Favorite teachers are seldom easy and undemanding. They impress their students by challenging them, introducing bold ideas, and making them think. So, in this process, does the great teacher attain immortality in student eyes. So, too, by following this process has former combat pilot and National War College department head Randall Larsen probed the folly and substance of homeland security in Our Own Worst Enemy (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2007) to present compelling and radical ideas on the realities of homeland defense.
Larsen first arouses reader attention by showing how ill conceived, reflexive responses to real and perceived homeland threats have created more problems than they solved. According to Larsen, over-investment and deficient analysis risk jeopardizing the homeland through irresponsible spending in areas ranging from detection technology at ports to building of walls at America’s undefended borders. Absent a reversal of this trend, Larsen argues cogently that it is precisely such actions on our own part that will realize our adversaries' objectives, bankrupt our economy, and make of all Americans our own worst enemy.
He flatly asserts the folly of succumbing to the rhetoric that America can “win the war against all those who would threaten our homeland,” arguing that the best we can do about attacks is to limit their frequency and severity (pp 84-85). Yet, in Larsen’s view, only a unifying strategy – containment – will prevent the wasteful spending and overreactions by political leaders while offering a degree of focus that will lend credibility to homeland defenses that are otherwise effective only in inflicting greater eventual damage to the economy than terror attacks themselves. Reviewing and cataloging the key threats presenting catastrophic risk, Larsen rates them by a scale (p. 73) that ultimately ranks biological and nuclear weapons as the most severe.
The author then makes the case for focusing on these top two that would potentially drive any nation to its knees. He uses the discussion of nuclear weapons to illustrate how otherwise brilliant scientists, enraptured by the allure of technology solutions often advocated by contractors who stand to profit from selling their devices, can fall prey to impractical solutions. Two such scientists with Homeland Security responsibilities seriously proposed equipping every motor vehicle in America large enough to carry a nuclear bomb with radiological detectors, leaving Larsen to challenge them with analytical questions. As Larson explains, the nuclear devices of greatest concern use highly enriched uranium which is a lower radiation emitter than that of the materials used in nuclear power plants. Why, argues Larsen, would a terrorist smart enough to lay hands on weapons-grade uranium not invest in lead shielding that would make the device capable of eluding the detectors? Moreover, why bankrupt taxpayers with the burden of wasting billions on such a flawed implementation of technology?
Biological weapons, though, strike Larsen as a greater danger. In the Internet age and with the proliferation of information on bioengineering, they are increasingly falling within the capacity of any terrorist to produce in the space of a garage without giving away any telltale signs or signatures necessary for rapid detection and pre-emption. Thus Larsen concludes that biological attacks are inevitable and must be approached as something to be mitigated rather than prevented.
On the one hand, Larsen's unvarnished prose and bulldozing style at times oscillate between the facile and the theatrical. Repeatedly, he holds forth before senior political executives, reporters, and congressional representative at length, challenging their assumptions and parrying their sound-bite-suited questions with his curmudgeon's refrain, "Wrong question." The refrain, which permeates the opening chapters or fusillade of the book, becomes old by page 30. Yet Larsen the pragmatist compensates for the limitations of Larsen the evangelist. And he makes a good case for bringing astronomical excesses under the banner of homeland security back down to Earth.
– Nick Catrantzos
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Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.