OTTAWA - RCMP spies kept a watchful eye over Michael Ignatieff as he organized a major academic conference during his student days, newly declassified records show.

A memo drafted by the Mounties' counter-subversion branch cites the Liberal leader's involvement in planning a "teach-in" on religion and international affairs, one of three such events he worked on as an undergraduate.

The September 1967 report, stamped confidential, notes "Mike Ignatieff" -- then a 20-year-old University of Toronto student -- would be co-chairman of the weekend colloquium featuring speeches by renowned thinkers.

The Canadian Press recently obtained the two-page memo under the Access to Information Act while researching another academic of interest to the Mounties. Portions of the document -- including a notation after Ignatieff's name -- remain classified.

The RCMP Security Service monitored the activities of students, professors and councils on university campuses across the country during the Cold War in a bid to detect Communist influence.

Ignatieff said although he doesn't want to second-guess what the Mounties were doing, the teach-ins were open and frank public dialogues.

"They may have had some idea that we were all subversive radicals, but we were anything but," he said Sunday in an interview.

"We had these teach-ins in which we got really important world figures to come and debate the issues. It was incredibly exciting to be part of it. And what was great about them is that faculty and students worked hand in hand as equals."

Historian Steve Hewitt said the Mounties would have asked many questions about the teach-ins, which dissected topics ranging from the Vietnam War to world population growth.

"Were they attracting students, were they generating an audience, were they potentially having influence? These were all sort of the questions that the police would've delved into in the context of counter-subversion," said Hewitt, author of Spying 101, a history of RCMP surveillance of universities.

"Their concern was about the peace movement -- the fact that behind the scenes that maybe it was being manipulated by Communists, and that even if these people were mainstream, in a sense they were dupes, or they were being misled."

The blacked-out sections after names in the memo, including Ignatieff's, denote Security Service file numbers, said Hewitt. The Mounties opened thousands of dossiers involving the halls of higher learning, including files on campus anti-war committees, protests, student unions and numerous individuals. Files on people can be obtained under the access law beginning 20 years after the individual's death.

In 1984 the civilian Canadian Security Intelligence Service took over surveillance duties from the RCMP following a series of Mountie scandals.

In addition to the 1967 event documented by the RCMP, Ignatieff helped with two previous teach-ins -- one in his freshman year that focused largely on the Vietnam conflict and another in 1966 that examined the Cultural Revolution in China.

"I walked onto campus at the ripe old age of 18 in '65 and the Vietnam teach-in then basically occupied me for the first three months of university. I'm not sure I went to class," he said with a chuckle.

"And above all as I look back on it, it was fair. It was not a propaganda session. There were people who got up and defended U.S. policy in Vietnam. I passionately disagreed, and there were people who attacked the policies."

The period also spawned an influential trio of university friends -- Ignatieff, Jeff Rose -- co-chairman of the religion teach-in -- and Bob Rae, who helped organize the 1967 event and now sits in the House of Commons as a caucus colleague of the Liberal leader.

Rose worked closely with Ignatieff on the religion conference from July until the event took place in October, and found the experience equally stimulating. They co-edited a volume of presentations delivered at the teach-in.

"I learned a lot. I think Michael and I learned a lot from each other, if I can be so presumptuous," said Rose.

"It was useful to deepen and develop the skills of organizing and rallying people to work in a common cause, and to think very deeply about issues about which I continue to care very much."

Rose went on to work as a union leader and became a deputy minister in Rae's NDP government in Ontario in 1991.

Included with the RCMP memo on the religion teach-in is the source of the information -- a clipping from the University of Toronto's Varsity newspaper. The name of the investigating officer is blacked out. The memo was forwarded to RCMP headquarters by Supt. Cam Hogg, now deceased.

The memo, which touches on several events at the university, also mentions that Ignatieff's father, then-Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, was among those slated to lecture in the coming year in an "Anatomy of Peace" class.

Correspondence archived by the UN traces the role George Ignatieff played in encouraging U Thant, then-secretary general of the global organization, to prepare a filmed statement that was shown to the some 5,000 people who crowded the university's Varsity Arena for the religion teach-in.

In the weeks leading up to the conference, Ignatieff and Rose had a private meeting with Thant.

"Here we were, two 20-year-olds sitting in his office persuading him to record a message for this event in Toronto. I can still remember my heart going boom, boom, boom," Ignatieff said.

"We were young and we were maybe a little naive and a little over-serious in a way, but we wanted to be involved, we wanted to be at the centre of things.

"I hope young Canadians today feel the same thing, and get involved. Because the teach-ins were a fantastic way to pull people into big issues and debate them seriously."