American Review of Canadian Studies

Vol. 39, No. 1, March 2009, 3851

Post-9/11 CanadaUS Security Integration: Of the Butcher, the Baker,

and the Intelligence-Policy Maker
The American
1943-9954
0272-2011
RARC
American
Review
Review
of Canadian
of Canadian
Studies
Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1, March 2009: pp. 131

American
I.
Hussain Review of Canadian Studies

Imtiaz Hussain

Department of International Studies, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico

Will the post-9/11 environment revive CanadaUS intelligence cooperation and catalyze a security community? A comparative study based on intelligence principles,
ideas, norms, orientations, and institutions drawn from the literature predicts cooperation but not necessarily a security community, owing to different (a) histories, (b)
security interpretations/agenda placements, (c) political and legislative cultures, (d)
degrees of public acceptance, and (e) domesticinternational inclinations. Waning
British influences, evaporating Anglo-Saxon identities, and changing strategic interests
compel Canada to play Thomas Hughess butcher role, and the US the more encompassing intelligence-policy maker role.

Questions and roles

The broader war against terrorism raises pertinent North American questions: Will
Canada and the United States revive the Cold War security community?1 What role will
intelligence, with its capacity to catalyze preemption-based policy, play in any securitybased cooperation, and what role is needed for intelligence in order for the 2005 Security
and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) between Canada, Mexico, and the United States to
succeed?
Although Winn L. Taplin defines intelligence as consisting of the collection, analysis,
evaluation, and dissemination of information for positive intelligence and counterintelligence
and the conduct of Special Activities (covert action),2 Thomas Hughess role orientations
characterize the subject better.3 Intelligence, Hughes posits, boils down to playing the
roles of the butcher (keeping intelligence a permanently top-priority concern), the baker
(formulating consistently high levels of intelligence expenditures), or the intelligence-policy
maker (running across the entire spectrum, from the drawing board to the trenches, serving as both butcher and baker).4 The comparative study of orientations and institutions
offered in this article, based on criteria articulated by Taplin and Michael A. Turner, finds
(a) Canada playing the butcher and the United States the intelligence-policy maker roles;
and (b) both roles limiting mutual cooperation due to different military cultures and global
positioning.
Comparing orientations and intelligence institutions
Similar security portraits can produce different policy outcomes, as is evident if one places
principles, ideas, and norms under the microscope. Table 1 illustrates this with Taplins
six principles.
ISSN 0272-2011 print/ISSN 1943-9954 online
2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02722010902834250
http://www.informaworld.com

American Review of Canadian Studies

39

Table 1. Intelligence principles: CanadaUS comparisons.

Principles
1. Intelligence derives from
international, as opposed to
domestic, conflict or rivalry

2. Conduct or use of intelligence

involves secrecy
3. Clandestine collection of
information is the fundamental
activity of intelligence
4. Truth must be the basis of good
intelligence
5. Intelligence in a vacuum is of
no value; tardy intelligence is of
little value
6. Special activities must involve
native knowledge of the national
groups toward which they are
directed

Canada

United States

It stems from both domestic

Stemming from domestic
and international conflictual
circumstances,
circumstances
intelligence took an
international shift, and
shows a two-flank
post-9/11 orientation
True
True
True

True

Not always true

Not always true

True

True

Domestically true,
not so abroad

True, but undergoes trials

and errors internationally

Source: Adapted from Taplin (1989, 47591).

Principles
Nuances, rather than contrasts, riddle the principles picture. As the first dimension
acknowledges, intelligence derives from international conflict or rivalry for both countries.
Canadas intelligence industry began formally after World War I, under two domestic
police agencies, the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) and the Dominion Police (DP);
as yet, Canada unique among Western powers does not have any foreign intelligence
service. On the other hand, US agencies, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
also began with a domestic agenda, only to shift attention abroad during World War II,
first under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from 1942, and ultimately under the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1947. Describing both Canada and the United
States as security states,5 Steve Hewitt traces their perceived domestic threats not to
hunts for alleged spies but to worker and immigrant groups, often with a campaign,
inspired by ethnic and class prejudice.6 Among NWMPs first targets were Russians and
Germans escaping the Bolshevik Revolution and World War II to Canada via the United
States. Interestingly, President Franklin D. Roosevelt also instructed FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover, in 1936, to monitor particularly Fascism and Communism two largely international issues, albeit with domestic implications.7 While Canadas introversion served
British war strategies until World War II, US extroversion, accelerated by the subsequent
creation of the CIA, extended the FBIs domestic tools and treatments abroad.8 Even with
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) centrally managing both fronts today, the
CIA and FBI continue with their overlapping and conflicting mandates independently.
From the outset, both Canadian and US orientations involved secrecy and clandestine
operations, Taplins second and third principles. While the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police (RCMP), which succeeded NWMP, centralized these efforts from the start which
was unusual for a country so decentralized in many other ways US decentralization was

