OTTAWA -- Ted Finn didn't expect a lengthy tenure as the first director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

"This is going to be a tough, wearing kind of job," he said in 1982 after being asked to head the transition that removed domestic spying duties from the scandal-plagued RCMP.

"It's going to require an enormous amount of physical and mental stamina and I think if someone were to stay too long, they would burn out."

Five or six years would be more than enough, he said. Finn was right, though his exit wasn't according to plan -he abruptly resigned in September 1987 after CSIS admitted using false information to obtain a warrant to wiretap a suspected Sikh terrorist following the 1985 Air India explosion.

Once described as a "cigar-chomping, baseball-loving bureaucrat," Thomas D'Arcy (Ted) Finn died Thursday at age 68.

Before heading CSIS, Finn was assistant secretary to the cabinet for security and intelligence matters, helping prepare the report for the infamous McDonald Commission into allegations of criminal activities by the RCMP - including censoring the most sensitive passages about the RCMP's activities against Quebec separatists during the 1970s.

The commission laid the groundwork for establishing an intelligence-gathering organization separate from the Mounties.

Finn later said being Canada's chief spy was "the farthest thing from my mind ever imaginable in my wildest, my most aberrant moments."

Finn's job was to forge a separate identity for the civilian body, even though 90 per cent of the new staff were former RCMP security officers. Tension between CSIS and the Mounties would fester during the mid-1980s as the two agencies struggled to define their jurisdictional limits. But his reign ended when Air India investigators were accused of relying on information from an informant who only eight days earlier had been fired by another branch because he was deemed to be unreliable.

Nine men were subsequently charged with conspiring to assassinate an Indian cabinet minister during a May 1986 visit to Vancouver. The minister survived the shooting and four men were convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Sources close to Finn reported he had already considered resigning, frustrated by funding cuts and disagreements with then-solicitor general James Kelleher.

Finn was a fifth-generation Ottawan. His grandfather was the Ottawa Citizen's managing editor during the 1920s and '30s and his father, Joe, was a well-known Citizen reporter.

Finn earned a law degree from the University of Ottawa; he worked as an assistant Crown prosecutor and criminal lawyer before entering the public service in 1971.

After leaving CSIS, Finn was named a special adviser to the solicitor general, with unspecified responsibilities. Finn eventually returned to private law and consulted for the RCMP Public Complaints Commission during the mid-1990s.

Finn is survived by his wife, Margaret, four children, and nine grandchildren.

Ottawa Citizen

© CanWest News Service 2007