Homeland Security: Guarding Against Terrorism

The Conflict

Days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the formation of an Office of Homeland Security. Under Director Tom Ridge, the office would coordinate the broad-based counterterrorist functions of a multitude of federal, state, and local agencies. Critics of the plan noted that without any statutory power or significant budget of its own, the Office of Homeland Security would have to rely on its persuasive power to get other agencies to cooperate on a comprehensive counter-terrorist plan.

Political

• Counterterrorist spending had been greatly increased throughout the 1990s and skyrocketed after the September 11 attacks. Much of the money remained at the federal level, however, leaving state and local systems understaffed and inadequately trained. The 2003 budget for homeland security promised to address this imbalance, and Ridge staked his reputation on including state and local officials in the planning process.

Ideological

• Other nations, such as Israel and the United Kingdom, have taken strong steps to counter domestic terrorism. In instances when federal agents have taken measures against domestic fringe groups in the United States, however, the results have been controversial, including the deadly raid at the Branch Davidian compound in 1993.

Football fans were thrilled with the last-minute, forty-eight-yard field goal by the New England Patriots that gave them the win in the thirty-sixth Super Bowl game over the St. Louis Rams. The 73,000 spectators who witnessed the Patriots' 20-17 victory in the Louisiana Superdome on February 3, 2002, were also relieved that the suspense over the game's outcome was played out on the field and not in the stands. As one of the first National Special Security Events designated by the Office of Homeland Security and the White House, the game had received as much attention for the possibility of suffering a terrorist attack as for the storybook nature of the Patriots' comeback season. Fans were admitted five hours before the start of the game, with ticket holders subjected to a number of security screenings. Male ticket holders had to take off their shoes and reset their watches to prove that the items were not bombs. Binocular and camera bags, backpacks, and any other large bags were banned outright from the stadium, as were coolers and camera lenses longer than six inches.

The Super Bowl and the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, which began just five days later, captured the nation's attention for their heightened security efforts. Yet Office of Home-land Security director Tom Ridge cautioned that federal involvement for such major events was not realistic for every situation. "We have so many high-profile events throughout the country in all fifty states, where we literally have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people, attracting both domestic and international visitors," Ridge told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in January 2002, adding, "We can't designate every major event as a national special security event." Emphasizing the need for state and local officials to bear the greatest share of responsibility for safeguarding future events, Ridge continued to say that a security model should be applied to highly visible, broadly attended events to ensure safety. With the Office of Homeland Security created only months before, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, however, many Americans wondered what the new model of security might entail and how quickly it could be learned and applied.

Historical Background

Controversies Over Domestic Defense

Ridge's concern over sharing responsibility with local officials stemmed not only from budgetary concerns but also from the federal government's past profile in security matters, which had often proved controversial in the era before September 11. At times the government itself was accused of acting in an aggressive, even unconstitutional, manner when confronted with extremist or terrorist groups. In one of the most contentious events, eighty agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to issue arrest and search warrants of the Branch Davidian religious compound, led by David Koresh, near Waco, Texas. After a shootout on February 28, 1993, that left four ATF agents and possibly six Branch Davidians dead, the two sides settled in for a 51-day standoff. Negotiations stalled while Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents engaged in psychological tactics—playing loud music and chants through loudspeakers, for example—and the Branch Davidians refused to surrender. After Attorney General Janet Reno received reports of a large weapons cache in the compound, on April 19 FBI agents poured tear gas into the sect's main building in the hope of ending the stalemate, but they were unsuccessful. Hours later, a massive fire blazed through the building and killed nearly 80 of the sect's members. While federal officials insisted that the Branch Davidians had set the fire themselves in a desperate and suicidal maneuver, the ensuing investigation highlighted the difficulty in balancing public safety while guaranteeing civil and religious liberties.

Convinced that the government's intervention at Waco was unjustified, Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War (1991) veteran, and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols, decided to strike back at the government in the name of individual freedom. McVeigh had already been outraged by the U.S. Marshals Service's shootout with white supremacist Randy Weaver in August 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which left one marshal and two members of Weaver's family dead. Feeding on the virulent racism, anti-Semitism, and antigovernment sentiments of the infamous novel by William Pierce, under the pseudonym of Andrew Macdonald, The Turner Diaries, McVeigh found support for his growing rage in the various militia movements that sprang up in the 1990s. Often associated with neo-Nazi, separatist, and survivalist agendas, the individual militia organizations also espoused libertarian ideals that attacked government regulation and intervention. At times their rhetoric veered into wild conspiracy theories, with the sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco invoked as proof of a government bent on taking away all basic civil liberties. By the time McVeigh and Nichols put their plan into action, as many as two hundred small militia groups claimed as many as 100,000 members across the United States though no militia group was directly involved in the terrorist attack.

