Talk about nuts. We know that our security services are still passing on to Washington the names of Canadian citizens alleged to be terrorists — with or without proof.

But it also seems that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has mistakenly added one of its own moles to the growing U.S. terror list.

This bizarre revelation comes courtesy of the muckraking website WikiLeaks, which — as first reported by CBC — has revealed a new cache of confidential U.S. State Department documents.

The documents show that over two years CSIS provided the U.S. embassy in Washington with the names of at least 41 Canadian citizens or residents that it said were associated with terrorism.

Some of the names are already well-known, including those of the so-called Toronto 18 terror cell.

But 22 names belong to people who have never been charged with any kind of terrorist offence.

And front and centre among them is Mubin Shaikh, the former CSIS and RCMP mole who infiltrated — and later testified against — members of the Toronto 18.

A fierce critic of Islamic radicalism, Shaikh was praised by the authorities for his role in the case, which ultimately led to 11 convictions.

But that didn’t stop CSIS from including him in a secret list of known terrorist associates that they passed over to the Americans much later, in 2009.

Shaikh, who was shown a copy of the leaked cable by a journalist, says he is flabbergasted.

“This is devoid of all logic,” he told me Wednesday.

To add insult to injury, Shaikh said, the state department cable listed his birthplace as India (he was born in Toronto).

The former mole hasn’t tried to enter the United States since the damning cable was sent. He’d be unwise to try. As Maher Arar found, once a person’s name gets into the U.S. terror data bank, it’s not easily removed.

For those with short memories, Arar is the Canadian arrested in New York in 2002, accused of terrorism and shipped to Syria, where he was tortured and imprisoned for close to a year.

He had come to U.S. attention when the RCMP passed on his name to Washington as a terror suspect. But, as an inquiry under Justice Dennis O’Connor later concluded, Arar had nothing to do with terrorism.

That RCMP mistake cost Arar unspeakable pain and the Canadian government $10.5 million in compensation. But the Ottawa man is still on the U.S. terror list.

In the wake of Arar, O’Connor recommended that the security services take more care in making unsubstantiated terror allegations to other countries — including the U.S.

Those were wise words. Even under President Barack Obama, the U.S. has not renounced the practice of extraordinary rendition it used against Arar — a practice that amounts to the outsourcing of torture.

Nor has it closed the notorious Guantanamo prison camp.

Supporters of the security services say intelligence gathering requires a lower burden of proof than criminal conviction. True enough. So do police investigations.

But police must be careful when they gather information. Police are subject to strenuous judicial oversight.

Intelligence services, by contrast, are much freer to make cock-ups, sometimes with tragic implications.

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It’s worth remembering that Arar was tortured because he was a “known associate” of Abdullah Almalki, a man the RCMP believed to be a terrorist.

It’s also worth noting that Almalki wasn’t a terrorist, either. Another judicial inquiry made that clear — but only after he, too, was jailed and tortured.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.