February 06, 2006
"Smiley's Canadians?" Not the answer
The Ottawa Citizen dreams of a Canadian "C".
...
A mostly unnoticed plank in the Conservative party election platform was to "create a Canadian Foreign Intelligence Agency to effectively gather intelligence overseas, independently counter threats before they reach Canada, and increase allied intelligence operations." The time has come to take the idea seriously.
In this new age of global terrorism, concerns about national security are not going away anytime soon, and for a host of reasons it's undesirable to put ourselves in a position where we are entirely dependent on intelligence gathered by other countries...
The U.S. is a friend and ally and it shares much important information with Canada, but the Americans shouldn't be our eyes and ears on the world. After all, even the CIA can be wrong, as it was on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And no matter how close an ally the U.S. might be, the information it shares will always, understandably, be filtered or presented in a way that privileges its national interest over ours...
In real life (as opposed to its cinematic counterpart), intelligence gathering is fairly unremarkable and even mundane. It is, however, necessary and technically tricky. In counterterrorism, the best form of intelligence is human intelligence, but it takes a lot of work to cultivate sources who are in a position to obtain valuable information. Canada, part of the democratic West, has been named by Osama bin Laden as an enemy country. It's time we started investing in our own protection.
Mr. Wark [U of T professor] points out, for example, that although Canada has a long-term commitment in Afghanistan, the Canadian government is "shockingly reliant" on other governments for the intelligence required to operate in that dangerous country...
Not a good idea, rather a romantic expression of our desire to play in the big leagues.
A separate foreign intelligence service--that is a clandestine human intelligence or HUMINT service--is not necessary to collect counter-terrorism information abroad. We already have CSIS doing the job.
There is no restriction in the CSIS Act on where CSIS may collect information on threats to the security of Canada. We may collect information on security threats from anywhere in Canada or abroad.
The CSIS Act also allows the Service to provide the Government of Canada with non-threat related intelligence that is collected incidentally during CSIS operations.
CSIS has carried out operations overseas in the past, and will continue to do so as circumstances warrant.
Update: An indicator as to why Canada does not need a clandestine foreign intelligence service: the media comment that Pete MacKay has in a sense been neutered by being appointed foreign affairs minister. If foreign policy really is not that important, neither is such a service.
CANFORGEN 096/04 DCDS 155 131716Z JUL 04
HUMINT CANDIDATE ASSESSMENT PROGRAMME (HCAP) SEP 04
UNCLASSIFIED
SITUATION. TO SP CURRENT AND FUTURE CF COMMITMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL OPS, THERE IS AN ON-GOING REQUIREMENT TO FIND VOLUNTEERS, BOTH JUNIOR OFFRS AND NCMS FROM THE REG AND RES COMPONENTS OF THE CF, WHO ARE INTERESTED AND SUITABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN OVERT HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (HUMINT) OPS IN A DEMANDING MULTINATIONAL ENVIRONMENT. THESE TYPES OF OPS REQR PERS POSSESSING VERY SPECIFIC PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES AND CAPABILITIES. ACCORDINGLY, THIS CANFORGEN IS PROMULGATED TO SOLICIT VOLUNTEERS FOR HCAP WHICH WILL SELECT SUITABLE CANDIDATES FOR HUMINT TRG AND EMPLOYMENT...
...HUMINT IS A PRIMARY INT COLLECTION DISCIPLINE CONTRIBUTING TO THE OVERALL INT PROCESS. IT IS AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF INTELLIGENCE IN SUPPORT OF OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES AND IS THE COLLECTION DISCIPLINE OF CHOICE ON DEPLOYED OPS. AGAIN, DEFENCE HUMINT ACTY WILL BE CONDUCTED OVERTLY IN UNIFORM UNDER VERY SPECIFIC AND DIRECTED CONTROL...
While "overt" is stressed here, I strongly suspect recruiting of local agents to collect information covertly is part of the mission.
More information on the Canadian Forces Intelligence Branch.
The best and most reliable information comes from signals intelligence (SIGINT). Canada has a major SIGINT organization.
The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is Canada's national cryptologic agency.
We provide the Government of Canada with two key services: foreign signals intelligence in support of defence and foreign policy, and the protection of electronic information and communication.
CSE works very closely with sister agencies in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
So Canada already would appear to be covered in terms of foreign HUMINT for counter-terrorism and for support of military operations, as well as being covered for SIGINT.
Why then do we need a stand-alone clandestine foreign intelligence (HUMINT) agency? As the Citizen points out "...even the CIA can be wrong, as it was on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Why would a Canadian agency do any better?
There are many negatives:
-The embarrassment associated with disclosure of foreign intelligence operations (the UK SIS' rock in Moscow).
-The cost and difficulty of setting up a new, independent agency.
-The diversion of resources and suitable personnel that would better be given to the Canadian diplomatic service (Foreign Affairs) which has been gutted almost as much as the Canadian Forces by the Liberal government. A primary role of the foreign service, which it is increasingly unable to perform, is overtly to collect intelligence; reinvigorating this capability would make much more sense than creating a whole new clandestine service. The value-added information--in terms of Canadian interests--that a clandestine service might collect, compared to what diplomats can acquire, would be very limited.
-Countering threats abroad means active, covert operations by our service, not just information collection. I doubt any Canadian govenment would have the guts for such inherently risky operations.
-The fact that even if useful foreign intelligence--i.e. information about the intentions and capabilities of foreign states--was collected, Canada's very limited international influence means that little useful could be done with the information. We find out that Iran is really, really developing nuclear weapons? What can the Canadian government do? Nothing but pass the information on to our allies who can actually do something with it. Let them collect the intelligence themselves.
-The only state that is really vital to Canadian interests is the US. It is the most open society in the world, with the most intrusive and effective media. Trying to collect covert intelligence on the US related to Canadian interests would be a waste of time, and the embarrassment of the inevitable exposures would practically negate the value of the effort.
This country survived the entire Cold War without positioning spies abroad (at least not officially), though having such a capability has often been considered...
If we could get through the Cold War, when the foreign threat was orders of magnitude greater than today, without a distinct foreign intelligence agency then there is still no need for one today.
Posted by markc at February 6, 2006 10:52 AM | TrackBack