On April 19, 1995—exactly two years after the siege at Waco ended in tragedy—McVeigh parked a delivery van packed with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel outside of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. In the resulting explosion and rescue operations, 168 victims died. To McVeigh and Nichols—the most deadly domestic terrorists up to that point in American history—their actions were justified as a protest against the "Socialist Wannabe Slaves" of the government. As McVeigh had written to a friend in July 1994 (quoted in Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck's 2001 book American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing), "Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly." He added, "Blood will flow in the streets."

The United States Before September 11

While McVeigh's actions demonstrated that government actions against perceptions of domestic groups could give rise to further violence in response, the Oklahoma City bombing was one of a handful of terrorist events that disrupted American life in the 1990s. Between 1990-95 the United States witnessed 32 separate terrorist incidents; about one-third were bombings committed by animal rights groups. Almost all of the events were staged by domestic terrorists; just two—the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and a takeover of the Iranian Mission at the United Nations in New York in 1992;—were conducted by foreign groups. Prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, most Americans were probably more familiar with the terrorist-centered plots of movies such as Die Hard and Speed than they were with any real-life terrorist actions in the United States. Even the deadly bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics at Atlanta's Centennial Park quickly devolved into controversies over the naming of Richard Jewell as a suspect by various media outlets. Jewell was eventually cleared of suspicion, but the investigation over the motives of indicted bomber Eric Robert Rudolph remained murky several years after the attack.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union after 1991 and the easing of Cold War tensions promised to deliver a "peace dividend" to Americans in the form of reduced spending on defense and security. With the United States standing as the world's lone superpower, it also seemed that the nation would take its place as a peace broker in places such as Bosnia and Somalia instead of the direct adversary of its former Cold War foes. Ironically, both these trends proved illusory. Within a decade the United States' status as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth stirred up resentment among a new generation of terrorists who used their extremist religious and cultural beliefs to begin a new war against the West, with the United States as their primary target.

Homeland Security: Comparative Perspectives

Israel. The generalized nature of the militant Islamic terrorist threats made it difficult for U.S. officials to foresee the September 11 bombings. In contrast other nations have been forced to deal with specific terrorist threats for generations. The country with perhaps the greatest experience with terrorism is Israel. Even before their nation's founding in 1948, Zionists had been targeted by their neighbors for expulsion or eradication from the Middle East. Consequently, the new State of Israel enacted broad counterterrorist measures from the start. In the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance passed in 1948, Israel defined terrorism to include not only direct acts of violence but also threats of violence against a person. Members of terrorist organizations included those who directly participated in its activities, published its materials, or gave money or any other resources to the group. Terrorist organizations themselves were defined by the government, which gave it broad discretion in singling out such groups. Further, the ordinance allowed authorities to prosecute anyone who allowed a terrorist organization to meet or keep items on their property and granted broad powers to military authorities to close down any place suspected of being the center of terrorist activities.

The 1948 Ordinance was expanded in 1980 to include the offense of "manifesting identification or sympathy with a terrorist organization in a public place … either by flying a flag or displaying a symbol or slogan or by causing an anthem or slogan to be heard, or any other overt act clearly manifesting such identification or sympathy." In 1986 another amendment to the ordinance criminalized most contacts made abroad with terrorists, although much of this section was repealed in 1993.

The Israeli government's broad counterterrorist powers have raised numerous international controversies. The state authorized secret assassination attempts on known terrorists outside of its borders, and Shin Bet, its intelligence agency, engaged in coercive interrogation, including the use of physical force on individuals, to gather information about terrorist activities. To civil rights advocates, such activities constituted nothing less than state-sanctioned terrorism and torture. Yet Israel's leaders have consistently defended its zero-tolerance stance against terrorism. As Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister from 1996-99, wrote in his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism, "Of course, there is something laudable in the efforts of Western democracies to hold their governments to the highest possible standards when it comes to respecting the rights of their citizens … Yet the threat to the most basic civil rights of not fighting terrorism are even more debilitating to a free society."

Indeed Netanyahu fulfilled his reputation as a hardliner against the Palestinians while in office. Although he was replaced after just three years as prime minister, other officials have invoked the same outlook. After being criticized by U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell and Canadian foreign affairs minister Bill Graham in March 2002 for the use of harsh counterterrorist tactics in the face of renewed suicide bombings by Palestinian militants, President Moshe Kastav of Israel was defiant. "No one around the world has any right to condemn us if we use the right to defend ourselves," Kastav told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on March 7, 2002.

