Canada's spies face tough questions after militant attacks

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On Monday one of Canada's top spy officials assured Canadian lawmakers that were no signs of an imminent terrorist attack on the country. Within hours a disaffected Muslim convert had run down two soldiers, killing one of them. Two days later, another Muslim convert armed with a rifle shot dead a Canadian soldier guarding the national war memorial in the capital, Ottawa, and then raced into the nearby parliament, where he exchanged fire with security personnel before being shot dead. Police said on Thursday they had no information indicating the two attacks were linked, and no Islamist militant group, such as Islamic State and al Qaeda, has claimed credit. The absence of an apparent organised conspiracy by the two men is of cold comfort to Canada's security agencies, who are facing uncomfortable questions about what they knew and when and why they were unable to stop the attacks since both attackers were known to them as potential security threats. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's main spy agency, did not immediate respond to requests for comment. Parliament attacker Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, who was shot after passing a room in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper was meeting lawmakers, was not under surveillance at the time of the attack, a U.S. government source told Reuters. The source said Zehaf-Bibeau was regarded as a security threat by Canadian authorities but not a high enough threat to warrant constant surveillance, which is often costly and labour intensive. Western intelligence and security officials have said that few if any Western spy and security agencies have sufficient personnel to closely monitor all suspects linked to the Syrian and Iraq conflict. They need to prioritise surveillance and focus on the suspects considered most dangerous, U.S. officials said. Police said on Thursday there were at least 93 Canadians who were viewed as "high risk" because they wanted to travel abroad to join Islamic militant groups. Zehaf-Bibeau, however, was not on that list, they said. It takes between 10 to 12 personnel to plant a listening device and up to 28 agents to follow and constantly monitor a suspect, a lawmaker told Monday's hearing by the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, citing testimony from CSIS personnel. Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, heightened monitoring and investigation of potential threats has put a strain on Canada’s security apparatus at a time when Ottawa has been trying to bring a wide budget deficit under control. CSIS' budget was C$513.0 million in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014. The budget for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was C$2.76 billion in the same period. "There is nothing more we can do with the budget we have except to prioritise internally as effectively as we can, and I think we're doing that," Jeff Yaworski, deputy director of operations for the CSIS, said on Monday. Yaworski said CSIS worked with the RCMP "wherever possible" to monitor people who had returned from abroad and were considered a threat, but "we can’t devote all our resources to all of them all the time." PASSPORT RENEWAL The government stalled a passport renewal application by Zehaf-Bibeau, a small-time criminal who had recently lived at a homeless shelter and was estranged from his mother, the U.S. government source said. Canadian police said on Thursday they suspected that delay may have helped pushed Zehaf-Bibeau to launch the attack. It is not clear whether Zehaf-Bibeau was influenced in any way by Martin Rouleau-Couture, 25 who was shot dead by police on Monday after running over the two soldiers in a Quebec parking lot. Another U.S. source familiar with the case said Canada's move to block renewal of Zehaf-Bibeau's passport had been recent. It was not known when he came to the attention of Canadian security authorities. Police said that it now appeared that Zehaf-Bibeau had intended to travel to Syria, where Islamic State has taken over swathes of the country. Yaworski said his agency was aware of at least 50 Canadians involved in terrorist-related activity with Islamic State and other extremist groups in the region. LONE WOLVES Canadian, U.S. and European security officials have identified so-called "lone wolf" attackers radicalised by online propaganda as the hardest to detect. Zehaf-Bibeau and Rouleau appeared to have been influenced by radical British cleric Anjem Choudary, a source familiar with their cases told Reuters. Rouleau's Twitter account showed he followed several radical preachers including Choudary, but the preacher denied in an interview with Reuters that he had exerted any influence over the men. "The fact that someone follows you on Twitter does not mean you necessarily influenced him to do anything," he said. Choudary's followers have been connected to a number of militant plots in Britain in recent years and he was arrested last month on suspicion of encouraging terrorism, and supporting a banned organisation, but was released without charge. Zehaf-Bibeau, the son of a Libyan father and Canadian mother was a misfit and had a criminal record that included robbery and drug offences, according to friends, family and court records. Police said on Thursday that Zehaf-Bibeau's email address had been found on the hard drive of a suspect charged with a terrorist-related offence but gave no further details. Rouleau, who converted to Islam last year, was among those being tracked by police on suspicion of taking part in militant activities abroad or planning to do so. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said on Monday they met with him multiple times, most recently on Oct. 9. The RCMP gave few details about the meetings but said they stopped the surveillance after Oct. 9 because Rouleau gave them reason to believe he would change his ways. (Additional reporting by Michael Holden in London, Writing by Ross Colvin)