CHAPTER 1
HOMELAND SECURITY
The American Tradition

Provide for the Common Defense.

U.S. Constitution

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Many Americans assume the 9/11 attacks represented an entirely new and unprecedented danger, that in decades past the isolation provided by two oceans had kept the homeland secure. This assumption is largely wrong. Tens of thousands of miles of border and coastline, wealth and resources, vast territory, a diverse population, and open civil society have long made the civilian population of the United States a tempting target.

The words of the U.S. Constitution, which established the new republic, that a foundation of governance was to “provide for the common defense,” have never lost their relevance. To some degree, every generation of Americans has experienced the anxiety that they might be attacked in their own homes. Each has held a public debate over the sufficient means necessary to protect the nation—the right balance of security; economic growth; cooperation among federal, state, and local governments; the role of volunteers and the private sector; and the protection of civil liberties. As the nation matured, American national security policy increasingly focused on offensive capabilities, confronting America’s enemies overseas, while the balance between domestic security and civil liberties tilted toward the latter. Meanwhile, the national capacity to prepare for and respond to all kinds of disaster grew in fits and starts as the nation expanded. Its full force was rarely ever brought together. These traditional practices proved unable to protect the United States from the attackers of 9/11 and the contemporary terrorist threat.

This chapter illuminates both the changes and the continuities in the American conception of security. That the notion of what protecting the homeland means has changed over time should not be surprising. “Security” is a social construction. In other words, people give the word its meaning. Thus, the word can have different meanings to different people in different places at different times. History, tradition, politics, threats, and culture all have a part in what security means to Americans.

CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

1. Identify the continuities and changes in the American conception of protecting the homeland.

2. Explain the traditional level of cooperation among federal, state, and local agencies for domestic security, national preparedness, and disaster response.

3. Gauge the general level of economic resources the United States has dedicated to homeland security during its history and what factors have affected expenditures.

4. Describe the role that the protection of civil liberties has played in determining the federal response to homeland security.

5. Explain the role that border security and immigration enforcement has played in protecting the homeland.

A COLONIAL LEGACY: SECURING COMMUNITIES AND COASTLINES

During America’s first century, protecting the homeland remained mostly a matter of defending towns and protecting ports and the coastline from external attackers. In particular, conflicts between colonists and Native Americans played a principal role in the formulation of an American conception of national security. Communities were largely responsible for protecting their citizens, usually through local militias.¹

Once established, the federal government focused its efforts on defending the nation from enemies abroad. In the early years of the republic, invasion by Great Britain—which razed Washington, DC, during the War of 1812—and the security of the border with Canada were national preoccupations. These fears declined by 1823, but a series of midcentury border crises led to the renovation of existing forts and harbor defenses. Still, investments in defense were modest, accounting for only a small percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP).

The notion of large peacetime security budgets was anathema to most Americans. This tradition was abandoned only in wartime or other moments of national crisis.² By 1870 trepidation over threats to the northern border and eastern coastline had mostly disappeared, with the exception of a short-lived flap during the Spanish-American War that stirred unfounded fears of a Spanish armada threatening the coast.³

THE YOUNG REPUBLIC: DANGERS FROM WITHIN

Throughout most of the nation’s history, threats from within the borders of the United States were less central to American concepts of homeland security. Internal threats have been transient and often regional in focus. The federal government’s role in providing defense against domestic threats has always been suspect. During the nineteenth century, drawing on long-standing antiarmy ideology and the colonial experience, Americans generally opposed using federal forces for internal security.⁴

The authors of the U.S. Constitution held that, other than providing for “the common defense” against external enemies, the only appropriate use of force by federal authorities was the restoration of order in the event of riot or rebellion. This principle was tested in 1794 when President George Washington mobilized the militia in response to threats against excise tax collectors in western Pennsylvania. The success in suppressing the “Whiskey Rebellion” there had as much to do with the president’s correctly gauging public opinion, undertaking skillful negotiations, and avoiding bloodshed as it did with putting the militia under arms. Thus, two precedents were set. First, the federal government had both the right and the responsibility to act in order to restore order. Second, the federal government’s authority should be exercised with restraint and prudence. There was no expectation that the federal government would intervene on domestic security issues on a routine basis. Intervention was considered acceptable only in cases of insurrection, widespread public disorder, or extreme domestic violence. Before the Civil War, state consent or requests for assistance by state authorities always accompanied the domestic use of federal force.⁵

Furthermore, the federal government did not play a large role in civil preparedness or responding to disasters. The earliest case of congressionally approved domestic assistance followed a devastating fire in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1803. To ease the burden, Congress granted an extra year to pay off bonds owed at the local customhouse. Such measures were an exception rather than the rule.

Federal Power versus Civil Liberties

The Civil War placed enormous strains on the proposition that the federal government could ensure domestic security without abrogating the constitutional rights of its citizens. The Union home front faced not only major military attack, but raids, draft riots, espionage, and sabotage—in one case Confederate spies tried to burn down New York City. Federal authorities responded with an unprecedented test of the limits of their power; they suspended the right of habeas corpus, which requires the government to provide justification before a judge in order to hold a prisoner, and prosecuted U.S. civilians (including conspirators in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination) in military tribunals.⁶

An even more significant departure from the traditions of U.S. security, however, was the use of soldiers as federal marshals during Reconstruction. During the presidential election of 1876, the President Grant dispatched troops to polling stations in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, where electoral votes remained in dispute. In a reflection of the ongoing national debate between security and government power, this measure precipitated calls for the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibited federal troops from enforcing state or federal laws without congressional approval.⁷

The Emergence of Federal Roles

American history from the Civil War era to the turn of the twentieth century also saw dramatic episodes of domestic terrorism and labor unrest, including Ku Klux Klan activity in the South and Midwest and the assassination of President William McKinley. These incidents were initially treated more as criminal acts than serious national threats. There was strong resistance to strengthening internal security based on long-standing traditions of distrust of government power. Americans looked for cheap, short-term solutions to domestic threats. Despite Posse Comitatus, military forces were often relied on as an expedient. Between 1875 and 1918, state militia or federal troops responded over 1,000 times to labor unrest, viewed by many as instigated by foreign influences.

During this period, the use of private contractor security by both governments and the private sector became common. Alan Pinkerton’s detective agency had made a fortune working for the Union army during the Civil War. Pinkerton used his war profits to build a national enterprise. Many others followed suit. Pinkerton had 74 competitors in New York City, 29 each in Chicago and Philadelphia. Private security agencies exploded over the course of the nineteenth century, serving as virtual private armies for big business and investigating, surveilling, intimidating, and arresting criminals, labor organizers, provocateurs, anarchists, and innocents.

