Could Paris teach Washington a thing or two about protecting civil liberties while tracking down terrorists at home? In the United States, revelations that the Bush administration mandated domestic spying have caused a political uproar. France, however, has been spying on its citizens for years, as part of its effective, albeit controversial, counterterrorist system.

In 1988, the FBI invited Alain Marsaud, then France’s top antiterrorist magistrate, to speak about terrorism to the bureau’s new recruits at its academy in Quantico, Virginia.

Marsaud, now a conservative lawmaker, told the audience of would-be feds of the deadly threat that radical Islamist terrorist networks posed to Western societies. His talk was an unmitigated flop. “They thought we were Martians,