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I. Hussain

dictated by both size and the constitutional separation of powers. The FBI and the CIA
evolved from the Department of Justices Bureau of Investigation and the OSS, respectively,
from 1908 and 1942. Their relationship was hindered by cultural differences, rivalries,
security concerns, legal separation, and jurisdictional twilight zones from the very
start.9 Whereas the FBI was entrusted to enforce law by catching criminals and showing
force, the CIAs more open-ended role was to promote strategic understanding, meaning
finding policy-relevant information while lying low. For cooperation to succeed,
Frederick P. Hitz and Brian J. Weiss argue, both must become more open and more
flexible, not centralized nor necessarily reorganized, since their critical resource
information becomes meaningless without analysis.10
Clandestine operations became increasingly difficult for both, given legislative oversight. Nevertheless, as Stuart Farson notes, Canadas inheritance of secrecy from Great
Britain and the US congressional preference for deference sheltered the former from legislative orders-in-councils, which literally prevent debate, and the latter from benign
neglect,11 until scandals shook both. Given the sensitive and secret nature of intelligence
operations, oversight exercises after 9/11 were further weakened: Canadas parliamentary
culture demands more information publicly, and a history of clandestine CIA operations
only became less revealing given the desire to retaliate quickly and effectively against al
Qaeda. When the issue is security, parliamentary question periods become highly melodramatic and theatrical and parliamentary debates usually superficial, in Roy Rempels
view,12 while in the United States causeeffect relations often get obscured or swamped
by blind attitudes against the adversary (such as the better-dead-than-red approach during
the Cold War and the with-us-or-against-us attitude after 9/11), or agency sclerosis. As
Melvyn A. Goodman observed, after Pearl Harbor President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed
a military and civilian commission to examine how and why the attacks had not been
anticipated, but after 9/11 President George W. Bush, CIA Director George Tenet, and
the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees were adamantly opposed to
any investigation or postmortem.13 Even an investigation, initiated in June 2002, did not
include the CIA Inspector General, Brito Snider; the review was placed under the FBI,
challenging separation-of-power principles and practices.
Both the fourth and fifth principles, emphasizing the penchant for truth as well as the
worthlessness of both intelligence in a vacuum and late intelligence, were meant to be broken:
no cloak-and-dagger exercise prioritizes honesty, and fabricating much-needed information under pressure is not uncommon. Both the CIA and the FBI in the United States and
Canadas RCMP constantly deviate from standard operating procedures, eliciting a public
outcry or necessitating corrective measures. For instance, Canadian Prime Minister Lester
Pearson was forced to appoint the Mackenzie Royal Commission in 1966 to investigate RCMP
university surveillance techniques, and Pierre Trudeaus 1981 McDonald Commission
investigated the more serious charges that the RCMPs Security Service Division was
involved in planting bombs, burning barns, stealing documents, intimidating sources,
and so forth.14 In the United States, the weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) rationale to
invade Iraq in March 2003 was clearly based on not erroneous, but deliberately false,
information.15
Taplins last principle also bears the nuanced stamp of the first: availability of native
knowledge. As noted earlier, Canada does not have any foreign intelligence service;16 thus
native knowledge abroad receives less attention, though it is by no means absent.
Canada gathers as much foreign intelligence as is warranted for a country not seeking
world military leadership, and is able to free-ride on its US counterpart agencies when the
threat is more or less similar. This practice has proved increasingly effective since World

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41

War II. During the Cold War and after, three high-profile cases revealed RCMP ineptness
and warped ingenuity, and almost blindfolded US collaboration with Canada:
(1) Igor Guezenkos 1946 revelation of Soviet espionage in Canada, under the very
noses of the RCMP;
(2) The creation of abstract files during the Cold War, with information on what
Reg Whitaker calls spies who might have been, leading the distinguished historian
and diplomat E. Herbert Norman to commit suicide in April 1957 against false
charges;17
(3) The supplying of false information either by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), created in 1984 as recommended by the McDonald
Commission, or the RCMP about Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin,
to US intelligence, leading to his US arrest, deportation to Syria, and arrest
and torture in Syria, before he was freed and compensated by the Canadian
government in 2007.
US native intelligence flaws have been no less dramatic and frequent. They constantly pop
up in both Afghanistan and Iraq currently, where native knowledge is based on grand or
false assumptions, such as Ahmad Chalabi vouching that US troops would be feted by Iraqis
for removing Saddam Hussein, rather than on knowledge gained through prior training.
Even before intelligence studies became fashionable, Roger Hilsman Jr.s picture-puzzle
analogy, distinguishing a lifetime of dealing with realities from a lifetime habit of
dealing with libraries, seems to have gone out of style.18 Producing specialized experts,
rather than training specialized forces, goes farther in filling such gaps, but relying on trial
and error reduces policy outcomes and CIA reputation. Even the CIAs country-study
reports, often written by off-shore experts addressing offshore publics, ignore local perspectives, breed misperceptions, and produce bad policies.

