ASSIGNMENT

Public Policy 7th Edition

Kraft, Michael E.,Furlong, Scott R (7TH EDITION) COPYRITTEN 2021)

CHAPTER 12 Foreign Policy and Homeland Security

National security and citizen rights. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (center) testifies at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 10, 2018. Zuckerberg told Congress in his written testimony that he is “responsible for” not preventing the social media platform from being used for harm, including fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech.

PAGE 413 Throughout 2013, the nation was gripped by news of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) extensive and secretive domestic surveillance operations that far exceeded what the public and policymakers thought was taking place. Most Americans recognize the need to keep close tabs on potential terrorists at home or abroad, particularly in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks and more recent incidents. These include the assault in San Bernardino, California, in 2015 in which fourteen people were killed, and the mass shooting by a man who also was a self-described supporter of ISIS at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016 that killed forty-nine people. In early 2019, federal officials arrested a forty-nine-year-old Coast Guard officer who described himself as a white nationalist and a domestic terrorist; he had amassed a large cache of weapons and was planning to attack prominent cable news journalists and Democratic Party officials. Such cases are increasingly a focus of law enforcement. A report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in March 2019 found that such domestic terrorism arrests—for example, for threats from far-right extremists—now exceed those for international terrorism.1

Whether the suspects are international or domestic terrorists, how much authority should the NSA and other law enforcement offices have to gather information about ordinary Americans in its search for telling patterns that might alert the agency to such threats? Should all phone calls and all email messages be monitored for such patterns? What about web browsing and postings to sites such as Facebook and Twitter, especially given use of those social media by Russian intelligence agencies in their effort to affect the 2016 presidential election campaign? At what point does such government surveillance cross the line and become an invasion of privacy or even a violation of federal laws that are designed to protect citizens’ civil liberties even as the nation pursues its national security goals? Increasingly, Americans are concerned about their personal privacy as they learn more about the vast amounts of personal data that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and other big technology companies are collecting or using in their routine business operations. Should government agencies be held to an even higher standard for protection of personal privacy?2

Many of the news stories in 2013 followed the release of thousands of classified documents by Edward J. Snowden, a then twenty-nine-year-old former NSA contractor who worked for the consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton. By one recent estimate, more than four million federal employees and contractors hold security clearances, making it difficult to oversee their actions. Snowden and his supporters say that he released classified data to journalists because he had no confidence that the NSA itself would act against what he viewed as excessive and illegal domestic surveillance operations. In effect, they said he became a whistle-blower, hoping that by releasing evidence of NSA’s mass collection of phone records and internet use he would help to end the practices. They viewed him as a hero.

Snowden’s detractors offered a much less positive interpretation. They said that he was not a whistle-blower at all, but a traitor, and that his release of classified documents did enormous damage to the ability of the NSA and other intelligence agencies to do their jobs and protect the nation from terrorism. Reflecting those views, the U.S. government charged Snowden with violation of the Espionage Act for unauthorized communication of classified material and theft of government property. In 2013, Russia granted him political asylum, which it extended until at least 2020.

PAGE 414 n yet another twist in the story, in April 2014, two of the newspapers that published stories based on the NSA documents that Snowden provided to them, the Washington Post and the Guardian, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. At the height of the controversy, both newspapers were strongly criticized by the American and British governments for the harm they were said to have inflicted on national security by publishing the information. Yet the Pulitzer committee indicated that it gave the award because of the papers’ “revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, marked by authoritative and insightful reports that helped the public understand how the disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security.”3

The sharply varying assessments of Snowden’s release of classified documents and of the NSA’s massive domestic surveillance operations illustrate well the contemporary challenge of providing for the nation’s security. As many observers noted in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, “the world has changed.” As a result, the goals of U.S. foreign policy, national defense, and homeland security need fresh and critical examination. Policy tools that were widely used in the past, from diplomacy and international economic assistance to weapons procurement and military intervention abroad, need to be rethought as well. At the same time, use of new policy tools, including the NSA’s elaborate electronic surveillance programs, clearly calls for careful analysis and reassessment, and that process is under way in Congress and the administration as well as in organizations outside of the government.

PAGE 415 Similarly, government agencies and offices responsible for foreign and defense policy, such as the Departments of State and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created through an executive agency reorganization in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, need to be thoroughly examined to make sure they are as capable as they can be of carrying out U.S. policy and protecting the nation from security threats.4 Aside from capacity to do their jobs well, it is imperative that these agencies be able to weigh and balance their missions against long-standing concern for the rights of citizens. As we will see at the end of the chapter, critics have questioned the trade-offs between security and liberty in debates over the USA PATRIOT Act, both at the time of its adoption in 2001, just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks, and during its renewal by Congress in later years. The box “Steps to Analysis: The National Security Agency and Domestic Surveillance” explores some of these concerns.

Because of the scope of the topic, this chapter is organized differently from those that precede it. Instead of the major policies and programs, we emphasize key issues in foreign policy and homeland security and address questions about the effectiveness of new policies adopted in the years following the terrorist attacks of 2001. We also place those policies within the larger context of new and complex global challenges that confront the United States in the twenty-first century, including national security threats posed by the growth of international terrorism, often defined as the unconventional use of violence for political gain. In addition, we provide a brief historical overview of U.S. foreign and defense policy since the end of World War II in 1945 that helps to explain the changing policy agenda in recent years, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War that dominated U.S. thinking about foreign policy for decades.

PAGE 416 We emphasize as well that policy analysis can help in understanding contemporary challenges in foreign policy and homeland security, much as it can in domestic policy areas such as education, the environment, and health care. Analysts and policymakers need to be alert to the available policy tools and think about which are most likely to be effective, which are justifiable in terms of economic costs and efficiency, and which are likely to be fair or acceptable on ethical grounds. There is an obvious need to think clearly and imaginatively about such questions, yet much of the current political debate over foreign policy and homeland security continues to be grounded in simplistic assessments of the situation faced. If this pattern continues, it will serve the nation poorly in the years ahead.

Background and Policy Evolution

We start this section with some basic definitions. Foreign policy refers to the collection of government actions that affect or attempt to affect U.S. national security as well as the economic and political goals associated with it. Foreign policy can deal with matters as diverse as international trade, economic assistance to poor nations, immigration to the United States, building of political alliances with other nations, action on human rights abuses around the world, global environmental and energy issues such as climate change, and strategic military actions abroad. As the list of topics suggests, foreign policy involves a great diversity of policy actors, among the most important of which are the president, the secretary of state, the president’s national security adviser, the National Security Council (see below), and key congressional committees. Among the most commonly used policy tools are diplomacy (high-level communication among policymakers), economic relations (such as imposing trade restraints or providing economic assistance), and threats of military intervention. Foreign policymaking also has some distinctive qualities, among them a greater need than in other policy areas for secrecy or a lack of transparency, more of a reliance on policy professionals (for example, in the State Department and in intelligence and defense agencies), considerably less opportunity for public input, greater involvement by foreign policy actors, and dominance by the president over Congress.

Defense policy, considered part of foreign policy, refers to the goals set (usually by civilian policymakers in the White House and Congress) and the actions taken by government officials directed at the conduct of military affairs. Here too the issues are diverse, ranging from decisions to build and deploy a variety of strategic weapons systems such as nuclear missiles, manned bombers, and aircraft carriers to the maintenance of suitable military force levels, domestically and abroad, and the planning and conduct of military operations such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among the major policy actors in defense decisions are the secretary of defense, other members of the National Security Council, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (representing the military services). The National Security Council (NSC) is chaired by the president, and the regular attendees (both statutory and nonstatutory) include the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of the Treasury, secretary of defense, and assistant to the president for national security affairs (also called the president’s national security adviser). The chair of the joint chiefs by statute is the military adviser to the council, and the director of national intelligence is the intelligence adviser. The Obama administration altered the NSC substantially by extending its scope beyond traditional foreign policy issues (for example, to climate change and energy(PAGE 417) concerns) and including other agencies in its work. Members of Congress who serve on defense-related committees also are influential policy players.5

Although it is something of a simplification, the chief purpose of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II can be described as the promotion of national security through a diversified economic, political, and military strategy. The United States emerged from the war in 1945 as one of the world’s leading military and economic powers, and it sought to ensure that the security it won at such a high price in World War II would not be lost. For most of the postwar era, that goal was associated with five essential activities: (1) the rebuilding of a war-devastated Europe through the Marshall Plan and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), (2) the formation of and support for the United Nations, (3) a military buildup to ensure adequate capacity to deal with potential enemies, (4) the development and growth of the nation’s intelligence agencies to provide reliable knowledge about security threats, and (5) the initiation of economic and military assistance to other nations for humanitarian and strategic purposes. We briefly review each of these in turn.

The Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Cold War

The Marshall Plan, named after Secretary of State George Marshall, was authorized by the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 to help rebuild Europe after the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces, which included the United States and the Soviet Union. Europe continued to suffer greatly from the effects of the prolonged war, which had caused unprecedented loss of life and destruction across the continent. The plan was to offer humanitarian aid to assist in Europe’s recovery and to encourage nations in Europe to work together to improve economically. This was an early form of economic cooperation that led decades later to the European Union. The United States offered up to $20 billion in aid, and by 1953, it had spent some $13 billion, enough to put Europe back on its feet.6 The United States also was aware that a stronger Europe could help to block the expansion of communism from the East as well as stimulate the U.S. economy, because so much of what European nations bought was made in the United States. The plan was one of the first clear demonstrations after the war that foreign policy could reflect idealistic goals but also be grounded in realpolitik, a hardheaded or practical appraisal of national interests that emphasizes competition among nation-states.