Concern over intelligence companies and the “proto-military-industrial complex” they created culminated in the Anti-Pinkerton Act, passed in the wake of the bloody suppression of a strike at a steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania (1892). With it, Congress prohibited the government from hiring Pinkerton or other private police companies to break strikes, though in practice the law has never precluded the government from hiring private security firms. In fact, in 1905 James McFarland, a Pinkerton operative, was hired to investigate the assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, who was killed by a bomb attached to his gatepost.⁸

Prevention and Investigation

The role of federal domestic security forces grew haltingly during this era. For example, it was not until 1908 that the Justice Department established a Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner to the modern Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The attorney general tasked this modest group of 34 special agents with pursuing violations of federal statutes. In its first two years, the special agent force had little to do with homeland security. The force’s most significant task was tracking down violators of the White Slave Traffic Act (the Mann Act), which criminalized the act of transporting women across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Americans still expected counties, cities, and states to fulfill most of their governmental needs, particularly regarding the roles of public safety and policing.

Fear over the threat of anarchists and Communists, called the “Red Scare,” grew in 1919 after an attempted bomb attack against the U.S. attorney general. Congress rushed through $500,000 in funding for a new antiradical unit in the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation, led by a young official named J. Edgar Hoover. In early 1920, federal agents conducted raids across the nation, taking thousands of suspected radicals, many of them immigrants, into custody and prompting an outcry from civil libertarians.⁹

The violence peaked in September 1920, when a bomb pulled by a horse cart tore through Wall Street in lower Manhattan, ripping apart pedestrians and pelting occupants of nearby offices with waves of broken glass that one witness likened to a snowstorm. “What happened came without warning,” said John Markle, a Pennsylvania mining executive on a business trip to the financial district, “[t]here was no time to duck.…” As the smoke cleared, victims of the attack could be seen strewn across the pavement like “lifeless lumps of clay.” The crime was never solved.

Immigration and Border Concerns

The issue of immigration as a “homeland security” problem was raised episodically over the course of the nation’s first century. It also varied significantly by region and by the groups over which concerns were expressed. Furthermore, anti-immigrant attitudes appeared due to a multiplicity of economic, cultural, and civic factors, as well as public safety and security concerns. In different periods of history, these factors expressed themselves in varying combinations. In 1885, for example, whites across urban areas on the California coast rioted against the presence of Chinese immigrants.

The first federal law controlling immigration appeared in 1875. The following year the Supreme Court ruled that the regulation of immigration belonged exclusively to the federal government. Still, it was 1891 before the government established an Immigration Service and assumed responsibility for processing all immigrants. The issuance of passports and visas remained under the responsibility of the State Department. Federal laws allowed for the prevention of entry or detention and removal of aliens for a number of reasons, including being unlawfully present in the United States, health concerns, and a criminal history, as well as being identified as a security or terrorist risk. Immigration activities were primarily focused on “points of entry” into the United States, a port or crossing designated as the entry point for both U.S. citizens and aliens.

Scant efforts were made to control the U.S. border. Furthermore, efforts to monitor U.S. land and sea borders initially focused on commerce (such as collecting tarrifs and combating smuggling) rather than people. The U.S. Coast Guard traces its history to the Revenue Service (later called the Revenue-Marine and still later the Revenue Cutter Service) established under the Treasury Department in 1790. The Treasury Department established the precursor of the U.S. Border Patrol in 1853, when it authorized custom collectors to hire “mounted inspectors” to patrol the land borders.

Disaster Preparedness and Response

During this era, the federal government’s role in national preparedness grew in fits and starts. Among the most dramatic federal interventions proved to be the military response following the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which together caused over $500 million in destroyed property, claimed between 600 and 3,000 lives, and left over 200,000 homeless (almost half the city’s population). Federal troops performed a variety of functions in support of the response, including local community policing (in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act) and managing camps for the refugees. As on other occasions, the use of federal military forces for disaster response was exceptional and ad hoc.

In San Francisco, the role of nongovernmental organizations in disaster response also came to the fore, particularly that of the American Red Cross. Founded in 1881, the volunteer organization first came to prominence for its role in disaster relief after the 1889 flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which killed some 2,200 people. Chartered by Congress in 1900, the Red Cross, along with other civic and faith-based groups, gradually took over the responsibilities for relief and rehabilitation from the U.S. Army, reinforcing the principle that even when compelled to intervene, military assistance was meant to provide temporary help until tasks could be turned over to civilian authorities.

Traditionally, outside the military, other federal agencies never played a prominent role in responding to disasters, though Congress did periodically provide assistance. Over the course of the century, ad hoc legislation was passed more than 100 times in response to hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters. As the size of the federal government grew, a myriad of agencies and programs emerged that offered some assistance to state and local governments in preparing for, responding to, or mitigating natural disasters, but little thought was given to how to respond to terrorist acts.

THE NEW GREAT POWER FACES FOREIGN THREATS

By the dawn of the twentieth century, as the nation grew in power and stature, it was increasingly eyed as a potential economic and military competitor by European and Asian powers. Soon foreign threats once again became the focus of security concerns. For example, Americans feared, and some of the kaiser’s military strategists actually proposed, German amphibious operations against the United States. The American occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was justified in part to secure avenues of approach to the United States through the Caribbean.¹⁰ Operations such as this and persistent public calls for improving U.S. defenses against foreign invasion were perennial features of national security debates throughout the first half of the 1900s.

WORLD WAR I: FROM SABOTAGE TO PANDEMICS

As prospects for the United States being drawn into World War I loomed and the Red Scare peaked, Americans were greatly concerned that foreign provocateurs would fan dissent on the home front. Concerns over espionage and sabotage were also acute. The Espionage Act of 1917 was followed by the Sedition Act of 1918. Created to prevent interference with the recruitment of troops or exposure of national security information, the Sedition Act made it a federal crime to criticize the government or Constitution. Both acts were repealed in 1921.

