Search: “CSIS”

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 23, 2018 Way back when I was an analyst at CSE I recall a conversation with an workmate about who was more important to the organisation (we were both young and full of piss and vinegar).  He worked on the ‘Soviet problem’: I was assigned along […]

As a former intelligence analyst with more than three decades in national security and someone who has chosen to go public with my knowledge, perspective and experience I have attracted a lot of attention.  Some of it is praiseworthy (“Thanks for your service”), some appreciative (“I like what you wrote”) and some not so good […]

We humans are a curious species (in both senses of the word ‘curious’). The foremost question on our minds is always Why?  Why is the sky blue?  Why do the seasons change?  Why can’t a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup?  Why? Why? WHY? Our insatiable need to know extends to tragic events, such as […]

I have a confession to make.  I am a huge New York Times fan.  I have read it religiously for decades and even in my retirement I buy a copy that a downtown Ottawa news seller sets aside for me on a daily basis (thanks Comerford Cigar Store!).  No one source is exhaustive or 100% […]

There is an old saying that goes “If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bus (or a bike, apparently. in the original Spanish)”.  This very silly sentence means that there are things that are unlikely to happen and therefore are not worth mentioning. This phrase was the very first thing that came to my […]

As readers of my blog and books will well know I consider myself, and am considered by some, an expert (I prefer specialist) in terrorism.  More specifically Islamist extremism as that scourge was the topic of my four books thus far as well as my career at CSIS.  Indeed, I have studied many aspects of […]

One of the most difficult challenges for governments around the world is what to do with their citizens who left to join Islamic State (IS) or other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq from 2013ish to 2017.  As we all know, IS is a shadow of its former self. It has lost swaths of territory.  […]

Way back in 1929, in the depths of the Great Depression, seven members of a Chicago gang were lined up and shot to death by members of another gang, probably tied to the infamous Al Capone.  The incident, now known as the Valentines Day Massacre, was probably part of Capone’s attempt to control organised crime […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 2, 2018   Is it just me or is it strange that an independent, secular democracy cannot make simple decisions on whom it wants to allow to stay in the country?  We are speaking here of immigrants, of course, since those lucky enough to have been […]

According to the standards of witches and warlocks in the Harry Potter series there were three curses or spells that were ‘unforgivable ‘.  These three are the Imperius curse (it forces one to do the bidding of the caster), the Cruciatus curse (it subjects the victim to excruciating pain) and the Killing curse (which does […]