By 1949, in response to the threat of aggression by the Soviet Union, the United States and Western European nations created a formal alliance to pursue their security interests cooperatively: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance or the Western Alliance, which was signed in Washington, D.C., in April. By 1955, NATO welcomed West Germany to the pact, but East Germany remained under the domination of the Soviet Union. The divided Germany would come to symbolize the deep ideological and political differences between NATO nations and the Soviet Union and its satellite states, the communist nations of Central and Eastern Europe. In response to West Germany’s entry into NATO, and with Soviet concern about a “remilitarized” West Germany, in 1955, these nations formally established their counterpart, called the Warsaw Pact. The two collections of nations, West and East, were on opposing sides during the rest of the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact itself was formally dissolved in 1991 with the end of the Soviet Union (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR).

PAGE 418 The Cold War was so named because the conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union never emerged into direct military confrontation between the two, or a “hot” war. Rather, the conflicts that were fought were between surrogate nations, such as North and South Korea in the early 1950s and North and South Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. This is not to say there was an absence of real warlike activities. In place of military engagement between the two superpowers, the Cold War relied on a variety of other policy tools. These included diplomatic actions, communication strategies (propaganda), economic and military aid to nations to secure their support, and covert intelligence and military operations in advance of each nation’s interests. The Cold War lasted from 1947 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Gaddis 2006).

The United Nations and Globalization

At the end of World War II, the United States and its European allies concluded that future conflicts might be resolved without war through the establishment of an international organization. In 1945, the United States and fifty other nations formed the United Nations (UN), headquartered in New York City and governed under the United Nations Charter, its constitution. Today, the UN is often described as a “global association of governments facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, and social equity.”7 In 2019, the UN consisted of 193 member states, all nations in the world except for Kosovo, Palestine, and the Vatican City. It has a vast array of agencies and programs to further its purposes, such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations international conferences on issues of special importance.

Several affiliated organizations work toward goals similar to those of the UN, especially economic development of poor nations. Most prominent among them are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are controlled by leading developed nations, such as the United States. The World Bank was created at about the same time as the UN, in 1945, and loans money to developing nations for certain kinds of development projects. As is the case with the UN itself, these organizations often are criticized for a variety of reasons. Some argue that they impose Western political and economic values on developing nations, such as a demand for democratic institutions and free-market economic systems that do not necessarily benefit the people of those nations. Others complain that they have worsened environmental conditions by fostering wasteful and damaging projects, such as the construction of large hydroelectric dams. There is no question, however, that the World Bank remains a highly regarded financial institution with an enormous impact on world economic development strategies. The same could be said of its related financial institutions.

As we discussed in chapter 7, one of the most important economic aspects of foreign policy, though not restricted to work through the United Nations, is an attempt to manage the effects of globalization, defined here as the growing interrelationship of all nations through global trade and other kinds of interaction and communication. Increasingly, national barriers to trade, such as tariffs (customs duties or taxes imposed on imports), have been lowered, facilitating the development of an international marketplace in what one journalist has called an increasingly (PAGE419)“flat” or connected world (Friedman 2006, 2008). Yet the nations that compete in this marketplace do so with greatly varied economic circumstances, particularly their cost of labor and reliance on different national health, safety, and environmental regulations. These variations can lead to conflicts over what is considered to be fair trade, which became a major issue in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The subject of trade with other nations also was prominent in Donald Trump’s presidency as his administration sought to renegotiate or terminate many long-standing trade agreements that it argued were no longer in the nation’s interests. Among the effects in 2018 were heightened economic uncertainty among American businesses and the agricultural community. Moreover, despite the administration’s concern that a large trade deficit needed to be lowered through such new trade arrangements, 2018 ended with the largest U.S. trade deficit in history. Analysts suggested that no administration finds it easy to alter international economic changes or, for that matter, to steer the U.S. economy as it would like.8

For decades, such conflicts have been presented to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO was established in 1995 and administers trade agreements among 164 nations (as of 2017), representing about 97 percent of the world’s population, to settle conflicts over trade disputes, such as imposing unreasonable restrictions on other nations’ trade with the United States. Its very existence testifies to the global marketplace of the twenty-first century, the effects of which sometimes become topics of intense debate. One example is the United States’ increasing reliance on importation of Chinese-made goods, which are ubiquitous in discount department stores across the nation such as Walmart and Target. Concerns have been raised about issues as disparate as China’s record on human rights abuses; its lax environmental, health, and safety protection; and the economic impact on the United States when importation of goods greatly exceeds purchase of U.S.-made products in China and other nations (thus contributing to the United States’ trade deficit).

The membership of the UN Security Council—the most important of the UN policymaking bodies—reflects the history of the UN’s formation. The council has a rotating membership of ten nations selected from the UN General Assembly (which consists of all member states) in addition to five permanent members: China, France, the Russian Federation (Russia, replacing the former Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, and the United States; each of the five has veto power over the council’s actions.

Military Buildup and Nuclear Weapons

Following the end of World War II, the most expensive war in U.S. history, military spending declined somewhat but remained high for decades.9 Measured as a percentage of the federal budget, spending rose in the early 1950s during the Korean War (1950–1953) and stayed at high levels during the 1950s and 1960s. It then declined steadily after the formal end of the Vietnam War in 1975. In 1960, defense spending was over 52 percent of the federal budget, and it remained at over 40 percent by 1965. By 2019, however, the Department of Defense budget and other security-related activities stood at about $686 billion, or about one-half of all federal discretionary spending. Another $60 billion is budgeted for the National Intelligence Program, and about $56 billion for diplomacy and foreign aid through the Department of State and the (PAGE 420) Agency for International Development. This represented a cut from previous years, but far less of a reduction than the Trump administration had requested of Congress. In 2019, the defense budget supported nearly 1.3 million active-duty military personnel and over 800,000 in the National Guard or other military reserves.10

Those with a serious interest in defense programs and spending levels might peruse the federal budget documents for the Department of Defense (www.defense.gov) and related programs in the Departments of State (www.state.gov), Energy (www.energy.gov), and Homeland Security (www.dhs.gov). The annual budget documents provide elaborate descriptions of defense programs and priorities. These also include an accounting of homeland security funding by each department and agency.

The high cost of defense and the increasing reliance on technologically advanced weapons systems, as well as the corporations that manufacture them, became a prominent issue as early as the 1950s and 1960s. In his farewell address to the nation in January 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower, who had served as commanding general of U.S. forces in Europe in World War II, famously complained about the nation’s “military-industrial complex,” a form of iron triangle discussed in chapter 2. It was, he said, a “permanent armaments industry of vast proportions,” and with great political influence. Even if no dominance by military or industrial elites is suspected, cumulative military spending during this period was without precedent.

Today, defense contractors work closely with members of Congress and the Pentagon and continue to press for costly weapons systems, even when the Pentagon seeks to shift spending to newer and more appropriate technologies. For example, in 2016, Congress approved $400 million for an extra littoral combat ship despite opposition by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the Obama White House to doing so. Both “strongly objected” because of multiple problems that the ship had at the time and a preference to spend the money on other military priorities.11 The Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford is the first in a new class of warships, and at $13 billion easily the most expensive in U.S. history. The Congressional Budget Office regularly issues cost warnings, and yet Congress continues to approve such spending.12

An even more astonishing example is the long resistance by members of Congress to proposals to end production of the obsolete F-22 Raptor fighter jet that was first conceived during the Cold War, in large part because of the tens of thousands of jobs in some forty-four states linked to the F-22. Finally, in 2009, Congress agreed to cease funding for the F-22 and instead looked to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to replace it, deferring to Defense Department preferences. Yet even the F-35 will be very costly, with separate versions of the jet for each of the services. The Defense Department estimates the cost of developing, testing, and building the problem-plagued F-35 fighter jet at over $400 billion if the government builds the anticipated 2,456 jets; the amount is twice the initial estimate. An additional $1.1 trillion is anticipated for operating and sustaining the planes over the next fifty years.13 At this cost, the F-35 is likely to become the most expensive Pentagon weapons procurement project in history.

In addition to the problem of congressional defense earmarks, an ongoing challenge has been dealing with the authorization and acquisition of expensive weapons and other national security systems. A comprehensive study by Reuters in 2013 concluded that the Pentagon is “largely (PAGE421)incapable of keeping track of its vast stores of weapons, ammunition and other supplies,” because it relies on a “tangle of thousands of disparate, obsolete, largely incompatible accounting and business-management systems.” A fresh audit of Pentagon spending in late 2018 reached similar conclusions.14

In short, there are continuing questions about some very basic matters of budgetary management and housekeeping that must be addressed if the nation is to get what it seeks with the current level of military spending. These needs become even more important if the Pentagon budget shrinks over the next few years as part of the larger national effort to reign in federal spending.15

Issues related to the use of nuclear weapons no longer get the attention they once did, with the exception of concern over their possible use by rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea, yet they remain among the most important in foreign and defense policy. The potential of nuclear weapons was vividly demonstrated by their use in Japan at the end of World War II, and the United States and the Soviet Union began a decades-long effort to achieve superiority in the number and destructive potential of nuclear weapons. This part of the arms race between the two nations was intended to serve one major purpose: to deter an attack by one against the other by creating fear of a counterattack. The key idea is that of mutually assured destruction, and it is based on an application of the rational choice theory that we discussed in chapter 3.

