Mr. Fyfe is correct I think in his statements with regard to having a separate group making a determination as to who should enter the witness program, rather than the arresting officer or his particular precinct or department and such.
Of course, my experience goes to federal investigative agencies, so I was confronted with the problem of the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service, and 26 federal investigative agencies that might have witnesses. I didn't like the idea of agents handing money to potential witnesses. I think it would look bad in court, and I thought if we had an independent group, such as the U.S. Marshals Service, that was not competitive, it would work much better.
I also could not see the DEA turning its witnesses over to the FBI for protection, or the FBI turning its witnesses over to the DEA or the Secret Service or whatever, again because of the competition. So I looked for a neutral agency that would do that. Nobody has a problem with the Marshal Service because they are not competing with them in any way, so that would be useful.
In our country, I think there are four people in the federal system who can determine who shall enter the witness protection program. It is the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, the assistant attorney general, criminal division, and one other person designated by the attorney general. I was the one other person.
It allows a standard to be established as to what types of cases you will put into the program. And you are more efficient with respect to money, you're more efficient with respect to investigations, and you're more efficient with respect to prosecutions when you have the judgment made centrally, where that group reflects the views of the highest law enforcement officer--the attorney general, in our case--as far as what cases you will go on.
So if we were to have someone from the Fish and Wildlife Service call us up and say that someone had shot three rabbits and they wanted to put the witness in the witness protection program, it might be a truly important case to that particular agent but not one that I would find deserving of a $100,000 expenditure and the movement of 24 people. So there is a standard that can be applied by having an independent judgment made from the investigators.
Now, you don't have to have a separate office, as I did with the U.S. Marshal Service. And if I may, without knowledge, dip into your area, if you had a separate group within the RCMP and their sole function was witness protection and making judgment, and there was a precise individual or individuals responsible for exercising that judgment, you could achieve the same results that I think we achieved in our program.
One other thing that Mr. Fyfe said, which has to be said by me, is that all witness protection programs need improvement. No matter how good they think they are, we need a lot of improvement.