Ideas
Principles aside, ideas and norms also shape orientations. Donald Snows recent specifications of the various forces behind strategic culture illustrate the argument.19 His treatment
of the United States is extended to Canada not only to level the comparative playing field,
but also to explain why the two countries, even with so many similarities, differ critically.
Snows two categories of elements of strategic culture, in Table 2, constitute the ideas
discussed here: background influences and direct strategic culture impacts.
Both Canada and the United States share plenty in the three background influences a
sense of history, geographical endowment, and cultural heritage though Britains
stronger, more lasting engagement with Canada is a significant difference. The institutionalization of intelligence is of recent origin in both countries. Still, Edward F. Sayle convincingly and energetically traces US intelligence back to the founding fathers, explicitly
identifying the first president, George Washington, as the manager of intelligence in
1790.20 Canadian eyes and ears were also opened from the very moment the British North
American Confederation was established in 1867, when the US Fenian Brotherhood, relishing the defeat of the British-supported US Confederacy in the Civil War, threatened to take
Canada from Britain to liberate Ireland.21 When state-building became a priority in both
countries, not much came of these initial intelligence-necessitating occasions. Nurturing
democracy, however, impinged upon intelligence.22

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Table 2. Elements of strategic culture: CanadaUS comparisons.

Categories
Background influences
1. Sense of history
2. Geographical endowment
3. Cultural heritage
Factors directly affecting
strategic culture
1. Democratic institutions
2. Role of media
3. Suspicion of
government/military
4. Mobilization-demobilization
pattern
5. Notion of invincibility
6. Preference for total wars
7. Tradition of citizensoldier

Canada

United States

1. Goes relatively deeper

given Britains role
2. Neighbor of superpower,
but British links
3. Anglo-Saxon

1. Relatively shallow
2. Absence of a European-type
hostile neighbor context
3. Anglo-Saxon

1. Yes, from the start

2. Constant influence
3. Yes; stems from colonial
and national divisions
4. Prevails

1. Yes, from the start

2. Constant influence
3. Yes, but for constitutional
reasons
4. Prevails

5. Not really
6. No preference for any
wars
7. Not at all

5. Yes, from the start

6. Yes, after World War II and
in the nuclear age
7. Not really a factor nor a
tradition

Source: Adapted from Snow (1995, 4265).

Geography and culture contradicted each other in the early days: the former kept the
New World aloof from Old World entanglements, while Anglo-Saxon values helped bring
the two together, during World War II particularly. Without a hostile neighborhood, as in
western Europe until World War II, US intelligence evolved without urgency, but Canadian
intelligence had to absorb Britains European preoccupations. As secrecy, drama, and
celluloid portrayals became part of the intelligence folklore, according to Mark Phythian,23
increasing BritishUS cooperation during the early 20th century24 acquired an Anglo-Saxon
tone a tone that was stronger in Canada than the US prior to World War II because of
enduring British influences.
The seven strategic culture components shown in Table 2 exposed more similarities
than differences. With democratic institutions emerging more or less simultaneously in the
two countries, the media became an early and constant watchdog. Citizens kept abreast of
developments, the more so the more dramatic they were, but kept a distance from the government and the military. This was largely a consequence of constitutional politics in the
United States, going back to the founding fathers; in Canada, however, field politics
proved more influential. Neither the Native peoples nor those of French heritage were
warm about the Anglo-Saxon government, while the steady stream of immigrants over
time reduced identity with the government even more. Moreover, western Canadians felt
too far from, and never too comfortable with, the federal government; they saw it as
reflecting, as they still complain today, a bunch of extraneous, sometimes un-Canadian
eastern interests.
Both Canada and the United States show pressures to demobilize the military after
war (the fourth strategic culture feature) while the increasing dependence on a voluntary
force suggests a distinct future possibility in other democratic countries. Invincibility (the
fifth feature) nevertheless remains an exclusive US trait. Alexis de Tocqueville recognized even in the 1830s that the United States had what it took to become a world power
when the United States still remained east of the Mississippi River and more than one