In such strategic and foreign policy decisions, policymakers need to understand the interests, perceptions, and motivations of nation-states and other international actors, whether they are terrorists or multinational corporations. In the case of nuclear weapons, the assumption is that a strike by one nation would likely be followed by an equal strike by the other, so that both nations are assured of destruction. If the nations are rational actors, neither should be motivated to engage in a first strike. Hence, having sufficient weapons would promote deterrence, and there would be no nuclear war.16 The United States relied on the policy of deterrence to prevent the outbreak of such a war.

The number, increasing power, and location of these weapons on land and on or under the sea were some of the most closely protected military secrets during the Cold War and a vital component of defense strategy. Each side was attentive to the possibility that the other might acquire more or better weapons or place them in areas where they could not easily be destroyed in a nuclear strike, such as within reinforced missile silos, on manned bombers, or in nuclear-powered submarines that could remain hidden for long periods of time under the sea. Thus, pressure on both nations led to an enormous investment in the building of nuclear stockpiles and the vehicles that would deliver them. The United States also placed nuclear weapons in strategic locations throughout Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, with over seven thousand nuclear warheads at the peak in 1971.17

Beyond the stockpiled weapons in internationally recognized “nuclear weapons states” (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), there is continuing concern over nuclear proliferation; this is the spread of nuclear weapons knowledge and technology to new nations such as India and Pakistan. The interest is particularly great over those nations that are politically unstable or that for other reasons may pose a threat to regional or world peace. The U.S. government is alert to the possibility that nations such as Iran and North Korea might eventually be able to threaten others with nuclear weapons. The U.S. decision to deploy a still-developing missile defense system was based in part on concern over the possibility of such an attack.1

(PAGE 422)The high cost of military weapon systems. A Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35A jet flies during a training mission in Hill Air Force Base, Utah, on October 21, 2016. Critics fault the F-35 as an ill-conceived and excessively expensive multipurpose aircraft. Part of the high cost of the jet is attributable to its use of stealth technology and other advanced and highly complex systems, which also add to the difficulty of maintaining the planes for combat. Advocates, however, believe that the jet is well worth the cost and that it will revolutionize the way America fights.

The enormous buildup of nuclear stockpiles led over time to negotiations and treaties to try to reduce their numbers. The manufacture and maintenance of those weapons were costly and inefficient uses of defense funds, and their numbers posed a continuing security risk. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had a reason to favor arms limitations, but they also distrusted each other, so arms talks went slowly and yielded mixed results. Eventually, the United States and the Russian government agreed to limit their nuclear weapons arsenals to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads each; in 2018, the estimate for the U.S. was about 1,650 strategic nuclear weapons.19 Critics have complained, however, that such agreements are only loosely enforced, with no provisions for verification. Despite considerable progress in reducing the number of nuclear weapons, concern persists over the risk posed by the existence of so many old weapons and the security of the stockpiles, especially in nations of the former Soviet Union. Suspicions over possible Russian violations of these agreements led the United States in early 2019 to announce it was pulling out of the nuclear arms control treaty. Soon after, Russia said it would do the same.20

A related question, still unresolved, is the extent to which the nation’s aging nuclear weapons arsenal should be modernized. President Obama sought to cut back a planned spending of some $350 billion over the next decade for that purpose, but the Trump administration has signaled its support for a far more elaborate and costly upgrade of the nuclear arsenal. The estimated cost for a nearly thirty-year plan (2017 through 2046) to modernize nuclear weapons and production facilities for the second half of the twenty-first century is $1.2 trillion in inflation-(PAGE 423) adjusted dollars. The plan calls for redesigning nuclear warheads and for building new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons laboratories, and production facilities. Critics question whether such an enormous expenditure can be justified as the threat of nuclear war has diminished.21

The Intelligence Agencies and the War in Iraq

In addition to the formation of NATO and the United Nations, and the buildup of military forces, the post–World War II era saw a transition from temporary intelligence services during the war to the organizations that operate today. The National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to replace the Office of Strategic Services that had performed more limited operations during World War II. The act also established the National Security Council to advise the president on security issues. Under the act, the CIA was charged with coordinating the nation’s intelligence activities and “correlating, evaluating, and disseminating intelligence which affects national security.”22 Other intelligence agencies were created as well, many operating in relative secrecy for much of their existence. For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) coordinates and manages specialized activities that protect U.S. government information systems and compiles foreign intelligence information. Created by President Harry Truman to unify the nation’s codemakers and codebreakers, the agency began operating in 1952, during the Korean War. It is widely viewed as one of the most secretive of the intelligence agencies, working on the cutting edge of intelligence data analysis.

For years, the intelligence agencies were characterized as highly professional and effective in their work. Yet the terrorist attacks of 2001 cast them in a different light. Several major assessments of their organization and decision making were launched, including one by a joint congressional panel representing the House and Senate intelligence committees. It reported in July 2003 with a scathing critique of the FBI and the CIA, saying they had failed to pay attention to repeated warnings that the terrorist organization al-Qaeda was planning to attack the United States.23 A second, nineteen-month investigation was undertaken by a bipartisan commission chaired by former New Jersey Republican governor Thomas H. Kean, called the 9/11 Commission; it issued its report on July 23, 2004. It too focused on the many failures of the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, the NSC, and almost every other agency charged with defending the nation.24

In response to the 9/11 Commission report, Congress enacted a sweeping overhaul of the agencies, called the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. It was the most extensive reorganization of the intelligence community since World War II. The law focused on establishing a new management structure to coordinate and oversee the disparate agencies. The director of national intelligence is to develop the budgets of the nation’s seventeen military and civilian intelligence agencies (said to employ about one hundred thousand people and to have a budget of more than $50 billion a year, although the budgets have long been secret), advise the president on intelligence matters, coordinate intelligence activities worldwide, and set an overall strategic direction for the U.S. intelligence system.25 The agencies themselves are to improve their analysis of intelligence data and develop mechanisms for coordinating activities and sharing their information with one another. The law also calls for a variety of new efforts to improve transportation and border security and to better protect the nation against terrorism.26

(PAGE 424) Time will tell if the new institutional arrangement will succeed in improving what was widely thought to be unacceptably weak performance and lack of coordination by the CIA, FBI, and other agencies in anticipating the 2001 attacks and communicating critical information to policymakers. Directors of national intelligence have emphasized their own views on what changes are needed to improve performance. Generally, all of them call for use of a mix of policy tools, including so-called soft power (diplomacy and economic development assistance) and the “hard power” of tough counterterrorism efforts. One reason for the mix of policy tools is a growing recognition that global instability and terrorism can be linked to economic and social unrest in developing nations as well as to the independent actions of terrorist organizations.27

Where does the nation now stand in relation to possible future terrorist attacks? Much has been done to improve the nation’s capacity to gather a wide array of information about diverse terrorist threats and to respond to them. Yet in a report issued on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, the 9/11 Commission still found serious shortcomings that could leave the country vulnerable to new and “likely successful” attacks, including congressional “dysfunction” in addressing security and intelligence issues, government procrastination in setting federal identification standards, and the “outrageous” failure by Congress to address continuing communication problems faced by first responders.28

By some accounts, the serious weaknesses in the intelligence agencies also played a large role in U.S. decisions regarding how to mount the global war on terrorism. Flawed intelligence as well as misuse of intelligence data led to the Bush administration’s assertion that Iraq was linked directly to al-Qaeda and that it possessed weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, or biological) that could be used to attack the United States. A five-year inquiry by a U.S. Senate committee drew essentially these conclusions in 2008.29

In October 2001, the United States sent troops to Afghanistan in what the U.S. military called Operation Enduring Freedom. It was the beginning of the U.S. war on terrorism. U.S. forces sought to remove the Taliban organization from power and to track down and capture the leaders of al-Qaeda responsible for the 9/11 attacks, especially Osama bin Laden. U.S. forces worked intensely with the Afghan Northern Alliance and with Western allies. President Obama substantially increased U.S. forces in Afghanistan to improve the ongoing war’s success against Taliban fighters, and in May 2011, U.S. forces tracked bin Laden to a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed him. The Obama administration set a deadline of late 2014 for withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and 2016 for the withdrawal of the remaining 9,800 troops, but ultimately more remained there. In late 2018, the United States had 18,000 troops in Afghanistan and another 2,000 in Syria.30

The Iraq War itself was equally if not more controversial during its turbulent eight years. On March 20, 2003, after Iraqi president Saddam Hussein refused to agree to U.S. terms (particularly to surrender suspected weapons of mass destruction) or to adhere to a UN demand for disarmament, the United States invaded Iraq. It was supported by coalition allies, chief among them the United Kingdom, in what the United States called Operation Iraqi Freedom. Hussein’s elite Republican Guard troops were quickly defeated, and the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, fell on (PAGE 425) April 9. On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq, a statement that would later prove to be wildly optimistic. The coalition forces eventually captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, and he was brought to trial in late 2005 and later executed.

Following the military success of the first few weeks of the war in 2003, the situation quickly deteriorated. Iraq came to be plagued by continuing violence, much of it launched by the Sunni Muslim insurgency and its supporters, including al-Qaeda. If al-Qaeda was not active in Iraq prior to the war, there was little question that the war itself, and hatred for the United States in many Muslim nations, made it easier for the terrorist group to recruit volunteers in that nation and in neighboring states.

