Lippman Chapter 10 & 11

Ace your homework & exams now with Quizwiz!

CHAPTER SUMMARY 11

A number of public policy issues in counterterrorism, some of which have yet to be fully resolved, have been discussed in this chapter. Drone warfare has proven effective in killing terrorists and in dismantling terrorist networks, although it risks endangering and alienating civilians. Cur-rent American policy is to maintain the Guantánamo Bay prison camp to detain and to isolate terrorists, although critics assert that the facility is expensive, is unnecessary, and inspires terrorism. The use of enhanced interrogation is con-sidered torture, which is prohibited under American and international law. Some commentators question whether enhanced interrogation constitutes torture and assert that these methods prove effective in detecting terrorist plots and are justified for protecting national security. Military commissions have proven to be an inefficient method of prosecuting accused terrorists, although they are viewed by some as preferable to providing terrorists with the full due process of protections granted in civilian jury trials. Civilian trials also present a target for terrorist attacks. The issues of surveillance and racial profiling starkly raise the question of how to balance civil liberties and the right to privacy with national security. Among the primary reasons why a significant number of people favor limiting immigration is to prevent terrorists from entering the United States. Studies suggest that immigrants are responsible only for a small number of ter-rorist attacks. Social media companies are expected as responsible citizens to balance the desire for free and open access and debate and the desire to attract as many users as possible with the responsibility to limit terrorist incitement and recruitment and hate speech.

How Terrorism Ends

Audrey Kurth Cronin (2011) finds that the ends of terrorist campaigns follow several patterns. In other words, why do terrorist groups disappear, evolve into peaceful political parties, or succeed? What are the lessons of Cronin's analysis for strategies of counterterrorism? Six "primary patterns" emerge. Decapitation. The killing or arrest of a terrorist leader is intended to eliminate those who unite a group and articulate the group's goals. The elimination of leadership also demonstrates the group's vulnerability and demoralizes adherents. A leader's arrest also may yield valuable intelli-gence. An example of a successful decapitation is the arrest of Abimael Guzmán, the founding figure of Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") in 1992 in Peru. The group rapidly declined and largely disappeared. The death of Osama bin Laden appears to have seriously weakened al Qaeda. This strategy may backfire—such as by eliminating a leader who is able to con-trol the desire of various factions within the organization to engage in an increased level of violence. Killing a leader also may create a martyr and heroic figure whose apprehension or death inspires increased violence. Eliminating a leader also may splinter an organization and make negoti-ated settlement more difficult. A government that engages in the killing of a terrorist leader also may be placed on the defensive in explaining why violence by terrorists is criminal when violence by the state is legitimate. Negotiations. There are isolated instances of governments engaging in unan-nounced negotiations with terrorist groups. The goal is to determine what concessions may lead to an end to violence and to reach a peace accord. Negotiations can demonstrate to a terrorist group that there are alternatives to violence to achieve the group's aims and goals. Negotiations also may enable the government to weaken the group by creating tension between individuals who favor negotiation and those who reject negotiations. On the other hand, negotiations provide terrorists recognition and legitimacy, reward a group for engaging in unlawful violence, and may give the impression that the government is weak and vulnerable and can encourage additional terror-ist violence. The historical record indicates that negotiations only have taken place in isolated instances in which a group has successfully carried out a terrorist campaign that the government has been unable to defeat. Terrorist groups are most likely to negotiate when the group possesses a strong cen-tralized leadership that commands loyalty; when there are other insurgent groups that are competing for popular support; when preconditions are not demanded to negotiations; when the international community intervenes to ensure fair negotiations; and when the group believes that it cannot sustain the terrorist campaign in the long term. In these instances negotiations gen-erally have resulted in a settlement, such as in Northern Ireland. Success. Terrorist groups possess various aims and goals. Examples of successful terrorist campaigns are the Jewish terrorist groups Irgun and Lehi, which contributed to the British decision to exit Palestine, the African National Congress (ANC) transition to power in South Africa, and the suc-cess of the FLN in Algeria. Groups have been most successful when they attract a measure of popular and international support for their goals. A foreign power like the French in Algeria is most likely to exit when its con-tinued presence is increasingly unpopular at home and abroad. Failure. Terrorist groups on average have a lifespan of roughly 8 years. Terrorists are killed and captured, and financial support and resources become increasingly difficult to attract. Fighters grow disillusioned or tired with the struggle or with the lack of clear success. Terrorists may be offered amnesty if they give up the struggle and decide to leave the battlefield. A terrorist group also may find that their goals are no longer relevant because of government concessions or reforms. The end of the Vietnam War left New Left groups in the United States without a cause that could attract popular support. An escalation of violence by a terrorist group may result in a group losing credibility and support. There also is a tendency for terrorist groups to splinter into various factions that differ on whether to continue to rely on violence or to shift to an electoral strategy or to open negotiations. Repression. A government may take aggressive actions to weaken or to eliminate a terrorist group. The use of force may be used to affirm the strength of the government, deter additional attacks, maintain domestic and foreign support, and gain revenge and retribution. There is an obvi-ous danger that the government reaction is viewed as too severe or as needlessly harming civilians and will weaken the government's support in the country. Excessive violence, although it may lead to short-term suc-cess, can create resentment that impedes unification of the country and inspires future acts of rebellion. Examples of the successful repression of terrorist groups include Peru and Uruguay. Reorientation. A terrorist group may be transformed into a political orga-nization or wage a guerilla or conventional war campaign. Kashmir is an example of a conflict in which terrorism evolved into a series of conven-tional armed conflicts. The ANC in South Africa made the transition from a terrorist organization to a political party that elected Nelson Mandela as president of the country in 1994. A terrorist group also may react to a lack of success by employing its political networks and skills to engage in criminal activity. FARC in Colombia, although it was a self-identified Marxist terrorist group, evolved into an organization that devoted a dis-proportionate amount of its resources to furthering the cocaine trade.

Personalities and Events 11

Beaudry Robert "Bowe" Bergdhal, at age 23, was serving in Afghani-stan with the U.S. Army when he was captured and held captive by the Taliban-affiliated Haqquini network. He was held as a prisoner from June 2009 to May 2014. He was captured after deserting his post and only was released in exchange for five Taliban detainees detained at Guantánamo Bay. Bergdhal was to be tried by a general court-martial for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. On October 16, 2017, he entered a guilty plea in a court-martial proceeding and was sentenced to dishonorable discharge, reduced in rank from sergeant to private, and fined $1,000 per month from his pay for 10 months—but was not sentenced to prison (Oppel, 2017). Bergdahl was born in Sun Valley, Idaho, and was homeschooled and was called a free spirit by many, spending time in a Buddhist monastery. He was discharged after 26 days from the Coast Guard for psychological reasons. Two years later, in 2008, Bergdahl enlisted in the army and was deployed in Afghanistan the next year and assigned to a counter-insurgency unit stationed at an outpost in eastern Afghanistan on the Pakistani border. Throughout his military career Bergdahl was described as a loner and he was reportedly shaken when a fellow soldier with whom he was close was killed by a roadside bomb. Several days later, Bergdahl allegedly wandered away from his unit and was captured. He had previously sent his parents an e-mail that was highly critical of the U.S. military: The US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good SGTs are getting out as soon as they can, [...] I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live. ... We don't even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks. ... We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them [...] I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is dis-gusting. There are a few more boxes coming to you guys. Feel free to open them, and use them (Hastings, 2012). The circumstances surrounding Bergdahl's disappearance are highly contested and uncertain. For example, soldiers in his unit contend he left an explanatory and bitter note, although the Pentagon claims there was no such note. Various soldiers who served with Bergdahl called him a deserter and attacked him for placing thousands of soldiers at risk when searching for him and for diverting soldiers from counterinsurgency missions. Although it was alleged that six soldiers died searching for Berg-dahl, the Pentagon concluded that the soldiers' deaths were unrelated to the search. In July 2009 the Taliban released the first in a series of videos showing Bergdahl's capture. His capturers initially demanded $1 million and the release of 21 Afghan prisoners along with a Pakistani scientist convicted in the United States (Stein, 2014). This demand eventually was reduced to five prisoners held at Guantánamo. Bergdahl alleged that while imprisoned, he attempted to escape and that after being captured he was tortured and detained in a cage in the dark for weeks at a time. On May 31, 2014, Bergdahl was released and exchanged for five Tali-ban members, including the Taliban army chief of staff, a Taliban deputy minister of intelligence, a former Taliban interior minister, and two other senior Taliban figures (Schmitt & Savage, 2014). The same day that Bergdahl was released, President Obama appeared with Bergdahl's parents in the White House Rose Garden where he announced the prisoner exchange (Schmitt & Savage, 2014). The deci-sion was criticized for rewarding the Taliban for taking U.S. soldiers as prisoners and encouraging future efforts to capture American soldiers. Negotiating with the Taliban also was attacked as contrary to the practice of not negotiating with terrorists and, in effect, providing them recognition as a military force rather than as terrorists. ough Sgt. Bergdahl did have a severe mental disease or defect at the time of the alleged criminal conduct, he was able to appreciate the nature and quality and wrongfulness of this conduct" (Wong, 2016). A 59-day investigation concluded that there was no evidence that Bergdahl was sympathetic to the Taliban or intended to desert. He was described as having "idealistic and unrealistic expectations of people" and as being an extreme individualist, and that there was no evidence that any soldiers had been killed attempting to rescue Bergdahl. The report concluded that imprisonment would be an "inappropriate penalty" for Bergdahl (Lam-othe, 2015). President Donald Trump during the presidential campaign attacked the Bergdahl controversy, saying he was a traitor. Should the United States have negotiated Bergdahl's release? What is your view? What was the appropriate sentence?

