In Battling Terrorism, the French Excel

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ALISON STEWART, host:

The French excel at many things, red wine, perfumes, silk scarves, and fighting terrorism. Because of a unique system where intelligence and the judicial communities work in tandem, France is considered to have one of the best track records on keeping its citizenry safe after a few decades of considerable fear.

Now, considering a recording attributed to Osama bin Laden threatened attacks in Europe, reprisals for running cartoons depicting Allah in some European papers, and just yesterday al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a new audio tape calling for attacks in American targets, perhaps the U.S. should take a look at the French model, or maybe not. Here to help us consider this is Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the Center of the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. Jeremy, thank you for being with us.

Dr. JEREMY SHAPIRO (Director, Center of the United States and Europe, Brookings Institution): Thanks for having me.

STEWART: Now, at two points in the past two decades, mid-'90s, mid-'80s, France was dealing with a series of attacks internally, department stores, trains. Why, at the time, did it seem to be infested with terror cells?

Dr. SHAPIRO: Well, it seems as if, particularly in the 1970s, France essentially allowed itself to be a sanctuary for terrorists, as long as they wouldn't attack French interests, and as long as they wouldn't operate within France. And this, over time, proved to be a problem, because when the interest of the groups changes or when the international situation changed, they decided to lash out at France. And of course, they were well-placed to do so.

STEWART: So the French just basically did not poke the hornet's nest internally?

Dr. SHAPIRO: Yeah, precisely. This is a common strategy, actually. We saw it in London in the 1990s. We've seen it in the U.S., even, with regard to Irish terrorists in the 1970s.

STEWART: Now, the French moved to a manage-and-minimize strategy, from suppression to prevention. Can you describe the changes French intelligence services made that took care of the past problems and possible thwarted problems in the future?

Dr. SHAPIRO: Well, one of the things they noticed, particularly after the '80s and '90s, was that it wasn't enough to simply be able to respond to the attacks. You had to get into the networks. You had to get into the logistical networks and that meant sort of increasing surveillance on the society and their ability to bring into play judicial tools before what they had previously considered crimes even took place. And so they created both a crime of what we would call conspiracy, and also an organization which could act with judicial powers even before violent acts had taken place.

STEWART: Let's break down a couple of the things you talked about, because that's a bunch of different ideas. The French, they've chosen to live with this very different standard of surveillance than we have in the United States. Describe the kind of surveillance that's allowed.

Dr. SHAPIRO: The French have really extensive domestic surveillance. They have a domestic intelligence agency which - they have two domestic intelligence agencies, but one of them basically just does surveillance. They are placed in more or less every town. They go into mosques and churches. They take polls - secret polls of the countryside to figure out what people are thinking. And it's generally assumed in France that the government is looking at what you are doing.

STEWART: Now, you also mentioned integrating a judicial system. Can you explain how the intelligence community and certain kind of judge, imbued with certain powers, work together?

Dr. SHAPIRO: Yeah, they have an institution there called the "investigating magistrate," which is - there is no real exact analogue in the U.S. system for. He's sort of a cross between a judge and a prosecutor. He's a judge in the sense that he is not an advocate for the defense of the prosecution. He's an impartial arbiter of the truth.

But he's a prosecutor in the sense of the fact that he's deeply involved in the investigation. So he brings the powers of a judge, wire taps, preventative detention, and other powers that only a judge would have, and assist him in the investigation. And he assembles a dossier with the help of the intelligence services.

This has created, kind of accidentally, at least, not intentionally, a link between the judicial and intelligence services, which is quite rare. The intelligence services need these investigating magistrates to get these powers, which are very useful for investigation. The judicial people need the intelligence people for their legwork and their contacts. And this means that there's a very tight link between them that the judicial people really have a very good sense how intelligence works and vice versa.

And so the cooperation has been good. And this has proven, I think, to be very, very valuable for the long-term fight against terrorism. I think one of the problems we have with the judicial branch in the United States and in most countries is that they sort of move from case to case, and they're not really aware of how terrorism works and how intelligence works.

STEWART: One of the differences between the way - or at least, it's been written about - the differences between the way France and the United States approach this problem, is that France treats it as a long-term problem, versus the way the United States has been describing the War on Terror as something that will have an end.

Dr. SHAPIRO: Yeah, I think that's right. The French have a really long and sorry history with terrorism over all sorts of different types coming from many different enemies. And so they clearly view it as a permanent feature of modern life, something that can be managed but not eliminated. Conceivably, you can eliminate a given group, and they certainly have in some circumstances, but that wouldn't end the problem of terrorism.

So therefore - because somebody else would take it up. So therefore, they've embedded counter-terrorism in their system. They expect to be able to - to have to do it forever. Therefore, they want to do it in a manner that is consistent with French principals of justice and fairness.

STEWART: But it's fair to say it would be very hard to apply French principals of justice to American culture. I mean, we're a much bigger country. We have cultural differences. Some of the descriptions of surveillance, preventative measures of keeping people much longer in custody than they are in the United States, some of those, frankly, Jeremy, just wouldn't fly here, right?

Dr. SHAPIRO: Oh, absolutely. I think what we can learn from the French is not so much the precise measures, but rather the need for consistency between whatever we do and our own beliefs and principles. Because if we think, as the president so often says, that we're in a long-term fight, that we will be dealing with this problem for generations, then we do need to find a system like the French which is consistent with our values.

Now, of course, our values are slightly different than the French values, so it implies a different system. I would argue the problem we've had here is that we haven't even attempted to find a system which is consistent with our own values, much less the French.

STEWART: Jeremy Shapiro is the director of research at the Center of the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. Thanks for speaking with us, Jeremy.

Mr. SHAPIRO: Thank you.

MARTIN: Next on the show, this tiny country of Bhutan held its first parliamentary elections after the king decided to step aside. The end of a royal dynasty and the beginning of a democracy. That's coming up next on the Bryant Park Project from NPR News.

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