To secure the homeland, authorities created an ad hoc security system that included Army and Navy Intelligence and the Department of Justice. The attorney general, for example, established the Radical Division (later renamed the General Intelligence Division) within the Bureau of Investigation and charged the unit with ferreting out information on “radicals and revolutionaries.” The government’s security network also included quasi-private, volunteer organizations, such as the Minnesota Commission for Public Safety. Together this makeshift public-private network largely succeeded in thwarting imperial German intelligence agents, though it was inefficient and prone to abuse, as some security agencies were used for partisan politics and to dispense vigilante justice. Much of their activity involved crackdowns against the Red Scare. The system was abandoned after the war, and most of the volunteer organizations were quickly abolished.¹¹

Not all the threats of this era, however, were imaginary. In 1914 a German agent, Horst von der Goltz, and his team of saboteurs planned but then abandoned a scheme to travel from Buffalo, New York, and attack Canada by blowing up the entrance to the Welland Canal, sealing the bottleneck connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario and tying up barge traffic for months, creating economic chaos.

While von der Goltz’s “dynamite plots” failed, there were at least 50 successful acts of “terrorism” against the United States during the World War I era. On July 31, 1915, suspected saboteurs derailed a New Jersey passenger train in order to disrupt munitions manufacturing along the Raritan River. Furthermore, a number of plots were thwarted. In May 1919 authorities discovered 30 mail bombs targeting prominent persons and government officials, including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and industrialists J.P. Morgan and John Rockefeller.

Though fear of overseas enemies subsided after the war, new concerns arose. The nation lacked the means to deal with interstate crimes, a growing concern in a society that saw new technologies, such as automobiles, airplanes, and the telephone, emerge that could move people, goods, services, and ideas across state borders with increasing speed and frequency. The need for a national law enforcement arm became particularly apparent during the years of Prohibition, and its unprecedented increase in interstate organized crime. The role of Justice Department investigators (popularly called “G-men”) was greatly expanded. In 1935 the department’s investigatory arm was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Back to the Border

Von der Goltz’s plots underscore the inextricable and complicated role border security came to play in the U.S. conception of “homeland security” at the turn of the century. While America and Canada are independent, sovereign nations, their industrial bases and transportation networks had become so intertwined that the security of both could not be protected simply by trying to defend the border between them. The focus of activities was primarily on cross-border cooperation between law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada.

Initially, von der Goltz crossed the United States–Mexico border to enter the United States, traveling to El Paso, Texas, where he received orders to wage a terror campaign against Canada. In contrast to relations with Canada, U.S.-Mexican commerce was of less concern, and the border regions remained a source of consternation. Before the war, troubles with cross-border violence and raids culminated with the punitive military expedition into Mexico in 1916–1917. During the war, the United States lacked the resources to patrol the vast expanse of America’s southern border. In March 1915, Congress officially authorized Mounted Guards (also called Mounted Inspectors), whose operations ranged from Texas to California, patrolling on horseback, car, and boats. Their primary focus, however, was not security. The guards acted as immigration inspectors, assigned to local inspection stations. They mostly dealt with refugees from China evading the U.S.–Chinese exclusion laws (first passed in 1882). Army troops also performed intermittent border patrolling when not conducting military training. The U.S. military patrols occurred through 1929.

Additionally, during and following World War I, there was a more concerted effort to limit and control immigration. This culminated in the establishment (in 1933) of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Department of Labor. The new agency combined the federal bureaus responsible for providing immigration services and enforcing immigration laws.

Postwar anti-immigrant attitudes created new domestic security concerns. The popularity of the antiforeigner Ku Klux Klan skyrocketed. Violence in southern border communities could also be severe. A 1922 article in the New York Times noted after a lynching in Texas that “the killing of Mexicans without provocation is so common as to pass almost unnoticed.”

The war also brought renewed attention to the nation’s maritime borders. In 1915 Congress merged the Revenue Cutter Service with the Life-Saving Service (which assisted in rescuing shipwrecked mariners and passengers) to establish the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard provided a variety of maritime services related to security. Though it served under the Treasury Department by law, the president could transfer the service to the Department of the Navy in time of war. This was done during both World War I and World War II.

Dealing with the Great Pandemic

In the last two years of World War I, an influenza pandemic struck the United States in three successive waves. Americans suffered 675,000 deaths out of a population of 105 million. The national response to the pandemic holds many lessons for the practice of homeland security.

The United States had episodically experienced epidemics in its history but never a pandemic—lethal widespread disease that quickly spanned the country. Traditionally, all levels of government played a very limited role in health matters. New York City established the first public health agency in 1866. Other cities followed its example. States began to establish health boards and agencies around the turn of the twentieth century. Federal activities were limited to the military services and the Marine Hospital Service, a collection of public hospitals that provided care to merchant seamen. It was not until 1912 that Congress converted the service to the Public Health Service, under the surgeon general. The flu pandemic of 1918 was its first great test.

President Woodrow Wilson and his principal military and civilian advisers were preoccupied with the battle for France. They wanted nothing to interfere with the effort to ship as many troops as possible to the European battlefields. Social distancing—limiting human contact to prevent the contagion from spreading—was deemed impractical. The government wanted workers to show at the factory and use public transportation.

The surgeon general and federal and state public health officials were ordered to downplay the significance of the breakout. The press was not free to write about the influenza pandemic because of government censorship. Among the belligerents, the American approach was in fact not unique. The 1918 influenza was known as the “Spanish sickness,” because only neutral nations, such as Spain, that were not involved in the war admitted the existence of an influenza pandemic. In the United States, it was only after major urban communities began to ignore official instruction on how to respond to the disease and adopted their own responses that outbreaks were quelled or prevented.

The response of the city of Philadelphia, one of the hardest hit in the nation, was particularly noteworthy. Leadership did not come from the governor’s office or City Hall, but emerged from an informal arrangement of diverse organizations. Prominent citizens formed an ad hoc committee. They enlisted a diverse group of volunteers. The Society of Visiting Nurses organized care for thousands, while the Philadelphia Automobile Club shuttled volunteers around the city.

Another notable response occurred at Camp Colt, an army training camp near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, commanded by Captain (and future president) Dwight D. Eisenhower. There were 10,000 men at the camp when cases appeared. Eisenhower and his medical staff moved quickly to isolate and treat the sick. When the crisis passed, only 150 had died. The army was so impressed, the War Department ordered Eisenhower to send his physicians to train medical personnel at other camps.

Disaster Preparedness

Despite the scenes of devastation in Europe in the wake of the Great War and the great global flu pandemic, relatively few significant innovations in national preparedness for catastrophes occurred during the interwar years. The U.S. military continued to provide assistance to civil authorities in the event of disasters. In December 1929, for example, the city of Tacoma, Washington, experienced a massive power-outage. The Department of the Navy ordered the USS Lexington to respond. The ship had four giant generators that were used to help provide electricity for the next several weeks.