While Israel's counterterrorist policies stirred up criticism abroad, its citizens had long since accepted a high degree of government intervention in their daily lives. Authorities routinely searched individuals and automobiles in public places, and scrutiny at border crossings and the country's main international airport was intense. The state-owned airline El Al examined every package checked or carried onto its planes and utilized a profiling system to screen every passenger on its flights. Highly trained and well-paid security guards also questioned passengers extensively to keep terrorists from sneaking onto a flight. As he advocated such intrusive counterterrorist methods for America in his book Fighting Terrorism, Netanyahu admitted, "Undoubtedly the leaders of the United States in particular could be subjected to a barrage of criticism that they are curtailing civil freedoms and that they are overreacting." He added the warning that "The security of democracies and their well-being cannot be governed by the ebb and flow of local political skirmishes."

The United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom as well, the move to stronger homeland defense raised accusations of civil rights violations with the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1974. Enacted to combat a rash of bombings in England perpetrated by the Irish Republican Army, the act granted broad detention powers to authorities to arrest and interrogate suspected terrorists. In conjunction with a number of controversial practices—including isolation, deprivation of food and sleep, and noise bombardment—however, the British government was condemned for condoning torture in a 1975 report by the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Yet the "temporary" law remained on the books and was even strengthened in December 2001 with the Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act, which allowed authorities to detain suspected terrorists without filing charges. The 2001 act also retained provisions that made it a crime to fail to report information on terrorist activities, a device that had been used to prosecute family members of terrorists.

As in Israel, British authorities also used coercive interrogation, including the practices condemned by the European Convention, to gather information on terrorist activities. As valuable as this tactic was in the short run to prevent specific terrorist attacks, however, it may have fueled further terrorist responses in both countries. Philip B. Heymann noted in his 1998 book Terrorism and America: A Commonsense Strategy for a Democratic Society, that strong measures of counterterrorism have at times actually resulted in an increase in violence, "additional recruit to the terrorist cause, and reduced willingness to assist the government." In example, Heymann notes that "in Northern Ireland policies allowing widespread warrantless searches of citizen houses led to increased terrorist group recruitment, especially where the searches were accompanied by excessive use of force by security personnel and extensive destruction of citizen property."

Yet countries that have taken a more cautious approach in countering terrorism have been criticized, in hindsight, for not being aggressive enough in their actions. The case of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, which made headlines worldwide after its sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995, demonstrated the hesitancy of authorities in democratic countries to infringe upon religious and civil liberties. Under Japan's Religious Corporation Law of 1951, government interference in religious practices and programs was severely curtailed; only in cases where a group had clearly harmed public safety could such a group be disbanded. Unlike Israel's 1948 Ordinance, however, such a determination was not placed with the government, but rather with the judicial system. While the distinction served as an additional safeguard to religious freedom in Japan, it also slowed down attempts to deal effectively with radical fringe groups such as Aum Shinrikyo.

Japan. Beginning in the late 1980s, complaints about Aum Shinrikyo had been made to the authorities by former cult members and the families of individuals who remained with the sect. After the 1989 formation of the Aum Shinrikyo Victims' Association, the cult responded with a series of violent actions, including several abductions and murders, committed against its opponents. The group also raised suspicions with numerous incidents involving the accidental release of poisonous chemicals around its various compounds. Even after its deliberate sarin gas attack at Matsumoto, Japan, on June 27, 1994, which killed seven people, Aum Shinrikyo escaped immediate scrutiny. It was only after the accidental release of sarin gas at the cult's main compound in Kamikuishiki in July 1994 that the cult came under suspicion for terrorist activities. By January 1995 reports were made public that linked Aum Shinrikyo to the sarin gas attacks. The following month, police announced that one of the cult's leaders was wanted for the kidnapping and murder of an elderly man who helped his sister escape from the cult. Unfortunately, the announcement induced hysteria within the cult, and its apocalyptic leader, Asahara Shoko, ordered five Aum Shinrikyo members to bombard the Tokyo subway system with sarin gas.

While it operated under the cloak of religious freedom, Aum Shinrikyo's actions also demonstrated the challenge of coordinating information on terrorist activities across numerous federal and local agencies. Local authorities had little reason to suspect that the 1994 attacks were related to Aum Shinrikyo; the delay in linking the previous sarin gas attacks was crucial in permitting the cult to plan its final attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995. Complicating matters, several years after the attacks the Public Security Agency—the intelligence arm of the Ministry of Justice—was still hampered in its efforts to monitor the cult, which the government could not ban from the country.

