Former Canadian envoy to Iran was covert CIA agent

Canada’s former ambassador to Tehran, Kenneth Taylor, actively spied for the Central Intelligence Agency and helped the US plan a military incursion into the country during the Islamic Revolution, according to new reports.

An arrangement was set up by then-US President Jimmy Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, whereby Taylor would provide US intelligence with information from his position at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran, according to a report published in The Globe and Mail on Saturday.

The report added that details of Taylor’s role are revealed in the book “Our Man in Tehran” by Trent University historian Robert Wright.

Taylor, who was the Canadian ambassador to Iran from 1977 to 1980, became “the de facto CIA station chief” in Tehran after Iranian students took control of the US embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and took 60 US citizens hostage.

The daily information he sent out was seen by only two officials at what was then the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa — Louis Delvoie, director of the intelligence analysis division, and Pat Black, assistant undersecretary for security and intelligence.

In conversation with The Globe and Mail this week, Taylor said he felt confident taking on the US intelligence enterprise because Iran at the time was in chaos and the risk was minimal.

The former Canadian envoy to Tehran added that for three months he, along with his wife and embassy staffers, concealed the six US embassy staff members who had escaped into hiding after the seizure of the US embassy.

The CIA, working with Taylor, arranged for the US citizens, using Canadian passports, to leave Tehran on a flight to Zurich on Jan. 27, 1980. Kenneth Taylor then closed the embassy and left with his staff.

The last of the US embassy hostages were not released until Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1981 — 444 days after the embassy had been seized.