Personalities and Events

Chelsea Manning (born Bradley Man-ning, December 17, 1987) was a member of the U.S. military. In July 2013, she was convicted of violating the Espionage Act after transferring roughly 750,000 classified and sen-sitive (unclassified) military and diplomatic documents to the website Wikileaks. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison and was released by President Obama in 2017. Manning was born in Oklahoma FIGURE 10.2 Chelsea Manning Copyright © Tim Travers Hawkins (CC BY-SA 4.0) at https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File%3AChelsea_ Manning%2C_18_May_2017_ (cropped).jpeg. City, Oklahoma, in 1987. Her father was a member of the Navy who mar-ried Manning's mother after meeting her in Wales in the United Kingdom. Both parents reportedly abused alco-hol and Chelsea's health suffered. As an adult she only reached 5ft 2in and weighed around 105 pounds. Despite her unstable home life, Chelsea excelled at science and exhibited an aptitude for computer Manning moved with her mother to Wales before returning to the United States at age 17. After being fired from a position as a software developer, Chelsea held a series of low-paying jobs but found the confidence to live as an openly gay person. In 2007 Chelsea's father persuaded her at age 20 to join the military with the understanding that she could take advantage of college benefits to eventually pursue a doctorate in physics. After surviving a difficult and chal-lenging experience during basic training, Chelsea was assigned to serve as an intelligence analyst, which gave her access to a massive amount of clas-sified information. Manning was then posted to Fort Drum in upstate New York and became romantically involved with a Brandeis University student who introduced Chelsea to the Boston-area hacker community. Although Manning finally seemed happy, she continued to exhibit emotional uneven-ness, instability, and insecurity. She was nonetheless assigned to Iraq in October 2009 and was promoted from private first class to specialist. Manning reportedly found herself lonely, in crisis over her gender iden-tity, and with grave misgivings about the war in Iraq. The military's "don't ask don't tell" policy prevented her from living openly as a transgender women. On January 5, 2010, Manning downloaded documents that were later labeled the Iraq War logs. Three days later she downloaded more documents, later known as the Afghan War logs. She saved the material on a CD-RW which she smuggled through security and copied onto her computer. The files then were copied from her laptop to an SD card for her camera. On January 23, 2010, Manning flew to the United States for 2 weeks' leave (Shaer, 2017). On February 3, 2010, after corresponding with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, Manning began sending files to the website. Material shortly thereafter also began appearing in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel. Manning was arrested shortly after the documents began to appear. The documents included: Afghanistan war logs. Excerpts from 91,731 reports of U.S. military actions in Afghanistan known as the Afghan War logs. These files included information on a 2007 attack by American forces in the city of Jalalabad that killed 19 and wounded 50 civilians. Iraq war logs. In October 2010, documents were released that included revelations of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and killing by Iraq police and soldiers. Some documents recorded that prisoners were shackled, hung by their wrists or ankles, and were whipped, kicked, and were subject to electric shock. Details of 100,000 deaths following the invasion of the country were compiled, which was contrary to representations that there was no official list of deaths. State department cables. On November 10, 2010, 251,287 Department of State cables written by 217 American embassies and consulates in 180 countries were released (WikiLeaks, 2010). This included cables on Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, and an intelligence operation directed against United Nations officials. Baghdad airstrike. A video showing two American helicopters in 2007 firing at a group of roughly a dozen men. Two of the men who were killed were Reuters journalists; the pilot mistook their cameras for weapons. A van is attacked in the video, killing an innocent father who is attempting to assist the wounded—as well as his two young children. Granai airstrike. A video of an air strike in 2009 on the village of Granai, Afghanistan, killing between 86 and 147 Afghan civilians. The video appears to have been destroyed by a member of Wikileaks and was never posted online. Guantánamo. In April 2011, 758 "detainee assessment" dossiers were released on individuals held at Guantánamo Bay prison drafted between 2002 and 2009. The files detailed the detainees' connections with al Qaeda or the Taliban. The files revealed that some prisoners had long been cleared of involvement with terrorist organizations. Manning was held in the Marine Corps Brig in Quantico, Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011 under Prevention of Injury status—which required solitary confinement and constant surveillance. She was incarcerated in a 6-by-12-foot cell with no window. Manning was temporarily placed on suicide watch, her clothing and eyeglasses were removed, and she was required to remain in her cell 24 hours a day (Nakashima, 2011). Her conditions led to international criticism; the United Nations Special Rap-porteur on torture, Juan E. Mendez, described her treatment as cruel and degrading. On April 20, 2010, Manning was transferred to medium-level custody at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and pled guilty to 10 of 22 charges. She stood trial beginning in June 2013 on the remaining charges and on July 30, 2013, was convicted of 17 of the original charges and amended versions of four others—although she was acquitted of aiding the enemy (Pilking-ton, 2013). A military psychologist who treated Manning testified at her trial that she was isolated in the Army and had difficulty dealing with her gender-iden-tity issues in a hypermasculine environment. Another psychiatrist testified that Manning had narcissistic personality traits and demonstrated signs of fetal alcohol syndrome and Asperger's syndrome. According to the testimony, in leaking the material Manning was acting out a sense of her own grandiosity and believed that the leaked information was going to change the world and persuade people that the Afghan and Iraq wars were not worth pursuing (Shaer, 2017). On August 14, Manning apologized to the court: "I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States. I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these deci-sions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people." Manning was sentenced to 35 years in a maximum-security disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth. The day after sentencing, Manning's attorney issued a press release announcing that his client was female and asked that she be referred to by the name Chelsea and that feminine pronouns be used. Manning requested and eventually received hormone replacement therapy (Hartmann, 2013; Tate, 2013). On January 17, 2017, President Obama commuted all but 4 months of Manning's remaining sentence. President Obama stated in a press con-ference in January 2017 that Manning's original 35-year prison sentence was "very disproportionate relative to what other leakers have received" and that "it makes sense to commute—and not pardon—her sentence." She was released on May 17, 2017. In response, President Trump tweeted that Manning was an "ungrateful traitor" and should "never have been released" (Savage, 2017b; Nelson, 2017). Manning's behavior may have been a product of her emotional instability and confusion. On the other hand, she may have been a well-meaning—if not naïve—idealist. Following the leaking of the documents to Wikileaks, Manning contacted Adrian Lamo, a well-known hacker, to discuss the leaks. Manning shared that the incident that had affected her most was when 15 detainees had been arrested by the Iraq Federal Police for print-ing material that was critical of the government. Manning reportedly told authorities that the arrests were unjustified because the arrestees had uncovered and were attempting to share information on corruption in the Iraqi government. Manning's commanding officer dismissed her concerns and ordered her to help the Iraqi police locate more subversives. Manning shared that it made her aware that she was "actively involved in something that I was completely against." On several occasions, Manning stated that she hoped the material that she leaked would hopefully lead to "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. if not ... than [sic] we're doomed as a species" (Shaer, 2017). Some individuals view Manning as a traitor to her country. Admiral Michael Mullen, then chair of the Joint Chief of Staffs, and other high-rank-ing officials and analysts continue to insist that Manning's disclosures jeopardized the lives of Americans and of Afghan informants. Others contended that Manning was a whistleblower who had ral-lied opposition to the Iraq and Afghan war. A Department of Defense study released to the public in July 2017 found that Manning's release of documents had no significant strategic impact on American national security. Manning has received numerous prizes from organizations in the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and various magazines for inspiring public debate over war and peace, and encouraging government openness and transgender rights. On September 13, 2017, Manning was named a vis-iting fellow at Harvard University to participate in a limited number of events on campus and to discuss LGBTQ issues with students. The acting director of the Harvard Institute of Politics welcomed her contribution to a series of thought-provoking events on race, gender, politics, and the media (Stack, 2017) Mike Morell, former deputy director and twice acting director of the CIA, resigned as a nonresident senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in protest over Har-vard honoring Manning, whom he stated was a convicted felon and leaker of classified information. CIA director Mike Pompeo—now Secretary of State—withdrew from a scheduled speaking engagement at Harvard, call-ing Manning a traitor. Douglas Elmendorf, dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard, subsequently withdrew Chelsea Manning's designation as a visiting fellow (Haag & Bromwich, 2017). A lingering question is how a young, unstable enlisted soldier could be permitted access to sensitive national security documents. What is your view of Chelsea Manning?

CHAPTER 11

Counterterrorism

Social Media

David Patrikarakos argues in his 2017 book, War In 140 Characters, that the nation-state in the 20th century exercised power in two crucial areas: the government monopolization of armed force and the domination of the flow of information. He notes that the development of Web 2.0 in the 21st century has allowed individual citizens to challenge governmental dominance of the flow of information. Gov-ernments, although able to militarily dominate terrorist groups, find themselves struggling to slow the radicalization of young people and dissemination of political criticism on social media (Patrikarakos, 2017). Al Shabaab in Somalia was one of the first groups to establish Twitter accounts which they organized under their media wing, called HMS Press. In September 2013, al Shabaab attracted worldwide attention by live-tweeting a terror attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. An al Shabaab tweet read: "What Kenyans are witnessing at #Westgate is retributive justice for crimes committed by their military, albeit minuscule in nature." Shortly thereafter al Shabaab posted the following message: "Since our last contact, the Mujahideen inside the mall confirmed to @HMS_Press that they killed over 100 Kenyan kuffar & battle is ongo-ing" (Higham & Nakashima, 2015). More than 60 people were killed in the attack on the mall, and an additional 175 were wounded. Twitter almost immediately took down the accounts, reportedly one of the first times the company removed material posted by a terrorist organization. Al Shabaab responded by creating new Twitter accounts under different names (Howden, 2013). The attack and the use of Twitter in real time was noted and copied by terrorists across the globe. Adam Gadahn, the late American-born al Qaeda media specialist observed in 2013 that the organization must make an effort to "reach out to Muslims through the new media like Facebook and Twitter" (Higham & Nakashima, 2015). In 2017 Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and YouTube initiated the Global Inter-net Forum to Counter Terrorism with the mission of developing technology for detecting terrorist posts online and providing online counternarratives to challenge terrorist appeals. There are at least four challenges identified by commentators in controlling social media. First, the content typically is in the form of videos. Photos are easily scanned, but videos contain thousands of frames and pose a greater challenge to scan for terrorist material. Second, the quantity of the videos poses a challenge. Facebook reports that around 100 million hours of video are watched on a daily basis and often are copied and shared; many of these videos are reposted after having been removed. Third, social media companies must undertake the difficult task of balancing freedom of expression against safety and profits. Lastly, governments must depend on the cooperation of private business entities organized to make a profit to regulate terrorist content. In response to governmental pressure to take action against terrorist mate-rial, Twitter suspended roughly 300,000 accounts linked to terrorism in the first half of 2017 and 935,897 accounts between August 2015 and June 2017. Twitter has roughly 328 million users, approximately 68 million of whom are in the United States. Restricting hate speech can be a difficult task for social media companies. Face-book has hired 1,200 moderators to monitor hate speech on its platform in Germany. The company received criticism from Muslim groups in Myanmar for failing to curb hate speech, incitements to violence, and fake news on its platform. It is estimated that Facebook would have to employ roughly 800 Burmese-speaking monitors to restrict hate speech in Myanmar. Human rights activists in other countries have articulated similar concerns. In March 2018, Sri Lanka ordered Facebook blocked in an effort to end mob violence against Muslims (Roose & Mozur, 2018). The focus on social media in combating terrorism only addresses a portion of the problem. In their personal communications and recruitment, terrorists rely on encryption. American governmental authorities unsuccessfully pressured Apple to assist them in breaking into the phone of one of the San Bernardino terrorist attackers. The British Conservative Party government reported that moments before Khalid Masood drove a car into pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge in London and stabbed a policeman to death outside Parliament, he had communi-cated through the use of an encrypted messaging service. Technology companies argue that their customers expect that their communications will remain private but governments insist that technology companies should not provide terrorists with a safe haven from governmental surveillance. In the past, Telegram has been the app of choice for ISIS, and ISIS has used the encrypted app to recruit and direct attacks in France, Germany, Russia, and Turkey. The app was developed in Russia, has more 100 million users, and primarily appeals to individuals who want end-to-end encryption (which prevents anyone except the sender and receiver from accessing a message), secret chatrooms, and self-destructing messages. Telegram also has a reputation for being less aggres-sive in closing terrorist channels of communication than other apps

Drone Warfare

Drones, or remote targeted aerial vehicles, are a central component of the war on terrorism. These unmanned, armed vehicles are equipped with cameras and are used to track terrorists. Images are sent back to operators stationed outside the battlefield who control the guidance and targeting of the armed drones. Signature strikes target training camps and groups of fighters and are carried out in active war zones. Profile strikes target specific individuals and may be employed wherever the target is located. For the most part in the past, profile strikes were carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Interna-tional humanitarian law requires that attacks be directed at military targets. An attack on a military object which could cause collateral damage to civilians is permissible only when the military advantage of the attack outweighs the harm to civilians. President Bush authorized drone strikes, although during his administration only about 50 attacks were launched in Pakistan, most of which took place in his last year in office. Within 2 years of taking office, President Obama escalated the number of strikes, most of which took place in Afghanistan. Strikes also targeted terrorists linked to al Qaeda in Yemen, in the tribal areas of Pakistan, in Libya, and against al Shabaab in Somalia. Profile strikes were carried out based on broad standards, such as a gathering of males who appeared to be terrorist fighters and as a consequence, these strikes resulted in civilian casualties. In March 2011, a CIA attack in Pakistan mistakenly killed a gathering of tribal elders. Another attack killed 83 people, including 45 civilians, who were attending the funeral of Khwaz Wali Mehsud, a middle-ranking Taliban commander. The British Bureau of Investigative Journalists identified 18 other occasions in which funerals were targeted by CIA drone attacks (Jaffer, 2016), Under the Obama administration, so-called kill lists of individuals to be tar-geted in signature strikes were developed by government officials who convened periodically to develop a roster of individuals to be targeted. The final decision on the individuals to be tracked and killed was made by President Obama. Perhaps the most controversial and widely reported drone strike was the October 11, 2012, attack that killed American-born Yemini cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a leading operative in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Awlaki's online lec-tures reportedly inspired the attacks by Major Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood, a 2009 attack on the New York City subway system, and an attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City by Faisal Shahzad in 2010. Al-Awlaki also played a role in the attempt by "underwear bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to attack an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The drone strike against al-Awlaki also killed Samir Khan, a 25-year-old American who was editor of the al Qaeda online magazine, Inspire. At the time they were killed, neither al-Awlaki nor Khan posed an immediate threat to American combatants or to the United States. Two weeks later, Awlaki's 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a drone strike on a gathering of men congregating at an outdoor restaurant in Yemen. In 2013, in response to criticism of the drone program, President Obama signed a presidential policy guidance popularly known as the drone playbook that attempted to restrict drone attacks (Presidential Policy Guidance, 2013). The guidance stipulated that attacks would be focused on individuals who presented an imminent threat to U.S. citizens, in which there was a near certainty that the individual being targeted is present at the site of the attack, and that there was a near certainty that noncombatants would not be injured or killed. The guidance also required that capture was not feasible, the country on whose territory the strike would take place was unable or unwilling to address the threat, and that there were no other reasonable available alternatives. The Obama administration also announced that responsibility for drone strikes would be shifted from the CIA to the military in order to provide a greater degree of information to the public regarding the occurrence of drone strikes. These reforms, according to various analysts, limited but did not eliminate civilian causalities (Jaffer, 2016). The Obama administration continued to rely on drone attacks, contending that the United States was at war with al Qaeda and that the drone strikes were justified on the battlefield and in other areas of the world as a matter of self-defense. Members of the administration denied that drone attacks resulted in a significant number of civilian deaths. In 2016 the Obama administration announced that over a 7-year period ending on December 31, 2015, drone strikes outside of the battlefield had killed between 64 and 116 noncombatants. Nongovernmental organizations list the number of civilian casualties between 2009 and 2015 as numbering between 200 and 900. As of the end of 2017, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the United States had conducted 4,705 drone strikes, which had killed between 7,207 and 10,511 people, approximately 70% of whom have been noncombatant civilians. As many as 330 of these casu-alties were children. Drone strikes were undoubtedly responsible for crippling, if not eliminating, the leadership of al Qaeda. However, the resulting civilian casualties in Pakistan and Afghanistan have led to a backlash against the United States and to a reluctance by the domestic population to cooperate with American forces. Drone strikes inevitably result in the killing of civilians because without accurate intelligence on the ground at the site of attack, it is difficult to determine whether civilians are present within the strike zone. Critics of President Obama's drone policy asserted that rather than focusing on killing high-level terrorists, the United States should attempt to capture them and gather intelligence on terrorist activity. On the other hand, this would inev-itably place American forces at risk and could result in an even greater number of civilian casualties. President Donald Trump announced that his administration has delegated the decision to employ drone attacks to the military and CIA and authorized profile attacks in an increased number of countries. Military commanders and the CIA are also authorized to attack terrorist leaders as well as ordinary foot soldiers who do not pose an immediate threat. In July 2017, the Columbia Law School's Human Rights Clinic and the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies reported that in the first months that President Donald Trump was in office, the monthly rate of American drone strikes has increased by roughly 4 times over the monthly rate of drone attacks under President Barack Obama. The U.S. government, according to the report, only acknowledged 20% of drone strikes that had taken place but admitted to killing between 2,867 and 3,138 individuals in strikes in countries like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. During his two terms in office, President Obama approved one drone strike every 5.4 days. Under President Trump, a drone strike during his first months in office was carried out roughly every 1.25 days. Defenders of drone attacks note that war is violent enterprise and that it is unrealistic to criticize tactics to defeat terrorists, who pose a serious threat. Attempting to introduce restrictions on the use of drones impedes the campaign against terrorism. The terrorists do not respect human life or restraints on the use of military force, and the defeat of terrorism requires authorizing the mili-tary and CIA to employ the necessary force to eliminate terrorist networks. On the other hand, the use of violence that threatens civilians may increase support for terrorists and make waging the War on Terror more difficult to win. What is your view?