WORLD WAR II: SAFEGUARDING FREEDOM’S ARSENAL

The period immediately leading up to World War II proved a watershed in the evolution of American concerns over protecting the homeland. Pressure grew to shift efforts to a more offensive-oriented posture. Army and Navy planners argued over whether the United States should adopt a “continental” defense, focused on securing the borders, or a “hemispheric” defense, a more offensive stance, centered on protecting the homeland from strategic points in the Atlantic, South America, and the Pacific. Political leaders, however, issued scant policy guidance and invested few resources. The public was largely apathetic toward security debates until the war’s eve.¹²

Even before Pearl Harbor, however, the military began to mobilize on the home front. During World War I, the services had focused part of their intelligence collection on domestic threats and continued to do so in the era leading to the Second World War. Throughout the 1930s, the Office of Naval Intelligence collected information on those suspected of having links to pacifist or anarchist causes, including groups such as the National Council for the Prevention of War and the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom. The intelligence service recruited retired officers and volunteers to keep tabs on suspicious characters. College professors at Yale and Harvard were asked to report on students who appeared “ultra-pacifist.” In May 1940, the White House ordered electronic surveillance of foreign agents and embassies and created the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference to coordinate activities among the armed forces and federal agencies. Most of these activities took place without legislation or consultation with Congress. It would not be until the 1970s that Congress addressed domestic intelligence operations in significant manner.

Defending the Home Front

Once war broke out, the federal government moved to protect America’s home front. Though untested by a major threat, wartime efforts to protect ports and other key infrastructure were prodigious, including the fielding of more than 200,000 auxiliary military police to guard over 16,000 facilities. The California State Guard alone had more than 200,000 members. Millions more citizens signed up for civilian defense units that provided surveillance and emergency response capabilities, including programs designed to prepare for a Nazi chemical attack.¹³

Critical Infrastructure

The most immediate concern during the war was the protection of what is now called critical infrastructure. Establishing adequate protective measures in wartime proved a challenge. The U.S. Constitution envisioned an American economy based on the principles of a free market, in which the central government intervened in private enterprise to the minimum extent required. Thus, the Constitution recognized the importance of the federal government having the authority to regulate interstate commerce, but in theory there was no role for it in industrial planning. In practice, however, the U.S. government aggressively advanced industrial policies in time of war, when harnessing industry and the economy was especially critical for national security.

In World War II, as in previous conflicts, the government in Washington directed measures that addressed the security of U.S. industries through a combination of legislative, regulatory, and voluntary measures crafted primarily to deal with the demands of wartime. As in previous wars, many of these practices would be discontinued or significantly scaled back after the conflict ended.

During the Second World War, the security of war-related industries and transportation networks, including ports and rail lines, were of the utmost importance. In 1939 the FBI took on a new responsibility—surveying conditions at 12,000 industrial plants that had been identified as important to the defense industry. Investigators examined everything from the physical security of the plants to labor–management relations. The FBI and the services also sent agents into key industrial plants posing as workers and looking for signs of subversive activity and sabotage. As war work expanded, not all facilities could be inspected. Starting in 1941, the FBI issued bulletins, such as Suggestions for Protection of Industrial Facilities, to tens of thousands of plant managers around the country.

Interagency Conflict

World War II also demonstrated the challenges of coordinating multiple federal agencies involved in common activities. The FBI, the State Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the army’s Military Intelligence Division were all concerned about subversion and sabotage. The State and Justice departments feuded over which should be responsible for coordinating counterintelligence activities inside the United States. The military services supported a prominent role for the FBI. The Treasury Department (which controlled the Secret Service, an agency that provided security for the president and investigated financial crimes) and the Postal Service (which played a role in domestic security through the enforcement of various federal laws) favored leadership by the State Department. All wanted more personnel, bigger budgets, and more authority. Committees were established to share information and coordinate major investigations, though tension and disagreement persisted throughout the war.

In 1941 a revised definition of responsibility was established with the FBI accountable for initiating counterespionage investigations in all matters within the United States and serving as lead agency for all domestic operations, while the armed forces would be concerned with the security of military installations. This was the first time in the nation’s history that clear divisions of responsibility, as well as a formal system of coordination for federal domestic intelligence and security, had been established.

Civilian Defense

During World War II, there were only a handful of ineffectual attacks on the continental United States. In June 1942 German submarines landed eight trained saboteurs on Long Island, New York, and near Jacksonville, Florida, as part of a plan called Operation Pastorius. The German infiltrators had spent years in the United States—at least two held U.S. citizenship—and they carried enough cash and sophisticated explosives equipment to destroy key infrastructure across the nation. On the West Coast, a seaplane launched from a Japanese submarine dropped an incendiary bomb near Brookings, Oregon, in September 1942. The Japanese also launched incendiary balloons designed to ignite in the U.S.

Major Impacts on Civil Liberties

In the end, threats of attack in the homeland turned out to have greater legal than strategic implications. Turned in by one of their own, the German saboteurs were quickly captured. The legal process following their capture—all were convicted, and six were put to death—established the executive branch’s power to categorize certain individuals as “enemy combatants,” instead of “prisoners of war,” and try them before military tribunals, even if they held U.S. citizenship. Meanwhile, the War Relocation Authority was directing the evacuation of over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, purportedly to preclude acts of sabotage and spying. Both decisions sparked controversy decades later when they were cited as precedents in debates over the appropriate response to the 9/11 attacks.

Immigration and Border Security

The British, Russians, Japanese, and Germans all made efforts to set up spy networks in the United States before and during the war. Both the FBI and the State Department were greatly frustrated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was then part of the Department of Labor. Poorly administered, the service lacked accurate information on aliens entering, living in, or residing in the United States.

Out of concern for national security, the president transferred the Immigration and Naturalization Service from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice. In 1940 the Alien Registration Act required all aliens in the United States to register with the government. Over the course of the war, the Immigration and Naturalization Service registered and fingerprinted over five million aliens.

During this time the presidents of the United States and Mexico also agreed to establish the Bracero Program. This temporary worker system was implemented to help deal with the U.S. wartime worker shortage, allowing Mexican citizens to cross legally into the United States for employment on a temporary basis. Despite the effort to ameliorate relations with Mexico, tensions persisted. In the 1943 Los Angles “Zoot Suit Riots,” roving gangs attacked both Mexicans and Mexican Americans. That same year, the Mexican government suspended the Bracero Program for a period because of violence perpetrated on Mexican workers in Texas. The initial Bracero Program expired in 1947 but continued in various forms for agricultural workers until it was formally abolished in 1964.