As many analysts have argued, one of the greatest weaknesses of the U.S. war on terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere has been a failure to truly understand the adversaries that the United States faces, and thus to determine what would be most effective in countering the threats they pose.31 By 2016, critics pointed to the U.S. failure to deal adequately with the aftermath of the Iraq War as one reason for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIS, also known as ISIL. After 2011, ISIS became a powerful force in Iraq and neighboring Syria, which faced a civil war. Over the next several years, ISIS captured territory in Syria and Iraq, where it fought Syrian government forces, some rebel groups, Iraqi military forces, and Kurdish Peshmerga troops.32

Over time, public support for the Iraq War withered, and the United States withdrew all its combat forces in December 2011. By that time, 4,486 Americans had lost their lives in Iraq, and over 32,200 had been wounded. At the height of the Iraq War in 2007, the United States had more than 170,000 military personnel in that country and maintained some 505 military bases. In late 2018, 5,200 U.S. troops remained in Iraq.33

Beyond the human toll, there have been varying estimates of the costs of the Iraq War, some higher than $3 trillion when short-term and some long-term costs (such as medical care and disability payments for veterans and interest on the national debt) are included.34 Most of these cost estimates do not attempt to put a value on the number of Americans and other coalition forces killed or wounded, or the very large number of Iraqi civilians who died as a result of the war.

The box “Steps to Analysis: What Is the Cost of the Global War on Terrorism?” raises questions about how best to measure the costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, or similar military actions. Given the objectives of the wars, the successes and failures, and the overall costs, would you say the wars were worth fighting, or not? Can the methods of cost-benefit analysis be applied to questions like this, or are such methods not suitable for determining whether a war is justifiable or not?

By 2008, both policy analysts and elected officials began asking questions like this, in effect asking what else the country might have done with the money being spent on the Iraq War. On the campaign trail in West Virginia in March 2008, for example, then candidate Barack Obama made that argument: “Just think about what battles we could be fighting instead of this misguided war.” For their part, journalists and policy analysts began counting what the roughly $12 billion per month spent on the war during 2008 would buy in other federal programs, such as health care reform, relief for homeowners unable to pay their mortgages, development of renewable energy sources, or fixing the Social Security system. The congressional Joint Economic Committee examined the same kinds of questions that year, concluding in one (PAGE426) example that the money spent on the war in one day would be enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in the Head Start program, make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay for 14,000 more police officers.35

(PAGE 427) Economic and Military Assistance: Foreign Aid

One of the most recognizable aspects of U.S. foreign policy today is economic and military assistance to other nations, or foreign aid. The United States has long helped other countries in need, and for many reasons. The one that is easiest to understand is humanitarian assistance, for example, following a natural disaster such as the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010, the earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of coastal Japan in March 2011, the typhoon that struck the Philippines in late 2013, and the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East, particularly in 2015 and 2016.

However, U.S. assistance has also served the nation’s strategic interests. That is, aid often is given to nations where it can help to support U.S. foreign policy goals. For many years, a large percentage of foreign aid went to the Middle East, especially to Israel and Egypt, and a similar pattern continues today, with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Afghanistan receiving the largest shares of the pie.

(PAGE429) Source: Susan B. Epstein, Marian Leonardo Lawson, and Cory R. Gill, “Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs: FY2019 Budget and Appropriations” (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, March 12, 2019), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45168.pdf.

Notes: These are all requested amounts in the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2019 budget, not final congressionally authorized figures.

According to figures compiled by the Congressional Research Service, in recent years about 30 percent of foreign aid money has gone for military purposes (for example, to acquire U.S. military equipment and training), about 37 percent for development purposes (such as health, family planning, environmental protection, and economic reform), about 14 percent for humanitarian ends (such as assistance for refugees and for food), about 5 percent for multilateral aid through international organizations, and most of the remainder (about 16 percent) for other political, economic, or security purposes (for example, to advance U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East). These allocations reflect presidential and congressional policy priorities, which can shift from year to year.36

(PAGE 430) The Clinton administration, for example, gave special emphasis to the promotion of sustainable development as a new strategy in the post–Cold War period, with attention to achievement of broad-based economic growth, stabilization of the world population, protection of human health, sustainable management of natural resources, and building of human capacity through education and training. The Bush administration modified these goals to focus on three “strategic pillars”: economic growth, agriculture, and trade; global health; and democracy, conflict prevention, and humanitarian assistance.37

President Obama placed a high priority on reestablishing American leadership and standing around the world, particularly through more cooperation and partnerships with other nations than was evident in the Bush administration. He addressed some of the emerging global challenges more firmly as well, particularly climate change, population growth, the global financial crisis, sustainable development, and global health (Hook and Scott 2011).

Donald Trump’s administration departed significantly from the historical norms in foreign assistance. Initially, following the president’s America First agenda, the White House tried to greatly reduce spending on all foreign aid, including funds already approved by Congress, and to eliminate aid for countries that were not “loyal” to the United States. Eventually, it backed off in the face of stiff bipartisan resistance from Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, and USAID. It also created a new U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to transform some foreign assistance grants into loans, much like private investment funds as part of its effort to counter Chinese influence in developing nations, a long-standing concern among foreign aid professionals.38

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is the principal vehicle for the distribution and management of what is called bilateral economic aid—that is, money the United States sends directly to other nations. Most multilateral (or multination) aid is handled by the U.S. Treasury Department, and the U.S. Departments of State and Defense separately administer military and other security-related aid programs. Some of the multilateral aid goes to the UN or to other international organizations, which in turn distribute it through their own programs. The history of foreign aid dates to the Marshall Plan and the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, and the agency took its current name in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act and created USAID by executive order. USAID is an independent federal agency but works closely with the Department of State.

here is widespread misunderstanding over the level of foreign aid today, which also explains why the program is so often criticized as being excessive. Polls taken over the past decade have shown that most people think the amount the nation spends on foreign aid is too much; however, they have also believed that the nation devotes far more than it does to such programs. When told the United States spent about 1 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, a large majority said that was about the right amount, if not too little; few thought it was too much. Over the past three decades, the United States spent between one-quarter and one-half of 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) on foreign aid; the Congressional Research Service puts this amount at about 1.2 percent of total federal budget authority.39 Recent polls have found that a strong majority of Americans favored spending at least 0.7 percent of the nation’s GDP—the UN target level—on foreign aid, or about four times recent levels of spending.40

(PAGE 431) Such findings are important for several reasons. Foreign aid is not popular, even if there is much misunderstanding about it. People tend to argue that unmet needs at home (e.g., health care, education, job training, improving the nation’s highways and other infrastructure, and much more) require that the money be spent here rather than abroad. There is also a widely shared belief that foreign aid does not reach those in need abroad but goes instead to corrupt officials or is simply wasted on inefficient and ineffective projects. It has been extremely difficult, therefore, to build public support for ambitious new goals to end world destitution, such as those adopted at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals that we described in chapter 11 (Sachs 2005, 2015). Many analysts believe that at least one solution is to improve the way foreign aid resources are used, particularly to fund only those projects with measurable, provable results (called “paying for results”). There are many such projects in developing nations that could meet such a test in areas as diverse as ensuring primary education for children, providing essential childhood vaccinations, delivery of vital health care services, supplying clean water, and improving agricultural productivity.41

U.S. spending on foreign aid is substantially lower today than it has been historically, particularly when viewed as a percentage of the nation’s GDP, and yet the nation is still among the leading contributors to developing countries. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), shown in Figure 12-1, in 2018, the United States gave 0.18 percent of its gross national income to developing nations, well below the UN target level of 0.7 percent. This put the United States below most other developed nations in the world, down sharply from the level of 0.54 percent it donated in 1960 and the 1 to 2 percent it gave during the Marshall Plan era.42 However, the actual dollar amount of U.S. aid was easily the highest in the world, at about $35 billion a year; this is $10 billion more than the nearest competitor, Germany, provided. How would you interpret these data? Should the United States be applauded for providing more money in aid than any other developed nation, or should we focus on the amount of aid given as a percentage of a country’s overall economy, which suggests that the United States is not as generous as many other countries?

Selected Issues in Homeland Security

Homeland security as a focus of public policy did not begin with the terrorist attacks of September 2001. It has always been an important component of foreign and defense policy and of law enforcement activity at all levels of government. However, the level of government activity in homeland security and the kinds of efforts made were transformed after the 2001 attacks. In this section, we review the major activities and programs not already touched on earlier and examine several of the most prominent issues that have arisen in the past few years. Among these are the diverse responsibilities of the DHS, the varied homeland security threats that the nation faces, the special case of transportation security, and the conflict between pursuit of security goals and protection of citizens’ civil liberties.

(PAGE 432) Challenges of foreign aid. Decisions on foreign aid can be complicated by ongoing and intense military actions, as made clear in Syria in 2016. The photo shows Syrians receiving food aid from the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency in Jinderes on March 18, 2018, after the town was cleared of terror groups.

Most people probably associate the term homeland security with antiterrorist actions of the nation’s intelligence agencies, military, and law enforcement bodies. Yet even the DHS defines its job in broader terms. It is responsible for dealing with natural disasters, protecting the nation’s borders, handling immigration services, managing transportation security at airports, directing the movement of international trade across U.S. borders in ports and waterways, and supporting scientific and technological research that could improve the nation’s capacity for security protection. Even the Secret Service is now part of the massive new department.

This form of organization and the preoccupation with international and domestic terrorism is problematic. The department is an awkward collection of offices and programs, and many of its component agencies appear to have lost the professional capabilities they once had. One consequence can be seen in the ineffective response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), made part of the DHS at its creation, to Hurricane Katrina in September 2005. With its massive toll in lives lost and economic damage, Katrina was a sign to many not only that FEMA was ill prepared to deal with natural disasters but that the DHS itself was organizationally dysfunctional and unable to handle similar threats to the nation’s citizens. Many hope fervently that the department gains greater administrative capabilities over time, learns better how to communicate with the American public, and figures out how to set meaningful priorities in homeland security.