IDENTIFING STATE SPONSORS AND FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS

Each year, the Department of State publishes the CountryReportsonTerrorism, which lists state sponsors of terrorism and foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). As previously noted, state sponsors of terrorism are governmental regimes that support terrorism; FTOs are terrorist groups. In accordance with congressional legislation, the secretary of state may designate a government as a state sponsor of terrorism if the country has con-sistently provided support for acts of international terrorism. A government remains on the list of state sponsors until removed by the secretary of state. A state sponsor of terrorism is subject to various penalties, including a prohi-bition on arms exports and sales, a prohibition on economic assistance, and restrictions on American exports of dual-use technology (goods that may be used for both civilian and military purposes). The Trump administration has listed North Korea, Iran, and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism but removed Sudan from the list. An FTO is a foreign organization that engages in terrorist activity or possesses the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity. In order to be designated an FTO, the organization must threaten the security of American nationals or national security (for example, national defense, foreign relations, or economic interests) of the United States (Luna & McCormack, 2015).

Chapter 10 Summary

Following the 9/11 attacks President George W. Bush issued an Executive Order establishing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The purpose of the DHS is to coordinate the detection, preparation, prevention, response to, and recovery from terrorist attacks within the United States. A number of agencies are under the umbrella of the DHS and the DHS coordinates with other agencies in protecting the nation's critical infrastructure. The FBI and a number of federal agencies are primarily responsible for the domestic investigation of terrorism and prosecutions are carried out by the Department of Justice. Other agencies are responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. The international community has entered into a number of agreements to coordinate efforts on airline safety, the protection of international diplomats, combating the taking of hostages, and the financing of terrorism. The United States has a history of taking strong action against internal threats that impinge on the rights and liberties of Americans. A number of these presi-dential and congressional programs remain of debatable effectiveness.

GUANTÁNAMO

Following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration reportedly wanted to house detainees outside the geographical boundaries of the United States at a prison con-structed at Guantánamo Bay, thinking that American courts lacked the jurisdiction to review the legality of the detentions and of the treatment of detainees held at the offshore facility. Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees were considered unlawful combatants who should not receive the legal protections accorded to prisoners of war under the law of war, which is adhered to by virtually every country in the world. President Bush reasoned that the detainees had no regard for the rule of law and did not merit recognition as prisoners of war because they did not satisfy the requirements for lawful combatants set forth in the Geneva Conventions—they did not carry their weapons openly, wear identifiable symbols, adhere to the law of war, or operate under the command of a responsible military officer. Guantánamo Bay detention camp was opened in January 2002 and since opening, it has housed 780 detainees. The island is leased by the United States from Cuba for a fee of $2,000 a year. The fee is based on a 1903 agreement between the two countries following the Spanish-American War. It has been termed the "most expensive prison on earth" and costs roughly $445 million per year to run—roughly $10 million for each detainee. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the notion that the detainees at Guantánamo existed in a no-law zone and held that courts had jurisdiction over the detainees housed at Guantánamo because the naval base was under American control. The detainees accordingly possessed the right to petition federal courts for habeas corpus review to determine whether they were being lawfully interned. Habeas corpus originated in England and provides prisoners the ability to ask courts to determine whether they are being legally interned. A number of detain-ees petitioned courts under habeas review, although the appellate courts in virtually every instance deferred to the judgment of military officials and held that based on the facts that the detainees were lawfully detained (Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004); Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008). The Supreme Court also held that detainees were entitled to various fundamental protections under the law of war. President Obama was intent on closing Guantánamo. He argued that Guantánamo was a symbol of American disregard for Muslims and inspired terrorist activity. American allies refused to extradite individuals to the United States to stand trial without a promise that the individual, if criminally convicted, would not be held at Guantánamo. Guantánamo was a blemish on the United States' commitment to the rule of law and made it difficult for the United States to criticize the human rights records of other countries. The U.S. Congress, however, passed legislation prohibiting the use of federal funds to transfer detainees to a prison in the United States. Various communities also expressed concern that the incarceration of convicted terrorist in a nearby prison would make the community a target for a terrorist attack. Keep in mind that hundreds of individuals convicted of terrorism are incarcerated in American prisons. Congress authorized the transfer of detainees to other countries if the secre-tary of defense certified that the country had a security plan in place and that the detainee did not pose a risk of engaging in terrorist activity. Detainees have been transferred to roughly 58 countries across the globe. The Bush administration transferred roughly 548 detainees from Guantánamo who were determined to no longer pose a threat or to have been incarcerated by mis-take. These detainees either were sent back to their country of origin or to other countries that agreed take them. President Obama transferred 197 detainees, and roughly 40 presently remain at Guantánamo, four of whom are scheduled to be sent to other countries. Twenty-three of these detainees are scheduled to be detained indefinitely, and 10 are to be charged or are in pretrial hearing before the military commission (see below). Three detainees are serving prison sentences or are awaiting sentencing. The Director of National Intelligence has certified that 21.2% of detainees transferred by the Bush administration have been confirmed to have engaged in terrorism and 13.9% are suspected of engaging in terrorism. Roughly 4.4% of detainees transferred by the Obama administration are confirmed to have engaged in terrorism and 7.1% are suspected of engaging in terrorism. President Trump has criticized the release of Guantánamo detainees and has expressed an intent to use the institution to house domestic terrorists. Nonetheless, the United States in 2018 released Ahmed al-Darbi, a 42-year-old Saudi citizen who in 2014 pled guilty to planning a 2002 terrorist attack on a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen that killed one crew member (Savage, 2018). Al-Darbi had agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in the trial of the terrorists that attacked the USS Cole in exchange for being sent to Saudi Arabia after 4 years of impris-onment to serve the remainder of his 13-year prison sentence. In 2018 President Trump announced a revised policy for Guantánamo which provides that individuals captured abroad who pose a significant threat to the security of the United States will be interned at the prison camp rather than in a civilian facility

The Palmer Raids

In 1915 President Woodrow Wilson warned that various American immigrants were sources of disloyalty and unrest and must be eliminated from the nation. His fears were fueled by the Russian Revolution of 1917 and a series of domestic bomb-ings and labor strikes. In August 1919, attorney general Mitchell Palmer named 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover to head an intelligence division in the Department of Justice. The newly established Bureau of Investigation amassed thousands of names of suspected anarchists and subversives. On November 7, 1919, the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, agents of Hoover's Bureau of Investigation aided local police in carrying out Palmer raids in 12 cities against the Union of Russian Workers, arresting 250 so-called dangerous radicals. Only 43 of these detainees were ultimately deported. A second series of raids were initiated in January 1920 and extended over 6 weeks, leading to the arrest of roughly 3,000 suspects in 30 cities and 23 states—a large percentage of whom simply were at the "wrong place at the wrong time." In the end, 10,000 were arrested, 3,500 were detained, and 556 immigrants were deported. Palmer responded to criticism by emphasizing that drastic measures were required to meet the threat of an epidemic of subversion and violence that posed a threat to the government and to society. In June 1920, Massachusetts district court judge Georg Anderson ordered the discharge of 17 immigrants, denounc-ing the Palmer raids and proclaiming that "a mob is a mob, whether made up of Government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals and loafers and the vicious classes" (Coyler v. Skeffington, 1920). Judge Anderson's decision marked the end of support for Palmer's campaign against internal subversion.

THE POST-DEPRESSION RED SCARE

In 1938 the House of Representatives formed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which investigated radical groups active in the United States during the Great Depression (1933-1938) and during the initial portion of the Cold War with the Soviet Union (1945-1951). The committee issued subpoenas (court-like orders) to individuals to appear and to testify before the committee. Critics claimed that HUAC was formed to link President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal with domestic left-wing groups. As Russia emerged as America's Cold War rival, HUAC increasingly turned its attention to identifying members of the Communist Party. Individuals called before HUAC were asked to identify other suspected Com-munists disloyal to the United States. The committee believed that Communists had infiltrated every aspect of American life and called academics, actors, artists, and civil servants to testify. A refusal to provide names resulted in being held in contempt of Congress. Individuals claiming that they would not testify on the grounds that the testimony would incriminate them were denounced as "Fifth Amendment Communists" and found themselves terminated by their employer and blacklisted from employment. In 1948 Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss, a former important State Department official of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. Chambers's testimony led to Hiss being convicted of perjury. Hiss served 44 months in prison. The case lent credibility to the claim that Communists had infiltrated the U.S. government. The encouragement of public fear and panic about the spread of communism in American institutions and society has been termed by historians as the Red Scare (Communists were known as "Reds" based on the red Bolshevik Russian flag)

11.4 You Decide

In December 2017, the police in Cologne, Germany, posted a Christmas message reading "Celebrate—With Respect," which appeared in German, English, French, Persian, and Arabic. Beatrix von Storch, a far-right parlia-mentarian, tweeted, "What the hell is wrong with this country? Why is the official page of police ... tweeting in Arabic ... Are they seeking to appease the barbaric Muslim, rapist hordes of men?" (Eddy, 2018). Von Storch, who is a member of the anti-Islamic party Alternative for Germany, was referring to the fact that in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2015, a number of women had been harassed and assaulted. She told her supporters that the "overwhelming majority of the perpetrators were young Muslim men for whom women and followers of other faiths are sec-ond-class citizens" (Eddy, 2018). The day after von Storch's message, a new law went into effect requiring social media companies to remove hateful comments within 24 hours or confront fines of as much as $57 million. A fine may be imposed after a company systematically refuses to remove objectionable material or fails to establish an effective complaint management system (Eddy, 2018). Twitter responded by withdrawing von Storch's account for 12 hours. Von Storch next posted a picture of the Twitter message suspending her account on her Facebook page. She wished her 83,000 followers a "Happy New Year in a free country in which everyone can call barbarians, barbarians, even if they are Muslims" (Eddy, 2018). Facebook reacted by removing her post (Eddy, 2018). The Twitter feed of Alternatives for Germany showed two lawmakers with red tape over their mouth with the caption, "Call for freedom of speech in Iran and preventing it in Germany" (Eddy, 2018). Germany, unlike the United States, prohibits hate speech directed at individuals and groups. However, individuals of every political persuasion opposed the imposition of criminal penalties on social media companies that failed to remove objectionable material as a violation of freedom of expression, because companies could begin to remove lawful posts to avoid possible fines. There also was the possibility that an Internet provider would make a mistake and remove nonoffensive material or material that served an important public purpose. A member of Berlin's Jewish community, for example, posted a video of an anti-Semitic speech by a prominent German politician on Facebook to highlight the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the country. Facebook following protests restored the post (Eddy, 2018). Would you favor the imposition of criminal penalties on social media companies that fail to delete hateful comments, terrorist appeals, or propaganda?

11.1 You Decide

In October 2017, the bodies of four members of the U.S. Special Forces were found near a remote village in Niger. Three of the deceased, Staff Ser-geants Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson, and David Wright had apparently died in a gunfight. A fourth American fighter, Sergeant La David Johnson, had reportedly been captured by ISIS fighters. After leaving a village, the American soldiers were attacked by terrorists. The area of the attack had been the site of more than 40 terrorist attacks in the previous 18 months, but the Americans seemed unprepared for the armed assault. They were in unarmored pickups and lightly armed when confronted with an attack by over 30 terrorists armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons mounted on troops. The 2-hour attack only halted when French Mirage jets were flown into the area. The jets were unable to drop bombs because they were not in radio contact with the Americans and feared hitting Nigerien or U.S. forces. The involvement of the Americans in the mission appeared to be con-trary to the rules of engagement, which specify that American troops are to train and to assist Nigerien fighters and only may accompany Nigerien fighters when enemy contact is unlikely. Niger is twice the size of Texas and has been a center of terrorist activity, drawing fighters from North Africa and the Middle East. American involvement has gradually expanded in the country and has grown from 100 under President Barack Obama in 2013 to the present commitment. In reaction to the killing of the four American fighters, Niger has asked the United States to arm the two surveillance drones provided to the country. Another 300 U.S. forces are in Cameroon. There are an additional 400 troops in Uganda, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan pursuing the Lord's Resistance Army. This is all part of what is termed shadow wars against terrorism. Members of the U.S. Congress claimed that they were unaware that there were 800 American counterterrorism troops in Niger who were training counterterrorism troops and carrying out joint patrols on the Mali-Niger border. In 2006 roughly 1% of U.S. forces deployed abroad were in Africa, by 2010 this had increased to 3% and by 2016, 17% of American counterterrorism troops were in Africa. There are more U.S. Special Operations personnel in Africa (1,700 in 20 countries) than in any geographic location other than the Middle East. At any given time, American troops are involved in close to 100 missions in Africa. Critics warn that the growing American presence may anger local residents and result in them aligning with terrorists. There also is the concern that the United States may find itself in a position of spending money to prop up fragile and unpopular governments because of their support for the fight against ISIS. Do you agree that American should be stationed abroad to train and advise foreign troops in Africa as part of the War on Terror?