During the war additional resources were also dedicated to border security. The U.S. Border Patrol had been officially established by Congress in the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924. Its mission was to patrol U.S. borders between points of entry. During Prohibition the patrol had expanded its efforts from immigration enforcement to combating transnational criminal activity. During the Second World War, the Border Patrol was more than doubled to a staff of 1,400. In addition to patrolling the border, the patrol helped guard alien detention camps, protect diplomats, and assist the U.S. Coast Guard in anti-saboteur operations.

THE COLD WAR: FOREIGN SPIES, DOMESTIC RADICALS, AND DISASTER RESPONSE

For a brief period following World War II, Americans were largely unconcerned about external threats. The U.S. government did tinker with the instruments of national security, but largely to address shortfalls in interagency cooperation experienced before and during the war. The National Security Act of 1947 combined the military services under a single department, formalized the organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, established the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and formed the National Security Council. Then in 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon, followed less than a year later by the outbreak of the Korean War. These events brought the Cold War home to Main Street America. As the conflict grew more intense, a high level of sustained investment in national security marked a departure from past policies. Between 1948 and 1989, the United States spent an average of 7.5 percent of its GDP each year on defense, compared to the 1 or 2 percent spent annually on the military for most of the nation’s earlier history.¹⁴

Communist Infiltration

During the early years of the Cold War, fear of Communist agitation and sabotage ran high. Extensive countermeasures included a massive security and personnel screening program for port facilities. Though concern over Soviet espionage was evident before World War II and was an enduring feature of the Cold War, it was only during the first half of the 1950s that the problem monopolized public attention as a homeland security issue.¹⁵

At the outset of the Cold War, the United States experimented with a defense-in-depth approach, employing everything from coastal antiaircraft posts and civil defense patrols to atomic diplomacy. The United States did not begin to build a deterrent force until 1948. As late as 1957, a highly publicized and controversial presidential blue ribbon panel study, popularly known as the Gaither Report, argued that deterrence was inadequate and called for a massive bomb shelter–building program.¹⁶ Still, by the middle of the decade, offensive measures had become the preferred means for protecting the nation, to the point that some argued for launching a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union. Close-in defensive measures, like air and civil defenses, withered.¹⁷ During this period, Americans worried about threats ranging from radiological attacks by secret agents to the poisoning of water reservoirs, but the dominant concern was the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The United States considered and then discarded plans to build a limited antiballistic missile system as both impractical and too expensive, a pattern to be repeated in the 1980s.

Postwar Immigration and Border Enforcement

Fears over immigration due to security or for other reasons declined after World War II. The postwar era also saw a resurgence in immigration. Both the Republican and Democratic parties endorsed proimmigration platforms. Nevertheless, concerns regarding illegal immigration persisted. As the U.S. postwar economy boomed and despite the existence of the Bracero Program, illegal workers crossed over from Mexico, making managing the border problematic. The Border Patrol transferred much of its workforce from the Canadian border to reinforce its assets on the southern border. In the 1950s, the patrol detained and repatriated upwards of 50,000 illegal aliens a year. The reparation programs had a limited impact; many aliens simply recrossed unguarded portions of the border.

Furthermore, a plethora of agencies was responsible for enforcing immigration laws and providing border security, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (responsible for both manning points of entry and enforcing immigration laws within the United States), and the U.S. Customs Service (responsible for monitoring goods crossing U.S. borders).

In 1965 Congress approved sweeping reforms of immigration polices through the Immigration and Nationality Act. This immigration framework put in place a system of preference categories favoring relatives of U.S. citizens and employed lawful immigrants as well as those deemed to have useful job skills.

Despite these reforms, control of the U.S. southern border continued to deteriorate. Before amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act, there were no limits on the number of Mexicans who could enter the United States. Until the 1970s immigration was capped at 20,000 per country, including Mexico. Yet workers continued to stream across the border. As a result, by the 1980s over three million illegal aliens resided in the United States. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act promised another sweeping series of reforms to improve border security and reduce illegal immigration. The act combined an offer of “amnesty” for those living unlawfully in the United States, with plans to increase border security and the enforcement of immigration laws along with launching more expansive temporary worker programs modeled on the defunct Bracero Program.

However, the Immigration Reform and Control Act largely failed to stem illegal migration. Immigration and workplace laws were not systematically enforced. While border security was increased, it was not effective. The Immigration and Naturalization Service undertook a series of operations, such as Operation Hold the Line in Texas and Operation Gatekeeper in California, to stem crossing on the southern border. Additional resources dedicated to securing the border actually fueled growth of the unlawful population in the United States. Because of increased security on the border illegal immigrants already in the country who had previously come for seasonal employment chose to remain and work in the United States year-round. Others, because the penalties for violating the laws were so minor, decided to continue to try to make their way to the United States.

Other concerns exacerbated anxiety over of immigration and border security. Transnational criminal activity fueled by the drug trade from Latin America further compromised control of the border. Cases of terrorism involving abuse of the immigration system also emerged. In January 1993 a Pakistani who had entered the United States illegally and applied for amnesty under the Immigration Reform and Control Act killed two and wounded three CIA employees outside the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Focus on Offensive Measures

Overwhelming reliance on deterrence was an unprecedented feature of Cold War competition. Rather than defending the homeland on U.S. shores, the United States decided to rely on threats of preemption or massive nuclear retaliation to a Soviet attack. This approach squelched demand for increased civil defense and preparedness, both for natural and human-caused disasters. Ironically, as the Cold War dragged on—and anxiety over attacks on U.S. soil gradually eased and overall defense spending as a percentage of GDP declined—the size of the Soviet arsenal actually increased.

THE THREAT OF SHADOW WAR

In contrast to the dominant place of the Soviet Union in American threat perceptions, concern over terrorism waxed and waned over the twentieth century, even as a range of groups carried out attacks against the United States.

Domestic Terrorists

September 11, 2001, was far from the first time terrorists set their sights on Washington, DC. Puerto Rican extremists shot up the U.S. Capitol and tried to kill President Harry Truman in separate incidents during the 1950s. Terrorists seeking the independence of Puerto Rico would launch many more attacks in the following decades. Right-wing radical Klansmen bombed a Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963, murdering four teenagers. Klan beatings, whippings, and floggings continued through much of the 1960s. At the same time, the seeds of domestic ideological terrorism were being sown in the movement against the Vietnam War, which spawned left-wing terrorist groups, including one that bombed the Capitol in 1971. By 1975 the number of terrorist groups active in America was so large that when a bomb exploded in New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people, the police faced a dizzying array of suspects. Although left-wing extremists, Puerto Rican liberationists, the Jewish Defense League, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Croatian nationalists came under suspicion—among others—the crime was never solved.