(PAGE 433) Comparing Homeland Security Threats: How Vulnerable Are We?

As the DHS itself openly acknowledges, the nation must learn how to identify and measure the various security risks it faces and find a way to set priorities among them. No agency or government can possibly protect the United States fully against all threats to its security. So which ones are most important? For which might government action realistically prove to be effective? Which can be addressed at moderate cost? To its credit, the DHS is beginning to grapple seriously with such questions, which we can think of as the application of risk analysis, discussed in chapter 6, to a set of related public problems.

Consider the following list, which is derived from one account that the DHS developed over a decade ago, but which remains, as it said at the time, “troubling vulnerabilities that have yet to be seriously addressed” by the nation despite the great attention to security issues and the large investment of public funds:

Large chemical plants that could endanger one million or more individuals in a worst-case attack. The Environmental Protection Agency identified 123 such plants, but little has been done to protect them. The chemical industry has resisted the imposition of stronger safety measures.

Use of a so-called dirty bomb, a compact nuclear device, in a major city. The concern here is the international capacity to identify and secure nuclear materials, especially in nations of the former Soviet Union.

Nuclear power plants or nuclear waste storage facilities that could become the focus of an attack from the air or ground. Current security measures may prove ineffective.

Insufficient security at the nation’s ports. The question is whether sufficient security exists to prevent a weapon of mass destruction from being brought into the country through one of the millions of shipping containers that arrive every year, mostly without inspection (discussed below).

Hazardous waste transport, in trucks and on rails, much of it through populated urban areas. How adequate are the regulatory measures for the movement of such material?

Bioterrorism, especially release of a deadly toxin in an urban area. The concern here is the adequacy of security at laboratories that house such materials.43

Is one of the risks of greater importance than the others? How would you go about determining that? Recall the discussion in chapter 6 on risk assessment as you consider these issues.

The DHS itself has lent support to such expressions of concern, and it is beginning to try to address the issues. In March 2005, one of its internal studies that the department did not intend for public release was inadvertently posted on a state government website and picked up by the press. The National Planning Scenarios identified fifteen possible threats to the nation, some by terrorists, some by natural disasters, and some by disease outbreaks. It then estimated the likely economic and human costs of each. At the upper end of the scenarios was a biological disease outbreak not related to terrorism, a flu pandemic that could kill eighty-seven thousand people, hospitalize three hundred thousand, and cost the nation $70 to $160 billion in economic impacts. Several natural hazards could be equally devastating, such as a 7.2 magnitude or (PAGE 434) higher earthquake in a large city, or severe flooding following intense rainstorms. Yet various forms of terrorism could exact a very high toll as well, particularly actions directed at chemical storage tanks near urban areas or detonation of a small nuclear device.44

Similarly, the U.S. intelligence community releases a Worldwide Threat Assessment each year that highlights the top security concerns facing the nation. Beyond the predictable concern with risks posed by Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, in 2019 the Director of National Intelligence pointed to many other regional and global challenges that received far less media coverage than, for example, recent immigration and refugee issues at the southern border of the United States. These included threats posed by nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; terrorism risks posed by ISIS and other groups; cybersecurity challenges; threats to public health from drugs, flu pandemics, and migration of tropical diseases; increased refugee migration related to political upheavals and other causes; and global climate change.45 One thing that such comparisons of risks and costs tell us is that despite the many actions taken since 9/11, the nation remains vulnerable to a variety of harmful events, many of which have not been directly addressed with current federal priorities.

Increasingly, analysts worry about some of these newest threats, such as cyberterrorism, where terrorists gain access to governmental or private sector computer networks that are critical to maintaining the nation’s economy and infrastructure. Possible targets include power plants, trains, oil and gas pipelines, financial institutions, and the electrical grid. However measured, it is evident that cybersecurity risks have risen substantially in recent years. Indeed, controversy over hacked email communications of the Democratic Party became a significant issue in the 2016 presidential election.46 Luckily, so far the attacks have focused on gaining information rather than sabotaging the operation of vital computer systems.47 In sum, the DHS and other federal, state, and local agencies have learned much since 9/11 about how to prevent terrorist attacks and how to respond to them should they occur. Yet it is equally clear that much more could be done.

The Case of Transportation Security

One way to assess the effectiveness to date of antiterrorism efforts is to examine transportation security, which was made a high priority following the hijacking of the airliners used in the 9/11 attacks. Since that time, airport security has undergone a dramatic transformation, as anyone who has traveled by air in recent years is aware. Airport security was federalized, and the number of airport security agents increased substantially. There is now elaborate, costly, and time-consuming screening of baggage and passengers. Other airport personnel have undergone special training, airliners have been retrofitted to greatly reduce the risk of hijacking, and armed federal agents now travel on selected flights. The task is massive. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at the DHS has a 2019 fiscal year budget of about $7.7 billion, employs over forty-four thousand transportation security officers at more than 450 airports and other transportation centers in the nation, and screens nearly two million passengers each day, or about seven hundred million people per year as well as more than forty-five million checked pieces of luggage and even more carry-on bags. These are impressive numbers, but do they tell us how effective the TSA has been in reducing security risks? Is it even possible to know that?

By one important measure, the TSA has been remarkably effective. As of late 2019, there have been no further hijackings of U.S. aircraft and no 9PAGE 435) terrorist incidents at airports, although there have been such incidents at other airports around the world. But the added security for U.S. aviation comes at a substantial price and does not necessarily protect the United States adequately.

First, because of the rush to secure the nation’s airports, a great deal of money was wasted. Numerous reports indicate that the TSA in effect “lost control of the spending” to meet a congressional deadline for added safety. High costs also have been linked to reliance on private contractors and a lack of adequate management of them, much as we saw for the Iraq War effort.48

Second, the TSA itself reports that in recent years it has spent far more on airport security than for any other form of transportation. For example, in the 2000s, it spent nearly $5 billion on aviation security but only a small fraction of that amount on passenger rail service, buses, and other modes of surface transportation. Currently, the TSA spends about 80 percent of its budget on aviation security and only 2 percent on surface transportation security—that is, on trains, buses, highways, and transportation—and pipeline security.49 Is such an imbalance in security spending warranted given different levels of risk for various modes of transportation? Would the nation be better served by spending a greater share of the funds on other forms of transportation that might also become terrorist targets?50 The box “Steps to Analysis: Transportation and Border Security” explores a terrorist risk that most people probably have not thought much about: the shipment of dangerous material across U.S. borders.

he DHS also has reported that there are about eleven million trucks and two million railcars that cross into the nation each year, and some 7,500 foreign flagships that make over fifty thousand calls in U.S. ports annually. Some of those vessels carry shipping containers, a common way to move goods around the world today. More than twenty-eight million truck, rail, and sea containers enter the United States annually, reflecting the fact that about 90 percent of global trade is shipped via such containers. The newest and largest cargo ships measure up to 435 yards long and carry up to eighteen thousand containers. Until recently, relatively few of those containers were inspected—and for good reason. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said that inspecting the average twenty- to forty-foot container would take four customs inspectors four hours. With over eighty-one thousand containers entering the country every day, routine manual screening is not feasible.51

In 2006, Congress enacted the Security and Accountability For Every Port Act (SAFE Port Act) to require that 100 percent of U.S.-bound ocean containers be scanned before they leave their foreign port of origin, but the act has yet to be fully implemented. Moreover, U.S. importers continue to urge Congress to eliminate the scanning requirement because they believe it adversely affects the flow of commerce. The DHS also has a Container Security Initiative that is to prescreen shipping containers at their point of origin at some fifty-eight ports around the world to identify high-risk shipments that might then be physically inspected or scanned. Development of new scanning technologies might improve the effectiveness of these kinds of actions.52 Do you think we should do more to scan or inspect containers reaching U.S. ports? Can government agencies enhance security by doing so without harming the import of goods?

Some of the same kinds of concerns have arisen over protection of U.S. borders, which is one reason why immigration has become such a hot (PAGE 436)topic in the last few years. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it is intent on “keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States,” and that as the nation’s unified border agency, it is “strategically positioned at and between our ports of entry to prevent further terrorist attacks on our nation.” According to the agency, it is adopting various initiatives to live up to those expectations, and time will tell how effective they are. Given the great attention given to border security in the last several years, including modification of the existing seven hundred miles of fencing or building of new structures, Congress and the administration are certain to continue to press for effective ways to improve security.53

Focused Discussion: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism

(PAGE 437)

Following a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, in late 2015 that killed fourteen people, the FBI sought to unlock an iPhone used by one of the attackers to learn more about his connections and activities. Apple challenged a court order to unlock the phone as an “unprecedented step” that could jeopardize its assurances to iPhone owners of personal security through its exceptionally strong encryption technology. The dispute was a classic case that pitted the government’s need to protect the nation from terrorists against citizens’ right to privacy. It also illustrated well that law enforcement agencies need to devise new ways to investigate terrorism risks that reflect the technological advances in the twenty-first century we all take for granted.54

As discussed earlier in the chapter, a perennial issue for any national security action beyond its actual success in protecting the nation’s security and whether the money is spent efficiently is the degree to which it may infringe on the civil liberties of citizens. As noted in the chapter’s opening, sharp disagreement over publication of secret documents related to the NSA domestic surveillance system speaks to the continuing controversy and underscores how policymakers and the public appraise the trade-offs between security and liberty in very different ways. These conflicts concern the use of surveillance technology as authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act and other legislation whose chief purpose is to detect possible terrorist activity. We examine arguments related to the likely effectiveness of such surveillance as well as legal and ethical concerns.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

There are few direct measures of effectiveness in the nation’s war on terrorism, including policy actions to improve homeland security through use of surveillance technology. That is, government agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA make thousands of decisions and accumulate untold quantities of data on possible terrorists and their activities. But it would be exceptionally difficult to determine just how effective these efforts have been or whether the investments of agency budgets and staff time are worth the results achieved. Consider this possibility. The vast majority of actions taken by the NSA and FBI, including the kind of surveillance of citizens’ email and web browsing that has become common since the terrorist attacks of 2001, are not very effective in producing useful knowledge, but a few of them turn out to be critically important in identifying and apprehending suspected terrorists. Would you say that the overall effort is effective, or at least defensible? What about the efficiency of having government agents spending so much time on actions that prove to be fruitless? Is this of concern? The difficulty of evaluating the effectiveness or efficiency of many antiterrorist policy efforts has significant implications. It means that policy proposals and defense or criticism of existing policies, such as the PATRIOT Act, often are framed in terms of support for the intelligence or law enforcement agencies, a determination to stop terrorism at any cost, or an equal determination to defend the civil rights of citizens under any circumstances that may exist.