With the perception that the authorities had failed to deal effectively with Aum Shinrikyo, public confidence in the country's safety and welfare dropped significantly, a trend that deepened after the September 11 attacks in the United States. An AP Worldstream report in January 2002 indicated that public confidence in Japan's safety, which had already fallen to 56 percent of those polled in 1995, now stood at just 47 percent. Fully 89 percent of the Japanese public said that they worried about crime or traffic accidents. As Japanese author Haruki Murakami concluded in 2000 in his moving oral history of the Aum Shinrikyo attacks, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche: "The Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo gas attack of January and March 1995 are two of the gravest tragedies in Japan's postwar history. It is no exaggeration to say that there was a marked change in the Japanese consciousness 'before' and 'after' these events. These twin catastrophes will remain embedded in our psyche as two milestones in our life as a people."

Counterterrorism under the Clinton Administration

Although Aum Shinrikyo had only a minor presence in North America, its actions set off warning bells among terrorist experts in the United States. Even after the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, however, the presidential administration of Bill Clinton (1993-2001) faced an uphill battle to pass counterterrorist legislation. The administration urged Congress to pass a comprehensive bill that included roving wiretaps that would allow authorities to track a suspect's communications regardless of location; chemical additives to explosive materials to make them easier to trace; and the criminalization of the possession of many materials used to make weapons of mass destruction, among other measures. The president's proposals were soon drowned out by partisan rhetoric, with Republican senator Orrin Hatch telling CNN in July 1996 that the provision to track explosives was "a phony issue." Hatch, along with Senate majority leader Trent Lott, also countered the administration's call for roving wiretaps. The senators then worked to tack on limitations to federal death penalty appeals as part of the bill.

As a result of the political process, the resulting Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 embodied a set of measures far weaker than the administration had wanted. The 1996 legislation did, however, criminalize fund raising or providing resources to foreign terrorist groups and allowed the deportation or exclusion of terrorist agents. Further, the act banned any financial transactions by American citizens with any country listed as a terrorist nation by the State Department, although commercial transactions with private parties were still allowed. The act also allowed Americans to bring civil suits against terrorist nations listed by the government as state sponsors of terrorism for damages from sabotage, torture, or hostage taking.

In 1996 the Clinton administration instituted the practice of designating certain high-risk sites National Security Special Events. The policy was implemented sparingly, with just nine events earning such status between 1996-2000. Under the policy—which used undisclosed criteria to determine which events merited extra protection—National Security Special Events were given the highest level of federal assistance, comparable to the security force that accompanied any presidential appearance. After September 11, the policy was invoked to safeguard a series of high-profile events in the United States, including the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City in November 2001; the State of the Union Address to Congress in January 2002; the Super Bowl in New Orleans in February 2002; and the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City later that same month.

Recent History and the Future

Establishing the Office of Homeland Security

In his Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People on the night of September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush (2001-) announced the creation of a new cabinet-level agency, the Office of Homeland Security. He also introduced the office's first director, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, whom he described as "a military veteran, an effective governor, a true patriot, a trusted friend." Bush charged Ridge with the mission to "oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism, and respond to any attacks that may come."

Ridge, then serving his second of two terms as Pennsylvania governor, was an unfamiliar face to most Americans. Although he had been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential candidate on the Bush ticket in the 2000 presidential election, his status as a Roman Catholic who favored maintaining the status quo on abortion rights put him in disfavor with the pro-life, religious-right faction of the Republican Party. The fifty-six-year-old politician had spent almost all of his career in public service. Despite some controversies over his welfare reform program and his support for public funding of sports stadiums, Ridge had maintained his popularity in opinion polls consistently throughout his two terms in office. Although he had few other qualifications for heading a counterterrorist team, Ridge brought another intangible asset to the job: as a "trusted friend" of the president, it was clear from the start that he would have the full backing of the Bush administration to get the Office of Homeland Security off to a sound start.

Following the president's announcement on September 20, the Office of Homeland Security was officially established by an executive order on October 8, 2001. The office was described as the coordinating body for local, state, and federal counterterrorist programs. Although it would not function in itself as a response agency, the office would set priorities, announce initiatives, and oversee preparedness activities at all levels of government.

As a coordinating body of forty federal departments—including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, the National Economic Council, and the Office of Management and Budget—the scope of the office's mission was broad. The office was charged not only with conducting preparedness exercises and reviewing emergency response systems across the nation, but with reviewing antiterrorist legislation and making budgetary recommendations as well. Its functions also included safeguarding the nation's agricultural sector from terrorist attacks, helping to coordinate immigration and trade policies, and improving security in the nation's airspace and along its land and sea borders. Yet it was clear that, despite the directives of the president's order, the Office of Homeland Security had little administrative or legislative power at its disposal. Ridge's role as a bureaucratic infighter with a persuasive personality and close ties to the president thus became vital to the new agency's success.