Particularly perplexing in the 1970s was the rash of “skyjackings,” in which armed gunmen took commercial airline flights hostage. For the United States, the hijacking of planes to Cuba had become a common occurrence. In response to this threat, the federal government established the Customs Air Security Officers Program (commonly referred to as the Sky Marshal Program), which place armed law enforcement agents in plainclothes on flights thought to be most at risk.

The laws and structures covering domestic intelligence had not been substantially altered since the programs put in place during World War II (without much public debate or congressional oversight). As a result, there was little to prevent the federal government from expanding its activities against these new perceived threats. The FBI, CIA, and other government agencies employed aggressive intelligence gathering and covert tactics to crack down on terrorist groups. But then, in the 1970s, the American public learned many of these same strategies had been used against lawful dissidents and civil rights groups. Such abuses prompted congressional hearings and led to dramatic restrictions on domestic intelligence operations, including the creation of a bureaucratic “wall” between intelligence gathering and law enforcement.¹⁸ Decades later, that wall would hamper investigations of al-Qaida terrorists preparing to attack the United States. Still, by the 1980s, most nationalist and left-wing ideological terrorist groups in the United States had collapsed (though they did not disappear entirely; for example, in April 1984 left-wing terrorists bombed the officers club at the Washington Navy Yard).

International Terrorism

The rise of spectacular Palestinian and European terrorism during the 1960s and ′70s, often sponsored by the Soviet bloc, failed to prompt substantial U.S. action. But the mid–1980s saw increasing concerns about the foreign terrorist threat to the United States. These included fears that small nuclear devices might be used to strike the 1984 Olympiad in Los Angeles.¹⁹ The Soviet role in terrorism was hotly debated, although the actual threat to the United States may have been far greater than was commonly assumed.²⁰

Still, the focus remained on threats to Americans abroad. Amid attacks on U.S. airliners, embassies, and military bases during the 1980s—and a Libyan attempt to pay a Chicago street gang to conduct terrorist attacks in America—the United States moved against so-called state-sponsored terrorist groups backed by nations such as Iran, Syria, and Libya.

By 1986 the United States had launched military strikes against Libya and placed sanctions on it, Iran, and Syria. “History is likely to record that 1986 was the year when the world, at long last, came to grips with the plague of terrorism,” commented President Ronald Reagan in May of that year. In reality, the policies had not ended terrorism supported by state sponsors. In April 1988 Japanese citizen Yu Kikumura was arrested at a New Jersey rest stop. In his car police found three powerful antipersonnel bombs built into fire extinguishers. According to prosecutors, Kikumura was working for Libya on a mission to strike New York City. The Libyan campaign peaked on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 183 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 passengers and people on the ground. Iran too continued its backing of terrorist groups such as Hizballah.

Still, by the late 1980s, U.S. policy makers perceived the terrorism threat as reduced and primarily of risk to Americans abroad; the White House was far more focused on the breakup of the Soviet Union. Ironically, as will be seen later, the decline of the Soviets—one of the very factors that weakened traditional state-sponsored terrorist groups and reduced American attention to the issue—inspired Usama bin Ladin and helped pave the way to 9/11.

Responding to Disasters

Throughout much of the Cold War, the U.S. government’s formal efforts in disaster response centered on civil defense, the protection of the U.S. population against military attack. These efforts were primarily led by the newly established Department of Defense. The Defense Civil Preparedness Agency focused on industrial planning and providing public information on nuclear attack and fallout shelters. Perhaps the most memorable of these efforts was the 1950s educational film Duck and Cover, which featured advice from Bert the Turtle, who advised parents and children on what to do in the event of a nuclear detonation. The federal government also developed some industrial policies to ensure the resiliency of American industry during wartime, but these efforts largely did not affect the practice of private enterprise or include measures to ensure the protection of critical infrastructure in peacetime.

During the Cold War, the military continued to provide assistance to civilians in the advent of disaster. On rare occasions, other agencies of the federal government were called upon to offer major assistance. One of the most remarkable episodes occurred on March 27, 1964, when the most severe earthquake ever recorded in North America struck Alaska. This incident was noteworthy not only for the disaster response, but also for the recovery phase, reestablishing order and services after the disaster. The quake severely impacted much of Alaska’s population, devastating the economy. Engineers surveying the damage concluded the situation was hopeless. If the critical facilities could not be rebuilt during the short Alaskan construction season, most of the affected population would have to be moved to the Lower 48. When the scope of the disaster became known, the president appointed much of his cabinet as the Federal Reconstruction and Development Planning Commission for Alaska to ensure the government helped provide housing and essential services so the state did not have to be evacuated.

Despite the success of the Alaska response, the federal government never institutionalized an integrated capacity to respond to and recover from major disasters. Across the government new agencies did begin to crop up that could potentially play a role in preparedness and response. For example, in 1946 the Communicable Disease Center, which eventually became the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was established. Little effort, however, was made to ensure these federal agencies would work seamlessly together, as well as cooperate with state and local governments, the private sector, and nongovernmental volunteer groups, in the advent of a major disaster or terrorist threat.

Another warning sign of shortfalls in how the nation prepared to cope with large-scale catastrophe occurred in 1976, when a soldier at Fort Dix, New Jersey, died from a new strain of “swine flu.” This strain was closely related to the disease that fueled the great pandemic of 1918 and officials feared a similar outbreak. The U.S. government embarked on a massive public information and vaccination campaign that was plagued with miscues and controversy. Fortunately, the actual outbreak proved relatively benign. Nevertheless, the government response demonstrated many weaknesses in the nation’s capacity to react to major dangers.

While the government in Washington did little to improve the organization of the federal response to disasters, the number of incidents that received a presidential disaster declaration (which allowed for federal resources to be used for disaster aid and recovery) increased during the Cold War era. Other than during the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, every president starting with Dwight Eisenhower federalized more and more disasters. Part of this increase was understandable. The U.S. population and infrastructure were growing, particularly in states such as Florida, Texas, and California, which experienced frequent natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires.

