-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.globeandmail.ca
}}}>Begin
We didn't mess up, they did
SECURITY: Canada has put its house in order. It's time to ask the
U.S. hard questions about how Sept. 11 was allowed to happen, says
LAWRENCE MARTIN
By LAWRENCE MARTIN
Tuesday, December 18, 2001 � Print Edition, Page A21
On budget day, I bumped into Justice Minister Anne McLellan in the
House of Commons. She was in a buoyant mood. The government's
handling of the whole security file, she thought, had turned out
quite nicely.
Some have found it curious, I pointed out, that our security and
intelligence systems have been put through the ringer over Sept. 11,
while the culpable parties, the CIA and FBI, have hardly suffered
criticism.
I had in mind a statement from Wesley Wark, one of Canada's foremost intelligence
experts and a consultant to the Privy Council on such matters. "What is happening in
the United States took me by surprise," he said. "I an
ticipated that in the aftermath of Sept. 11, there would be an enormous hue and cry to
find out what went wrong. There has been no hue and cry in the United States. No
recriminations, nothing even similar to what happened
after Pearl Harbor in 1941. . . . The United States has drawn a veil of silence over
the issue of intelligence failure."
Did our Justice Minister find it interesting that Canada was put on the defensive,
when, in fact, it was the American security infrastructure that faltered? Ms. McLellan
didn't dispute the point. No question, she said, th
ere was a major collapse of American security and intelligence on that day. In
private, she noted, American authorities admit to it.
But because of the staggering nature of the event, the minister added, Canada has been
cutting the United States a lot of slack. No tough questions about what went wrong. No
asking for accountability.
Indeed, after some initial stalling, it's been mainly just a big rollover. Like, what
can we do to please you, master, in light of your enormous blunder?
To do otherwise, of course, would have been politically incorrect. And, curiously,
about the only person who has dared strike that chord is the one who is supposed to be
the most politically correct of all -- Governor-Gen
eral Adrienne Clarkson.
This month, U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft came to Ottawa. Most everyone fell at
his feet. In the Commons, they pounded the benches for him. Though he has amended his
words a bit since, this is the same man who had t
he gall, given the sieve-like performance of his FBI, to talk about our borders being
"porous." Jean Chr�tien and his Foreign Minister, John Manley, deserved the
admirable-restraint award of the year for not calling Mr. A
shcroft one of the biggest hypocrites of all time.
As for our own security forces, how must they feel about taking the heat while the
more guilty parties ride in the criticism-free zone? A senior RCMP official I
encountered didn't seem overly annoyed by it. But he felt th
ere should be accountability from the CIA and FBI and that, indeed, a day of reckoning
would probably come. They just haven't gotten around to it, he said.
But it has been three months since that catastrophe. Might the period of grace last
forever? Logic sometimes has a funny way of working. One of the biggest defence
failures in American history has resulted in one of the b
iggest bonanzas of favourable publicity in American history.
Credit the American media for much of it. They've been pussycat patriots, Mary Poppins
on the beat, since the story broke. Would they dare ask of the guy at the top, "What
happened, Mr. President, to our CIA and FBI -- an
d when are you going to fire those responsible?"
Not likely. The world's strongest country takes out a tribe in the world's weakest,
Afghanistan -- which is like the NHL champions defeating a Junior C team without
skates -- and the media talks of a glorious military vic
tory. And how's this for magic? Washington is praised for bombing a country to pieces
to "prevent" a refugee crisis in Kosovo, and is now praised for bombing a country to
pieces to "create" a refugee crisis in Afghanistan
. Different circumstances, of course, but cool nonetheless.
Though nothing happened in this country on Sept. 11, Paul Martin has just put up $7.7-
billion of Canadian taxpayer money to address our security situation. It is probably a
wise investment and it has been coupled with we
ll-deserved expressions of sympathy and love by the multitude for our American friends
and neighbours.
That done, it's now time -- political correctness has limits -- for
some explanations from their side. It's time the veil of silence, as
Wesley Wark describes it, is lifted.
Lawrence Martin, author of two books on Canada-U.S. relations, is
working on the second volume of his biography of Jean Chr�tien.
Copyright � 2001 Globe Interactive, a division of Bell Globemedia
Publishing Inc.
End<{{{
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