage handlers in Tokyo died handling luggage for another Air India flight.

Documents released by the court in the Air India bombing trial indicate that RCMP officers thought a man named Surjan Singh Gill was an informant who was pulled out by CSIS three days before the June 18, 1985, attack.

That issue wasn't covered in the SIRC report. Some observers have speculated the RCMP officers interrogating the two men charged were bluffing.

But there is further evidence in the documents that Gill was arrested and charged in 1996, but that the charges were mysteriously dropped. Gill eventually moved to England.

The trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri on charges stemming from the bombing is currently on summer break.

The court documents that have surfaced, however, offer an intriguing look at the tension between CSIS and the RCMP during the long investigation.

In a 1986 memo classified as secret, Jim Warren, CSIS's top counter-terrorism official, explained the erasing of crucial surveillance tapes this way: CSIS's job was only to collect intelligence, not to help police collect evidence for a possible prosecution.