American Review of Canadian Studies

43

full century before the US leadership potential materialized; but Canadas disinterest in
global leadership, both under Britain and independently, qualified it as a secondary US
partner. Thus Canada rarely had to prepare for a total war (sixth), unlike the United States
after World War II, when the Communist and terrorist threats successively necessitated
what George F. Kennan proposed against the Soviet Union, a long-term, patient but firm
and vigilant approach.25 Neither country portrays a citizen-soldier tradition (seventh), in
spite of an expanding US military-industrial complex.
Norms
Table 3 applies Michael A. Turners 14 US intelligence norms to Canada, exposing both
similarities and differences. Among the similarities: relying on a belief in secrecy (second
norm), according intelligence an exceptional status in governmental affairs (third), grappling
with the ambiguities of the intelligence mandate (fourth), facing increasingly flexible
accountability (sixth), facilitating a competitive intelligence industry (eighth), giving
independent authority to the multiple agencies involved (ninth), and utilizing intelligence
to support policies (tenth).
Differences stem less from the process of intelligence-making than from geographical
and demographical constraints. Given its sparse population over a huge chunk of territory,
much of it uninhabitable, Canada cannot survive in anything but a confederal system; the
United States, on the other hand, is almost as large, but a more hospitable climate permits
integrative infrastructures, its far larger population provides military depth, and its more
frequent engagements in foreign wars built not just one capable and substantial military
institution, but several. Thus, the centralizing US tendencies contrast with Canadas
decentralized patterns (fifth). Before Canadas intelligence turned to espionage, it served
law enforcement purposes (seventh); but in the United States, the act of establishing the
CIA in 1947 shifted certain powers from the FBI to that new agency, and thereby confirmed a
long-term separation of police and intelligence functions but also invited tensions
between the FBI and the CIA.
Table 3. Intelligence and institutional norms: CanadaUS comparisons.
Institutional Norms
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Institutional survival
Secrecy
Intelligence exceptionalism
Ambiguous mandate
Confederal structure

6. Flexible accountability
7. Separation of intelligence from law
enforcement (police)
8. Competitive intelligence
9. Separation of intelligence from policy
10. Policy support
11. Can-do attitude
12. Primacy of intelligence analysis
13. Emphasis on current intelligence
14. Provision for accurate, timely, and relevant
intelligence
Source: Adapted from Turner (2004, 49, 4261).

Canada

United States

Prevails
Prevails
To an extent, yes
Yes
Decentralized police; other
centralizing pressures
Increasing pressures to do so
Mixed

