Paul Palango has a lot of material to work with in his new book about the ineptitude, incompetence, and, in some cases, outright corruption of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Having drifted far from the public image of probity that the Mounties have cultivated – and, Palango contends, have come to rely on to maintain their popular support – the force is in need of major changes.

Dispersing the Fog: Inside the Secret World of Ottawa and the RCMP covers everything from the RCMP's mishandling of the Air India investigation – due in part to the force’s ongoing rivalry with CSIS – to its role in the Maher Arar affair. Along the way, Palango points out more pedestrian examples of backwardness, such as the force’s outmoded training system and the shockingly long list of recent casualties. After all of this, the RCMP comes off worse than the Baltimore Police Department of David Simon’s TV series The Wire.
 
The RCMP’s investigations of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber offer all sorts of material for Palango, but he goes off in an improbable direction, discussing  shadowy groups Le Cercle, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission. He even throws in brief mentions of Opus Dei and the Bavarian Illuminati.

This is the stuff of poorly researched conspiracy theory websites. While there may be something reassuring and even entertaining in invoking nefarious organizations to help explain away some of the political events of the last quarter-century, it is ultimately unconvincing. Palango is on much firmer footing in his second chapter on the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, which focuses on the efforts of reporters to uncover details in the face of institutional roadblocks.

Aside from the drift into conspiracy theory, Dispersing the Fog is a useful catalogue of the many flaws and shortcomings of the RCMP, complete with interesting suggestions for improving their situation.