My friend the Watch Cat always winds up putting up thought provoking posts. In this case she points out a clear effort on the part of Sadam Hussein’s Intelligence services to sway US policy by targeting individuals in the United State Congress. Clearly we are reliant upon our counter-intelligence teams to detect and halt actions like the one described. Just as clearly, they have a very difficult job to do and expecting them to halt 100% of the covert operations that take place within the US is unreasonable.
I do think that it is reasonable though for them to use a system that would alert them to individuals or facilities that would be likely targets for foreign services. I think that I may ponder this issue for a while and see if there is a more thought out post to be had. In the interim go read Watch Cat’s post.