(PAGE 438) Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., has been one of the most fervent supporters in Congress of the PATRIOT Act and as a high-ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee held an influential policymaking position. “It is not by luck that the United States has not been attacked since September 11, 2001,” he said in July 2005, following terrorist bombings in London. “It is through increased cooperation and information sharing among law enforcement and intelligence agencies as well as the enhanced domestic security and investigative tools contained in legislation such as the PATRIOT Act.”55

Like Sensenbrenner, the Bush administration was convinced that the act was working, and in 2005, it sought congressional approval to make all of its provisions permanent, without any major changes. Indeed, it asked for additional legal authority to track terrorists. Attorney general Alberto Gonzales put the case this way in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2005: “The tools contained in the USA PATRIOT Act have proven to be essential weapons in our arsenal to combat the terrorists, and now is not the time for us to be engaging in unilateral disarmament [by not renewing the act’s provision].”

At least some members of Congress were not persuaded, in part because the administration was reluctant to share information with Congress about just how it had used the act and what effects its provisions had. Said longtime critic of the act, then senator Russell D. Feingold, D-Wis.: “I do think the administration, by its lack of candor and its unwillingness to provide basic information, has caused the movement across the country against the PATRIOT Act to grow.”56 Based on these kinds of statements, how effective do you think the PATRIOT Act has been? What kind of information would you need to determine that with some confidence?

These debates have recurred each time the PATRIOT Act has come up for renewal. For example, in 2005, as Congress was deeply immersed in debates over renewal of the act, President Bush made a startling announcement. He acknowledged that he had ordered the NSA to conduct electronic eavesdropping on individuals without first requesting a warrant from judges who serve on the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the law seems to require. He claimed the action was essential in the war on terrorism, and that his authority for such orders came from his role as commander in chief. Another assessment, mandated by Congress and produced by inspectors general in five federal agencies in 2008, reached a quite different conclusion. It found that other intelligence tools provided more timely and detailed information than that coming from warrantless wiretapping, which it concluded was of “limited value” in the war on terrorism.57

Concerns about the efficiency of such surveillance also have long been voiced, particularly by the FBI, which had the task of dealing with massive amounts of information sent to it by the NSA. According to news accounts, in the months after the September 11 attacks, FBI officials “repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators.” The agency reported that virtually all the thousands of tips it received each month led to “dead ends or innocent Americans,” and thus diverted agents from counterterrorism work that they considered to be more important. The NSA itself, however, has continued to view the surveillance program as a valuable source of information that was not available anywhere else.58

As noted in the chapter’s opening, it was precisely the NSA’s surveillance activities of this kind that led Edward Snowden to leak information about the agency’s actions. In 2013, the Obama administration ordered a review of surveillance policy, yet the president continued to defend both domestic surveillance and the gathering of intelligence on foreign leaders, including U.S. allies. Some members of Congress, however, including Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Sensenbrenner, introduced legislation designed to end what the press has called the “bulk collection of Americans’ communications data.” The administration said that such data collection is authorized by the PATRIOT Act.59

(PAGE 439)

Legal and Ethical Concerns

In addition to judgments about the effectiveness or efficiency of government efforts in the war on terrorism, policy debates turn on questions of legality with respect to several elements of current law and the Constitution. Closely aligned with these questions are concerns over one of the ethical aspects of policy that we have discussed throughout the text. This relates to individual rights, or liberty in the face of government actions to pursue policy goals.

The USA PATRIOT Act is the short name (and acronym) for the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. This law, rushed through Congress forty-five days after the 2001 terrorist attacks, has sweeping implications for both national security and civil liberties, as the earlier statements suggest. There was limited debate over its provisions at that time but a belief among policymakers that something extraordinary was needed to protect the nation after the shocking experience of 9/11. President Bush argued that the administration needed additional tools to combat terrorism, including expansion of federal investigating authority. Congress approved the act after extended and difficult negotiations both within Congress and between Congress and the administration. There was, however, a great deal of concern expressed within Congress over how the act would be implemented and how it would affect both presidential power and individual rights (Wolfensberger 2005).

The PATRIOT Act emphasized empowering the government to monitor communications, detect signs of terrorist activities, and act against suspected terrorists. Clearly, there was a belief in Congress and in the White House that such surveillance would help in the difficult task of identifying suspicious individuals, gaining critical information about them and their activities, and preventing possible terrorist attacks. A minority of members expressed concern about the implications for civil liberties and the necessity to place limits on the exercise of executive authority.

Well before the news of late 2005 regarding presidential approval of NSA surveillance practices, and the renewed concerns sparked by Snowden’s release of NSA files in 2013, many critics of the PATRIOT Act had voiced these concerns about civil liberties. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) pointed to a “lack of due process and accountability [that] violates the rights extended to all persons, citizens and non-citizens, by the Bill of Rights.” Among other complaints, it said the PATRIOT Act threatened a return to illegal actions taken by the FBI in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, when it “sought to disrupt and discredit thousands of individuals and groups engaged in legitimate political activity.”60 Some four hundred resolutions expressing some kind of opposition to parts of the act were approved by state and local governments around the nation, from both political parties and all points on the ideological spectrum. Although they had varying reasons for their opposition, opponents included civil libertarians, gun rights advocates, the American Conservative Union, librarians, doctors, and (PAGE 440) business organizations. As the press reports put it, the biggest complaint about the act was that it would not sufficiently protect civil liberties. Critics also raised the same concerns during the 2013 controversies over the NSA’s activities, and in future years.61 In March 2006, Congress voted overwhelmingly to renew the PATRIOT Act, giving the Bush administration most of what it had sought. However, critics in Congress also promised an investigation into the president’s use of domestic surveillance without court approval.

In 2007 and 2008, Congress considered several key amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to bring it up to date by explicitly covering internet communication, which was not addressed in the original 1978 legislation. That action raised anew the many conflicts between the Bush administration and Congress over the president’s assertion that he had the legal authority to intercept any telephone calls or email communications from citizens without first obtaining a warrant. The revised law also protected telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program by granting immunity from lawsuits. Ultimately, however, Congress acquiesced to most of the president’s demands, making it easier for the government to wiretap U.S. phone and computer lines in its search for possible terrorists. This was the most significant revision of the law in a generation. Yet, as a political compromise, it skirted some of the most controversial elements, and even people familiar with the issues reported that they found the new policy hard to understand.

In 2011, Congress once again approved and President Obama signed into law an extension of key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, with the Senate voting, 73–23, for the renewal, and the House approving by a margin of 250–153. The act continued surveillance powers until June 1, 2015, and shortly after that date, Congress once again approved extension of the act (voting by 67–32 in the Senate and 338–88 in the House). President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act in June 2015.62

Most recently, Congress renewed the act by similar margins in January 2018, and President Trump signed the measure into law. At the time, he indicated his strong support for using the sweeping powers of surveillance of digital media to identify potential terrorists despite the risk to the public, whose communications might be swept up in such activities. Those who favored greater protection of privacy over the government’s powers once again failed to gain enough support to succeed.63 The debate over precisely what legal rights exist in such circumstances is not new. A balance of sorts had been reached in earlier years to govern such actions by the NSA. After the end of the Vietnam War, where government surveillance of opponents of the war was a common practice, a new policy was set. Government spying on citizens would be prohibited unless very special circumstances required it. Those circumstances were to be examined, and the process regulated and supervised, by the courts to ensure that there was no abuse of power on the part of the executive branch. By one tally in 2004, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had issued more than 1,700 warrants since the September 11 attacks and had turned down only a handful of government requests for wiretaps.

In an updated tally requested by then Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Department of Justice reported that the court approved every single request made during 2012: 1,719 requests were made for wiretaps, and the court did not reject any of them, leading critics to doubt that the court exercised much, if any, independent judgment over the Justice Department or the NSA.64 Would you be inclined to give ( PAGE 441) the president the benefit of the doubt in these kinds of disputes, or to question the need to act without a court warrant? What might be done to help ensure that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court exercises independent judgment and thus helps to limit unreasonable activities on the part of intelligence agencies or the Justice Department?

