Homeland Security

An Introduction to Principles and Practice

Charles P. Nemeth

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000407860
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Criminología

Homeland Security: An Introduction to Principles and Practice, Fourth Edition continues its record of providing a fully updated, no-nonsense textbook to reflect the latest policy, operational, and program changes to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the last several years. The blend of theory with practical application instructs students on how to understand the need to reconcile policy and operational philosophy with the real-world use of technologies and implementation of practices.

The new edition is completely updated to reflect changes to both new challenges and continually changing considerations. This includes facial recognition, intelligence gathering techniques, information sharing databases, white supremacy, domestic terrorism and lone wolf actors, border security and immigration, the use of drones and surveillance technology, cybersecurity, the status of ISIS and Al Qaeda, the increased nuclear threat, COVID-19, ICE, DACA, and immigration policy challenges. Consideration of, and the coordinated response, to all these and more is housed among a myriad of federal agencies and departments.

Features

• Provides the latest organizational changes, restructures, and policy developments in DHS

• Outlines the role of multi-jurisdictional agencies—this includes stakeholders at all levels of government relative to the various intelligence community, law enforcement, emergency managers, and private sector agencies

• Presents a balanced approach to the challenges the federal and state government agencies are faced with in emergency planning and preparedness, countering terrorism, and critical infrastructure protection

• Includes full regulatory and oversight legislation passed since the last edition, as well as updates on the global terrorism landscape and prominent terrorist incidents, both domestic and international

• Highlights emerging, oftentimes controversial, topics such as the use of drones, border security and immigration, surveillance technologies, and pandemic planning and response

• Contains extensive pedagogy including learning objectives, sidebar boxes, chapter summaries, end of chapter questions, Web links, and references for ease in comprehension

Homeland Security, Fourth Edition continues to serve as the comprehensive and authoritative text on homeland secuirty. The book presents the various DHS state and federal agencies and entities within the government—their role, how they operate, their structure, and how they interact with other agencies—to protect U.S. domestic interests from various dynamic threats.

Ancillaries including an Instructor's Manual with Test Bank and chapter PowerPointTM slides for classroom presentation are also available for this book and can be provided for qualified course instructors.

Charles P. Nemeth

is a recognized expert in homeland security and a leader in the private security industry, private sector justice, and homeland security education. He has more than 45 book publications and is currently Chair of the Department of Security, Fire, and Emergency Management at John Jay College in New York City.

1 The Idea and Origin of Homeland Security

OBJECTIVES

1. To identify major twentieth- and twenty-first-century events, both domestic and international, that formed the United States’ current policy position on homeland security
2. To comprehend that war, by its very nature, its military tactics and strategies, and governmental policies, relies on forms of terror to meet its goals
3. To analyze the effect the Cold War had on shaping Americans’ notions of terror and to understand the evolution of the government’s policy responses
4. To describe the domestic events of the turbulent 1960s and 1970s to shed light on the country’s response to domestic terrorism as well as gain an understanding of the unique motivations of the domestic terrorist
5. To differentiate the motives of the international terrorist from the domestic terrorist and comprehend that although the methods may be the same, the motivations differ
6. To explain the unique motivations of the jihadist by exploring attacks against U.S. military targets and discover the motivations leading up to the events of 9/11
7. To evaluate specific international terror incidents against U.S. installations prior to 9/11 to gain an understanding of the jihadist mentality that led up to the terror attacks against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon
8. To identify specific domestic terror attacks, such as those perpetuated by Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski, the Tree of Life-Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter, by way of examples, in light of the effect these types of attacks have on national security policy

1.1 Introduction

The concept of a threat to the homeland has historically taken many shapes. Terror and the terrorist are not new phenomena—they are a construction of the ages, seen throughout history in various guises. In recent years, the country has focused on domestic security and preventing acts of terrorism. The new domestic terrorist continues to evolve, whether driven by racial, religious, or ideological motives, from the left or the right, or “planted” among us—a trained and brain-washed actor determined to cause havoc. In short, we are under stress from within and without. As we move toward a twentieth year reflection on the events of 9/11, it is clear that domestic terrorism has unfortunately grown in scope and size, whether it be driven by racial or ethnic hatred, religious bigotry, or extreme ideologies like supremacy or environmental issues.¹ Couple this perspective with a predictable national desire to protect one’s homeland, and nothing here is unexpected. What is of greater utility in the discussion of security of the homeland will be how we arrived at our current position. Specifically, what did we do before the jihadist? What types of terror attacks did America experience? What motivated the terrorist? For example, the Ku Klux Klansman is hardly a jihadist, although his methods may be just as dastardly. How do we reconcile that difference, or is there really a difference at all when measuring harm? In fact, the crazed shooter who enters religious settings, whether mosque, church, or synagogue, operates from just as extreme an ideology as the jihadist. What of the military dictator, the tyrant, the leader who leads his country to ruin and grounds his enterprise on hate, such as the leader of the Third Reich? This too is terror by any reasonable definition. Terror is nothing new, although terror adopts new rationales, new causes, and new methodologies.