Prevails
Prevails
Increasingly yes
Yes
Yes

Yes
Increasingly so
Largely
Not really
Not really
Yes
Yes

Yes
Increasingly no
Yes
Yes
Increasingly yes
Yes
Yes

Yes
Yes

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For political or other reasons, politicians increasingly keep a distance from intelligence
agencies in Canada (ninth), though in the wake of 9/11 and Canadas troop deployments in
Afghanistan,26 spiraling interest in military intelligence and precautions against terrorism
produced the Public Safety Department (PSD) and the National Security Adviser (NSA)
in that country.27 With the Department of Homeland Security, the United States seeks to
reduce the distance between intelligence activities and policy-making. Intelligence-gathering
is often accepted by the US public as a necessary evil, whereas in Canada it is largely seen
as just an evil. It was easier for George W. Bush than for any Canadian leader to promise
the legislature that he would lead, oversee, and coordinate a comprehensive strategy.28
Given the background influences and sources/nature of threat, intelligence agencies in the
United States increasingly show a can-do attitude (eleventh), what disapproving outsiders
dub a gung-ho approach. After 9/11, they have vied for policy-making primacy (twelfth),
emphasized concurrent intelligence (thirteenth), and prioritized the timely availability of
accurate and relevant information (fourteenth). Canada has neither the intention nor the
infrastructure to evince a can-do attitude or elevate intelligence. Instead, it silently and
subordinately cooperates with its US counterparts (thirteenth, fourteenth), as was evident
in its participation in successful efforts to thwart a possible terrorist plot near Toronto in
June 2006.
As previously observed, Canadas intelligence agencies evolved directly out of
domestic rather than foreign threat perceptions, at times more colluding with their US
counterparts than cooperating with the prime ministers office (thirteenth, fourteenth).
Examples of this collusion include the false-charge campaign that drove Norman to suicide
in 1957, the unwarranted arrest of Arar, and the unearthing of the June 2006 terrorist plot.
Nothing in Louis St. Laurents diplomacy suggests that the prime minister sought to victimize Norman at such an extreme level; during the entire Arar arrest episode, Jean Chrtiens
government had sour relations with George W. Bushs administration, belying any suggested compliance on his part with events leading to Arars arrest; and the June 2006
Toronto arrests capped a period of sustained cooperation between Canadian and US agencies,
in part because the terrorist plot involved individuals either in or traveling between both
countries.
Institutionalization and the intelligence community
Turners application of international relations (IR) theories to intelligence helps this institutional CanadaUS comparison. Recognizing that the realists emphasize interest and
power relations over all else, while constructivists emphasize norms and identities, Turner
adopts a strategic culture to capture both sets,29 which had roughly parallel but nuanced
growth in the two countries. Although Turner identifies the United States as fulfilling the
realist criteria and fitting into that framework better,30 over time that nation has arguably
shifted in the constructivist direction, since policy continuity and cumulative growth breed
(a) norms, (b) identities of an intelligence community (IC), and (c) bedfellows through
trial and error. Owing to a longer cumulation period, Canada fits the constructivist IR
paradigm even better, but Canadas IC also shows signs of consociationalist (or powersharing) mediating patterns.31 As examples of the latter, policy-making elites from contending social groups streamline diverging preferences, often resorting to secretive actions
in a competitive field,32 and they transcend differences to preserve larger interests against
fears and costs of political fragmentation in a divided country. Given Canadas parliamentary system, with its fusion of powers (as opposed to the US separation of powers),
Canadian political leaders have successfully prevented any guerrilla warfare between

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intelligence agencies though Canada has multiple competitive such agencies33 in large
part through quid pro quo exchanges of policy preferences or some form of you scratch
my back, Ill scratch yours.
To understand IC in general, Thomas F. Troys explanation of the specific pre-9/11
US IC helps. Defining it as the collection of those entities loosely knitted together by a
number of committees, he identifies the US director of central intelligence (DCI), a position broader and higher than the director of the CIA, as the head of this collection from as
far back as July 1947.34 In the decades thereafter, the US IC was neglected, with the DCI
hardly more powerful in 1976 than in 1947.35 The establishment of the Department of
Homeland Security changed this. When the DHS joined the IC in 2003, the DCI was
replaced by the director of national intelligence (DNI).36
Growth at the base in the intelligence world has not deepened authority at the top
again, probably the result of rivalry between agencies. Canada is comparable to the United
States in this regard. However, Canada offers an arguably tighter IC owing to the centralizing efforts of political leaders. There is no Canadian counterpart to the DCI, thus softening
theoretical linkages, but Canadian intelligence, lacking a parliamentary constituency, has
rarely reached the commanding heights of Canadas consociationalist policy agenda. Nevertheless, post-Cold War security concerns and intelligence adjustments fed into Canadas
9/11 responses. Brian Mulroneys Conservative government revitalized the solicitor generals (SGs) office as the Department of Public Safety, bringing immigration enforcement
under its purview, whereas Paul Martin and Stephen Harper successively rechristened that
office as the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC)
from April 2005 and Public Safety Canada (PSC) from 2006.37 Upgrading intelligence
was accelerated immediately after 9/11, when Jean Chrtien established the Interdepartmental Committee on Security and Intelligence (ICSI) under the formal chairmanship of
the Privy Council Office (PCO) clerk, though it was informally sited under the PCO intelligence coordinator. Anne McLellan, who initiated the 2002 Anti-Terrorist Act as a deputy
prime minister, became minister of public safety under Chrtien and Martin. Her Conservative
successor, Stockwell Day, was not a deputy prime minister, but previously had led the
Canadian Alliance political group.38
Of course, 1947 the year of the CIAs founding was not the true start of the US
intelligence community.39 Seeds of the current Big Three (the CIA, the FBI, and the DHS)
were sown by the original Big Three starting in the 1880s: the Office of Naval Intelligence
(ONI), created in 1882 by the Bureau of Navigation, was incorporated by the chief of
naval operations before World War I; the US Armys Division of Military Information,
created in 1885 under the Miscellaneous Branch of the Adjutants General Office, eventually became the Military Intelligence Division (MID), or G2, by the end of World War I;
and the 1908-founded Bureau of Investigation within the Department of Justice became
the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover, arguably the most powerful FBI director, coordinated all three
agencies ONI, G2, and the FBI. Yet, by World War II, when Troy counted more than
fifty agencies collecting intelligence in the United States, the Department of State rose to
prominence after creating the OSS, which controlled the Office of War Information
(OWI) and the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW).40 Troy notes that all these agencies
(a) were both independent and insulated, (b) belonged to a larger uncoordinated whole,
and (c) had a specific chain of command.41
Even before President Harry S Trumans 1947 National Security Act created its own
Big Three,42 he experimented with the National Intelligence Authority (NIA), the Director of
Central Intelligence (DCI), and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) from January 22, 1946.
Major General William J. Wild Bill Donovan, founder and head of the OSS, campaigned