Nevertheless, it was not until the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 that the process of presidential disaster declarations was formalized. Only in 1979, in response to complaints from state and local governments over the plethora of federal agencies to be coordinated with following hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, was the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) established to coordinate all federal support to state and local governments. FEMA was created by consolidating five different organizations, each of which addressed a particular part of emergency management. The Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, U.S. Fire Administration, Federal Preparedness Agency, and National Flood Insurance Administration were transferred from other federal departments to the new independent agency, which reported directly to the president.

Despite the establishment of FEMA, President Reagan, a strong opponent of a large federal government, averaged only 28 disaster declarations per year. He reversed, for a time, the trend of greater federal control over disasters.

OUT OF THE COLD: EMERGING THREATS TO AMERICA’S HOMELAND

After the Cold War, the nation’s approach to combating threats to the homeland assumed a more traditional pattern. Defense spending was reduced to under 3 percent of GDP.²¹ But a new threat was growing—Islamic extremists with ideological and often direct links to bin Ladin and al-Qaida. Following attacks on U.S. forces in Yemen and Somalia, foreign terrorists struck the American homeland on February 26, 1993, setting off a bomb in the underground parking lot at New York City’s World Trade Center. The plotters failed in their plan to bring the twin towers crashing down, but did kill 6 and wounded more than 1,000. Just months later in June, authorities picked up eight extremists in the Day of Terror plot to blow up landmarks in New York City. But at the time, law enforcement officials failed to grasp the full significance of these events.

Funding for some activities related to homeland security did rise in the mid–1990s, spurred by the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, by domestic terrorists and the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by members of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult, who also hated the United States and had considered gasing the Pentagon and White House. Federal expenditures for domestic preparedness against weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1995 to 2000 accelerated from almost nothing to $1.5 billion.²² Presidential Decision Directive 39, released on June 21, 1995, called for giving “the highest priority to developing effective capabilities to detect, prevent, defeat and manage the consequences of nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) materials or weapons use by terrorists.”²³ In 1996 Congress passed the Nunn–Lugar–Domenici Domestic Preparedness Initiative, which enhanced the capabilities of first responders to deal with WMD. Reflecting a growing concern over terrorism and WMD, Congress held over 80 hearings on related issues between 1998 and 2000.²⁴

During this period, al-Qaida and its supporters continued their attacks abroad, hitting U.S. military facilities and embassies. In 1998 bin Ladin pledged to escalate his campaign to drive America from the Middle East. While the Clinton administration ultimately launched diplomatic initiatives, financial crackdowns, prosecutions, covert operations, and even a missile attack against bin Ladin and his followers, U.S. policy responses never reflected the enormity of the threat. Built to combat state-sponsored terrorist groups, U.S. government strategies in both the Clinton and early Bush administrations were marked by a focus on the threat abroad rather than at home, treatment of terrorism as primarily a law enforcement issue, toleration of terrorist sanctuaries, competing priorities and limited resources, poor information sharing and analysis, and inadequate domestic preparedness. Military responses were rare and limited, reflecting narrow congressional and public support for aggressive and sustained international action. Because of this, a highly refined form of political violence received room to metastasize largely unchecked.

In December 1999 Ahmed Ressam was arrested at the U.S.-Canadian border with materials for a bomb he intended to use against Los Angeles Airport as part of the al-Qaida-linked global millennium terrorist plot. Despite this near miss, there was still little appetite for a broad national agenda to address homeland security.

Preparing for the “Big One”

National complacency regarding transnational terrorism was mirrored by lack of progress in advancing preparedness for catastrophic disaster response. In 1988 the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act supplanted the Disaster Relief Act in establishing rules for presidential disaster declarations and guidelines for providing aid to state and local governments and financial assistance. While the act gave FEMA responsibility for coordinating federal aid for natural disasters, other government entities operating under different rules and regulations were responsible for serving as the lead federal agency in the event of other incidents. The FBI, for example, was lead agency for responding to terrorist attacks. The Department of Energy managed radiological incidents. The U.S. Coast Guard was responsible for oil spills of major significance.

Two major events in 1992 demonstrated that progress in organizing the federal effort was still inadequate. In April 1992 massive violence spread throughout South Central Los Angeles in response to the acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King, following a high-speed chase. Fifty-three people died in the rioting. Thousands were injured, and property damage was estimated at over $1 billion. From the outset, the rioting overwhelmed local law enforcement resources. First, the California National Guard was called in. Later, the troops were federalized under an active-duty “joint force” commander. In the aftermath, numerous problems were identified, including a lack of interoperable communications, disputes over the application of the Posse Comitatus Act, and lack of adequate training and equipment.

The second noteworthy event of 1992 occurred in August, when Hurricane Andrew struck southern Florida, leaving over $26 billion in destroyed property. While the president dispatched troops from the 82nd Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division, as well as providing other assistance coordinated by FEMA, the federal government was widely and loudly criticized for reacting too slowly. However, despite these major shortfalls in Florida and Los Angeles, little significant change was made in how the nation planned to respond to major catastrophes.

While preparations for large-scale disasters did not advance significantly, the number of presidential disaster declarations did expand after Hurricane Andrew, increasing at a dramatic pace that far outstripped the growth of the nation’s population and infrastructure. More and more federal declarations were issued for disasters of lesser and lesser consequence. This federalization of disasters accelerated during the presidency of William J. Clinton. The number of disaster declarations doubled from those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, from 43 a year to more than 88 a year under Clinton.

A Broken System

In 2000 and 2001, despite a variety of leads and warnings, America’s homeland security system failed to detect plans for a massive strike against the homeland. While the blame for the attack rests squarely with the criminals who conducted it, and their plot was well crafted and executed, evidence suggests a more effective system could have uncovered and disrupted it. The failure to do so stemmed from a variety of systemic problems, including disjointed government strategies, balkanized agency responsibilities, an FBI mind-set focused on investigating rather than preventing terrorism, grossly inadequate resources, poor technology, a refusal to share information, and just plain sloppy work. Civil liberty safeguards put in place decades before had become ossified bureaucratic barriers. When a New York FBI agent asked for help from criminal agents to track down two al-Qaida operatives (who later participated in the 9/11 attacks), he was turned down because of the “wall” between intelligence and criminal cases.

On the morning of September 11, 19 suicide hijackers approached their flights. The existing homeland security system still had a chance to stop them. In 1996 and ′97, the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, headed by Vice President Al Gore and known as the Gore Commission, had sent recommendations for preventing aviation terrorism to the White House. But years later—despite repeated government and media investigations documenting gaps in aviation security—many of the safeguards recommended by the Gore Commission and other experts were still not in place. On this morning, nine of the hijackers were selected for special security screening, according to a federal spokesperson, but all made it through to their flights anyway.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The distinguishing feature of homeland security initiatives under-taken before September 11 was that investments were far outpaced by identified requirements and that even those identified requirements underestimated the threat. Those investments that were made closely adhered to traditional organizational responsibilities and missions, with only a modicum of innovation, interagency integration, or synchronization of federal, state, local, and private sector efforts. In many respects, these modest, fragmented efforts followed the traditional American approach of dedicating only limited resources to domestic security.