In his first month on the job Ridge learned how difficult it would be to help Americans adjust to a new level of preparedness and vigilance without causing undue panic. Just three days after the Office of Homeland Security was established, it issued a national warning to be on high alert against possible terrorist actions. Ridge did not disclose any specific threats in the October 11 warning, however, and urged people to carry on with their normal daily activities. Still, the general warning was less than reassuring to some, who wondered why the statement could not be more detailed in the nature of the threat.

The criticism continued after a second "high alert" warning on October 29, which again did not carry any specific information about a possible terrorist attack. By the time of the third warning from Ridge's office, on December 3, 2001, however, it appeared that the public had come to take such warnings in stride. A Chicago Tribune editorial noted on December 5, 2001, "This nation has had to learn to live with a new state of emergency … This is our new reality. Ridge has become the administration's point person. He's handling the job well. Maybe his formal warning allows some citizens to feel more confident about picking up the phone to report suspicious behavior."

Ridge also faced criticism in his first month as Homeland Security chief for the federal government's erratic response to a series of anthrax attacks in October and November of 2001. Caught by surprise over the ability of a terrorist to transmit anthrax through contaminated letters, Ridge and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson "often looked flummoxed and misinformed, learning medicine on the go and winging it when they didn't know," according to a January 21,2002, article in Time (Jeffrey Klugar, et al.), "Under Thompson and Ridge, bad—and sometimes fatal—decisions were made," the article continued, including the decision to keep a Washington, DC, mail sorting facility open even after it was known to be heavily contaminated with anthrax spores. By November 2001 five people had died from inhalation anthrax exposures, including two postal workers at the contaminated facility, with 23 confirmed anthrax cases. The attacks ceased as mysteriously as they had begun, and as the FBI and U.S. Postal Service continued their hunt for the culprit, questions about the nation's ability to deal with such a public health crisis lingered.

By the end of 2001, however, Ridge had made headway in navigating the bureaucratic channels of Washington, particularly in using his discretionary powers to influence the president's new budget. By the time the president announced his 2003 budget in a proposal announced on February 4, 2002, Ridge's authority was obvious in the US$37.3 billion devoted to homeland security. The amount nearly doubled that spent in the previous budget and reflected Ridge's recommendations on prioritizing border security, airline safety, bioterrorist defenses, emergency response training, and intelligence gathering.

Border Security: Immigration and Trade

With the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, government officials on both sides of the border between Canada, the United States, and Mexico hailed a new era of cooperation and prosperity in the region. Sharing the longest undefended border in the world, Canada and the United States, for example, engaged in more than $1 billion in trade each day, a figure that doubled during the NAFTA era. Over 200 million people each year traveled between the two countries, with only cursory security checks on either side. After September 11, however, security concerns quickly presented roadblocks all along the border. As international shipments slowed to a standstill, factories shut down from the lack of components. Tourism also screeched to a halt as pileups at border crossings stretched into hours of waiting.

Like its American neighbor, the Canadian government quickly prioritized its response to September 11 to improve counterterrorist intelligence and prosecutions, become more engaged in international efforts to prevent terrorism, and facilitate commercial traffic across its borders. In October 2001 the Canadian government introduced legislation to broaden the number of prosecutable offenses related to terrorism, such as giving aid to terrorist groups or harboring a terrorist. The proposal also made it easier to prosecute such crimes by broadening surveillance powers and allowing authorities to keep secret some evidence of national security interest during trial.

While the counterterrorist proposals raised some criticism by civil liberties watchdogs in Canada, the introduction of new, streamlined security measures led to charges that the government risked subordinating the nation's security to economic interests. On December 12, 2001, then-Canadian foreign affairs minister John Manley and Ridge signed the Smart Border Declaration, which included thirty initiatives to facilitate trade and travel between the two countries. Under the agreement permanent residents of either country who had completed a screening process would be issued a "secure card" to allow them immediate access across the border. The new plan also outlined a system to clear goods for export at their initial shipment point instead of at the border, a system that had already been in limited use before September 11. Manley and Ridge also promised that their countries would share more of their data on customs and immigration matters.

More controversial were calls to allow customs agents to bear firearms on the Canadian side of the border. In light of the much more restrictive gun laws in Canada, some critics pointed to a creeping "Americanization" of the border. Manley rejected such assertions, telling Graham Fraser of the Toronto Star (December 13, 2001) the day after signing the Smart Border Declaration that "I don't believe that we have accepted the idea that our policies will be decided by the United States." He added, "The question of arming agents is something that we have not yet decided on."

Manley also refuted suggestions that the new policies were dictated by American interests rather than the security of Canada, saying that Canada's first priority was safety, with trade coming in at an important second. "[W]e lack sovereignty if we're poor," he said. Manley was also hopeful that negotiations with the United States would bring recognition of the "third country accord" principle that would allow either country to reject refugees seeking asylum after first entering the United States or Canada. If the accord were adopted as part of the security reforms, Canadian authorities would be allowed to reject those seeking asylum in their country who tried to enter the country via the United States—about half of all refugee claimants annually.