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I. Hussain

against the three 1946 institutions, blaming the CIG for lacking civilian control and independence and the NIA for being no more than a debating society.43 With the National
Security Act, the NIA became the National Security Council (NSC), the position of DCI
was made a civilian post, and the CIG became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to Troy, the CIAs IC included all of the following: the CIA itself, the Department
of State, the Department of Energy, the Department of Treasury, the FBI, the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency, Army intelligence, Navy intelligence, Air Force intelligence, Marine Corps intelligence, and various offices in the
Department of Defense. He estimated that over 80 per cent of all these various agencies
had connections with the Department of Defense. As one can see, quite a network evolved,
but with it came compartmentalization, and thereby an intelligence community in name
only. In Hughess terms, one might argue that the intelligence system was filled with butchers,
bakers, and intelligence-policy makers even before 9/11; after 9/11 the fear is neither the
absence of relevant actors nor the constraints of elected officials, but the coordination of
the many.
Canadas institutional experiences were similar, but the threat was not as significant or
as sustained from abroad as was the case in the United States, nor was it capable of overriding preponderant US influences. Although scarred by scandals from at least 1946, the
RCMP remains as obstreperous after 9/11 as it was heavy-handed with eastern Europeans
and trade unionists after World War I. New competition from the CSIS from 1984
produced as unclear a division of labor between the two as exists between the FBI and the
CIA; but, unlike their US counterparts, both the RCMP and the CSIS escape legislative
oversight, in spite of repeated claims of both transparency and accountability. Their political
subordination, on the other hand, seems as complete as the independence of the FBI, the
CIA, and now the DHS from political control.
The CSIS Act also created the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), an
independent external review body comprised of from three to five members, all sworn
privy councilors appointed by the prime minister on the basis of consultation with all
political parties reflecting consociationalist elitism and consensus. The SIRCs budget
allocations, however, rarely allow for more than three SIRC members and a staff of 16,44
thus handicapping any meaningful oversight. Canadian intelligence is too financially constrained to play the bakers role, leaving only the butcher (RCMP) to hold the fort.
In addition, the CSIS must report to the solicitor general through the inspector general
(IG), while Parliaments Office of the Auditor General (OAG) also reviews the CSIS.
Accountability and oversight are not review functions,45 however, according to Farson,
while parliamentary procedures often prove counterproductive. For example, fears of
antagonizing the prime minister encourage play-safe approaches in the question period,
while security and intelligence generally receive a lower agenda placement. Canada lacks
even the theoretical foundations of the US Congress in bringing intelligence agencies to
task.
The Anti-Terrorist Act (C-36) of 2002 upgraded Canadian intelligence. Terrorism was
given a legal definition, RCMP power was enhanced, the number of terrorist entities
addressed was expanded from seven to forty, while authorities invested in the national signals
intelligence agency Communications Security Establishment (CSE) were broadened
(for example, by expanding the counter-intelligence remit, funding, staffing, knowledge
resources, and technological capabilities).46 When Jean Chrtien resigned in 2003, Paul
Martin elevated the security and intelligence portfolio, placing it as a deputy prime minister
portfolio under the Privy Council Office (PCO).47 While that placement gave intelligence
needed additional attention, the revamped portfolio also spawned public debate over the

