Summary

Contrary to most beliefs, homeland security didn’t begin with 9/11. Homeland security arose six years earlier out of concerns from the 1995 Tokyo Subway Attacks. The 1995 attacks were the first deployment of a weapon of mass destruction by a non-state actor. Prior to this incident, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons required the resources of a nation to produce. The 1995 Tokyo Subway Attacks catalyzed Congress and the White House to investigate the probability of terrorist WMD attack on the US. Subsequent commissions reported that the probability was most likely and the US was unprepared to prevent it. As a result, in April 2001 legislation was introduced proposing a National Homeland Security Agency to consolidate US efforts aimed at preventing a terrorist WMD attack. That legislation still sat in Congress six months later when 9/11 occurred. Only 9/11 didn’t involve WMD. Instead, the 9/11 terrorists subverted critical infrastructure to achieve WMD effects by turning passenger jets into guided missiles and striking at the Twin Towers and Pentagon to inflict nearly 3,000 deaths and $40 billion in damages. The staggering toll elicited comparisons to Pearl Harbor fifty years earlier. But whereas the attack on Pearl Harbor required the extensive strength of the Japanese Imperial Navy, 9/11 was precipitated by only nineteen hijackers, mostly poor and uneducated. The 9/11 Commission noted the attacks for their “surpassing disproportion”. 9/11 marked a watershed in world history when the ability to wreak domestic catastrophic destruction once reserved to nature and nations was acquired by non-state actors. Every nation shuddered.