Search: “9/11”

When you work for CSIS or the RCMP in national security the one thing that keeps you up at night is the possibility that you might miss something (or, more probably, don’t have enough resources to run down all the leads you discover) and a terrorist act succeeds in Canada.  The second thing that makes […]

One criticism that has been leveled a lot in the post 9/11 period is that governments, through their security intelligence and law enforcement agencies, has run roughshod over civil rights and what should be seen as legitimate political activity, and criminalised some behaviours all in an effort to prevent terrorism from occurring.  The timeline on […]

I have come to know the journalist Michael Petrou over the past few years.  He would sometimes call me to seek my views on terrorism when he was with Macleans magazine and I relied heavily on his book ‘Renegades’ – the story of Canadians in the Spanish Civil War – for a section of my […]

Once in a while I come across (or, in this case, have someone point me in the right direction) a story related to terrorism that surprises even  me, a 30-year grizzled veteran of intelligence and counter terrorism.  I saw a lot in my time at CSIS and had the incredibly amazing opportunity to work on […]

The third attack in the UK in a little over two months has people panicking, and not just in Great Britain.  On March 22 a man ran over people on Westminster Bridge in downtown London, killing three and wounding 50, before exiting his car and stabbing an unarmed police officer near Parliament before he was […]

Here we go again.  I have lost track of how many articles I have read over the last few days all written in an accusatory tone that when you distill it comes down to a very simple claim: British intelligence should have known that Salman Abedi was a terrorist and should have stopped him before […]

Terrorism is sure getting complicated.  The good old days, if I may call them that, were easy by comparison. Terrorists were easy to spot because they tended to chuck bombs or fire weapons at people, the larger the crowd the better.  Then we got to the airline hijacking phase in which most incidents ended relatively […]

It should come as a surprise to no one that in a world apparently awash in terrorist groups and terrorist attacks that any glimpse of success is paraded loudly and widely.  We are desperate for a victory in this ill-named ‘war on terror’ and so we celebrate every drone strike that takes out a leader […]

Here we go again, an alleged terrorist plot against planes.  We have been there before – far too often.  There was 9/11 of course, and the 2002 ‘shoebomber’, and the 2006 liquid plot, and the 2009 ‘underwear bomber’, and the 2010 printer cartridge plot – clearly there is a trend here.  As a result of […]

This is a big year for us in Canada.  Sure, we are a youngish nation and celebrating 150 years may sound quaint to our older international cousins, but it is a cause for celebration nonetheless. I am looking forward to the commemoration as I was six when we marked our centennial in 1967 and don’t […]