American Review of Canadian Studies

47

extent of interrogative intrusiveness, rights curtailment, and so forth; whether past skeletons
will come out of closets remains a puzzle still.
The US 9/11 responses also entailed breathtaking changes. However, even though the
new DHS is more centralized in its direction of the US IC, it still does not control all intelligence agencies, the CIA and the FBI being notable exceptions.48 Looking at the halfcentury prior to 9/11, Troy found at least four clusters of intelligence decision-making
between 1947 and 2001: (a) the DCI, which managed the Secretariat, counter-intelligence,
planning and policy, programming and budgeting, and eight committees; (b) the National
Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), which under the DCI managed the eight abovementioned committees in addition to five others; (c) the National Intelligence Council
(NIC), which was filled with analytical groups; and (d) the Intelligence Producers Council
(IPC). While the DCI managed this intelligence community, Congress created the Deputy
DCI (DDCI) in 1953 to run the agency itself, creating two institutionalized streams.49
IC development has also been affected by policy makers bringing different strengths
and orientations to the table. Taking the NSC as an example, Cecil V. Crabb and Kevin V.
Mulcahy have shown how four different roles can emerge by mixing policy-making
responsibility (PMR that is, drawing-board functions) and implementation duties (ID, or
trench activities) along a lowhigh salience continuum. Henry Kissinger exemplified high
PMR and high ID; Walt Whitman Rostow, a mixture of high PMR but low ID; Robert
McFarlane, the converse picture of high ID but low PMR; and Colin Powell and Brent
Scowcroft, low PMR and low ID.50
One question relevant to this discussion is whether the US national security advisors
role is administrator, counselor, coordinator, or agent. Within the IC, Glenn Hastedt has
found at least five types of loyalties: to the president, profession and organization, a political
cause, the law, and the Congress and public. During the Cold War, he found Allen Dulles
(195361) and Richard Helms (196673) reflecting loyalty to the CIA; William Casey
(198187), loyalty to a political cause in this case, the Reagan revolution; and John
McCone (196165), a mixture of law (legislation) as well as Congress and public.51 After
9/11, the third type of loyalty (political cause) may get arguably greater emphasis than
law, Congress, and the public in the United States, in spite of increasing accountability
and personnel changes.
Applying the primary roles addressed in this article butcher, baker, and intelligencepolicy maker to Canada, in light of the above discussion, dramatizes the different professional and political cultures: the butcher and baker can converge into the intelligence-maker
in the United States but not in Canada; and the political difference between the fusion of
power, which should promote that convergence, and a separation of power, which should
encourage it, could be a big reason why.
Conclusions
This brief comparative overview of principles, ideas, norms, orientations, and institutions
suggests that post-9/11 CanadaUS cooperation over intelligence is only to be expected,
given the past, but is unlikely to deepen owing to the different: (a) historical influences;
(b) interpretations and placements of security in each countrys interest agenda; (c) political and, particularly, legislative, cultures; (d) degrees of public acceptance, reflecting
both official desires and available resources; and (e) domestic-international inclinations.
Despite these differences, the threat perception of the two countries seems more congruent
than not. Where they diverge is in how deep they will dig in responding: serving as the
intelligence butcher, Canada is likely to keep its intelligence radar on high-alert but refrain

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I. Hussain

from the bakers role of building infrastructures against every threat; in the US, on the other
hand, the readiness, willingness, and ability to institutionalize, against even only possible
threats, places it in an exclusive category of the quintessential intelligence-policy maker.
British influences from at least the August 1940 Ogdensburg Agreement to Canadas initiative to develop what became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) later in the
decade, or shifting strategic interests, occasionally distorted these portraits. Yet, in that
more representative phase before push turns to shove, the depth that policy-making
reaches in fulfilling commitments seems to be the litmus test that US intelligence survived
to be in the drivers seat. To have Canadian intelligence on the passenger seat may be a
bonus, to be sure, but its certainly not a presence one could (or can still) take for granted.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their probing comments, and to support from John
Purdy and Kathy Reigstad. Though I have not always heeded some valuable comments, I am
indebted to those from the following colleagues in various seminar presentations who offered them:
David Barrett, Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Stuart Farson, Lowell Gustafson, Anil Hira, Eric Hershberg,
Edward D. Mansfield, Jorge Nowalski, Satya Pattnayak, and Mara Pa Taracena Gout. Of course,
I alone remain responsible for omissions and commissions. The article is rooted in study and thought
that eventually became a book, North American Homeland Security: Back to Bilateralism (2008),
co-authored with Hira and Pattnayak in the Praeger Security International Series. I wish to record
my appreciation to Praeger for being allowed to lean on one chapter of that book for some of the sections in this article, to the Canadian government for a 2008 Faculty Research Program grant, and to
El Programa Interinstitucional de Estudios sobre la Regin de Amrica del North (PIERAN),
coordinated by El Colegio de Mxico, which funded research for the book.

Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.