Even though they draw the line differently, both liberals and conservatives agree that it is imperative that the nation improve its gathering of information related to possible terrorism, including domestic intelligence. The essential question they must address is how best to balance competing needs of security and civil liberties. As the nation’s intelligence agencies chart a new path under the reorganization plans discussed earlier, both the agencies and their overseers in Congress and the White House will be struggling to figure out how to combat the threat of terrorism without weakening the nation’s historic commitment to citizens’ rights. Concerns like these extend to homegrown security threats, including domestic antigovernment groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks extremist organizations, the antigovernment militia movement has grown significantly in recent years. Partly in response to these trends, in 2014, then attorney general Eric Holder reestablished the Domestic Terrorism Task Force.65

It is not fully evident how President Obama changed domestic surveillance operations, but as of 2014, his administration generally drew the line much closer to civil liberties than did President Bush. For example, in his first few months in office, Attorney General Holder indicated that he would critically review the practice of warrantless surveillance and run the Justice Department with “transparency and openness.” He also stated that he saw no reason why the war on terrorism could not be pursued without sacrificing American freedoms. By early 2014, the president acknowledged that the new high-tech surveillance programs could threaten civil liberties. He called for overhauling NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone call records, but he also wished to maintain many other components of the nation’s intelligence programs, defending them as essential in the continuing war on terrorism.66

In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton suggested the creation of a national commission to examine both legal and practical questions surrounding surveillance and encryption technologies, and she indicated a desire to work with Silicon Valley technology leaders in developing new approaches that better balance these national security needs and individual rights to privacy. The Republican nominee and winner of the election, Donald Trump, did not address these concerns substantively, but he did propose several highly controversial steps during the campaign. The New York Times was highly critical of what it called “draconian, unconstitutional measures to keep the nation safe, including carrying out surveillance of mosques and creating a database of Muslims.”67 In early 2018, President Trump signed into law the latest version of the surveillance act, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017. The White House statement at the signing strongly defended its importance for keeping the nation safe from terrorism while also protecting the privacy rights of American citizens.

(PAGE442) Conclusions

This chapter surveys the evolution of U.S. foreign policy and the key institutions involved in its formation and implementation, and examines selected issues in homeland security. In keeping with the overall purpose of the text, it emphasizes questions of policy effectiveness, the efficiency with which government funds are invested in a diversity of competing programs, and ethical and political concerns that invariably arise as nations try to balance foreign and national security policy needs against the rights of citizens, as evident in the debates over the USA PATRIOT Act and the activities of the National Security Agency that were brought to light with release in 2013 of classified documents.

The implication is that students of public policy need to be knowledgeable about the major issues in foreign policy and homeland security, and need to be able to evaluate key policy actions as well as the capabilities of the agencies charged with implementing them. To do that, you need to know how different types of policy analysis can build understanding of the issues and of the agencies themselves. In addition to questions of economic efficiency, such as the cost of weapon systems and wars, the chapter underscores the importance of political, legal, and ethical criteria, such as concern for civil liberties when governments engage in extensive domestic surveillance of citizens’ phone calls and internet use.

Although they appraise the risks differently and call for varied forms of action, analysts of all stripes point to a similar set of international problems with which the nation must now come to terms. These include economic globalization and its consequences for the United States; worldwide threats of diseases that spread more easily today than in earlier years; rising global use of energy, particularly fossil fuels that contribute to climate change; persistent poverty in developing nations; increasing demands on the world’s natural resources to meet rising human needs; cultural and religious conflicts that threaten regional and world peace; and escalating international terrorism. All these current and future challenges call for creative thinking, better analysis, and stronger leadership to discover viable solutions and to build public and political support for a new generation of public policy actions.

Notes

1. See Dave Phillips, “Coast Guard Officer Plotted to Kill Democrats and Journalists, Prosecutors Say,” New York Times, February 20, 2019; and Devlin Barrett, “Arrests in Domestic Terror Probes Outpace Those Inspired by Islamic Extremists,” Washington Post, March 9, 2019.

2. For one recent survey of American attitudes toward protection of privacy by social media sites and government agencies, see Lee Rainie, “Americans’ Complicated Feelings about Social Media in an Era of Privacy Concerns,” Pew Research Center Fact Tank, March 27, 2018, available at www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/27/americans-complicated-feelings-about-social-media-in-an-era-of-privacy-concerns/.

3. Ravi Somaiya, “Pulitzer Prizes Awarded for Coverage of N.S.A. Documents and Boston Bombing,” New York Times, April 14, 2014.

4. The DHS, with some 240,000 employees in 2016, was assembled in 2002 from twenty-two different federal agencies, many of which had never worked together. Surveys of federal employees regularly find high levels of dissatisfaction among its staff. In addition, scholars have characterized the department and its activities as constituting an “anemic policy regime” (May, Jochim, and Sapotichne 2011).

5. See the NSC website for a description of its work, membership, and history: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/eop/nsc/.

6. The numbers come from the U.S. State Department’s history of the Marshall Plan, available at https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan.

7. See www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/United_Nations.

8. Andrew Mayeda, Rich Miller, and Austin Weinstein, “Trump’s Trade War and the Emerging Global Fallout: Quick Take,” Washington Post, January 5, 2019. On the higher trade deficit, see Jim Tankersley and Ana Swanson, “In a Blow to Trump, America’s Trade Deficit Hit Record $891 Billion,” New York Times, March 6, 2019.

9. For an account of the cost of all U.S. wars in constant 2011 dollars, see Stephen Daggett, “Costs of Major U.S. Wars” (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, June 29, 2010). The CRS estimate of war cost includes only direct military operations and not the costs of veterans’ benefits, interest on war-related debt, or assistance to allies.

10. The Congressional Budget Office offers a comprehensive overview of defense and national security spending at www.cbo.gov/topics/defense-and-national-security.

11. Lauren Chadwick and R. Jeffrey Smith, “Congress Buys the Navy a $400 Million Pork Ship,” Politico, July 5, 2016.

12. See the CBO study, “Stop Building Ford Class Aircraft Carriers,” December 13, 2018, available at www.cbo.gov/budget-options/2018/54758.

13. See Clyde Haberman, “Despite Decades of Stealth, Sticking Points Bedevil F-35 Jet,” New York Times, January 24, 2016; and Anthony Capaccio, “Lockheed F-35 Cost Stabilizes at $406 Billion, Pentagon Says,” Bloomberg News, March 13, 2018.

14. Scot J. Paltrow, “Unaccountable: The High Cost of the Pentagon’s Bad Booking,” Reuters, November 18, 2013; and New York Times Editorial Board, “The Military’s Messy Books,” New York Times, December 2, 2018.

15. Elizabeth Bulmiller and Thom Shanker, “Defense Budget Cuts Would Limit Raises and Close Bases,” New York Times, January 26, 2012. See also Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward, “Pentagon Buries Evidence of $125 Billion in Bureaucratic Waste,” Washington Post, December 5, 2016.

16. Of course, part of the concern in strategic analysis is that not all nations are rational in this way. One might think it can win with a first strike despite the likelihood of severe retaliation. Similarly, some nations may be so motivated by ideology or other political and cultural beliefs that they are prepared to launch such an attack despite the consequences.

17. Steven Pifer, “NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control” (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Arms Control Series, Number 7, July 2011), available at www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/07/19-arms-control-pifer.

18. John M. Donnelly, “Debate Yields to Deployment as Missile Defense Takes Off,” CQ Weekly, September 11, 2004, 2090–2096.

19. See an extensive report by the Arms Control Association, U.S. Nuclear Modernization Programs, updated August 2018, at www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/USNuclearModernization.

20. Andrew E. Kramer, “A Day after U.S. Leaves Nuclear Pact Russia Announces It Will Do the Same,” New York Times, February 3, 2019.

21. For both sides on the debate, see “Room for Debate: A Nuclear Arsenal Upgrade,” New York Times, October 26, 2016; and Arms Control Association, U.S. Nuclear Modernization Programs.

22. Central Intelligence Agency, “History,” available at www.fas.org/irp/cia/ciahist.htm.

23. David Johnson, “Report of 9/11 Panel Cites Lapses by C.I.A. and F.B.I,” New York Times, July 25, 2003, A12–A13.

24. See also Philip Shenon, “9/11 Report Calls for a Sweeping Overhaul of Intelligence,” New York Times, July 23, 2004. The full report of the 9/11 Commission is available at www.9-11commission.gov. See also a harsh critique of the various intelligence failures as well as the proposed and adopted reforms in Paul R. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

25. Greg Miller, “Budget 2012: CIA/Intelligence Agencies,” Washington Post, February 14, 2011. Some critics also charge that a sizeable portion of the intelligence budget is outsourced, going to private-sector contractors and consultants such as Booz Allen and SAIC—many of whom are exempt from public oversight. See Harry Hurt III, “The Business of Intelligence Gathering,” New York Times, June 15, 2008.

26. See Philip Shenon, “Next Round Is Set in Push toward Intelligence Reform,” New York Times, December 20, 2004. A summary of the law can be found in Martin Kady II, “Details of the Intelligence Overhaul Law,” CQ Weekly, February 21, 2005, 464–468. The website for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence provides considerable detail about the new programs: www.dni.gov.

27. Scott Shane, “Blair Pledges New Approach to Counterterrorism,” New York Times online edition, January 23, 2009; and Joby Warrick, “A New Wave of Threats,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, November 24–30, 2008. The website for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence contains a vast amount of information on the seventeen intelligence agencies and organizations and their activities: www.dni.gov.