11.3 You Decide

In September 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a judgment holding that several interrogation methods relied on by the Security Services, when questioning Palestinian detainees who were considered terrorists, violates suspects' dignity and the right to not be subject to degrading and inhumane conditions. In the Shabach position, a "detainee's hands are tied behind his back, he is seated on a small and low chair whose seat is tilted toward the ground. One hand is tied behind the suspect and placed inside the gap behind the chair against the back support. His [or her] second hand is tied behind the chair against the back support"(Is-rael Supreme Court, 1999). A heavy bag is placed over the detainee's head and loud music is continuously piped into the room. Suspects are secured in this position for lengthy periods of time and are periodically interrogated. The Israeli Supreme Court held that an interrogator prosecuted for the criminal abuse of a detainee during interrogation may rely on the necessity defense. The interrogator may be exonerated in instances in which the harm caused by the interrogator's criminal act is outweighed by the harm the interrogator intended to prevent. An interrogator, for example, would be able to rely on the necessity defense in the so-called ticking time bomb scenario in which torture was relied on to obtain information to prevent an imminent terrorist bombing. Critics assert that torture is rarely effective in obtaining information from detainees and that society should never accept that torture is justified. Recognition of torture is considered a slippery slope because courts will be reluctant to find that an interrogator's actions were unjustified. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has advocated "torture war-rants" that allow government authorities to go before a federal judge and to obtain a warrant authorizing the use of torture in interrogating a detainee. Should an interrogator who tortures a terrorist detainee be criminally prosecuted? If criminally prosecuted, should an interrogator be allowed to rely on the necessity defense? What of the proposal for torture warrants? n

FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

In terms of law enforcement, the DHS coordinates with the Department of Justice (DOJ), which includes the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to detect, investigate, and arrest terrorists. DOJ lawyers are charged with prosecuting terrorists. The FBI is the lead agency in detecting and investigating domestic terrorism. The FBI is assisted in their investigations by the ATF, which enforces laws regard-ing gun crimes and by the DEA. The Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) is involved with protecting U.S. embassies and personnel abroad and with protecting foreign dignitaries visiting the United States. The DSS is concerned with terrorist threats to State Department facilities abroad and administers the Rewards for Justice program, which provides cash payments for information lead-ing to the arrest of terrorists on the most wanted list. Each branch of the U.S. military has an investiga-tive arm (for example, the Naval Investigative Service) which, among other concerns, investigates threats of terrorism against and within their specific branch of the military. Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are cooperative arrange-ments between federal, state, and local law enforcement. The FBI coor-dinates JTTFs through the National Joint Terrorism Task Force.

INTRODUCTION

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a number of measures were taken to protect the U.S. homeland. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the govern-ment departments and agencies charged with protecting the homeland, along with a historical overview of steps taken in the past to protect the United States. The next chapter looks at some of the public policy questions involved in counterterrorism programs. Following 9/11, numerous commentators expressed alarm at the vulnerability of the United States to a terrorist attack and to the inadequate domestic protection of bridges, water-treatment and power plants, and seaports, as well as the lack of food security. Intelligence experts warned that al Qaeda "sleeper cells" had penetrated the United States and were waiting to attack (Mueller & Stewart, 2011). A significant amount of money, resources, and attention is devoted to airline security, which following 9/11 became a particular area of concern. An attack made on an airliner can lead to the tragic loss of life and devastate countless families, relatives, and friends. Most people in the United States rely at least to some extent on air travel and threats of this type of attack can spread panic and fear. The data indicates that attacks on airplanes reverberate through the economy, discouraging travel and tourism and harming tourism-related services. Skeptics, however, point out that there have been relatively few successful attacks on aircraft, and the screening of checked bags has effectively eliminated the threat of a bomb being smuggled onto an aircraft. In the 12 years from 1999 to 2010, 9,605 individuals were killed in airline accidents. During this period, 363 passengers were killed by terrorist attacks on airliners, including 265 individu-als on the four planes attacked on 9/11 and 98 individuals in two 2004 attacks on Russian aircraft. In other words, airline passengers were significantly more likely to be killed in an airline accident than from a terrorist attack during this 12-year period. There was one chance in 11 million that a flight would be hijacked or attacked by terrorists (Mueller & Stewart, 2011). Mueller and Stewart (2011) note that airliners are remarkably vulnerable to an attack by explosives and that the most effective method for bringing down an airliner is with a shoulder-fired missile. Between 1987 and 2007, there only were two successful shoulder-fired missile attacks on airliners—only two of which resulted in the catastrophic loss of aircraft. The logical conclusion is that steps taken to protect aircraft have proven remark-ably effective. Mueller and Stewart (2011), however, identify 21 separate layers of security surrounding air travel, the vast majority of which are of limited effec-tiveness. The researchers refer to these layers as national security theater that is designed to reassure and calm the public rather than effective protections against a terrorist attack. Most individuals' contact with homeland security is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening before boarding an airplane. In tests conducted in 2017, TSA screening failed to detect a weapon between 70% and 80% of the time. This was an improvement over tests in 2015, in which the failure rate was over 90%. TSA agents are immune from being sued for a violation of an individual's civil liberties, although they may be held criminally responsible for misconduct. The TSA preboarding screening is supplemented by the TSA's Screening Pas-sengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program. The SPOT program involves trained observers evaluating whether the behavior of individuals in security lines and in the airport is suspicious. Various behaviors are listed as constituting suspicious behavior and are assigned points. An individual whose score is 6 or more is pulled out of the boarding line for closer inspection. SPOT officers also observe individuals after they have gone through the screening line. The General Accounting Office, which reviews the effectiveness of government programs and the wasteful expenditure of money, reviewed hundreds of studies and concluded that there is little evidence that terrorist activity can be detected by briefly observing an individual's physical behavior or facial expressions. Anal-ysis of individual behavior is complicated by the fact that individuals often are nervous or apprehensive about flying and their behavior may appear suspicious. Only about 1% of the hundreds of thousands of individuals seized by SPOT officers are arrested, and these are arrests are most often for narcotics possession. There has yet to be an arrest for terrorist-related activity. The SPOT program also has been marred by allegations of racial profiling. Because of these difficulties, the SPOT program is being significantly revised. A third airport security program is the no-fly list. The no-fly list is a list of people who are prohibited from boarding commercial aircraft within, into, or from the United States that is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Terrorist Screening Center. The number of names on the no-fly list and the identity of these individuals are a matter of national security and are not available to the public. Estimates are that the no-fly list contains as many as 81,000 names, although fewer than 1,000 are American citizens or nationals. Another list, termed the TSA selectee list, precipitates enhanced scrutiny of a passenger but does not prevent them from boarding an aircraft. This list contains roughly 28,000 names; fewer than 1,700 are Americans. There is a larger list of as many as 1 million mostly non-Americans on the terrorist watchlist who are individuals suspected of terrorist activity. It is not clear why individuals are placed on the no-fly list, other than the finding that they are involved in terrorist activity or suspicion that they are involved in terrorist activity. Individuals have complained that they have been placed on the list because of travel to particular countries, social media posts, or that they were mistakenly placed on the list because their name is similar to that of a suspected ter-rorist. Individuals on the list also have alleged that they have experienced difficulty in being removed from the list. In 2015 officials boarded an aircraft and informed the family that their infant was on the no-fly list and had to be removed from the plane. There also are isolated instances of people on the no-fly list being able to board an aircraft. A successful application of the no-fly list was the case of Faisal Shahzad. Shahzad attempted to ignite a car bomb in Times Square and the next day boarded a plane for Dubai before being removed from the plane at the gate and arrested. A new program developed by TSA known as the "95 List" identifies difficult and unruly passengers who are thought to pose a threat to TSA screeners. Yet another recent program titled "Quiet Skies" involves the development of a watch-list based on undisclosed factors, which results in individuals being placed under surveillance during their flight. Once on board the aircraft, passengers are protected by air marshals, which involves placing armed undercover law enforcement agents on aircraft to prevent disruptions or hijacking. Although there are thousands of marshals, only roughly 5% of flights have air marshals on board. The program is expensive and accounts for 10% of the TSA budget. The TSA argues that the marshals provide protection on high-risk flights, although there has not been a concerted effort to take over an American aircraft since 9/11. In addition, there is a program to train and equip pilots with firearms and to secure cockpit doors. There is anecdotal information that because of their hectic schedule, the air marshals often are sleep deprived and less than attentive. Mueller and Stewart (2011) estimate that the air marshal program only reduces the risk of a successful hijacking by 1.7%. Morale in the TSA, which has an annual budget of more than $7.5 billion a year, is ranked nearly at the bottom of government agencies. Critics of the TSA assert that the TSA is wasting resources by screening every passenger rather than focusing on individuals who pose a threat. The no-fly list, although a more focused program, lacks clear standards for inclusion and includes various ordinary Americans who pose no terrorist threat. Some experts advocate additional pro-cedures such as securing entrances to airports, inspecting arriving automobiles, and increasing the use of bomb-sniffing dogs and surveillance cameras. Although each of the TSA programs has shortcomings, the thinking is that so-called layered security ensures that a would-be attacker who evades one layer of security will be detected by another layer of security. What is your view of whether airline security is effective in protecting against a terrorist attack? The next sections of this chapter outline the agencies, institutions, and laws that protect the United States.

Immigration

Individuals involved in terrorist activities are prohibited from entering the United States. Terrorist activities are broadly defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act. This includes planning or engaging in a terrorist activity, soliciting individuals to engage in terrorism, providing material support to a terrorist organization or membership in a terrorist organization, and soliciting or recruiting members for a terrorist organization. After he took office, President Donald Trump banned immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Several federal courts held the ban unconsti-tutional on various grounds including a finding that the so-called Muslim ban was at least partially based on discriminatory intent. The ban was subsequently modified to include additional non-predominantly Muslim nations. The Trump administration has consistently contended that immigration, unless accompanied by enhanced vetting of individuals applying to emigrate to the United States, poses a threat to national security because of the threat that terrorists will enter the United States and engage in acts of violence. It is a crime to unlawfully enter the United States. An estimated 11 million individuals are unlawfully in the United States and are subject to deportation back to their country of origin. There are various categories of individuals who are authorized to enter and to remain in the United States. Visitors/Tourists. Individuals visiting the United States are required to obtain a visa, although nationals of various European and other nations are not required to obtain a visa under the Foreign Visa Waiver program. Refugees. Individuals are eligible to enter the United States if they experience a well-founded fear of persecution or violence in their country of origin. Asylum. Individuals who enter the United States and immediately apply for asylum based on a well-founded fear of persecution or violence in their country of origin. Students. Individuals may enter to pursue higher or graduate education. Immigrants. Individuals lawfully in the United States under various employment programs or family reunion programs. Green Card holders are authorized to work in the United States. Marriage. Individuals entering the United States based on marriage to an American citizen. Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Nationals of 10 countries have been granted temporary residency in the United States because of war, natural disasters, and severe and threatening conditions which makes it unsafe for individuals to return home. These countries are: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Soma-lia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The TPS program is administered by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and TPS status typically is granted in 6-to 18-month intervals that can be renewed so long as the secretary considers the designation necessary. Under the Trump administration, the DHS has revoked TPS for 100,000 individuals from Haiti, 25,000 from Nicaragua, roughly 1,000 from Sudan, 800 from Nepal, as many as 200,000 from El Salvador, and 57,000 from Honduras, many of whom have established businesses and have children born in the United States and are thus American citizens (Miroff, 2018). The most comprehensive study of the relationship between immigration and terrorism was undertaken in 2016 by Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute (Nowrasteh, 2016). Nowrasteh cautions against concluding that deporting immigrants or closing American borders will eliminate terrorism on U.S. soil and concludes that the risk of an American being killed by a foreign-born terrorist over the 41-year period between 1975 and 2015 is one in 3.6 million per year. The possibility of an American dying in a terrorist attack by a refugee is one in 3.64 billion; and by an individual granted asylum based on political persecution is one in 2.7 billion. The odds of being murdered in an attack by an illegal immigrant is one in 10.9 billion per year, and the odds of being murdered by a foreign tourist on the widely issued B visa is 1 in 3.9 million per year. No murder was committed by a visitor who entered on the Foreign Visa Waiver program. Student visa holders pose a threat to one in 3.8 million individuals. The U.S issued 1.14 billion visas between 1975 and 2015; 154 of these visas were issued to terrorists. In other words, only 0.0000136% of visas were issued to ter-rorists. One foreign-born terrorist entered the United States for every 7.38 million nonterrorists. Excluding the 9/11 terrorists, 134 foreign-born terrorists entered the United States out of the 1.14 billion visas issued between 1975 and 2015 (0.00001%). Excluding the 9/11 terrorists, for each visa granted to a terrorist, 8.48 million visas were issued to nonterrorist foreigners. Of the 19 9/11 terrorists, 18 were on tourist visas and one entered on a student visa. Zacarias Moussaoui—who was not a hijacker, but was involved in the con-spiracy, entered without a visa based on his French citizenship. Excluding the 9/11 attackers, 21 foreign-born terrorists succeeded in murdering 41 individuals between 1975 and 2015. Sixteen of those terrorists committed their attacks prior to 9/11, and these terrorists killed a total of 17 people. There were five successful attacks following 9/11 that killed 24 people. Egyptian-born Hesham Mohamed Hadayet killed two people in July 2012 at Los Angeles International Airport; the Tsarnaev brothers killed three people in the Boston Marathon bomb-ing on April 15, 2013; Muhammad Abdulazeez killed five people at two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 16, 2015; and Tashfeen Malik, along with her American-born husband, killed 14 individuals in December 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California. Nowrasteh argues that a halt to all immigration is unrealistic because of the contribution of immigrants to the United States. At any rate, this would prevent a relatively small number of terrorist attacks. An alternative would be to eliminate tourist visas. The vast majority—93.7%—of all murders by foreign-born terrorists were committed by the 34 terrorists who entered the United States on tourist visas. He concludes that this would not be realistic given that tourists add $94.1 billion directly and indirectly to the American economy. Consider also that 99.7% of murders committed by foreign-born tourists occurred on 9/11. David Bier, who is Nowrasteh's colleague at the conservative Cato Institute, created a database of all terrorist suspects between 2015 and the initial portion of October 2017. He found very few instances of foreign terrorists entering the United States as a result of a failure in the vetting (screening) process. He found that at most that there were 17 vetting failures. These individuals came from 12 different countries and only eight attempted to carry out an attack; the other nine were guilty of aiding a foreign terrorist organization. Only one of the 17 individuals succeeded in killing an individual on American soil (Bier, 2017). In yet another study issued in April 2018, Bier concluded that the United States was effectively vetting refugees. He found that only 13 of the 531 persons convicted of a terrorism-related offense or killed while participating in a terrorist attack since 9/11 had managed to pass through immigration screening and enter the United States. Only one of these 13 individuals participated in a deadly assault in the United States, a rate of one for every 379 million individuals entering the country with a visa or individuals who obtained a change in status allowing them to remain lawfully in the United States between 2002 and 2016 In other words, the data suggests that very few terrorists are able to avoid detection and enter the United States. A relatively small number of lethal terrorist offenses are committed by individuals born abroad who enter the United States on a visa, and the odds are very small that an individual in the United States will be killed by a foreign-born terrorist. This suggests that the overwhelming number of terrorists are homegrown rather than foreign born. On the other hand, there is no way of knowing about the number of terrorist attacks that were planned and then abandoned by the perpetrators. It also might be argued that it is better to be safe than sorry, and that all available steps should be taken to prevent terrorism by limiting the number and background of individuals entering the United States. Keep in mind that studies indicate that when individuals are polled, they vastly overestimate the number of immigrants in their country, as well as the share of immigrants who are Muslim, and they overestimate immigrants' poverty rate and social benefits. These misperceptions are concentrated in individuals with the least amount of education who possess low skills and who have right-wing political views

