After 9/11: The Department of Homeland Security

Civics 101

NHPR

Government, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, made one thing very obvious: our country’s national security strategy was flawed. What followed was one of the biggest reorganizations of our federal government in history: the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in November, 2002. What about 9/11, the attacks, and their aftermath, made it possible for the government to transform, in just over a year? And how has that transformation changed how our government makes decisions about threats to our country, and responds to them? Helping us untangle this story are: David Schanzer, the director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University; Darren Davis, a politics professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies public opinion and political behavior; and Eileen Sullivan, the Homeland Security Correspondent for the New York Times. Support Civics 101 with a small donation today! CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I am.
0:01.0	I am.
0:02.0	I am.
0:03.0	I am.
0:04.0	I am hit record.
0:05.0	We are going.
0:07.0	Well, let me start by saying it is lovely to see you in this chair, Christina.
0:13.4	It is so wonderful to be here in the studio with you face to face.
0:17.7	Everyone this is Christina Phillips.
0:19.2	She's our senior producer and she's going to be stepping in for Hannah this week.
0:22.7	She is about to take us on a journey and she has been quite frankly busy.
0:28.0	Yeah, so I thought I'd given myself a pretty straightforward task which was explaining
0:33.7	how September 11th led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and why
0:39.1	that matters.
0:40.4	And this is the executive department that combined 22 agencies from several different departments
0:46.5	under one roof, right?
0:47.8	Yeah, and created a few new agencies on top of that, all for the purpose of preparing
0:53.2	for, preventing and responding to domestic emergencies, especially terrorism.
0:58.7	And let me tell you, just trying to figure out what moved where and why was a pretty enormous
1:03.1	task.
1:04.1	I ended up mapping it out on a whiteboard that is the size of a window.
1:07.5	Imagine what it was like for the federal government to decide to do this in the first place.
	...

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