In February 2002 Canadian officials also committed themselves to increased security at the nation's ports after a U.S. Senate report documented chronic security lapses at those ports. While the greatest concern in the past had been the shipment of illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, hashish, and ecstasy into the country, organized crime rings such as the Hell's Angels also smuggled illegal immigrants and weapons through Canadian ports. With less than one percent of all container shipments being searched at some ports, a customs force comprised mostly of temporary workers, and a lack of information sharing among federal agencies, Canadian officials concluded that the country could no longer stint on its spending on manpower and technology at its borders. In March 2002 Ridge and Manley also announced that their countries would begin sharing teams of customs agents in the ports of Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax, Seattle-Tacoma, and Newark.

Trade and security issues also affected the post-September 11 relationship between the United States and its southern neighbor, Mexico. With a 2,000-mile-long border that had traditionally been a crossing point for millions of illegal aliens into the United States, immigration concerns jumped to the top of the agenda in talks between Ridge and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, his Mexican counterpart. Just one week before the terrorist attacks in the United States, Mexico's president, Vincente Fox, had joined President Bush on an American tour to promote an amnesty agreement to grant permanent resident status to about three million illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States. The proposal was abruptly tabled in the aftermath of the attacks, but in November 2001 discussions resumed with broad support on both sides of the border.

Airline Security

While Ridge had forged a consensus about border security issues with officials in Canada and Mexico, the topic of domestic airline security presented an even greater challenge. As details emerged on the ease with which terrorists had hijacked four commercial flights on September 11, confidence in security measures at the nation's airports plummeted. As the public learned that security was routinely subcontracted to private firms that inadequately trained and compensated their employees and failed to conduct criminal back-ground checks, support grew for the federal government to take over airport security. While the Bush administration at first resisted the calls to take over airport security, it eventually agreed to support the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by Congress on November 19, 2001. The act phased in federal control of airport security over the next year and added citizenship and English-language requirements for security employees.

Implementation of the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) was another controversial area of homeland security. Although CAPPS used a number of criteria to select certain passengers for in-depth searches and questioning, some regarded it as a system of racial profiling against passengers of Middle Eastern descent. When reports surfaced that several of the September 11 terrorists had been singled out by CAPPS for scrutiny—which screeners apparently failed to follow—however, there were renewed calls to strengthen the CAPPS system. Former El Al security chief Isaac Yeffet, who now worked as a security consultant in the United States, told Jim Morris of the Dallas Morning News in the November 8, 2001, article "Israel Offers U.S. Lessons in Aviation Security," "We have to stop relying on technology. We have to rely on qualified, well-trained human beings. The technology can help us. It cannot replace us. The enemy is sophisticated enough to know how to beat the X-ray machine."

Bioterrorism

The anthrax attacks of October and November 2001 demonstrated how ill prepared the United States was to counter a public health emergency on a significant scale. The 2003 budget thus contained a massive $4.5 billion increase in bioterrorist prevention measures, raising it to $5.9 billion. As the primary coordinating agency in this area, the Office of Homeland Security was charged with monitoring the supply of crucial vaccines; reviewing public health emergency response plans; overseeing the protection of the nation's food and water supplies; and developing a nationwide system to detect biological, chemical, and radiological threats.

Referring to the early missteps on the anthrax attacks, Ridge encouraged the public to take a long-range view of the effectiveness of the plans. In a speech given to the National Governors' Association meeting in February 2002, Ridge reflected that "We learned a lot of lessons with regard to our public health system as states and communities tried to deal with anthrax. Some of them were painful. We recognized some strengths in that system, but we saw some gaps and weaknesses … So it's a good investment for America to make. We'll be more secure against a bioterrorism attack, but we'll be a lot healthier and a lot better country, because we'll be upgrading our public health system."

Emergency Response Training

The effort to improve emergency response training at the local level was perhaps the most complex task of the Office of Homeland Security. From the start, however, the direction of the new agency represented a significant change from previous efforts, as an overwhelming percentage of past government counterterrorist funding had remained within federal agencies. As Ridge stated at the National Emergency Management Association's February 2002 meeting, "Prior to September 11, the notion that the federal government would be so involved financially with providing equipment and training and resources for local community first responders just, in the scheme of federal government, wasn't seen as a core responsibility or a federal responsibility …" He went on to say that the outline of a national defense procedure will only come into clear focus once comprehensive plans from each state are integrated. Ridge reiterated the need to envision homeland defense as a coordinated effort at all levels of government, with primary efforts coming from the local level; at the National Governor's Associations meeting, he told the audience, "I have a feeling that if we make every hometown secure, the homeland will be secure."

