Former MP used fabricated documents to accuse reporter David Pugliese of being a Russian asset
A July report that solicited input from leading experts in typography and graphology determined that the the documents Chris Alexander submitted to a parliamentary committee are forgeries.
At an October 2024 House of Commons committee hearing on Russian disinformation, former Conservative MP Chris Alexander made the extraordinary claim that Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese has been a paid Russian intelligence asset since the 1980s.
Alexander made these comments under the shield of parliamentary privilege, meaning he cannot be sued for defamation, even if he tarnished Pugliese’s reputation through a callous disregard for truth, which a new report suggests is precisely what he did.
Postmedia, which owns the Citizen, defended the long-time defence reporter against Alexander’s “ridiculous and baseless accusations,” and the Canadian Association of Journalists noted the “sad irony” that the former Cabinet minister used hearings into disinformation as a platform to spread disinformation.
A group of journalists, including yours truly, signed and circulated a petition defending Pugliese, “an upstanding citizen and excellent journalist,” from Alexander’s “ludicrous” claims.
In an effort to substantiate his allegation against Pugliese, Alexander submitted a series of documents he claimed were from the Archives of the State Security Committee in Kyiv, Ukraine, identifying Pugliese, code-named “Stuart,” as a potential Russian state asset.
“In a nutshell, these records document a KGB operation to talent spot, recruit, develop and run as an agent a Canadian citizen who has been a prominent journalist in this country for over three decades,” Alexander said.
At the time, Pugliese said he wasn’t aware of whether the documents are authentic or not, but noted that they list him as residing in Ottawa in 1984. Pugliese didn’t live in Ottawa then.
Independent researcher Giuseppe Bianchin conducted a forensic analysis of these documents over a span of seven months, soliciting expertise from leading typologists and graphologists. They concluded that the documents Alexander submitted to the committee are forgeries.
This comes as no surprise to Pugliese, who noted in a statement to The Orchard that Alexander never submitted “supporting evidence … that would authenticate the records as real.”
Bianchin’s July report republishes the documents in question with English translations, and details the steps he took in determining that they’re fraudulent.
Before analyzing the documents themselves, Bianchin reached out to Andriy Kohut, a director of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, who said the documents appear authentic at first glance.
The colour, type of paper, writing style and syntax are consistent with similar documents from the same period. The KGB officers identified in the documents were real people, he added.
While Kohut couldn’t locate the documents in the state archive, he was unable to confirm or deny their authenticity, because they didn’t contain the necessary identifying features to track them down in the voluminous archive.
Upon Kohut’s recommendation, Bianchin checked with the Foreign Intelligence Service archive, which is headed by Oleksandr Feshchenko, who searched for Pugliese’s name and found no results.
In an Oct. 5, 2024 Global News story, reporters Stewart Bell and Jeff Semple reached out to the same archives with the same results.
But Dwayne Strocen, a retired RCMP officer who runs an outfit called DocuFraud, told Global that he conducted a “microscopic examination” of the documents that determined they “are all genuine and authentic.”
“If this was an elaborate hoax, it would be an elaborate hoax beyond all reasonableness,” Strocen added.
Yet multiple international experts Bianchin consulted suggest the hoax wasn’t all that elaborate.
Erik van Blokland, the head of the Type Media Master of Design program in Typeface Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, the Netherlands, is a typeface designer with more than 30 years experience.
Examining three of the seven documents Alexander submitted to committee, van Blokland determined that the documents, which are dated from 1990, use a font that he developed and released in 1993.
“The whole document was definitely set on a computer, not a typewriter,” van Blokland told Bianchin.
Recurring specks of dust throughout the documents van Blokland examined are “precisely identical,” wrote Bianchin, suggesting an effort to make a document developed on a computer appear as one written on a typewriter.
“The repeating presence of the same speck of dust, in the same position, with the same intensity, is impossible with a mechanical typewriter, but it is possible using a software such as Adobe Photoshop (or similar) and a digital font,” explained Bianchin.
The consistency in the letters’ weight also suggests computer generation. Typewritten letters, explained van Blokland, will each have “its own unique impression” based on the “slightly different pressure” the person typing would have used to type each letter.
Bianchin went to another expert in typography, German forensic document examiner Bernhard Haas, for his opinion, who agreed with van Blokland that the identically placed specks of dust are consistent with a computer font, not a typewriter.
Two of the documents — one dated April 1990 from Col. V.I. Semenyuk in Kyiv to Col. Kostik V.V. in Moscow, and a response to Semenyuk dated May 1990 — “could not be written by two separate typewriters, even if they were the same model, and not in two separate offices, Kyiv and Moscow,” wrote Bianchin.
Forensic graphologist Ira Boato, who works for the Italian Justice Department verifying handwriting in legal settings, analyzed three documents that appear to be handwritten.
She specifically focused on the handwritten forms of KGB, CCCP, the P in Pugliese and D in David, and the K in Kanaga, which is Canada in Russian.
Boato found in them “numerous compatible elements, despite the diversity of the forms and content,” which suggest that the “three documents submitted for analysis are highly likely attributable to the same writing subject, or are written by the same hand.”
To summarize, we have documents that cannot be found in either of the relevant Ukrainian state archives, with typewritten portions that use a font that wasn’t available until three years after the documents are dated, according to the person who created the font.
Typed letters that make identical impressions on the page, with identical specks of dust located in identical places with identical intensity, could not have been typewritten, let alone typewritten by two different people in two separate Soviet Republics. The documents’ handwritten portions are also too similar to have been written by different people.
Looks like Chris Alexander has some explaining to do. Unfortunately, he didn’t respond to a request for comment that included a copy of Bianchin’s report for his reading pleasure.
Pugliese places Alexander’s attack on his character in the context of an “ongoing attack on Canadian journalism.”
He said that his stories about “financial irregularities at National Defence, bungled billion-dollar military procurements,” sexual assault in the Canadian military, and the presence of Nazi collaborators in Canada “are upsetting to those inside and outside government.”
“This is what journalism is supposed to be about; publishing things the powerful do not want to see in public. Be rest assured, I have no intention of changing the way I conduct my reporting or retiring anytime soon from journalism,” said Pugliese.
You can download Bianchin’s full report below.
Chris Alexander looked like a sharp cookie when he was a diplomat. Now he looks likes a crumby creep: bitter enough to conjure sham docs for a smear job, old enough to know the difference between Photoshop and real forgers, and too cheap (broke?) to pay for the real article.
What about that piece of shit, Justin Ling? He was also at that committee hearing as a so-called expert on "Russian interference".