Reviews
| Date | 01 April 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1375/acri.37.1.155 |
| Author | Gerard Newham,Jude McCulloch |
| Published date | 01 April 2004 |
Defending the Homeland: Domestic
Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Security
By Jonathan R White
(2004) Australia:Thomas Wadsworth, 128 pp., ISBN 0534621694
The Enemy Within: Intelligence Gathering,
Law Enforcement, and Civil Liberties in the
Wake of September 11
By Stephen J Schulhofer
(2002) New York: A Century Foundation Report 81 pp., ISBN 087078482X.
In this review essay I look at two of the myriad books to be published in the wake
of the September 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The first,
Defending the Homeland: Domestic Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Security opens
by stating that “[a]fter the tragedies of September 11, 2001, national policy makers
[in the United States] called state and local law enforcement agencies to national
defense”. The book “is designed to discuss the role of state and local law
enforcement in national defense” (p. viii). It argues that “if the police are used to
enhance national defense, it will raise a host of issues about functions and civil
liberties. In short, incorporating law enforcement in national defense will change
the nature of American police work” (p. viii). The book was written while the
author was working with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, State and Local
Anti-terrorist Training program, under a joint grant with the Institute of
Intergovernmental Research and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is a text for
police officers, criminal justice students and law enforcement policy makers and is
set out so that it can easily be used in a teaching context. Teaching aids include
learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter followed by matching
subheadings; boxed text to reinforce objectives and aid discussion; sidebars to
summarise major issues like the USA Patriot Act and the al Qaeda manual;
summaries of emergency plans, and practical steps for police operations. There is no
index, however, which is disappointing in the context of the other useful features.
The chapters move through terrorism and its relationship to law enforcement,
issues concerning police powers and civil liberties, the problem or challenges of
changing bureaucratic structures, “modern conflict” from a law enforcement
perspective, ways that law enforcement can engage in national defense and
speculation on the future of conflict and law enforcement p. (ix).
The book is clearly written and logically set out. Complex problems are
rendered accessible, definitions are set out succinctly and much of the discussion is
well grounded in the practical problems of law enforcement. In just shy of two
THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
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VOLUME 37 NUMBER 1 2004 PP. 155–162
REVIEWS
pages, under the heading “coming to grips with concepts”, a whole host of terms are
defined and/or differentiated. These include information, intelligence, criminal
intelligence, defence intelligence, intelligence gathering, counterintelligence,
antiterrorism, counterterrorism, interdiction, crisis management, consequence
management, first responders, infrastructure protection, and cyberterrorism, to
name just some. Even the notoriously slippery and ideologically loaded concept of
terrorism is dealt with in just one paragraph. After two sentences which signal that
defining terrorism might be complex, the author concludes that “This book errs on
the side of simplicity”. “Terrorism is violence or threatened violence used against
innocent people or symbols to change behaviour by producing fear … In terms of
discussion in this book, terrorism is a threat to national security beyond the
traditional meaning of a military attack” (p. 14). The discussion of the issues,
dilemmas and juxtaposing positions in each chapter are useful in setting out the
broad contours of debates and alerting the reader to a host of media, professional
and scholarly sources that relate to the practical and philosophical dimensions of
the topics discussed. In Chapter 2, Intelligence Rivalries and Civil Liberties, for
example, the reader is advised that “[a]fter reading this chapter, you should be
able to [amongst other things] define the debate between the intelligence and
law enforcement communities; outline the constitutional issues associated with
homeland security [and] … describe the implications of the Patriot Act for
civil liberties …”
As with many of the works in the post 9/11 batch of titles, the book exaggerates
the impact of that one day in 2001. 9/11 was not so much “the day America’s world
changed” in terms of law enforcement, as the book claims, but rather the culmin-
ation or coming to light of a range of trends which were bubbling and brewing
beneath the surface for years and even decades before the planes hit the twin towers.
One major shift in the nature of state power and global conflict and politics that the
attack and subsequent “war on terror” has illuminated is the progressive erosion of
the boundaries between military and police action. Hardt and Negri anticipated this
in their influential book Empire where they wrote “Every imperial war is a civil war,
a police action — from Los Angeles and Granada to...
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