28. See a summary of the report in an editorial, “What Remains to Be Done,” New York Times, September 4, 2011. On intelligence failures to detect a terrorist plan to blow up a passenger plane in flight, see Mark Mazzetti and Eric Lipton, “U.S. Spy Agencies Failed to Collate Clues on Terror,” New York Times, December 31, 2009; and Shane Harris, “Too Much Information,” National Journal, January 30, 2010, 35–39.

29. See Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, “Bush Overstated Evidence on Iraq, Senators Report,” New York Times, June 6, 2008.

30. See Mark Landler, “U.S. Troops to Leave Afghanistan by Late 2016,” New York Times, May 27, 2014; and Annie Karni, Mark Landler, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Trump Makes Surprise Visit to American Troops in Iraq,” New York Times, December 26, 2018.

31. See, for example, Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), and work by the RAND Corporation’s Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy. Hoffman directs RAND’s Washington, D.C., office.

32. For an account of ISIS’s history and actions that is regularly updated, see a Stanford University site called Mapping Militant Organizations, at http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/1.

33. Thom Shanker, Michael S. Schmidt, and Robert F. Worth, “In Baghdad, Panetta Leads Uneasy Moment of Closure,” New York Times, December 15, 2011; and Tamer El-Ghobashy, “Trump’s Decision on Syria Is Worrying Allies in Iraq and Emboldening Opponents,” Washington Post, December 20, 2018.

34. David M. Herszenhorn, “Estimates of Iraq War Cost Were Not Close to Ballpark,” New York Times, March 19, 2008; and Shan Carter and Amanda Cox, “One 9/11 Tally: $3.3 Trillion,” New York Times, September 8, 2011. Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has one of the higher estimates.

35. John M. Broder, “Views on Money for Iraq War, and What Else Could Be Done with It,” New York Times, April 14, 2008; and Bob Herbert, “The $2 Trillion Nightmare,” New York Times, March 4, 2008.

36. Taken from Curt Tarnoff and Marian L. Lawson, “Foreign Aid: An Introduction to U.S. Programs and Policy” (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, April 25, 2018). The original sources of the data are USAID and the Department of State.

37. Ibid.

38. John Hudson and Josh Dawsey, “Trump Keeps Threatening to End Foreign Aid for Disloyal Countries. Here’s Why It Hasn’t Happened,” Washington Post, September 25, 2018.

39. Susan B. Epstein, Marian Leonardo Lawson, and Cory R. Gill, “Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs: FY2019 Budget and Appropriations” (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, March 12, 2019), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45168.pdf.

40. See Ezra Klein, “The Budget Myth That Just Won’t Die: Americans Still Think 28 Percent of the Budget Goes to Foreign Aid,” Washington Post, November 7, 2013. See also Reuben Hurst, Darren Hawkins, and Taylor Tidwell, “Americans Love to Hate Foreign Aid, but the Right Argument Makes Them Like It a Lot More,” Washington Post, May 4, 2017.

41. See Tina Rosenberg, “How to Protect Foreign Aid? Improve It,” New York Times, March 14, 2011.

42. Celia W. Dugger, “Discerning a New Course for World’s Donor Nations,” New York Times, April 18, 2005.

43. The list comes from the New York Times, February 20, 2005, but similar lists have been compiled by other sources. On the risk of bioterrorism, see Wil S. Hylton, “How Ready Are We for Bioterrorism,” New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2011. On the continuing risks presented by hundreds of chemical plants and similar facilities, see Christine Todd Whitman, “The Chemical Threat to America,” New York Times, August 29, 2012.

44. See Eric Lipton, “U.S. Lists Possible Terror Attacks and Likely Toll,” New York Times, March 16, 2005. See also Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2006), on the failure of the war on terrorism and a review of continuing terrorist threats.

45. Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. Faces Increasing Threats from Weakening World Order and Isolationism, Intelligence Agencies Warn,” Washington Post, January 22, 2019. The full assessment is available at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, at www.odni.gov.

46. David E. Sanger and Charlie Savage, “U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections,” New York Times, October 7, 2016; and Sanger, “Under the Din of the Presidential Race Lies a Once and Future Threat: Cyberwarfare,” New York Times, November 6, 2016.

47. John Seabrook, “Network Insecurity: Are We Losing the Battle against Cyber Crime,” New Yorker, May 20, 2013, 64–70. The DHS maintains an extensive web page on cybersecurity threats and its actions on them: www.dhs.gov/topic/cybersecurity.

48. Scott Higham and Robert O’Harrow Jr., “Securing the Homeland: The Government’s Rush to Private Contracting Led to Abuse and Fraud,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, May 3–June 5, 2005, 6–7.

49. See Justin Bachman, “After New York Attack, Congress Wants TSA to Secure Amtrak, Buses,” Bloomberg, September 26, 2016; and “Senate Report 115-178—Surface and Maritime Transportation Security Act,” 115th Congress (2017–2018), at www.congress.gov/congressional-report/115th-congress/senate-report/178/1.

50. For a comprehensive analysis of the risk and priority setting across different modes of transportation, see a March 2009 Government Accountability Office study, “Transportation Security: Comprehensive Risk Assessments and Stronger Internal Controls Needed to Help Inform TSA” (GAO-09-492).

51. The numbers come from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection publication “Snapshot: A Summary of CBP Facts and Figures,” July 2019, available at www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/.

52. See Hank Glauser, “Meeting the Requirements of the SAFE Port Act,” Homeland Security Today, January 16, 2018, available at www.hstoday.us/channels/federal-state-local/meeting-requirements-safe-port-act-hank-glauser/.

53. On the existing border fence project, see Randal C. Archibold and Julia Preston, “Homeland Security Stands by Its Fence,” New York Times, May 21, 2008; and Preston, “Border Patrol Seeks to Add Digital Eyes to Its Ranks,” New York Times, March 21, 2014.

54. Katie Benner and Eric Lichtblau, “Apple Fights Order to Unlock San Bernardino Gunman’s iPhone,” New York Times, February 17, 2016; and Susan Landau, “The Real Security Issues of the iPhone Case,” Science 352 (June 17, 2016): 1398–1399.

55. Quoted in Keith Perine, “Attacks Loom over Anti-terrorism Law,” CQ Weekly, July 8, 2005, 1902.

56. Ibid.

57. See Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, “U.S. Wiretapping of Limited Value, Officials Report,” New York Times, July 11, 2009. The bulk of the study’s findings were classified; only a thirty-eight-page summary was released. The five agencies included the Justice Department, the NSA, the CIA, the Defense Department, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

58. Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane, and Don Van Natta Jr., “Spy Agency Data after Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends,” New York Times, January 17, 2006.

59. See New York Times Editorial Board, “The White House on Spying,” New York Times, October 28, 2013; and Charlie Savage, Edward Wyatt, and Peter Baker, “U.S. Confirms That It Gathers Online Data Overseas,” New York Times, June 6, 2013; and Savage, “U.S. Outlines N.S.A.’s Culling of Data for All Domestic Calls,” New York Times, July 31, 2013. See also James Risen and Laura Poitras, “N.S.A. Examines Social Networks of U.S. Citizens,” New York Times, September 29, 2013.

60. The language comes from a flyer on the ACLU web page: “The USA PATRIOT Act and Government Actions That Threaten Our Civil Liberties,” available at www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/patriot%20act%20flyer.pdf.

61. Perine, “Attacks Loom over Anti-terrorism Law”; Michael Sandler, “Another Setback for Anti-terrorism Law,” CQ Weekly, December 9, 2005, 3325; Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, “U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls,” New York Times, June 5, 2013; Risen and Poitras, “N.S.A. Examines Social Networks of U.S. Citizens.”

62. For a description of the surveillance law, see Shane Harris, “Explaining FISA,” National Journal, July 19, 2008, 66–70. For a history of a two-decades-long battle over domestic surveillance or wiretapping and limits placed on government’s authority, see Shane Harris, “Surveillance Standoff,” National Journal, April 5, 2008, 21–27. The 2011 renewal of key provisions is described in Paul Kane and Felicia Sonmez, “Congress Approves Extension of USA Patriot Act Provisions,” Washington Post, May 26, 2011; and in Ellen Nakashima, “Senate Approves Measure to Renew Controversial Surveillance Authority,” Washington Post, December 28, 2012.

63. Karoun Demirjian, “Senate Passes Bill to Extend Key Surveillance Program, Sending It to Trump’s Desk,” Washington Post, January 18, 2018. The president’s remarks on signing the legislation can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-fisa-amendments-reauthorization-act-2017/.

64. The report to Senator Reid is available in many locations on the internet. Interesting enough, the John Birch Society (www.jbs.org) also published the report on its site, with an equal expression of outrage about the court’s actions. Nationwide, about twenty thousand requests a year are made by law enforcement for court orders approving searches of individuals’ phone, email, or online communications activities. See Spencer S. Hsu, “This Judge Just Released 200 Secret Government Surveillance Requests,” Washington Post, September 23, 2016.

65. Ron Nixon, “Homeland Security Looked Past Anti-Government Movement, Ex-Analyst Says,” New York Times, January 8, 2016. The Southern Poverty Law Center regularly follows actions of antigovernment groups, and posts reports on its website: www.splcenter.org/.

66. Mark Landler and Charlie Savage, “Obama Outlines Calibrated Curbs on Phone Spying,” New York Times, January 17, 2014; and Savage, “Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.’s Bulk Data Collection,” New York Times, March 24, 2014.

67. New York Times Editorial Board, “Surveillance in the Post-Obama Era,” New York Times, October 9, 2016.