O Canada

By Sebastian Sprenger / April 22, 2009 at 5:00 AM

Amid public professions of the excellent U.S.-Canadian security cooperation, Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano this week said she is troubled by -- as she described it -- known or suspected terrorists crossing the border from Canada into the United States.

In an interview with CBC News, Napolitano described the situation at America's northern border like this:

"((Y))es, Canada is not Mexico. It doesn't have a drug war going on; it didn't have 6,000 homicides that were drug-related last year. Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there."

Since the April 20 interview, news reports have focused mostly on follow-up remarks she made suggesting those carrying out the September 11, 2001, attacks also had made their way to the United States from Canada. In a statement released after the interview, Napolitano said she knows this to be untrue.

But Napolitano's 9/11 connection comments aside, her remarks about the threat of terrorists traveling from Canada to the United States mirror a belief held by some in the military community.

As InsideDefense.com reported in February, officials at U.S. Northern Command's Joint Task Force-North believe Canadian immigration policies are creating a "favorable" environment for what the U.S. government deems to be potential terrorists seeking entry into the United States from the north.

The assessment was inadvertently posted on a JTF-North Web site earlier this year, and officials have since removed the document. (Our readers can view two Canada-related briefing slides extracted from it -- marked "for official use only/law-enforcement sensitive" -- here.)

U.S. security officials have declined to elaborate on the findings in the document. Tristan Landry, a spokesman for the Canadian Embassy in Washington, argued Canada presents no greater threat to U.S. security "than any other Western democracy."

54499