Surveillance

Most experts argue that intelligence that detects terrorist plots is the most effec-tive method of defeating terrorism. Since the attack on the World Trade center, New York City has prevented more than 26 terrorist attacks through intelligence, investigation, and intervention. In 1976 a Senate Select Committee documented widespread warrantless spying on Americans by U.S. intelligence activities. This surveillance was based on the claim of various Democratic and Republican presidents that the president, as commander in chief, possessed the inherent power to protect national security and that the president was not required to obtain a search warrant to engage in the wiretapping of individuals. The Congress, in 1978, enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to establish procedures for the electronic surveillance of threats to national security. In 1994 FISA was extended to cover physical searches. Keep in mind that FISA regulates surveillance within the United States of international threats to national security and of international terrorist activities. FISA established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, composed of 11 district court judges selected by the chief justice of the United States. Requests for a warrant to conduct surveillance of a potential threat to national security, or for a warrant to conduct surveillance involving international terrorism, are filed before a single judge and a request that is turned down may be appealed to the entire court. The standard for approval of FISA surveillance is whether there is probable cause to believe that the target is an agent of a foreign power, is affiliated with a terrorist group, or is engaged in terrorism. In 2005 it was disclosed that 3 years prior, President George W. Bush signed a secret order authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept commu-nications within the United States without a warrant (Risen & Lichtblau 2005). President Bush explained that the Terrorist Surveillance Program was part of his responsibility as commander in chief to protect the United States, and that the FISA procedures were overly complicated and interfered with his responsibility to protect the United States. Congress, although affirming that warrants were required to monitor the communications of Americans, authorized the attorney general and director of national intelligence to continue to engage in the elec-tronic surveillance of foreign nationals located abroad and to specify how the surveillance would avoid the warrantless surveillance of Americans who may be involved in the conversation. In 2014 Edward Snowden, a 33-year-old former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NSA contractor, leaked confidential information. Since 2006, the NSA had engaged in the bulk collection of the domestic and foreign telephone numbers dialed by Americans, along with digital data. This secret "metadata" program, referred to as PRISM, was based on bulk search warrants issued every 3 months by the surveillance court that directed nine Internet providers to turn phone call and other records over to the government. The collection involved "chaining" of the collection of the numbers dialed by the target, all numbers dialed by individuals called by the target, and all numbers dialed by these individuals. Studies concluded that the collection of the numbers dialed by an individual could reveal virtually every aspect of an individual's life. In those instances where there was reasonable suspicion based on the numbers dialed that an individual was involved with terrorism, the government was authorized to obtain a search warrant to monitor the content of phone calls. Snowden was concerned that this warrantless secret surveillance violated the provision in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that prohibited unreasonable searches and seizures that are conducted without probable cause. The government responded that the American public did not possess an expec-tation of privacy in the numbers they dialed, and that the program was essential to combat terrorism. A review commission appointed by President Obama concluded that the program had not been significant in protecting national security, and that information obtained through the program could have been obtained by relying on the established FISA warrant procedure. After extensive debate, Congress adopted the USA Freedom Act, which mandates that phone providers retain metadata rather than turning the information over to the government. The NSA only may obtain access to these records by obtaining a warrant from the sur-veillance court where there is a reasonable suspicion that the target is involved in terrorism. Once a warrant for metadata is secured, the NSA may obtain the record of the phone numbers dialed and text messages sent by the target as well the numbers dialed by the individuals who have been in contact with the target. In 2017 the NSA obtained the phone records of 40 individuals and the individuals linked to these targets. This amounted to over 500 million com-munications (Savage, 2018). Are there too many restraints being placed on surveillance to combat terrorism? What of the threat of a surveillance state like that being constructed in China with 200 million surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology and the tracking of internet use and communications and an integrated system that collects data on nearly every aspect of an individual's life

10.1 You Decide

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a Kuwaiti-born American citizen, attacked two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee, killing five people and wounding another two. Despite a history of mental illness, Abdulazeez was able to legally purchase the firearm used in the assault (Cassidy, 2016). In December 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, described as homegrown violent extremists, killed 14 people and wounded 22 in San Bernardino, California. Farook was a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, and Malik was a lawful permanent resident born in Pakistan. They had legally purchased handguns and had persuaded a neighbor to purchase two rifles for them. Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen of Afghan descent who in June 2016 killed 50 individuals and wounded 53 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Investigators determined that he had legally purchased a pistol and an assault rifle a few days prior to the attack. Mateen had spent 10 months on the terrorist watchlist until removed by the FBI on the grounds that he did not pose a threat (Cassidy, 2016). President Barack Obama, in an address from the Oval Office 4 days following the San Bernardino attack, said that Farook and Malik "had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpreta-tion of Islam that calls for war against America and the West." President Obama called on Congress to "make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun," and asked, "What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon? This is a matter of national security" (Tau, 2015). Individuals purchasing firearms from federally licensed dealers are required to undergo background checks. There are at least 10 categories of individuals who are prohibited from obtaining a firearm, including con-victed felons, undocumented individuals unlawfully in the country, and individuals institutionalized for mental illness. A sale can be approved in less than an hour if the background check using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System does not indicate that the purchaser is prohibited from owning a firearm. A sale can be delayed for as long as 72 hours if FBI examiners find reason to believe that the purchaser of the weapon is prohibited from owning a weapon. Background checks are not required to buy a gun from an unlicensed seller at a gun show or online The U.S. Congress, dominated by a Republican majority, disregarded President Obama's proposal to prohibit individuals on the no-fly list from purchasing a firearm. It was pointed out that prohibiting individuals on the no-fly list from purchasing firearms would not have prevented any of the recent terrorist attacks in the United States. The no-fly list is based on loose standards and contains inaccuracies which might unjustly prevent a law-abiding American from purchasing and possessing a firearm. A deter-mined terrorist will find a way to obtain a firearm despite any restrictions that are imposed, and like the Boston Marathon bombers, a dedicated terrorist will employ methods of attack that do not involve firearms. For-eign nationals are ineligible to purchase a firearm in the United States in any event. A more effective approach, according to opponents of Pres-ident Obama's proposal, would be to improve intelligence on extremists in the United States. A middle ground would delay sale to an individual whose name appears on a terrorist database to determine whether there is any concern that the firearm will be used for acts of terrorism. Between 2004 and 2015, 2,477 people on the terrorist watchlist attempted to buy a firearm or explosive through a licensed dealer. The General Accounting Office of the federal government reports that 2,265 were allowed to make the purchase and 212 were denied. The denials presumably were based on a reason other than the fact that the individual was on the terrorist watchlist. What is your view on whether individuals on the no-fly list should be allowed to purchase firearms?

Personalities and Events 11.2

On June 9, 2014, the British newspaper with the Guardian released a video interview Edward FIGURE 11.2 Edward Snowden Copyright © https://www.youtube.com/user/ TheWikiLeaksChannel (CC by 3.0) at https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_ Snowden_2013-10-9_(1).jpg. Snowden (Poitras & Green-wald, 2014), a 33-year-old former CIA and NSA con-tractor who had released top-secret information regarding NSA programs to several newspapers. Initially denied asylum in Hong Kong and several other countries, Snowden es received temporary asylum in Russia. Snowden reportedly never received a high school diploma, briefly attended community college, and joined military with the goal of joining the Special Forces. He was discharged after breaking both his legs and in 2007, based on his aptitude for computers, obtained employment in Geneva, Switzerland, as a contractor for the CIA maintaining network security. He was next hired by Dell as a contractor engaged in computer analysis for the NSA in Japan and was then transferred to Hawaii. Snowden took a job with CIA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) and worked as an ethical hacker charged with detecting vulnerabilities in American technology which might be exploited by foreign countries. This provided Snowden with access to top-secret Internet programs. He inadvertently discovered a report that detailed the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance of both Americans and foreigners following 9/11. His sense of shock was heightened in March 2013 when James Clap-per, the director of national intelligence, denied before a congressional committee that the NSA had been collecting data on American citizens, a statement that Snowden was aware was false. Snowden unlawfully transferred information about the warrantless surveillance program to journalists at the Guardian and the Washington Post. The American government charged Snowden with espionage, and govern-ment officials characterized him as a coward for fleeing rather than taking responsibility for his actions. Officials claimed that Snowden's actions jeopardized national security and had made American less safe. In addi-tion, his claim that he was a defender of liberty and freedom seemingly was in conflict with his seeking asylum in an authoritarian regime like Russia. Polls indicated that the majority of Americans considered Snowden a whistleblower rather than a traitor. Without Snowden's leaking of infor-mation, the "metadata" program likely never would have been revealed (Lippman, 2016). Should Snowden be prosecuted for espionage if he returns to the United States or granted a pardon and allowed to return to the United States?