The acts of the terrorist have been with us since the dawn of recorded history. It is important to keep this in context in our interpretation of history. This chapter traces a whole host of acts and movements in the twentieth century that preceded the events of 9/11. All the examples covered illuminate how and why terrorists do what they do. All these illustrations, from the military machine that oppresses people and states to the radical protest groups, like the “Weathermen” who sabotage government installations, help to bring perspective to the discussion. When one scrutinizes the diversity of these acts and approaches, one can better understand the landscape of modern terrorism in a post-9/11 world.

1.2 Threats to the Homeland: Twentieth-Century Military Movements

While much can be written about the nature of threat and violence throughout U.S. history, the best place to start in order to understand modern-day terrorism is the twentieth century—a century with complex conflicts and territorial challenges. From World War I (WWI) to World War II (WWII), the concept of threats to the homeland was largely the result of country-to-country conquests, political disagreements, and imperial empire building. For example, the Third Reich’s move across the Polish frontier, in the name of the reclamation of Aryan races under the thumb of the Polish authorities, is a land grab with a eugenic flavor. This is a very different kind of threat from that currently considered by the Department of Homeland Security. Yet, these wars and conflicts serve as an appropriate backdrop for the way any nation seeks to maintain its territorial integrity. In a sense, the planes attacking the World Trade Center buildings were an assault on the country’s sovereignty not unlike the way the German troops crossed into the Sudetenland (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 German troops goose step through Warsaw, Poland, during the 1939 invasion that saw Poland fall within 3 weeks. The invasion caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany. (From National Archives, image 200-SFF-52.)

The means and motivation are clearly different, though the net effect is not completely dissimilar. The Nazi onslaught of WWII was, in a sense, the largest whole-scale terror campaign ever inflicted on a continent (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 From Poland to Stalingrad, from Holland to Northern Africa, the propaganda of the Third Reich was a campaign that terrorized the entire civilized world. (Courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC.)

Aside from this illegal and unjustified sweep of countries, Germany culminated its terror by implementing its Final Solution, its programs of extermination of Jews and all forms of resisters, of the mentally disabled, the old and infirm, homosexuals, Rabbis, Catholic priests, and Lutheran ministers. More than six million human beings perished under the crush of an evil state (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 A survivor stokes smoldering human remains in a crematorium oven that is still lit, Dachau, Germany, April 29–May 1, 1945. (Courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC.)

That the Nazi regime engaged in deliberate, intentional threats against whole races, ethnic types, and classifications of citizens is a self-evident conclusion when the historical record is scratched just a little. The systematic extermination program was the subject of endless meetings and conferences, though admittedly the Nazi leaders were quite effective in removing the paper trail. In 1942, at what was billed as the Wannsee Conference, the leadership of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Nazi and other aligned government entities met to discuss the efficacy and corresponding efficiencies of mass extermination. Leading the charge calling for the physical extermination of millions was SS officer Reinhard Heydrich (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4 Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (Security Service) and Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia. Place uncertain, 1942. (From National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.)

The bureaucratic apparatus was coupled with legions of resources, from transportation to the building of crematoria. The task of moving millions of people to their own deaths required extraordinary efforts by the captains of industry. Consider the complexities of rail movement alone as portrayed in Figure 1.5.

Figure 1.5 The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as “resettlement to the east.” The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation for most Jews meant transit to killing centers and then death. (Courtesy of the U.S Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC.)

Similar arguments about Japanese imperialism can be posited and for good reason. The Japanese intent was to dominate and rule the world using means far outside the mainstream of modern warfare. The survivors of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines or of Japan’s own concentration camps tell a story of brutality and degradation that seems inexplicable when one considers the modern democratic state of Japan. The notorious Unit 731 on the Japanese mainland witnessed forced sterilization, castration, live burial, vivisection, mutilation, and mass experimentation (Figure 1.6).

Figure 1.6 Camp 731 beheading an American POW. (Courtesy of the University of Minnesota, Center for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.)

Internet Exercise: Visit Unit 731.org—a web location dedicated to advancing the truth about this horrid place especially considering its notorious biological experimentation—at: https://unit731.org.

None of these atrocities can be adequately covered in a text on homeland security, although it is critical that the reader understands that war, by its very nature, depends on terror to some extent. Whether it is the summary execution of civilians and prisoners of war or the indiscriminate bombing of wholescale populations, terror is both an end and a by-product of war. Much of what we witness in the terror battlefield today c...