Willful Neglect ─ The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security

The Central Intelligence Agency’s most respected former Middle East counterterrorism officer applies a critical lens to the state of America’s Homeland Security system and asks, “Are we really any safer than we were on 9/11?” Have the vast new bureaucracies that have arisen and the billions spent translated into real protection? Or has complacency set in? His answer is terrifying. Charles S. Faddis, the author of Beyond Repair and the coauthor of Operation Hotel California, was trained through his years in the field with the CIA to know what it is like to stand in the shoes of a terrorist and appraise targets. In Willful Neglect, he applies this expert knowledge to scrutinizing the preparedness of the nation’s critical infrastructure—military installations, passenger and freight rail systems, chemical plants, liquefied natural gas facilities, water treatment plants, dams, and nuclear power plants. America is still a land of opportunity, he finds—for its enemies. From the author’s introduction We had, on a strategic scale, plenty of warning that 9/11 was coming. Al Qaida told us they were coming, and they launched a series of preliminary attacks. . . . We did nothing. Three thousand people died as the result of that complacency. Now, in the aftermath, it is our job to move as fast as is humanly possible to block any and all future attacks. Amazingly, though, as you tour this nation and examine the prime targets that beg to be defended from terrorist attack, what you find, eight years later, is that virtually nothing meaningful has been done. True, large new bureaucracies have been created and huge shiny, new office buildings constructed, but in terms of concrete measures which will stand in the way of determined, evil men, there is very, very little.