The 2003 budget proposal included $3.5 billion in spending on "first responders," the almost two million local police, firefighters, and other emergency rescue personnel that served as the front line of assistance in a terrorist attack. The bulk of the funds was pledged to immediate training exercises and equipment for local agencies, while some was reserved for paying the overtime costs accumulated in any emergency operation. Some $230 million in the budget was marked for improving volunteer efforts against terrorism through a new Citizen Corps. Incorporating existing efforts such as the Neighborhood Watch and Community Emergency Response Team programs, the Citizen Corps would also organize Medical Reserve Corps, Volunteers in Police Service groups and Terrorist and Information and Prevention Systems throughout local communities.

Intelligence Sharing and Technology

Improving information technology was the final priority announced by the Office of Homeland Security. While the initiatives might not have made as many headlines as the plans for upgrading border and airline security, they represented some of the most serious behind-the-scenes challenges for Ridge. Given the traditional rivalry among the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Attorney General's Office, Ridge faced an uphill battle to get the agencies to share information. Yet almost every directive of the Office of Homeland Security depended upon doing just that. As Ridge frankly admitted to Abraham McLaughlin of the Christian Science Monitor in the December 27, 2001, article "Ridge Applies Light Touch to Weighty Task," "I don't predict smooth sailing in the future."

The 2003 budget earmarked a $50 billion investment in information technology at the federal level, with $722 million devoted specifically to new systems of intelligence gathering and sharing. The proposed Information Integration Office, housed within the Department of Commerce, would collect data on suspected terrorists and provide it to relevant governmental agencies to help prevent suspects from entering the United States. The Immigration and Naturalization Service would also receive $380 million of the new-technology funds to establish a visa-tracking system to monitor the movement of noncitizens in the United States. There had been no such system in place prior to September 11, meaning that foreign visitors could violate their visas with near impunity. The new budget also included funds for the Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, created in October 2001 to safeguard governmental information and communication during a cyberterrorist attack.

Finally, the technology initiatives included plans to establish a Uniform National Threat Advisory System to warn and advise agencies at all levels of government in the event of a terrorist threat. Under the system, the Office of Homeland Security would issue four different alerts, based on the ascending nature and risk of the threat: ready, alert, serious, and critical. An alternate plan color-coded, which was enacted, the threats into five categories. While the new system promised to remove intra-agency squabbling over making such announcements, the plans raised questions of how valuable they would be in terms of promoting homeland security. "They violate all the guidance that we've come up with from disaster research," Mike Lindell, a security expert at Texas A&M University said in an interview with the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau in February 2002. "They don't tell you what to do other than be vigilant. What's that? We don't know." Instead, Lindell and other experts suggested that a system that linked an advisory with specific directives would be more helpful in reducing the damage from a potential terrorist attack.

While his staff fine-tuned the advisory system, Ridge maintained a high profile as the administration's leading counterterrorism voice. The Super Bowl and Winter Olympic Games added to public confidence that the Office of Homeland Security was fulfilling its mission. Ridge also continued to meet with his counterparts in Canada and Mexico to ensure progress on safeguarding the region's borders. All the while, he worked to marshal the government's programs against terrorism into one coherent effort. As Ridge concluded his comments to the National Emergency Management Association members in February 2002, "It will not just be a matter of resources. It's how we plan and how we integrate and how we coordinate our activity and how we cooperate in order to create this national network." He added, "I'm confident that we'll get it done."

In June 2002, President Bush bolstered the status of the Office of Homeland Security by creating a new Cabinet position for the newly promoted Department of Homeland Security.

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Timothy G. Borden

Chronology

August 1992 U.S. Marshals engage in a standoff with white supremacist Randy Weaver and his family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

February 28, 1993 The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms attempt to issue arrest and search warrants against David Koresh and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas; a fifty-one day standoff ensues.

1994-95 Aum Shinrikyo cult members stage two sarin gas attacks; the first attack kills seven people in the town of Matsumoto, and the second attack kills twelve people on the Tokyo subway.

April 19, 1995 Timothy McVeigh and Terry LynnNichols bomb the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

September 11, 2001 Terrorists suspected of being connected to the terrorist group al-Qaeda attack the World Trade Center buildings in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, DC. More than three thousands people are killed.mid-September 2001 The first of several anthrax-riddled letters sent through the U.S. mail is received in the offices of American Media in Boca Raton, Florida.

September 20, 2001 President Bush announces plans for a Homeland Security Office, the first new cabinet office since 1989.

October 8, 2001 The Office of Homeland Security is established, with Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as its first director.

