The terms counterterrorism and antiterrorism are often used interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference between the tw

The terms counterterrorism and antiterrorism are often used interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference between the two. At the same time, there is also considerable overlap, especially since both now often get subsumed under the term homeland security.

Counterterrorism tends to be broader and longer-term and refers to policies and programs designed to mitigate or even eliminate the existence of terrorist groups and activities. Counterterrorism includes military, covert, intelligence, diplomatic, legal, and economic efforts Antiterrorism tends to be narrower and refers to efforts to prevent and/or respond to specific types of attacks. It is in this category that you see your discussions of aviation security, increased law enforcement activity in response to threat assessments, improvements in our public health system, and the like. Our readings look at the concepts of counterterrorism and antiterrorism in the context of our “new” (now 20 years old) focus on homeland security and provide a good look at how our homeland security apparatus and infrastructure are organized to achieve our counterterrorism and antiterrorism goals.

To say that much has changed about how our counterterrorism community is structured since 9-11 is to state the obvious. The answers to the following questions are much more problematic: Have we made ourselves safer? Are we capable of preventing and/or responding to the next terrorist attack? How do we know if we are or not? Some of you posed very similar questions with regard to cyber threats. The same questions apply to the broader issues of national security and safety.

Falkenraths article ask these questions in one form or another. I will admit that reading a long article about changes in the structure of federal agencies and congressional committees does not usually lead to stomach-turning emotions or much excitement. But it is reading this article, knowing what is going to happen within just a few months of its publication that does it for me. I often wonder what Falkenrath (considered a top national security scholar) felt the first time he went back and read this after 9-11 and the anthrax attacks.

Note though, that as Falkenrath points out, a considerable amount of discussion, funding, and program development came in response to events in 1995. In fact, it was the confluence of the chemical attack in Tokyo and the Oklahoma City bombing within a month of each other that generated the interest. Although no U.S. lives or property were implicated in the Tokyo attack, the incident was seen immediately as a sea change in terrorism concerns. The line that we assumed no one would cross — the use of chemical or biological weapons — was crossed. More, it was done by a non-state actor; a group of lunatics who believed that drinking their gurus blood would lead to enlightenment (I kid you not). Still, the concerns about more WMD attacks, particularly on U.S. soil, would likely have remained among a relatively select group of experts in the federal government and academia if not for Oklahoma City. Tokyo raised the concerns; Oklahoma City provided the forum in which to discuss them.

Falkenraths article also does a good job of introducing us to the debate over how we define and structure the areas of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. I was involved in a group that examined the creation of degrees in these areas and we struggled constantly with how to define these disciplines, what should be covered, what are the areas of overlap, and so forth. In the practitioner community, this debate is epitomized not by 9-11, but by Hurricane Katrina. Following 9-11, as many of you know, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was merged into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and formed the basis for a new directorate called the Emergency Response and Recovery Directorate. By subsuming FEMA into DHS and focusing all the attention on terrorist attacks instead of natural disasters, the move significantly interfered with the traditional all-hazards approach that guided the agency successfully in the past. Worse, it placed several layers of bureaucracy between the FEMA director and the White House (where the authority to issue disaster declarations and mobilize federal resources resides). Of course, it did not help that the FEMA director at the time was the former head of the racing association for thoroughbred horses. Today, while still technically in DHS, the original directorates have been broken up and FEMA has regained its status as a separate agency within DHS with more direct access to both the Secretary and the White House. In fact, if you go to the FEMA website (www.fema.gov) it is difficult to find any significant reference to DHS other than the seal next the FEMA name and the organizational charts.

Ultimately, Falkenraths article presents probably the trickiest problem of all. How prepared should and can we be? Starting on page 172, Falkenrath addressed the issue of acceptable risk noting that reasonable limits must be established because society cannot invest endlessly in lowering the risks it faces. Note that he was writing this seven years before the financial meltdown of 2008, when many state and local first response agencies — including public health agencies — found their budgets and personnel slashed dramatically. Once we finally recovered from that financial disaster, we have the pandemic meltdown. In fact, many experts argue that the reason the pandemic has been as bad as it has is that we have spent the last decades systematically stripping our public health system of money and resources. Stated more bluntly, assuming a major future terrorist attack of some type, how many casualties are we willing to accept?

Another important aspect of homeland security that gained new — and much needed — currency after 9-11 is critical infrastructure protection (CIP), including infrastructure related to our food and water systems. In fact, a terrorist attack using a food-borne illness took place in the United States as early as 1984. It never drew much attention as a terrorist attack because for several years after the incident was attributed to food-handler error. It took place in the small Oregon town of The Dalles, which sits just east of Portland on I-84 wedged between the Columbia River and Mt. Hood (If you like hiking, rafting, or boating, this is the place for you). A bizarre fringe cult bought and settled on a large ranch outside of town. They decided that they wanted to take over the city council, so just before the elections, they contaminated several salad bars in town by the simple expedient of dropping a bit of salmonella in the lettuce at each salad bar. Their hope was that most of the towns people would be too sick to go out and vote and thus ensure that their own candidates won the election. It didnt work — the town simply postponed the elections. Still, at least 700 people were sickened (some seriously), the local hospitals as well as the state lab were quickly overwhelmed. The CDC originally blamed the outbreak on food handling error even though the salad bars were from several different restaurants which did not share a common lettuce distributor. Eventually, the perpetrators were found and convicted, and the cult shut down, but it took a while.

The lesson here is that since 2001, many experts on both the emergency management and homeland security sides of the aisle have increasingly recognized the importance and vulnerability of our agriculture and water distribution infrastructure. The attack would not even need to be that successful in terms of casualties. Even a hint of the idea of serious contamination could result in panic and the devastation of several industries. The psychological damage alone could be considerable.

In many ways, all of these issues are once again raising their head in the crisis we are now experiencing. While it is important that we do not forget the human toll this is going to take, the same questions raised above, and in Falkenraths article, still apply. Once this is over, they will be asked again in a number of venues. The most important question will be — after all this time and all the lessons learned after 9-11, Katrina, and the anthrax attacks — why were we still not as prepared as we should have been.

Obviously, the coronavirus is not a terrorist attack (please ignore any and all conspiracy theories that suggest it is). But as you saw in the materials we read about WMD, the issues regarding how to deal with a dangerous pathogen are dictated by the pathogen itself, not with how it was released. In fact, public health experts have been warning for years that the dangers posed by naturally emerging infectious diseases far outweighed those posed by bioterrorism. They are taking no pleasure now in being able to say… we told you so … but they have every right to say it.

Our discussion thread for this topic is a broad one and deliberately so. Its designed to allow you to be endlessly creative and, hopefully, have some fun with it. Looking forward to reading what you come up with.

Discussion Question 12-1: Based on the readings and videos for this topic, how would you describe the areas/disciplines of Homeland Security and Emergency Management? What areas of overlap, if any, do you see between them? If you were designing a 15-week semester course that covered an introduction to both, what topics would you include?