Despite repeated attacks by al-Qaida against Americans abroad, threats by bin Ladin against the homeland, at least two major attempts by his followers to attack U.S. targets, a successful poison gas attack in Japan by a group with an established hatred of the United States, the Oklahoma bombing, and numerous warnings at all levels of government, the United States failed to understand and respond to the threat of a massive terrorist attack against its territory.

Likewise, the nation’s capacity to prepare and respond to disasters lagged behind the growth of the nation’s population and infrastructure. The most obvious and significant shortfall was the lack of capacity to integrate the efforts of federal agencies and coordinate their work with local officials, communities, and volunteers.

CHAPTER QUIZ

1. Why did a significant federal role for domestic security, except during periods of war, not emerge until the twentieth century?

2. Identify two historical conflicts in which the U.S. government used military tribunals to try civilians arrested in the United States and why these powers were employed.

3. Explain the relationship between civil liberties and domestic security in the American tradition.

4. What was the traditional level of national spending on domestic security? What were the exceptions? Why?

5. Explain why concerns over border security and immigration have waxed and waned over the course of the nation’s history.

NOTES

1. See, for example, Jill Lepore, Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Random House, 1999).

2. Mark Grimsely, “Surviving Military Revolution: The U.S. Civil War,” in The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050, ed. McGregor Knox and Williamson Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

3. Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1860–1941 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1998); Charles P. Stacey, “The Myth of the Unguarded Frontier, 1815–1871,” American Historical Review 56 (October 1950): 1–18; John S. D. Eisenhower, Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913–1917 (New York: Norton, 1993).

4. Lois G. Schwoerer, “No Standing Armies!” The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).

5. Robert W. Coakley, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1789–1878 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1988).

6. William H. Rehnquist, All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 138–43.

7. Mathew Carlton Hammond, “The Posse Comitatus Act: A Principle in Need of Renewal,” Washington University Law Quarterly 2/75 (Summer 1997): 3; www.wulaw.wuslt.edu/75–2/75–2–10.html.

8. For a detailed discussion of the period, see Clayton D. Laurie and Ronald H. Cole, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1877–1945 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1997); James Jay Carafano, Private Sector, Public Wars: Contractors in Combat—Afghanistan, Iraq and Future Conflicts (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), 26.

9. Nathan Miller, Spying for America (New York, Dell Publishing, 1989), 232–34.

10. Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995).

11. Carl H. Chrislock, Watchdog of Loyalty: The Minnesota Commission for Public Safety during World War I (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1991).

12. Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 3–15.

13. For an overview of the defense of the United States during World War II, see Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2000).

14. Defense spending, for example, was 2 percent of GDP in 1940. During the Cold War, spending varied considerably from a low of 3.6 percent of GDP in 1948 to a high of 13 percent in 1954. Office of Management and Budget, Historical Table, Budget of the United States Government, Table 3.1: Outlays by Superfunction and Function: 1940–2006, w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2002/sheets/hist03z1.xls. For the varieties in Cold War defense spending, see Dennis S. Ippolito, Blunting the Sword: Budget Policy and the Future of Defense Spending (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1994), 3–33. The exact percentages of defense spending that can be attributed directly to protecting the homeland or securing other national security interests is difficult to quantify. Some investments served dual functions. America’s nuclear arsenal, for example, was intended to protect the nation and discourage Soviet aggression in Western Europe. Historical homeland security spending by nondefense agencies is even more difficult to measure.

15. Lisle Abbott Rose, The Cold War Comes to Main Street: America in 1950 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).

16. Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker, 2001), 161.

17. In 1950 the United States established a civil defense program, and the military organized its first postwar continental air defense commands to protect nearly 100 cities, industrial centers, and military bases. At its height these defenses included constant combat air patrols by the Air National Guard and 240 missile sites operated by almost 45,000 active Army National Guard soldiers. Robert L. Kelly, Army Antiaircraft in Air Defense, 1946–54, Historical Study No. 4 (Colorado Springs, CO: Air Defense Command, June 1954); Kenneth Schaffel, The Emerging Shield: The Air Force and the Evolution of Continental Air Defense, 1945–1960 (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1991). There were brief spurts of activity. After the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the national civil defense effort received renewed attention when the government initiated a nationwide nuclear fallout shelter system. Some homeland defense systems lingered as well. As late as the early 1970s, the Defense Department still maintained nuclear-tipped air defense missiles in the United States. Thomas J. Kerr, Civil Defense in the US: Bandaid for a Holocaust? (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).

18. United States Senate, Final Report of Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Book II (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976).

19. Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1984 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1985).

20. The most controversial claims were made in Claire Sterling, The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism (New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston, 1981). See also Jillian Becker, The Soviet Connection: State Sponsorship of Terrorism (London: Alliance for the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, 1985). Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981–1987 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 127, concludes that Sterling’s research drew heavily on CIA disinformation efforts to inflate the threat of Soviet state-sponsored terrorism. Nevertheless, in the early 1990s Russian officials, including deputy minister Sergei Shakhari and information minister Mikhail Poltoranin, suggested that there was credible archival material substantiating the role of terrorism sponsorship by the Soviet Union and its client states. Many of the relevant archives continued to be closed to Western researchers. See, for example, Mark Kramer, “Archival Research in Moscow: Progress and Pitfalls,” Cold War International History Project, wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=library.document&topic_id=1409&id=516, and Gary Bruce, “Update on the Stasi Archives,” Cold War International History Project, wwics.si.edu/index. cfm?fuseaction=library.document&topic_id=1409&id=15618.

21. Steven M. Kosiak, Analysis of the FY 2003 Defense Budget Request (Washington, DC: CSBA, March 2002), graph 4.

22. Richard A. Falkenrath, “The Problems of Preparedness: Challenges Facing the U.S. Domestic Preparedness Program,” Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, discussion paper (Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2000), 1.

23. Presidential Decision Directive 39, U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism, June 21, 1995.

24. Laura K. Donohue, “In the Name of National Security: U.S. Counterterrorist Measures, 1960–2000,” BCIA Discussion Paper 20001–6 (Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, August 2001).