Finding terrorists is different from finding garden variety criminals.

If you find them and arrest them, you need to build a good, strong case against them that will lead to conviction. But you also need to stop them before they attack, and still build a good court case that will put them safely away in jail.

But how do we do that?

Our British cousins know how. It requires patience. Beginning with the first good lead, they set up surveillance and begin to watch and listen with whatever useful tools are at hand, and as their knowledge grows, so does their watching and listening. They learn as much as they can about the people and plans and contacts, while staying alert to any signs that some attack might be about to happen. They also try to infiltrate someone into the group, to develop first hand information, which is always a slow process.

If an attack is imminent, they must find a way to stop it, hopefully without having to close down the surveillance effort. It’s a process they learned over the years when defending against IRA attacks.

But it clearly wouldn’t work here as a regular strategy. As soon as the surveillance results start coming in, there will be a leak. Count on it.

The surveillance will be shut down and the group taken into custody, if possible, before they disappear. The evidence against them may be meager and incomplete, since the surveillance never ran its planned course.

A defense attorney would quickly get the case dismissed and return the “not guilty” to their rightful places in society, after which they will probably disappear.

In this country, leakers are heroes, and often become celebrities and sometimes pundits, and maybe even write a book.