Deutsch, Burrell, and Kann (1957) found this functional in the 1950s.
Taplin (1989).
Hughes (1976).
In addition to Hughes (1976), see Hastedt (1986).
Peter Gill (1994) popularizes this term.
Hewitt (2002, 166, 16584).
Wannall (1990).
Theoharis (1990).
Hitz and Weiss (2004, 46, 141).
Hitz and Weiss (2004).
Farson (2000, 226, ch. 11).
Rempel(2004, 6413, 63454).
Goodman (2003, 59, 5971).
Weller (2001, 51, 4961).
Donald M. Snow (2007, 57) adds a second questionable rationale for the US invasion: ties to
terrorism, al Qaeda specifically. He does not go as far as to call these rationales false, only as
being essentially discredited, though policymakers were generally given the benefit of
doubt. That is not the message coming across in the 2006 media, nor consistent with election
messages and follow-up congressional investigations. Richard L. Russell (2005, 468, 466485)
is more blatant, calling these rationales a catastrophic intelligence failure arguably one of
the greatest intelligence failures since the CIAs inception in 1947.
Weller (2001, 54).
Whitaker (1997, 2543).
The picture-puzzle analogy brings together what Lt. General Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg called
the overall picture as seen by troops in their corners of the world, and what Admiral Roscoe
H. Hillenkoetter described as a gigantic jigsaw, necessitating a researcher, engaged in hard,
painstaking work, poring over foreign newspapers and magazines, reference works and similar
materials, endlessly putting fact upon fact, until the whole outline appears and the details begin

American Review of Canadian Studies

19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.

25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.

49

to fill in. Vandenberg was formerly head of the armys G2 until appointed the second Director
of Central Intelligence (DCI), from July 1946; Hillenkoetter became the first director of the
Central Intelligence Agency after the National Security Act was enacted in July 1947. (Hilsman
1969, 210, ch. 22).
Snow (1995, 4265).
The Constitutional Convention placed intelligence in civilian hands, and Congress authorized
the first secret service fund, the Contingent Fund on Foreign Intercourse, on July 1, 1790
(Sayle 1986, 9, 127).
Wark (2003, 1845, ch. 13).
See his classic, Democracy in America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, NY: Library
for America for Penguin Putnam, 2004).
Phythian (2005, 6546, 65381).
Bradley F. Smith (1997) traces Anglo-American cooperation to the extremely close and
warm relations which prevailed between American civil and military authorities on one hand,
and those of Great Britain on the other, even pointing to a 1906 Admiralty memorandum
indicating Britain to be on the best of terms with the United States. Also of interest is Colin
MacKinnon (2005, 65469).
Mr. X (1947, 575).
For more on this, see Peter Pigott (2007, ch. 34).
I am indebted to a reviewer for specifying these.
Bushs homeland security speech to Congress, September 20, 2001 (Maxwell 2004, 258). Full
speech accessed from Cynthia A. Watson (2002, 2006).
Turner (2004, 423).
He is not the only one. Acknowledging nuances, Snow also sees this paradigm as the dominant
organizational device for purposes of intelligence and security. See Snow (2007, 70, 5072).
On consociationalism, see Lijphart (1968b, 216, 20721), Lijphart (1968a, 344), and Lange
and Meadwell (2002, ch. 5).
Canadian competitiveness involves as many actors, though perhaps makes less noise than, as
in the United States. On the actors, see Farson (2000, 2523) and Rudner (2002, 54064).
For a useful diagram and discussions, see Richelson and Ball (1985), page 85 for RCMA
Secret Service and page 95 for CSIS, but see chapter 5 in general.
Troy (1988, 253, 24566).
Troy (1988, 1568).
Johnson (2008, 5863) and Goodman (2008, 1701).
Both PSEPC and PSC trace their origins to the 2002 Public Safety Act, itself the product of
Bill C-55 of April 29, 2002 which died when the Parliament was prorogued in September.
For the postCold War, pre9/11 changes, see Farson and Whitaker (2008, 2236, 2835).
Charles (2005, 22537).
Jackson (2005, 325, ch. 1).
Troy (1988, 247).
Harry Trumans middle name is not an initial.
Valero (2003, 91118).
Figure from Rempel (2004, 6378). Compare to US OSS having over 13,000 in 1944 (Jackson
2005, 33).
Farson (2000, 23031).
Rudner (2007, 47390).
Farson (2005, 1104, 99119).
Yet their capacities have been seriously questioned alter 9/11. On the CIAs limitations, see
Goodman (2008), and on the FBIs, see Zegart (2007, 16584).
Troy (1988, 2567).
Crabb and Mulcahy (1989, 15368).
Hastedt, (1986, 2930).

Notes on contributor
Imtiaz Hussain is a Professor of International Relations at Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico
City. He utilized recent fellowships to develop two new courses on North American foreign policy
and political economy, organized several North America-related seminars/conferences, edited two

50

I. Hussain

books on the region from those conferences, and wrote a number of journal articles on regionalism,
democratization, and security. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (1989), he is originally
from Bangladesh.

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