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| Home Front: WoT |
| The lessons of Toronto and domestic intelligence |
| 2006-06-08 |
| By Richard A. Posner The terrorist arrests in Toronto this week have revealed a gap in the U.S. intelligence system. The arrests were made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but the plot had been discovered by surveillance conducted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, a different kind of security organization that our media have dubbed Canada's "spy agency." That is true, but misleading. When we think of a spy agency, we think of the CIA, which conducts foreign intelligence. CSIS, however, conducts only domestic intelligence. It corresponds to England's security intelligence agency, commonly known as MI5, and to similar agencies in almost all major countries other than the United States. Such agencies are not in the law enforcement business. They have no powers of arrest or prosecution. Their sole mission is to detect and foil terrorism, sabotage, espionage and other internal threats to national security. Sometimes they hand over terrorists or other state enemies to the police, but often they thwart terrorists by other means, such as exposure, disinformation or "turning"--persuading the suspect to become a double agent. In the U.S., domestic intelligence is primarily the responsibility of the FBI. Canada took the same approach until 1984. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's counterpart to the FBI, had a division called the Security Service that dealt with national security threats. But in that year the service was removed from the Mounties and made a separate domestic intelligence agency, CSIS. Why split domestic intelligence from criminal investigation? Because these activities differ so profoundly that trying to combine them into one agency causes underperformance of both. A crime has a definite locus in time and space, a characteristic profile (it's a bank robbery, or credit-card fraud, etc.), physical evidence, witnesses and often suspects. These circumstances enable a tightly focused investigation that usually leads in a reasonably short time to an arrest, prosecution, conviction and sentence. National security intelligence does not operate with such a clear path to success, especially when confronting a terrorist threat. For then the main objective is to discover who and where the terrorists are, what their plans and capabilities are, who finances them and what links they have with other terrorist networks. Obtaining such information is a laborious, painstaking and frustrating process, full of dead ends and wrong turnings. It is uncongenial activity for an agency, such as the FBI, that is primarily oriented toward conventional criminal investigations. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 The vast majority of North American Muslims are loyal; and even among those who hate our governments and way of life only a tiny minority would ever turn terrorist. Getting killed in a skyscraper or other site by a terrorist does not take the "vast majority." It only takes a few, along with the looking away of others, which is a Muslim duty. Posner's comments should be no comfort. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-06-08 07:56 |