Personal Security Measures: A Guide on How to Live and Work Safely in Abroad (Part 3)

      

(Image courtesy of Pixabay)

     In this article, I will discuss the security measures in protecting your home and keeping your family safe from intruders, as well as screening your household staff and selecting party caterers and repair men.

     1.    Leave a “courtesy light” at the porch or front door from dusk to dawn. A light with a dusk-to-dawn sensor is highly recommended.
     2.    Consider the use of other types of security lighting system for use in emergencies.  Lights placed in strategic areas around the house would make it difficult for the would-be-assailants or robbers to hide in the shadows.
     3.    Keep the boundary fences in good condition and make sure they block the rooms in the house that are often used.
     4.  Remove or trim shrubberies around your house, particularly shrubs near paths and driveways to make concealment of persons or devices difficult.
     5.    Make a safety check each night before retiring to ensure that all doors and windows are locked.
     6.    Treat late callers with high suspicion.
     7.    Consider keeping a dog. A barking dog will warn you of strangers or trespassers.
     8.   Know your domestic helpers. Let them fill out a Personal History Statement (PHS) or other similar forms. Take their pictures yourself, if not, ask for their current pictures. This will serve as a deterrent to those who have criminal plans.
     9.    Conduct due diligence. Verify the information declared by the helpers on their PHS.
    10.  Avoid walk-in helpers or helpers dropping names of an acquaintance who are not available for verification.
    11. Schedule the works/repairs in your residence and never leave the workers in the house on their own.
    12. Exercise utmost care when holding parties or gatherings at your home.  Workers, helpers, and caterers should be properly checked before the function. Be wary of those last-minute substitutions.
    13. Prepare an action plan or emergency plan in case of intrusion or other threats. The plan should involve the protection of family members as well as the helpers in the house and also of the household pets.

Introduction: The Nation Under Siege (Creation of the Department of Homeland Security)



(World Trade Center. Photo courtesy of Wally Gobetz, Wikemedia Commons)


 

            The notion that the United States is invincible from a foreign-terrorist attack was proven wrong after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, which later referred to as the 9/11. The successful terrorist operations carried out in New York and Washington DC by the members of al-Qaeda (AQ) have revealed to the world that even a powerful country like the United States is not secured from a suicidal terrorist group.

            The results of the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon building not only claimed the lives of 5,350 Americans and foreign expatriates, but they also resulted in the injuries of 6,500 people. These figures do not include the lives of 44 passengers and the flight crew of United Airlines Flight 93 killed when they crashed in the outskirt of Shanksville, Pennsylvania while bravely wrestling control of the plane from the terrorists.

            The terrorists' operations on 9/11 have revealed the softer sides of the security and intelligence apparatus of the United States government. The much-heralded invincibility of the US Intelligence Community (IC), considered as the best in the world, was later on regarded by the public as an incompetent organization. The IC members' ineptitude raised serious concern about the capability to provide the policymakers with accurate and timely intelligence on future terrorist operations in the United States.

            There are several factors that can be considered why the IC failed to preempt the AQ plot. One of these was the lack of a strategic plan to counter the emerging threats of global terrorism coming from the ranks of the Islamist terrorists after the Cold War. The IC members, particularly the FBI and the CIA, have failed to adjust to the changing geopolitical landscape of the world after the collapse of the Berlin wall—which consequently united the two German countries—and of the break-up of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) into independent States.

            The political change has shifted the global alliances that even former Warsaw Pact members (i.e., communist states) became part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This transformation had left the United States with no traditional military enemies to engage with. The threat to United States' national security via conventional warfare or through missile strikes from the distant European shores has lessened.

            The lowering of guards created false security, which apparently affected the collection of intelligence data because of the pressure to disband the CIA in the aftermath of the downfall of communism in Europe. The Democratic Party leaders called for the abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and to transfer its foreign intelligence activities to the US Department of State as well as the CIA’s paramilitary operations to the Pentagon.

            The demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries—considered as the “A” list nations in terms of threat to national security—has caused the United States’ foreign policy on security to shift to the “B” list nations (e.g., Iraq and North Korea)  and to the “C” list nations (e.g., Bosnia, Somalia). Accordingly, the immediate attention given to the “B” list nations is to preempt these countries to fill the void left by the “A” nations and to counter the proliferations of weapons of mass destruction. Security experts claimed that, because the focus of the IC resources in the past decade was shifted to the “B” list nations, the IC had never seen the emerging threats coming from the Islamic radical groups, particularly the MAK—the forerunner of AQ network, after the Soviet-Afghan war.

            There were estimated 40,000 displaced had-core mujahideens, who came from various Muslim countries around the world to fight in Afghanistan.  With no more war to win and no more battle to fight, these seasoned fighters went back to their respective countries and became leaders of terrorist groups in their localities. For example, the late Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani, who founded the notorious Abu Sayaff Group in the Philippines, was a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war. Others had surreptitiously relocated to the West and secretly formed cell groups in Germany, France, and Spain. These developments were not seen by the IC as a gathering threats to the security of United States until the 9/11 attacks happened.

            Before the 9/11, there were 14 organizations that comprised IC—six from the civilian sector and eight from the military sector. Its mandate came from the Executive Order 12333 (United States Intelligence Activities), which provides, among others, to “collect information concerning, and the conduct of activities to protect against, intelligence activities directed against the United States, international terrorist and international narcotics activities, and other hostile activities directed against the United States by foreign powers, organizations, persons, and their agents.”

