Canada needs foreign spy agency: advisor http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?f=/stories/20011003/718137.h tml Security reforms urged: 'The only viable long-term strategy is offence, not defence' Richard Foot National Post HALIFAX - Canada's most senior intelligence official says the country should contemplate the creation of a foreign spy agency to guard against terrorism. "We need to develop the necessary tools to work with our friends and to protect Canadians, whether here at home or abroad," says Richard Fadden, the deputy clerk and co-ordinator for security and intelligence at the Privy Council Office in Ottawa. "Is it time to think about a formalized capacity to collect foreign intelligence?" Mr. Fadden calls this one of the "crucial questions we must face" in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He made his comments during a recent speech to the Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies. Mr. Fadden occupies a once-obscure portfolio at the Privy Council Office. The U.S. tragedy has vaulted him into a small circle of bureaucrats advising Jean Chr�tien, the Prime Minister, about how to respond to the threat of terrorism. Mr. Fadden says a review of Canada's intelligence capabilities was already underway before Sept. 11, but the events of that day swept aside assumptions about such threats as global organized crime and computer hacking and moved "mass terrorism unequivocally to the top of our priority list." Although no evidence yet shows that any of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States through Canada, Mr. Fadden says it would be wrong to imagine that agents of al Qaeda, the group accused of the attacks, are absent from this country. "Because the terrorist armies are largely invisible, so are their manoeuvres towards their next targets," he says. "The danger is so vast that the only viable long-term strategy is offence, not defence." Intelligence experts say any Canadian offensive against terrorism will require new money and a reform of the country's security and intelligence capability. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the domestic spy agency, is limited by law from taking an offensive stance with overseas espionage. A Senate committee rejected calls for a foreign spy service in 1999. But circumstances have changed and experts say if Ottawa intends to work with allies attacking terrorists abroad, the government may need to dispatch spies to foreign countries. They say CSIS does spy on foreign embassies within Canada, but relies on the help of friendly foreign spy services for most of its external intelligence. Ward Elcock, director of CSIS, insists the agency does gather foreign intelligence, despite the legal restraints. "We have an international mandate," he told intelligence experts in Halifax on Sunday. "CSIS does not have a territorial mandate. I can collect intelligence wherever I need to." However, Greg Fyffe, the director of intelligence assessment at the Privy Council Office, says, "Most intelligence reports go to bureaucrats and do not reach the political level." To solve this problem, experts want the government to establish a formal office of national security, headed by a single Cabinet minister, to co-ordinate intelligence sources, analyze the information and bring it to the attention of political decision makers. "The most important shortcoming of intelligence in the Sept. 11 event was the failure to manage information that existed and to interpret it correctly," says Tony Campbell, a former clerk of intelligence analysis in the Privy Council Office. Mr. Campbell says the government has an "embarrassingly small number" of security analysts with expertise in such global hot spots as the Middle East. He says a national security office, headed by a domestic security minister, could focus the disparate information gathered by the departments of Immigration, Foreign Affairs, Defence and CSIS, then take it to the Prime Minister. "Right now, I don't know who wakes up in the morning and says, 'The country's national security is my responsibility,' " he says. THE END ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bUrHhl.bVKZIr Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
