Is Canada Next?
BEICHMAN, ARNOLD
Is Canada Next? Time to look at the northern border. BY ARNOLD BEICHMAN THE CANADIAN Security Intelligence Service has just issued this warning: There is an increasing threat from what Canada's...
...What that means for the United States is obvious...
...I worry that the ratio has increased...
...He testified ominously: "I can tell you that all of the circumstances that led to the London transit bombings, to take one example, are resident here and now in Canada...
...They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth," said Hooper...
...According to a report in the Toronto National Post, Hooper admitted that his agency was troubled about its inability to track these immigrants...
...Indeed, it has been, for a century, an unarmed, unpoliced border...
...Embassy in Nairobi...
...He told the committee that, since 2001, some 20,000 immigrants from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region have entered Canada...
...The warning came from Jack Hooper, CSIS deputy director of operations, in May 29 testimony before a Canadian Senate defense committee...
...And said Hooper in what passes for Canadian understatement: "We're in a position to vet one-tenth of those...
...We stay up at night," he said, "worrying about the threats we don't know about, and we always used to work on a ratio of ten to one...
...And presumably awaiting orders...
...That may be inadequate...
...The U.S.Canada border should be a top priority on the binational agenda when both sides meet again...
...Hooper pointed out that the men responsible for the London 2005 subway bombings were from immigrant families...
...BY ARNOLD BEICHMAN THE CANADIAN Security Intelligence Service has just issued this warning: There is an increasing threat from what Canada's CIA calls "home-grown terrorists" living in communities across Canada...
...And as Hooper noted in his testimony, "Canada has been named on several occasions as one of six Western 'target countries' by al Qaeda leaders, most recently last summer...
...Our northern border must be guarded more closely Arnold Beichman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University...
...In other words, apart from bare details, which themselves may be spurious, Canada knows noth-ing—not even current addresses—of approximately 18,000 immigrants from that part of the world who have arrived just in the last five years...
...They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language and they appear to be—to all intents and purposes—well assimilated...
...That Canada may be a terrorist target is a distinct possibility...
...A Canadian resident, trained in Afghanistan and at one time living in Vancouver, British Columbia, played a key role in the August 1998 al Qaeda attack on the U.S...
...A new and conservative government rules Canada today...
...For every one we knew, there were probably ten out there we didn't...
...Even more ominous was Hooper's admission that the CSIS could vet only about one-tenth of the immigrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan...
...Said Hooper about these nontradi-tional votaries of Islamist terrorism: "We have cases of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants converting to the most radical form of Islam...
...They look to Canada to execute their targeting...
...than ever before in history...
...Hooper said, according to CBC News, that young Canadians with immigrant backgrounds are: (1) becoming radicalized through the Internet and (2) seeking targets within Canada itself, not abroad...
...Hooper said the CSIS does a good job at containing threats it uncovers, but what about those threats it does not uncover...
...He was the one who trained the embassy bombers...
...Canada has about 2,300 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan on a mission that was recently extended until 2009...
...But there is now a new and startling concern: Canadian-born fanatics, whose numbers are on the rise...
...These are people who blend in with us and our neighbors...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 37