            The US Intelligence Community members were as follows:

             Civilian Sector

            1. Central Intelligence Agency

            2. Federal Bureau of Investigation
            3. US State Department
            4. Treasury Department
            5. Energy Department
            6. Coast Guard

            Military Sector

            1. Defense Intelligence Agency

            2. National Security Agency
            3. National Reconnaissance Office
            4. National Imagery and Mapping Agency
            5. Army Intelligence
            6. Navy Intelligence
            7. Air Force Intelligence
            8. Marine Intelligence

Agenda Setting: The State-Centric Approach (Creation of the Department of Homeland Security)

(United States Congress, Photo by Susan Sterner. Wikimedia Commons)

            Prominent leaders in the US Congress have demanded explanations from President George W. Bush why the federal government failed to detect, monitor, and negate the terrorist attacks. The most vocal critic on this issue was New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) when she told the reporters on May 16, 2002, that “the public demands answers immediately . . . And the people of New York deserve those answers more than anyone.”

            The Director of the CIA and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were not spared from the blame-game either. In the midst of this political turmoil, the people demanded accountability. There was a public outcry for the resignations of DCI George Tenet and Director Robert Mueller. The actions and inactions of their organizations were reflective of the way they led and managed the CIA and the FBI before the 9/11 attacks. The public clamor for an explanation of what caused the massive intelligence and security failure has not only reverberated in the streets of America but also rang in the halls of US Congress.

            Rep. Peter Goss (R), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, himself a former CIA Intelligence Officer, said that “over the years, success in the FBI meant ‘to go out and apprehend criminals’ prosecute them and ‘get them off the streets’ . . . that approach is still needed but with terrorism, there is a new element of integrating overseas intelligence to prevent acts inside the United States.” Likewise, Rep. Jane Harman (D), a ranking member of the intelligence committee, said that “the CIA, which by law operates overseas, and FBI, which operates within the United States, have to rethink their separate roles when it comes to dealing with terrorism. . . I still see a separate law enforcement and intelligence function, but if we stop at the border's edge, we may not be preventing terrorism.”

            The political activists and the Democratic Party leaders demanded that the Bush Administration be held accountable for the 9/11 tragedies as they happened under his watch. The Republicans countered that the terrorist plan was hatched during the time of the Clinton Administration, which had failed to detect and negate the attack including those that had happened before 9/11.

            On the span of just nine years—from February 26, 1993, in the first bombing of the World Trade Center, to its second attack on September 11, 2001—the United States had encountered ten major terrorist hits on US mainland and on US interests overseas. These attacks have resulted in the total death of 6101 people and injuries to 19,735. The blame game and political mudslinging from both parties have not produced any positive results to address the problems of terrorism. On the other hand, the crisis had spotlighted the years of dysfunctional relationship in the IC, which were then revisited by the members of the US Congress through the fact-finding commission.

            The US Congress noted the professional jealousies in the IC and this harmful rivalry among the members had hampered the coordination and sharing of information about the terrorists. Reports gathered by the media, the revelations of FBI whistleblowers, and the results of the congressional investigation have concluded that there were operational leads in the hands of the IC members, and had that information been shared with one another, it could have been used to negate the AQ network from carrying the attacks.

            Moreover, the congressional leaders had also seen the weakness of the FBI in analyzing and assessing the raw information coming from the field offices. For instance, Special Agent Kenneth Williams of Phoenix FBI Field Office wrote a five-page memorandum on July 10, 2001 about a possible attack on the United States. His report did not reach the key Bureau officials. Senator Richard J. Durbin (D), who attended the closed-door congressional hearing when Williams testified before the Judiciary Committee,  learned that the memorandum did not go up to the chain of command. Durbin commented that the report was “never treated seriously within the FBI, never circulated, never analyzed, nor referred to the CIA."

            The responsibility of securing the mainland from terrorist attack is the primary assignment of the FBI. However, the FBI had no strategic plan to address the rising danger posed by the Islamist terrorists that time. The Bureau came up with a draft assessment entitled “FBI Report on the Terrorist Threat to the United States and a Strategy for Prevention and Response” in September 2001. The lack of strategic planning on terrorism has clearly reflected in the Bureau’s organizational behavior towards terrorism.

            The FBI serves as the federal government’s lead agency in charge to respond, investigate, and prosecute terrorists. However, it will only pursue the terrorists after they struck, not while they are still in the planning stage. As an example, a request to conduct manhunt on AQ operative Khalid al-Mihdar in the United States was denied by the Bureau heads because the FBI Special Agents are criminal investigators and not intelligence operators. Al-Mihdar was one of the terrorists that crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon building.

            The 9/11 tragedies created a groundswell in the US Congress to review the FBI’s role as the lead agency that oversee the efforts in counter-terrorism because its organizational culture and operational thrusts are not suitable for counter-terrorism. It took the lives of thousands of people for the federal government to finally admit that there is a need to create an organization that will focus mainly on countering the threats of terrorism in US mainland. Thus, after so much discussions and hesitations, the proposal to create a super organization that is distinct from the FBI and CIA has been proposed to the members of the US Congress by the Bush Administration. The US Congress, on the other hand, had its own version of a domestic agency, which was incorporated later on in the White House’s proposal.