October 11, 2001 A general terrorism alert is issued by the Office of Homeland Security. A second alert is issued on October 29, and a third alert follows on December 3.

October 17, 2001 The Financial Anti-Terrorism Act is passed by Congress.

October 26, 2001 The USA Patriot Act is enacted into law.

November 19, 2001 The Airport and TransportationSecurity Act is signed into law.

November 29, 2001 Congress passes the Terrorism RiskProtection Act.

December 12, 2001 The Smart Border Declaration, intended to increase security between the United States and Canada, is signed by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge of the United States and Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley of Canada.

February 3, 2002 Super Bowl XXXVI between the NewEngland Patriots and the St. Louis Rams is played in New Orleans, Louisiana, without any significant security threat.

February 4, 2002 President Bush announces a $37.7 billion budget for homeland security for the 2003 fiscal year.

February 8-23, 2002 The XIX Winter Games are held in Salt Lake City, Utah, without any significant security incidents.

June 6, 2002 President Bush announces a new Cabinet position, creating the Department of Homeland Security, which has far reaching implications for government.

Tom Ridge

1945- Tom Ridge was born near Pittsburgh, but grew up in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania. His family lived in a public housing project in Erie until Ridge was nine years old. An outstanding student, Ridge graduated from Harvard University in 1967; he completed a year of law school before being drafted into the U.S. Army. Ridge completed his tour of duty in Vietnam and rose to the rank of staff sergeant. He finished law school upon his return and began his political career as the assistant district attorney for Erie County before running for Congress in 1982. Ridge was reelected to the U.S. House of Representatives six times before entering the Pennsylvania governor's race in 1994. He won the race and began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 1995.

As governor, Ridge, a Republican, pressed for more stringent law-and-order measures, such as increased penalties for certain crimes, higher mandatory sentencing guidelines, and a faster process for death sentence appeals. He also delivered cuts to many social services in the state, including the public health system and welfare programs. As a Catholic who favored the maintenance of some abortion rights, Ridge drew attention from both sides of the abortion debate. While he was brought up as a potential running mate in George W. Bush's 2000 presidential bid, religious conservatives quickly denounced his stand on abortion. Despite the criticism, Ridge remained a popular chief executive in Pennsylvania, with a majority of residents routinely approving his actions in office.

Safeguarding America 's Water

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, concerns arose that terrorists might next target the United States' water supply, either by contaminating the water itself, or by seeking to destroy one of the nation's larger dams or aqueducts. All across the country, from large metropolitan areas like New York City to small rural towns like Greensburg, Kentucky, officials moved quickly to protect their water systems.

The threat of terrorists unleashing a biological or chemical agent into a water supply caused unease among many. Authorities at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) hastened to point out that it would take enormous quantities of chemical or biological agents to do any harm if introduced into a reservoir. Even if this were somehow accomplished, officials added, the contamination would most likely be detected at the water treatment plant and filtered out. The chlorine used to sterilize the water would also assist in diminishing the agent's persistence.

Of course, this scenario could change drastically if the water system in question was much smaller and more specific—for instance, one that delivered water that had already passed through treatment facilities to a particular neighborhood. The possibility of a terrorist with access to relevant areas and a basic knowledge of hydraulics succeeding in such a case as this is worth considering, and some water utility companies have taken precautions such as installing alarms in tunnels and extra locks on doors.

With water contamination a complicated and unpredictable option, some authorities fear the more straightforward possibility of an attack intended to cripple or destroy one of the United States' 58 hydroelectric dams. Immediately following September 11, security at these facilities was increased, with National Guard troops deployed and Coast Guard troops patrolling nearby. Highways that crossed dams, such as Highway 93, which traverses the Hoover Dam—a mammoth structure that holds back the nation's largest man-made reservoir—were closed to commercial vehicles and truck with trailers.

These measure seemed more than justified when federal officials announced in January 2001 that computers seized in the offensive in Afghanistan contained pictures of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state, the largest concrete dam in the United States and the third largest producer of electricity in the world. The Grand Coulee harnesses Lake Roosevelt and its three trillion gallons of water, which, if the Grand Coulee were destroyed, could possibly take down the nine dams downstream of it as well.

Demolishing a large dam, however, would not be an easy task. Authorities stress that as a dam is generally a solid wall of concrete, as opposed to a building which contains hollow spaces, chances are very slim that crashing a plane into the Grand Coulee, for instance, could threaten the structure's integrity to the point of collapse.

Despite the substantial obstacles faced by a terrorist organization desiring to mount an attack against the United States' water supply—in any form—September 11 taught the world that almost anything was possible. Therefore, federal assistance to secure the nation's water systems has been forthcoming. Congress has passed several bills to assist in the effort, and in October 2001 the EPA announced the formation of a water protection task force.