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We really are no closer to figuring out what to do with ISIS detainees

Deciding how to deal with detained ISIS ‘foreign fighters’ is proving to be very, very difficult. One would think it rare that terrorists and those trying to prevent them from achieving their goals would share the same desires. Yet in a way it is true, at least for the Islamist terrorist variety. Many Islamist terrorist […]

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Today in Terrorism: 31 October 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assassinated by Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for Golden Temple siege.

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Today in Terrorism: 28 October 2004 Bombing at bar in southern Thailand

On this day in 2004, two were killed in bombing three days after 85 Muslims were crushed to death by military.

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Today in terrorism: October 19, 1998 arson at Colorado ski resort

How far would you go to prevent something bad from happening? Here is a small example. Let’s say you were walking downtown and came across a man and a woman arguing. As you went by you noticed things were getting more heated. Voices were raised and tempers skyrocketed. There was some physical contact (fingers pointed […]

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Today in terrorism: 15 October 1992

In just four hours, the village of Palliyathidal was the scene where some 285 men, women and children were killed by a 1,000 strong LTTE force.

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Did French security officials miss the obvious?

Mickaël Harpon’s drift toward fundamentalist Islam went undetected even though he worked in unit that tracked Islamist radicals.

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September 19, 1972: Letter bomb sent to the Israeli embassy in London

If you go far enough back in recent-ish history one of the terrorist groups that used to get a fair bit of attention was an outfit named Black September. Named after the month in 1970 during which the Jordanian armed forces clashed with fighters from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO – remember them?), which led […]

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Once more into the breach

I remember my very first day as an ‘insider’ in the Canadian intelligence community as if it were yesterday.  It was July 13,1983.  I had moved to Ottawa from my hometown of London (Ontario) to accept a job at CSE – Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s signals intelligence agency.  I had already been accorded a top […]

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A lack of trust in security agencies makes us less safe

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on September 2, 2019. It should come as a surprise to no one that people in many parts of the world lack confidence in important public institutions. Whether we are talking about governments in general or more specifically agencies such as law enforcement and security intelligence, there is […]

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On existential threats

It is rare for the head of an intelligence agency to give a public talk. Spy services, as we all know, work in the shadows and do things that are sometimes not generally nice (like assassinating terrorists). We’ve all seen the Jason Bourne films, right? So when the leader of one of these organisations does […]