MILITARY COMMISSIONS

On November 13, 2001, President George W. Bush, as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, issued a military order providing that enemy combatants were to be prosecuted before military commissions. A military commission is a court composed of members of the military that has jurisdiction to pros-ecute enemy soldiers. Military commissions provide the basic rights that are essential to a fair trial while providing the flexibility to limit these rights in the interests of national security. The trial of terrorists, for example, necessarily involves the testimony of unnamed confidential informants and reliance on confidential information. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the military com-missions had several fatal flaws such as the admission of evidence obtain through torture, the limited right for defendants to have access to the evidence against them, and a limited right to appeal. President Bush responded by consulting with Congress which, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The act provides military commissions with jurisdiction over any foreign unlawful com-batant who has been involved in hostilities against the United States or who has supported hostilities against the United States. The commission under the Act is to consist of a military judge and at least five commissioned military officers (Lippman, 2016). In 2008 Salim Hamdan, who served as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and had driven him to various meetings became the first individual convicted before a military commission. This conviction was later overturned on appeal along with two other subsequent convictions. A total of eight individuals have been convicted before military commissions. In a conviction in early 2014 Ahmed al-Darbi pled guilty to aiding and abetting a suicide bombing of a French flagged oil tanker off the coast of Yemen. In February 2018, Judge Colonel Vance Spath suspended pretrial hearings in the death penalty case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of directing the 2000 bombing of the American destroyer USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. The entire defense team had withdrawn from the case after discovering that their communications with their client were being monitored. The al-Nashiri prosecu-tion, along with the effort to prosecute five coconspirators, was initiated in 2012 and had made little progress. The Obama administration favored prosecuting individuals before civilian courts rather than military commissions. In 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would bring criminal charges in New York City against five 9/11 defendants. The holding of civilian trials in New York City were meant to communicate that the United States would not be intimidated by terrorists and as a democracy, society would provide full due process protec-tions to accused terrorists. In November 2010 a New York jury convicted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani of conspiracy to damage or destroy two U.S. embassies in 1998 in Africa by bombings that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani was acquitted of 284 counts, including murder and attempted murder, and was the first and only Guantánamo detainee prosecuted in civilian court. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Critics of the Obama administration alleged the verdict indicated that civilian courts cannot be trusted to prosecute terrorists. Others responded that the trial proved that terrorists can be successfully prose-cuted before civilian courts and that if convicted, they will be severely punished (Lippman, 2016). The plan to conduct trial of the 9/11 defendants in New York City collapsed when city officials protested that the trial posed a threat to the city. Charges against the 9/11 defendants were subsequently filed before military commissions, and the defendants continue to await the start of their trials. The Obama administration nonetheless continued to bring charges against foreign terrorists captured abroad in domestic courts. In 2013 the guilty plea of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame to a nine-count indictment was unsealed in federal court. Warsame, a Somali national, had pled guilty to providing material support to al Shabaab and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2015 Russian national and Taliban terrorist Irek Hamidullin was convicted of conspiracy to attack Afghan and American forces in Afghanistan. A second prosecution in September 2017 resulted in the conviction of Muhanad Mahmoud Al-Farekh for participation in an attack on an American military outpost in Afghanistan. A third prosecution for foreign terrorist activity in civilian court was the conviction in 2017 of Libyan militia leader Ahmed Abu Khattala, who was found guilty of various offenses relating to the Benghazi attacks in which four Americans were killed. In another 2017 prosecution, a jury convicted Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Harun for a conspir-acy to murder American military personnel in Afghanistan and a conspiracy to bomb the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. Harun was subsequently sentenced to life in prison (Ellis & Kupperman, 2018). Other recent convictions include Sulaiman Abu Gheith, Osama bin Laden's son-in-law; Abid Naseer, convicted of conspiring with al Qaeda to bomb shopping malls; Abu Hamza who was sentenced to life imprisonment for involvement of the abduction of tourists in Yemen and organizing a terrorist training camp in Oregon; and Khalid al-Fawwaz, who was convicted of conspiracy to bomb two American embassies in East Africa and was sentenced to life imprisonment. A number of terrorist trials have been prosecuted in the United States against individuals apprehended within the country. The more than 600 convictions before American courts include Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to explode a car bomb in Times Square in New York City; David Coleman Headley, convicted of involvement in the 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, that resulted in the deaths of 164 persons, including six Americans; and a number of individuals involved in a conspiracy to bomb the New York City subway system. In 2017 Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud was the first American convicted of training with ISIS in Syria and returning to the United States with the intent to commit acts of terror. In 2017 Ahmad Khan Rahami, the so-called Chelsea bomber, was convicted of planting two bombs in New York City, one of which was detonated and injured 30 indi-viduals. In another case, David Daoud Wright was convicted in a federal trial in Boston of plotting to kill Americans on behalf of the Islamic State. In 2018 Nicholas Young, a former patrol officer in the Washington D.C. regional Metrorail system, became the first law-enforcement officer to be convicted of terrorism. Young was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for attempting to provide gift cards to the Islamic State. He was friends with another Islamic convert, Zachary Chasser, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempting to join al Shabab in Somalia and for making threats against the creators of the South Park for segments he considered insulting to Islam. The question whether to prosecute foreign terrorists before military commis-sion or civilian courts remains a point of contention. The Trump administration has announced that it will keep Guantánamo open and that there are plans to prosecute detainees before military commissions (Pilkington, 2018). Following Sayfullo Saipov's driving of a truck onto a bicycle path in New York City killing eight people and injuring 12, President Trump called the American criminal justice system laughable and argued that military commissions were much more effective that civilian courts in bringing detainees to justice. In June 2018, federal prosecutors persuaded a judge to sentence a former Colum-bia University student to supervised release. The defendant faced a possible prison sentence of 25 years in prison, based on his having traveled to Syria to fight with ISIS. Prosecutors recounted that after the defendant fled an ISIS encampment, he had assisted the American government for roughly 4 years

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

On October 8, 2001, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order (EO) 13228 titled "Establishing the Office of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Council." The EO stipulated that the "functions of the Office [of Homeland Security] shall be to coordinate the executive branch's efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States" (Bush, 2001). In other words, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is charged with protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. Although the focus of this chapter is its role in preventing terrorism, keep in mind that DHS also is responsible for responding to natural and technological disasters and other threats to the nation. Terrorist threats are constantly changing as terrorists develop new tactics. A country as large and complex as the United States has a number of vulnera-bilities, ranging from airlines and airports to rail, truck, and sea transport. The northern and southern borders and coastline need to be secured against infiltration by terrorists. The vulnerable infrastructure also requires protection, including nuclear power and water-treatment plants, high-rise buildings, iconic landmarks, bridges and roads, and sports venues. Hospitals need to be equipped with sufficient resources to respond to a terrorist attack, and urban areas require evacuation plans and secure communication systems. First responders need to be equipped and trained to respond to a range of emergency situations. There also must be coordi-nation between local, state, and federal agencies in protecting homeland security. A much-overlooked aspect of security is assisting private industry to address vulnerabilities in areas ranging from cybersecurity and power grids to high-rises. A number of federal agencies were integrated into the DHS to ensure a coor-dinated and comprehensive response to terrorist threats and to other threats and emergencies (see Table 10.1). As a result of the reorganization of federal agencies, the DHS has a workforce of 225,000 employees and is the third largest federal agency, behind the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. The director of the DHS is part of the president's official Cabinet.

Personalities and Events 11.3

Sayfullo Saipov, age 29 (discussed in Chapter 10), arrived in the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010. He married and worked as a truck driver, drifting from Ohio to Florida with his wife and children without success before settling in Patterson, New Jersey. In November 2017, Saipov drove a rental truck onto a New York City bicycle path, killing eight people and injuring more than a dozen. Witnesses said he exited the truck yelling "Allahu Akbar" and carrying a pellet gun and paintball gun. Saipov was fortunately subdued by an alert law enforcement officer. He left behind a note in the truck endorsing ISIS and investigators found 90 ISIS propa-ganda videos and about 3,800 pro-ISIS images on his phone. According to law enforcement, Saipov had followed instructions for a vehicle attack that appeared in the ISIS online magazine Rumiyah. The evidence is that Saipov held moderate political views when he entered the United States and had become increasingly extremist after experiencing personal and economic frustrations. In 2010 Saipov received a visa, along with nearly 3,300 people from Uzbekistan who were granted diversity visas. The Diversity Visa program was established by Democrats and Republicans in 1990 and signed by President George H. W. Bush. The purpose of the program is to increase immigration from countries and regions that are underrepresented in the ordinary immigration program. Individuals place their name in a lottery and roughly 50,000 individuals are selected out of more than 1 million applicants. No country may receive more than 7% of available slots. To be eligible, an individual must have a high school diploma and go through a vetting process. Between 2007 and 2016, roughly 473,000 people were granted a diversity visa. The largest number were from Africa, which accounted for 43% of those awarded in 2016. This compares with the 32% that went to Europeans, 19% to Asians, 3% to Latin Americans, and 1% to people from Oceania. President Trump has called for an end to diversity visas even though Saipov is only the second person on a diversity visa to commit an act of terrorism. The same pattern of radicalization following arrival in the United States was followed by Akayed Ullah. Ullah, aged 27, was born in Bangladesh. In November 2017, he strapped a pipe bomb to his chest which he ignited in a Times Square subway station. Ullah arrived in the United States in 2011 on visa for family members (chain migration) after an uncle had received a visa in the lottery program. Ullah was radicalized online after entering the country. He ignited his bomb in response to an online call from ISIS to launch Christmas attacks. President Trump has advocated an end to the family reunion program that allowed Ullah to enter the United States. Commentators supporting family reunion visas argue that the program promotes stability and a sense of community among immigrants to the United States. A third individual, Akhror Saidakhmetov, an immigrant from Kazakhstan, was arrested in 2015 for attempting to travel abroad to join ISIS, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Saidakhmetov, 19 at the time of his arrest, was simply unprepared to attend an American high school or adjust to life in America when he arrived in the United States at age 16. He was radicalized online by an Uzbek cleric and was abandoned by his mother because of his increased criticism of her Western dress and of her failure to adhere to Islam. He moved in with an older male whom he met at the mosque and began posting pro-ISIS messages on various sites and expressing admiration for the ISIS massacre of Iraqi soldiers. These three individuals all were radicalized primarily on social media after entering the United States. In each instance, they were unable to adjust to American society, lived in insulated communities, and found meaning by becoming part of the ISIS electronic community. The import-ant point is that enhanced vetting of individuals entering the United States may not fully protect America from attacks by foreign-born terrorists, because many of these individuals are radicalized after entering the coun-try. A focus on foreign-born terrorists clearly does very little to combat homegrown terrorism.

THE COLD WAR AND THE RED SCARE

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin conducted hearings on the alleged infil-tration of the U.S. government by individuals who were accused of being loyal to China or Russia rather than to the United States. His often false or exaggerated allegations and attacks became known as McCarthyism. Hundreds of individuals had their careers destroyed as a result of being singled out as Communists or as Communist sympathizers. In 1940 Congress passed the Alien Registration Act (also called the Smith Act) making it a crime to "knowingly or willfully advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government or to organize any association which teaches the overthrow of the U.S. government or to become a member of such an association" (Dennis v. United States, 1951). The Smith Act provided the legal basis for the criminal prosecutions in 1949 and subsequent imprisonment of 11 leaders of the Communist Party and of more than 100 other members of the Communist Party. More than 130 other members of the Communist Party were prosecuted after the 1949 prosecutions, many of whom were imprisoned. In 1947 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9835 (the Loyalty Order) which required that federal employees be examined to determine whether they were loyal to the U.S. government. The Red Scare reached its height in 1951 when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were brought to trial and convicted for conspiracy to commit espionage by allegedly turning information regarding the design of nuclear weapons over to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs were both executed in 1953. McCarthy's assault on the government ended in December 1954 when Joseph Welch, General Counsel of the U.S. Army, confronted him during a Senate hearing and exposed him as an irresponsible bully. McCarthy was officially condemned by the Senate for contempt against his colleagues. During the next 21⁄2 years, McCarthy deteriorated and spiraled downhill into alcoholism. He died while in office in 1957

INTERNATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM AGREEMENTS

Terrorism inevitably involves more than a single government. Terrorists may use a country as a safe haven, raise money or obtain weapons abroad, assassinate foreign leaders, or launch attacks on a target in another country. The international community has responded by entering into a number of agreements or treaties in which they agree to cooperate in combating terrorism. Keep in mind that an international agreement does not have a binding impact in a country unless it is incorporated into a country's internal domestic law. A treaty that is accepted by a country, although not made part of a country's domestic law, may take on the status of customary law that has the force of binding law based on general acceptance by the international community. Examples include international agreements that prohibit genocide and torture. The most significant international agreements regulate areas that require international cooperation to be effective and are of concern to most countries in the world. Air transport is vital to the movement of people and cargo, the protec-tion of diplomats and hostages abducted abroad, and restricting the movement of money across borders. The major international treaties on terrorism are listed below. Tokyo Convention on Offenses and Certain Other Acts Committed Aboard Aircraft (1963). Countries agree to restore the control of aircraft to the pilot and to send the passengers and containers on their intended route. Hague Convention (1970). Signatories agree to extradite air hijackers to their country of origin or to prosecute hijackers. Montreal Convention (1971). Sabotage and attacks on airports and grounded aircraft are to be prosecuted or sent to a country that seeks their extradition. Offenders are subject to severe penalties. Protection and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons Including Diplomatic Agents (1973). Violent acts against diplomats, the kidnapping of diplomats, and attacks on diplomatic premises and means of transport are to be subject to criminal penalties. Offenders are either to be pros-ecuted or extradited to a county asserting jurisdiction. International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages (1979). An inter-national agreement to punish hostage takers or to extradite hostage takers for trial abroad. International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. This treaty obligates signatories to prevent and punish the financing of terrorism. The international community has been unable to agree on a general treaty to prevent and to punish terrorism. There has been intense disagreement, for example, on whether to punish state terrorism and whether individuals fighting for freedom should be considered terrorists or freedom fighters. In addition to these international agreements, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the related protocols of 1977 regulate the law of war and prohibit attacks on civilians and civilian objects. The treaties significantly regulate the treatment of prisoners of war during both international and noninternational conflicts. There also are international treaties regulating landmines, chemical and biological weapons, poison gas, torture, genocide, extrajudicial killings, and a newly drafted treaty on nuclear weapons. There are several international courts with jurisdiction over international terrorism. International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ is a body established by the United Nations to consider disputes between nations and to issue advisory opinions on various issues. The ICJ, for example, issued an advisory opinion on the legality of the wall constructed by Israel to separate the country from the West Bank and an advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons. International Criminal Court (ICC). The court is based on a 1988 treaty and at present 128 states have joined the court which has jurisdiction to prosecute nationals of these states for international crimes, including torture, genocide, extrajudicial executions, and war crimes. Regional human rights courts in Europe, Latin America, and Africa have jurisdiction to hear challenges to the treatment of terrorist detainees by courts. The European court has condemned the state torture of detainees accused of terrorism.

