| Summary/Abstract |
“The Belgians just aren’t up to it,” said a French intelligence source anonymously after the 13 November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.1 Robert-Jan Bartunek “Belgium Hits Back at French Criticism Over Lax Intelligence,” Reuters, 17 November 2015, at
http://www.reuters.com/article/france-shooting-belgium-criticism-idUSL8N13C3OV20151117
, accessed 17 November 2015.
Surely frustrated by the connections surfacing between the attackers and Belgium, he or she may have had a point. Throughout the 1980s the Belgian intelligence services were routinely criticized, fairly or unfairly, for just about anything.2 “Every institution experiences difficulties at some time or another. The 1980s was just such a period […]. Now we need to pull ourselves together, overcome our difficulties, and go about restoring people’s confidence. We have learned the lessons of the past.” Nancy Ferroni, interview with SE Administrateur général Bart Van Lijsebeth, “Soulever un coin du voile du secret,” Le Vif/L’Express, 5 March 1999, p. 18.
In the 1990s, those services were thought, as a Belgian intelligence officer put it, to be operating “like something out of the Middle Ages.”3 Nancy Ferroni “Le Spy Blues,” Le Vif/L’Express, 5 March 1999, p. 16. In more recent years, Belgium has been increasingly seen as a hotbed of Islamic radicalization and as a staging ground for terrorist attacks.
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