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Inside Canadian Intelligence: Exposing the New Realities of Espionage and International Terrorism

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In today's election a lot of the comment by the American candidates concerns finding a way to stop illegal immigration under the guise of helping to stoy the international flow of terrorists. It is important to remember that on December 17, 1999, an Algerian National terrorist thought to be tied with Osama bin Laden, was caught in Seattle after crossing the Canadian Border, with materials to fabricate a highly destructive bomb meant to blow up LAX (Los Angeles Airport).

This book examines the state of the intelligence agencies in Canada. It is written by people with some experience in the Canadian intelligence service. On the whole their view is somewhat negative as they point out the liberal government's attitude towards security in general.

It is left unclear just how much joint intelligence is going on between the Canadians and the Americans. One can only hope that the real situation in Canada isn't as dark as is portrayed here.

A fascinating book though, I suspect, not for the reasons the author's intended. It gives an invaluable insight into the mindset of the spooks - we are surrounded by nefarious characters who would do us harm. They're everywhere folks and we'd better start increasing funding to our spy agencies to keep us safe.

Politicians come in for scorn; well, of course they would. They don't, you see, understand the gravity of the threat we face and try to keep the good guys from quietly offing the bad guys. Okay, every once in a while an innocent citizen might get roughed up a bit, but that's the price we have to pay for being able to sleep quietly in our beds.

The media, of course, are also criticized for their negative portrayal of spy agencies. It seems they shouldn't mention the botched Air India case, the failure to stop the FLQ murder of Pierre Laporte and kidnapping of James Cross, the Litton bombing, or having Los Angeles Airport bomber Ahmed Ressam floating about the country undetected.

And, then there's the Maher Arar case. The authors refer to his "alleged" torture in Syria. There seems to be no sense of culpability for the dreadful things that happened to this innocent man.

I'll fess up I didn't finish this book. When I got to the end of Chapter 7 I had to bin the wretched volume. You see, it turns out that whole beating with electrical cables thing in Syria was actually Maher Arar's own fault - the silly man had dual citizenship. He should have known that passing through the U.S. with a Syrian passport was going to get him into trouble.

I'm not denying there are some deranged idiots out there who might want to do us harm and that we ought to do what we can to protect ourselves from them. But, given the paranoid mentality revealed by the former spooks in this book, I wonder if giving security agencies a freer hand isn't a bigger threat. What's needed is a sense of proportion.

I guess if you're trained to be a spy absolutely everything around you needs to be spied upon.

This is a rare book that looks into Canadian intelligence activities. Often, the Canadian experiences are neglected, due to the more pressing concerns in the US. But the reader may find may interesting parallels between what the Canadians have to guard against and what the US does. The intertwining of the two economies is one factor, that leads to a commonality of interests and a pooling of intelligence.

The book's authors give the Canadian perspective on the War on Terror. There is certainly much less funding and fewer personnel than the Americans. But the Canadians also have specific problems that the Americans are mostly spared. Like Sikh extremists that downed a passenger jet. Investigating this consumed enormous amounts of intelligence effort over many years.

Inside Canadian Intelligence should serve as a wake-up call for Canadians. Do we have what it will take to win the war on terror? Hamilton and co-authors have dared to delve into the world of international spying while providing a quick education on the roots of terror. A scary but crucial read for those of us who take our freedom and national security for granted.