ENHANCED INTERROGATION

The Bush administration determined that the United States was not obtaining the intelligence required to effectively combat al Qaeda. It was decided that it was necessary to employ enhanced interrogation techniques against high-level detainees. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice was asked to clarify the definition of the terms torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrad-ing treatment, which are considered crimes under international and American domestic law and to offer an opinion on authorized interrogation techniques (US Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, 2014). A 2001 OLC memo advised that interrogation methods had to meet a high standard to constitute unlawful torture. Physical pain to constitute torture "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Mental pain or suffering to constitute torture must "result in significant psychological harm of significant duration ... lasting for months or even years." The memo also argued that the president as commander in chief possessed unrestricted authority to take whatever steps which were required to defend the United States. In response to public and media criticism, the OLC rescinded the memo in 2004. In a separate August 2002 memo, the OLC approved 15 interrogation methods, including sleep deprivation, nudity, cramped confinement in a box filled with insects, stress positions, sleep deprivation, denial of food and water, ice water baths, and shackling of individuals to the floor. At least five detainees were sub-jected to "rectal feeding." The most controversial enhanced interrogation technique was waterboarding. The detainee is strapped to the bed and a cloth is placed over the nose and mouth and water is poured onto the cloth causing the individual to feel as if he or she is being suffocated by water. Abu Zubaydah, director of terrorist operations for al Qaeda, reportedly was waterboarded 83 times. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a central figure in planning the 9/11 attacks, was waterboarded an estimated 183 times. The Bush administration argued that enhanced interrogation resulted in valu-able intelligence, although a number of analysts as well as the report on torture of the Senate Intelligence Committee (2014) dispute whether these methods yielded important information. Critics of enhanced interrogation contend that individuals who are abused by interrogators will provide whatever information the interrogators "want to hear" in order to end their abuse. Although the best approach to obtain information is to establish a relationship with a detainee, the imminent threat of terrorism does not always allow interrogators the time and opportunity to establish a trusting relationship with detainees. Torture was carried out in many instances in conjunction with extraordinary rendition, which involved turning foreign nationals detained in American custody over to another country for enhanced interrogation without going through legal procedures. In other instances, extraordinary rendition was carried out by trans-ferring individuals to so-called secret black sites for interrogation by the CIA and allied countries. In some instances, individuals were literally kidnapped off the street and sent for interrogation abroad. U.S. allies also were involved in the rendition program. In 2018, a British Parlia-ment report documented the involvement of intelligence officials in extraordinary rendition and the abuse of suspected terrorists. British officers were involved in the direct abuse of individuals in only three instances, although they assisted in the financing, rendition, and questioning and received intelligence in several hundred cases in which they were aware that individuals were subject to abuse (Perez-Pena, 2018). In one infamous episode, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent, was mistakenly identified as a "terrorist" during a stopover in New York City and was sent to Syria where he was detained and tortured for a nearly a year before being released at the request of Canadian authorities. The 2005 Detainee Treatment Act prohibited the use of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. The primary sponsor and advocate for the legislation was the late Senator John McCain of Arizona, who himself had been tortured while a prisoner of war during Vietnam. When he took office, President Barack Obama stated that terrorist detainees would be accorded the rights of prisoners of war and he prohibited the use of enhanced interrogation and directed that both mili-tary and CIA interrogators follow the requirements of the law of war as set forth in the U.S. Army Field Manual. There is continuing debate over whether terrorist suspects brought to the United States should be read their Miranda rights and informed of their rights to silence and to a lawyer, and that anything they may say can be used against them. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who in 2009 attempted to ignite a bomb on board an airliner landing in Detroit, was read the Miranda rights and invoked his right to silence. Although Abdulmutallab subsequently talked to authori-ties, federal officials were criticized for treating Abdulmutallab as a "common criminal" rather than as a terrorist and for reading him the Miranda rights. Detainees now are subjected to a two-track interrogation. The first involves national security concerns without the Miranda rights based on the public safety exception to Miranda, and during the second interrogation terrorist sus-pects are read Miranda. FBI agents most recently relied on the national security exception in their interrogation of Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Lippman, 2016). What is your view on whether enhanced interrogation is justified?

Racial Profiling

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution provide individuals equal protection of the law, which means that individuals may not be discrim-inated against based on race, religion, or gender. In terms of law enforcement, individuals may not be targeted for racial profiling: investigative stops, arrests, prosecution, and sentences based on race, religion, or gender. In other words, the law is concerned with what you did—not with who you are. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, various analysts advocated the use of racial profiling to combat terrorism. This was based on the fact that al Qaeda was a Muslim group and the 9/11 hijackers were Muslims from the Middle East. The Bush admin-istration almost immediately initiated a detention program of Muslims. The only precedent for this this type of mass roundup of individuals was the detention of 112,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, an event for which President Ronald Reagan and Congress later apologized and paid compensation to the indi-viduals who had been harmed. The Bush initiative involved three programs. In the 2 months following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government detained well over 1,000 individuals based on immigration violations. Attorney general John Ashcroft explained that this was motivated by a desire to deter future acts of terrorism by identifying individuals who participate in or support terrorist activ-ities. Citizens of more than 20 predominantly Muslim countries who had violated immigration law were detained—roughly one third of whom came from Pakistan. In April 2003, the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice released a report analyzing the detention of 762 individuals, all of whom were nationals of various Middle Eastern countries or Pakistan. The average length of detention was 80 days, and although a small number of individuals were suspected of terrorist activities, the vast majority were detained because of minor immigra-tion violations such as overstaying their visa or working without authorization. In all likelihood most of the detainees ordinarily would not have been jailed and would have been released and directed to report for a deportation hearing. None of the men who were detained were subsequently charged with terrorism or with terrorism-related activities. They were incarcerated on a hold-until-clear policy while they were investigated for terrorist activity. Individuals guilty of immi-gration violations were ordered to be deported. The inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, determined that several detainees at the Brooklyn detention facility had been subjected to unduly harsh conditions and 12 individuals reportedly had been subjected to physical abuse. "High interest' detainees were held in restrictive conditions and were confined in their cells for 23 hours a day and handcuffed with leg irons when moved out of their cells. The Bureau of Prisons imposed a communications blackout that restricted the efforts of detainees to contact their family and lawyers" (Office of the Inspector General, 2003, Ch. 7). On November 9, 2001, Ashcroft directed the FBI and immigration authorities to interview upward of 5,000 men between the ages of 18 and 35 who had lawfully entered the United States in the previous 2 years and originated from countries thought to be linked to terrorism. The list of individuals subject to interview was based on national origin and there was no basis for suspecting that any of these individuals were involved with terrorism. In March 2002, an additional 3,000 Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men in the United States who had entered the United as visitors or students were interviewed. In June 2002, Ashcroft announced the initiation of the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS), required Arab and Muslim noncitizen immi-grants to register and to be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned. In 1 year, the now-abandoned NSEERS program registered 83,310 individuals and deported more than 13,000. The program was subsequently abolished (American Civil Liberties Union, 2004). In 2003 the Department of Justice issued now-abandoned guidelines prohib-iting racial profiling although exempted relying on race or ethnicity in national security investigations. The 2014 guidelines, promulgated by the Attorney General Eric Holder, eliminated the authorization to rely on racial profiling in national security cases. Critics argue that the notion that terrorism can be effectively combated based on racial profiling is misguided. It is thought to be a waste of resources to track individuals because they are Muslim rather than to focus on individual behavior. Muslims are a diverse community with various beliefs and backgrounds, and Islamic terrorists within the United States have very little in common with one another. Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," is of Canadian and Jamaican background. The 9/11 hijackers all were lawfully within the United States and were from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both of which are allies of the United States. Law enforcement depends on cooperation from the Muslim community, and singling the entire group out as terrorists breeds distrust of law enforcement, discourages cooperation, and damages American prestige throughout the world. Programs that target individuals because of their race and religion run the danger of a "slippery slope" that may lead to an acceptance of severe restrictions on the civil liberties of members of the group and on the civil liberties of members of other groups. On the other hand, proponents of racial profiling note that individuals should be willing to sacrifice a small degree of liberty and freedom in the interests of protecting society. Terrorism is difficult to detect, and it makes sense to focus law enforcement efforts on individuals who fit the broad pattern of individuals involved in terrorist activity. Following 9/11, it was reasonable to believe that individuals unlawfully in the United States may be associated with al Qaeda. The view that Muslims are more sympathetic to terrorist violence than other Americans is shared by roughly one third of Americans and a higher percentage among individuals who hold conservative political and religious views.

11.2 You Decide

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City in October 2017 sponsored an exhibit of art created by current and former Guantánamo detainees titled "Ode to the Sea." The exhibition online provided the e-mail addresses of artists so that anyone interested in the art could arrange to purchase the pieces. The Department of Defense (DOD) had a policy of releasing art after it was subjected to a "censorship and security" review. The DOD responded to the exhibit by stating that the art belonged to the U.S. government and that in the future, it would halt the release of art cre-ated by detainees and that the art would be destroyed after a prisoner was released. The DOD also threatened to confiscate any money paid for the art. Detainees at Guantánamo would continue to be permitted to create artwork, but they only would be allowed to keep a limited number of pieces in their cells—the other pieces would be destroyed. The Federal Bureau of Prisons allows inmates to mail "art and hobby craft" to their family, give items to visitors, and display the art in public space that meets the warden's standard of taste. The warden under the Federal Code of Regula-tions "may restrict for reasons of security and housekeeping, the size and quantity of all products made in the art and hobby craft program. Paintings mailed out of the institution must conform to both institution guidelines and postal regulation" (Code of Federal Regulations, n.d.). Art classes were introduced at Guantánamo to break the monotony of imprisonment and were the most popular activity in the prison. The paint-ings were prohibited from depicting the prison and were typically based on recollections of their home or of seascapes. Other internees created three-dimensional models of ships and other objects. Should inmates at Guantánamo be offered art classes? Should they be allowed to keep or sell their art? n

Intro

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military define counterterrorism as "activities and operations taken to neutralize terrorists, their organizations, and networks in order to render them incapable of using violence to instill fear and coerce gov-ernments or societies to achieve their goals" (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2017, p. 169). The range of activities included in counterterrorism according to the Joint Chiefs include domestic law enforcement, acts undertaken by first responders and mil-itary, and foreign assistance efforts. Ganor (2005) lists three broad goals of a counterterrorism strategy: Eliminating terrorism. The eradication of terrorism by defeating terrorists, deterring terrorists through the use of violence or intimidation, or meeting terrorist demands. Minimizing damage. Reducing the number, severity or types of attacks, or lim-iting the human and/or physical consequences of attacks. Preventing the escalation of terrorism. Limiting the growth of domestic and international support for terrorists and impeding the spread of the terrorist attacks and development of new types of terrorist attacks. Various counterterrorism programs can be grouped under each of these strategic goals. Infrastructure protection, for example, is intended to minimize damage and deradicalization programs are intended to eliminate the threat of terrorism. A major pillar of American counterterrorism policy is that the United States is at "war" with terrorists and with terrorism. This means that terrorists can be attacked and killed wherever they are found, even they are not on the battlefield or do not pose an immediate threat. Terrorists and their supporters receive minimal protections under the Geneva Convention and may be prosecuted before military tribunals rather than civilian courts. An alternative to the war-fighting approach to counterterrorism, at the other extreme, is to view terrorists as "common criminals" who are subject to arrest and are to be accorded with constitutional protections when captured. They are to be prosecuted before conventional criminal courts and afforded a jury trial. The focus of this crime-control approach to counterterrorism is on combating the radicalization of individuals and in combating the conditions that lead to terrorism by promoting economic development and democracy. Mil-itary force, whenever possible, should be undertaken in a multilateral fashion in conjunction with other countries. In practice, counterterrorism policy in the United States combines the war-fight-ing approach and the crime-control approach, although the primary focus of American efforts has been on the reliance on military force. In 1984 the Reagan administration invoked the phrase war against terrorism in asking Congress to pass legislation to bolster the military following the 1983 bombing of an American military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which resulted in the death of 241 Americans. In a 2017 speech, Vice President Mike Pence noted that the Beirut attack marked the beginning of the war on terrorism In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush in an address to Congress observed that the war on terror would not be complete until every global terrorist organization has been defeated. Three years later, he stated that the effort against terrorism was not a "law enforcement and intelligence-gathering operation." Counterterrorism required the "full use of American power." The goal is to 'defeat terror' by ... destroying terrorists" (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2017, p. 172). The early Bush policy had a decidedly military emphasis and was based on what was termed four Ds; Defeat, Deny (state support), Diminish (by addressing root causes), and Defend (the homeland and Americans abroad). This policy stressed that the United States would take the initiative in self-defense against terrorists and would seek international allies but would not hesitate to act alone (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2017). The legal basis for this War on Terror was soon thereafter established following the 9/11 attacks by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and signed by President Bush on September 18, 2001. The law authorized the president to employ all nec-essary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons determined to have planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or who harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent future acts of terrorism against the United States (U.S. Congress, 2001a). By 2006, the Bush counterterrorism policy became less focused on unilateral military force in defense of America and more focused on countering jihadist ideology through so-called soft power. The spread of democracy, bolstering the economy of other countries, and strengthening moderate Muslims at home and abroad were considered essential in combating the root cause of terrorism, which was described as violent extremism. The United States at this point was hesitant to act alone or use military force without consultation and support from allied nations (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2017) In April 2007, the British government publicly abandoned the use of the term War on Terror explaining that the terrorists were criminals rather than soldiers. President Barack Obama generally avoided use of the term Global War on Terror and following his election, in a speech at Cairo University in Egypt he outlined a counterterrorism policy based on human rights, religious freedom, economic development, multilateral cooperation, and rejecting violent extremism (Cren-shaw & LaFree, 2017). President Obama aspired to dismantle al Qaeda and to diminish and degrade imminent terrorist threats, rather than defeat terrorism militarily across the globe. Terrorism was to be controlled rather than entirely eliminated. An important focus was on continuing to counter the spread of terrorism by challenging the growth of violent extremist ideology. President Obama stated that, in his opinion, "our efforts to work with other countries to counter the ideology and root causes of extremism will be more important than our capacity to remove terrorists from the battlefield" (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2017, p. 176). President Obama, however, did not abandon the view that the United States was engaged in a so-called war against terrorists that transcended geographic boundaries. In May 2013 President Obama stressed that the United States was at war with al Qaeda and the Taliban and that this was a so-called just war that was being waged against terrorist groups across the globe that threatened the United States. President Obama stressed that military action should be a collective effort between America and its allies, and that the United States should not act alone. The Obama administration's counterterrorism policy also stressed the need to deny terrorists access to nuclear material and weapons (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2015). The direction of American counterterrorism policy under Presidents Bush and Obama moved in the direction of defeating terrorism through challenging vio-lent extremist ideology and by spreading democracy and economic development. Muslim communities came to be viewed as partners in the fight against terrorism. Military force increasingly was to be undertaken in conjunction with allied nations. President Donald Trump shifted the focus of American counterterrorism policy back to a reliance on unilateral military force. President Trump, in honoring the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, proclaimed that "we are making plain to these savage killers that there is no dark corner beyond our reach, no sanctuary beyond our grasp and nowhere to hide anywhere on this very large earth ... we will never, ever yield ... we pledge ... to fight together and to overcome together every enemy and obstacle that's ever in our path" (Trump, 2017). President Trump authorized military commanders in the field to act without consultation to attack terrorists, expanded military operations across the globe, and supported an increase in military bombing strikes. He also has threatened to limit the United States' com-mitment to countries that do not support America's war on terrorism. In August 2017, President Donald Trump announced the creation of a memorial to American soldiers killed in the War on Terrorism. American counterterrorism policy, although differing under Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, has several broad components. Military. A willingness to rely on the unilateral use of force against terrorists when it is not possible to rely on a coalition force of American, European, and Middle Eastern countries. The United States is involved in training and equip-ping local counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Foreign assistance is provided to countries participating in the effort against terrorism. Intelligence. A vigorous intelligence program intended to detect and disable terrorist plots. This also involves the sharing of information among security agencies in various countries and cooperation in apprehending and interrogat-ing suspected terrorists. Diplomacy. Cooperation with other member-states of the UN Security Council and other nations to sanction countries that sponsor terrorism and the with-drawal of foreign assistance from countries that do not cooperate in combating terrorism. A crucial component of diplomacy is working with foreign countries to prevent state sponsors of terrorism and terrorist groups from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Homeland security. Combating terrorist threats within the United States; control over immigration and borders; the creation of a legal structure that facilitates the investigation, detection, and prosecution of terrorists; and the protection of critical infrastructure. Ideology. Challenging terrorist propaganda in cyberspace. As you read the about the various issues discussed in this chapter, consider whether they are primarily based on a war-fighting or crime-control approach to terrorism. The next sections of the chapter outline several issues involved in American counterterrorism.

Chapter 10

The Legal and Historical Basis of Homeland Security

VIETNAM PROTESTS

The U.S. government conducted a selective service draft of men 18 years of age and older to serve in the Vietnam War. The war became increasingly unpopular—particularly on college campuses. The government reacted strongly against any efforts to impede the draft. In 1968 famed pediatrician Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin, along with others were prosecuted for conspiring to aid, abet, and counsel draft registrants to violate the Selective Service Act. Their conviction was overturned by an appellate federal court in 1969. A number of the thousands of young men who committed a criminal offense by burning their draft cards were prosecuted and sentenced to prison. Protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention turned violent in what a report termed a police riot. The federal government charged eight antiwar and civil rights activists with conspiracy to cross state lines to incite a riot. The convictions of six of the defendants were reversed on appeal. The disclosure that American forces had expanded the Vietnam War by sending troops into Cambodia sparked nationwide protests. On May 4, 1970, 28 members of the Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds and killed four students and wounded nine others. Criminal charges against the guardsmen were dismissed. The COINTELPRO program (COINTELPRO stands for Counter Intelligence Program) was an FBI surveillance program that targeted antiwar and other activists. Undercover agents were used to disrupt demonstrations, infiltrate the movement, and harass antiwar leaders.

WORLD WAR II INTERNMENT

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by Japan led to a fear among many Americans that Japanese Americans posed a threat of subversion and sab-otage. There also was a fear that Japanese Americans were communicating with enemy submarines and ships and assisting in targeting missiles towards vulnerable targets within the United States. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the War Relocation Author-ity which, with the assistance of the U.S. Army, transferred as many as 112,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps on the West Coast and in the Western states. Internees often lost their businesses, careers, and most of their valuable possessions. President Ronald Reagan, decades later in the 1980s, apologized for the actions of the United States in the internment of Japanese Americans and Congress authorized reparation payments of $20,000 to surviving internees.

CHECKS AND BALANCES

The authority and ability of the federal government to combat terrorism is lim-ited by the system of checks and balances provided in the U.S. Constitution. The DHS and other administrative agencies are subject to oversight from Congress. Administrative regulations and Congressional laws may, in turn, be ruled uncon-stitutional by the courts. Elected officials must also stand for election and are accountable to the American electorate.

DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

The collection, analysis, and dis-tribution of intelligence are crucial to protecting the United States and American facilities around the world from a terrorist attack. The U.S. intelligence community includes 16 intelligence-gathering opera-FIGURE 10.1 The Bombing of the Murrah Federal Building Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File%3AFEMA_-_1573_-_Photograph_by_ FEMA_News_Photo_taken_on_04-26-1995_ in_Oklahoma.jpg. tions. Following 9/11, federal agencies realized that these various intelligence branches failed to share information on potential terrorist threats. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to centralize the collection of intelligence from each of these agencies and to identify areas of concern. The central components of the U.S. intelligence community include the following: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) collects and analyzes intelligence using human intelligence and also special-izes in the analysis of open-source material (such as newspapers). The CIA is yet another partner agency of the DHS. In protecting the border, the DHS works with the CIA to identify individuals entering the country who may pose a terrorist threat. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is located within the Department of Defense and is the central source of intelligence for the American military. The DIA gathers information from the intelligence bureaus of each of the branches of the military. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI is located within the Department of Justice and is the primary federal law enforcement agency. The FBI engages in domestic surveillance of suspected terrorists and is involved in the investigation of attacks on American facilities abroad. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS, in conjunction with other agencies, is involved in collecting information on domestic terrorism, issues of immigration, and the import of contraband into the United States. A number of agencies have their own intelligence arms, including the ATF, the DEA, and Department of State. In addition, the U.S. Postal Service monitors the country's mail for threats to national security. National Security Agency (NSA). The National Security Agency collects foreign intelligence using electronic (for example, wiretapping, computer monitoring, and hacking) and satellite technology. The NSA devotes considerable resources to developing new methods of surveillance. The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an alliance comprised of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States that shares information and conducts joint surveillance. There are a number other information-sharing arrangements, including the arrangement between members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Keep in mind that the vast amount of information collected by intelligence agencies must be analyzed to determine its importance. Analysis requires indi-viduals that have the language skills and familiarity with the culture and politics of various countries. In the past, the United States has experienced a shortage of individuals with the required skills in Southeast Asia and in the Middle East. There also are areas of the world—such as North Korea—in which it has been proven difficult to gather accurate information.

HOMELAND SECURITY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

The historical record suggests that American government, in part, has responded strongly against what were viewed as internal domestic threats. This at times has involved a severe and seemingly unnecessary limitation on civil rights and liberties. How do we know when the response to an internal threat is unnecessary and a product of mass hysteria rather than a reasoned and prudent reaction? At what point is there a danger that the restriction on rights and liberties are com-promising the very values that Western societies are fighting to uphold? How can we be confident that the threat is as severe as politicians indicate? Despite possible misgivings, is it better to take extreme measures—even if in retrospect they were too restrictive to secure national security and safety?

The Civil War

The writ of habeas corpus is a fundamental right established in English common law, which was made part of English statutory law by parliament in 1671. The so-called Great Writ was later incorporated into the U.S. Constitution. An incarcerated indi-vidual may file a writ of habeas corpus and compel authorities to appear in court and justify the basis of his or her detention. Habeas corpus is thus a check on the ability of the government to imprison individuals without reason and/or without following required legal procedures. In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln imposed martial law and suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and in the Midwest. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as unconstitutional. Lincoln disregarded the Court's decision and extended the sus-pension of habeas corpus to all the states in the Union in cases involving prisoners of war, spies, traitors, or Union soldiers. Under Lincoln's order, detainees were to be prosecuted before military tribunals. Lincoln detained between 13,000 and 38,000 individuals under this order, many of whom were outside the immediate war zone and were guilty of nothing more than publishing articles and commentators critical of Lincoln's conduct of the war. In Milligan, the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently affirmed their earlier decision rejecting President Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and held that the use of military tribunals to prosecute civilians when civil-ian courts are still open and functioning is unconstitutional (In re Milligan, 1866). Keep in mind the issues of military tribunals and suspension of habeas corpus reemerged in prosecuting the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks.

HISTORICAL FOUNDATION OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Throughout the country's history, the United States has confronted domestic challenges that the government has viewed as a serious challenge to the security and stability of the government. Alien and Sedition Acts President John Adams (1797-1801) and the Federalist Party strongly supported England against Napoleon Bonaparte's French regime, which was supported by Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Republican Party. The Federalists feared that the Democratic Republicans would foment revolutionary fervor in the United States and overthrow the government. The initial Alien and Sedition Act was intended to restrict the liberty and freedom of the Jeffersonians and their immigrant supporters. The Alien and Sedition Acts were made of the following four acts: Alien Enemies Act. The president may deport or imprison citizens of "enemy" countries. Alien Friendly Act. The president may deport citizens of friendly countries who are considered dangerous. Naturalization Act. Immigrants are required to live in the United States for 14 years before being considered for citizenship. Sedition Act. Individuals may be imprisoned for criticizing the government. President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and Democratic Republican Party repealed three of the Acts, although the Sedition Act remained in place and would form the basis for the Espionage Act which was employed to restrict dissent during World War I.

FEDERAL COUNTERTERRORISM LAWS

Two congressional laws discussed below are of particular importance in coun-terterrorism: the PATRIOT Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. George W. Bush signed a new law to provide the legal tools to combat terrorism titled the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. Commonly referred to as the PATRIOT Act, the law includes 10 titles and more than 50 sections and modifies more than nine existing laws. Congress periodically has renewed various sections of the PATRIOT Act with some modification of the text. The law primarily is concerned with defining new federal criminal offenses relating to terrorism, and with introducing reforms to criminal procedure that makes it easier to investigate, detect, and prosecute terrorism. An example of a tool provided to law enforcement under the PATRIOT Act is national security letters (NSL). The FBI is authorized to issue an NSL under Section 505 of the PATRIOT Act to obtain information without a court order that is "relevant to an ... investigation to protect against international terrorism or [secret] intelligence activities" (U.S. Congress, 2001b). Another important provision in the PATRIOT Act is Section 203, which breaks down the so-called wall between national intelligence and domestic law enforcement and allows information obtained in electronic surveillance by NSA for purposes of national security to be shared with domestic law enforcement. Roving wiretaps allow a federal court to issue a warrant that authorizes the electronic surveillance of all telephones, computers, or other devices utilized by an individual with-out requiring that law enforcement obtain a separate warrant to monitor each device. Sneak-and-peek searches allow law enforcement to enter and examine material in a dwelling and then obtain a warrant and execute a formal search (U.S. Congress, 2001b). To ensure that the provisions of the PATRIOT Act did not lead to govern-mental abuse and were at the same time sufficiently strong, civil libertarians and conservative lawmakers demanded that various provisions would auto-matically expire unless extended by Congress. For example, the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 provided additional protections for libraries and enhanced criminal penalties for financial support for terrorism, among other provisions. The 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. In 1996, following the explosion of a bomb at Centennial Park during the Atlanta Olympics and the unsolved explosion that brought down TWA Flight 800 over Long Island, New York, the U.S. Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The legislation allows the death penalty for acts of terrorism and broadens the authority of the secretary of state to designate groups as terrorist organizations, which are prohibited from raising funds in the United States. An important provision requires the inclusion of taggants in plastic explosives in order to assist law enforcement to locate the individuals who purchased the explosives used in a terrorist attack. Also keep in mind that most states have their own terrorism laws. These laws are typically used to prosecute acts of terrorism that are not prosecuted by federal authorities. In some instances, individuals may be prosecuted in both state and federal courts.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Various agencies are concerned with specific sectors of the economy that include critical infrastructure that needs to be protected against a terrorist attack. The damage or destruction of these sectors would have a debilitating impact on the economy, public health, transportation, food, and agriculture. The agencies listed below are concerned with vital areas of the economy which may not come to mind when discussing terrorism, but they work with DHS in protecting the homeland. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA has primary respon-sibility for the food security of the U.S. food supply and for ensuring that the infrastructure supports the continued development and growth of the nation's food supply. Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE is responsible for the development and protection of nation's energy resources, which includes responsibility for power plants, nuclear weapons production facilities, and research sites. The DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is an independent agency concerned with public health and safety, work with state agencies and with private industry to protect the nation's nuclear stockpile and nuclear power plants. Department of Health and Human Services (DHS). The DHS is concerned with the health of Americans including the ability of the health care system to respond to an emergency. Department of the Interior. The Department of the Interior is responsible for securing national monuments and federal lands for parks. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has the responsibility to secure drinking water and water treatment plants and facilities and other envi-ronmental health concerns.


Related study sets

The Move to Global War (WW2) - P1

View Set

Anthropology Exam 1 Key Terms and Quiz questions

View Set

AP GOV: OBERGEFELL V. HODGES (2015)

View Set

KIN 2504 chapter 11, Kin 2504 Chapter 8, Kin 2504 Chapter 9, KIN 2504 Exam 3 Grodesky

View Set