Pilot Study - Psychosocial Impacts of Terrorist Attack on a National Icon

HOMELAND SECURITY INSTITUTE The Homeland Security Institute (HSI) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) established by the Secretary of Homeland Security under Section 312 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Analytic Services Inc. operates HSI under contract number W81XWH-04-D-0011.

HSI’s mission is to assist the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Under Secretary for Science and Technology, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operating elements in addressing national policy and security issues where scientific, technical, and analytical expertise is required. HSI also consults with other government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, institutions of higher education, and nonprofit organizations.

HSI delivers independent and objective analyses and advice to support policy development, decision making, alternative approaches, and new ideas on significant issues.

HSI’s research is undertaken by mutual consent with DHS and is organized by Tasks in the annual HSI Research Plan. This report presents the results of research and analysis conducted under

Task 07-03.04.06 Psychological/National Iconic Impacts

of HSI’s Fiscal Year 2007 Research Plan. The purpose of the task is to support the Department of the Interior and its National Monuments and Icons Sector partners in determining whether the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack might be of a magnitude sufficient to warrant inclusion of these factors in risk assessments and resource allocation decisions related to protecting national icons from terrorist attacks.

The results presented in this report do not necessarily reflect official DHS opinion or policy.

For Official Use Only

Homeland Security Institute

Sarah Carlson Task Lead

Sam Clovis Gary Foster Anna Kasupski Daniel McFadden Rosemary Lark

Division Manager, Threat Analysis Division

George Thompson

Deputy Director, Homeland Security Plans and Programs

PILOT STUDY: PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPACTS OF A TERRORIST ATTACK ON A NATIONAL ICON

Final Report

31 March 2008

Prepared for:

Department of Homeland Security Office of Science and Technology

Department of the Interior and National Monuments and Icons Sector Partners

For Official Use Only

For information about this publication or other HSI research, contact

HOMELAND SECURITY INSTITUTE Analytic Services Incorporated

2900 S. Quincy Street Arlington, VA 22206

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HSI Publication Number: RP07-03.04.06-01

Pilot Study: Psychosocial Impacts of a Terrorist Attack on a National Icon

i For Official Use Only

TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary........................................................................................................................ 1

Objectives.................................................................................................................................. 1 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 1 Scope and Limitations ............................................................................................................... 2 Key Findings ............................................................................................................................. 2

Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 5 Objectives.................................................................................................................................. 6 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 6 Scope and Limitations ............................................................................................................... 7 Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 8 Report Overview ....................................................................................................................... 8

Section I: Understanding Icon Importance .................................................................................. 9 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 9 Public Perceptions of Icon Importance.................................................................................... 10 Public Perceptions of Icon Security ........................................................................................ 14 Summary and Conclusions...................................................................................................... 19

Section II: Psychosocial Impacts of Terrorist Attacks .............................................................. 21 Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 21 Dimensions of the Psychosocial Impact of Terrorist Attacks.................................................. 22 Summary and Conclusions...................................................................................................... 37

Section III: Strategies for Mitigating the Psychosocial Impacts of an Attack on a National Icon ................................................................................................................................................ 39

Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 39 Prevention and Protection: Pre-Event Mitigation Strategies ................................................... 40 Response and Recovery: Post-Event Mitigation Strategies..................................................... 41 Summary and Conclusions...................................................................................................... 43 Appendix 1: Previous Terrorist Attacks against National Icons.............................................. 45 Appendix 2: Round Table Agenda and Participants................................................................ 47 Appendix 3: Survey 1 Methodology and Findings.................................................................. 55 Appendix 4: Survey 2 Methodology and Findings.................................................................. 63 Appendix 5: Scenario-Based Exercise Agenda, Participants, and Scenario............................ 65

Annotated Bibliography............................................................................................................... 73 Endnotes........................................................................................................................................ 83


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LIST OF TABLES Table 1: National Icons Included in the Study ................................................................................. 7 Table 2: Ranking of Selected National Icons ................................................................................. 11 Table 3: Other Icons Suggested by Participants as Among the “Most Important”......................... 13 Table 4: Most Important Symbolic Values..................................................................................... 14 Table 5: Ideal Security of Selected National Icons......................................................................... 16 Table 6: Actual Security of Selected National Icons...................................................................... 18 Table 7: Measures of Psychosocial Impact .................................................................................... 23 Table 8: Emotional Impact of the Oklahoma City Bombing on Residents of Oklahoma City and Indianapolis .................................................................................................................................... 25 Table 9: Percent of Americans Reporting Psychiatric and Emotional Impacts of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks............................................................................................................................. 27 Table 10: Dissipation of Psychiatric disorders in the Months after the 9/11 attack........................ 29 Table 11: Percentage of Americans Engaging in Helping or Security-Enhancing Behaviors after the 9/11 Attack ............................................................................................................................... 35


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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Impact of Major Domestic Terrorist Attacks on Americans’ Levels of Worry over Becoming a Victim of a Terrorist Attack ....................................................................................... 31 Figure 2: Impact of Terrorist Attacks on Presidential Approval Ratings ....................................... 32 Figure 3: Impact of Recent Terrorist Attacks on Public Confidence in the Government’s Ability to Prevent Future Terrorist Attacks ................................................................................................ 33 Figure 4: Gender of Survey 1 Participants ..................................................................................... 55 Figure 5: Ages of Survey 1 Participants ......................................................................................... 56 Figure 6: Familiarity of Survey 1 Participants with Selected Icons ............................................... 56 Figure 7: Gender of Survey 2 Participants ..................................................................................... 63 Figure 8: Ages of Survey 2 Participants ......................................................................................... 64 Figure 9: Familiarity of Survey 2 Participants with Selected National Icons................................. 64


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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Terrorist attacks are a threat to the safety and security of our country. Risk assessments looking at the possible consequences of such attacks typically consider three types of consequences from an attack: economic effects, injuries, and fatalities. However, The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets warns that a terrorist attack against critical infrastructure could also cause “profound damage to our national prestige, morale, and confidence.”1 This suggests that there is potentially a fourth category of consequence – psychosocial impacts – that should be considered as part of the risk equation. The Department of the Interior (DOI) and its partners in the National Monuments and Icons (NMI) sector are interested in determining whether the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack might be of a magnitude sufficient to warrant inclusion of these factors in risk assessments and resource allocation decisions for the NMI sector. The Homeland Security Institute (HSI) undertook this modest pilot study to begin exploring this issue.

Objectives A complete assessment of the issues raised above would have required more time and resources than was allotted for this initial effort. However, working in concert with DOI and its NMI sector partners, HSI developed an initial framework for beginning to explore some of these complex questions. This effort was modest and should be considered a pilot study. The project objectives included the following:

1. Assist DOI and its NMI sector partners in identifying those icons that Americans view as the most important national symbols, an attack on which would constitute the most direct blow to “national prestige, morale, and confidence.”

2. Explore and define basic measures of psychosocial impact that a terrorist attack on an important national icon might affect.

3. Assess whether and what types of activities DOI and its NMI sector partners could potentially take to mitigate the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack, in terms of either preventive measures or response activities.

Methodology To meet these objectives, HSI conducted three phases of research:

1. Phase I entailed conducting two small pilot surveys designed to identify and rank the most symbolically important national icons; test the extent to which respondents saw those as symbols of national prestige, morale, and confidence; and explore whether an attack on one of these icons might have a particularly potential to undermine confidence in government.

2. Phase II involved conducting a literature review and hosting a roundtable discussion with subject-matter experts to explore the potential psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks, in general, and attacks on national icons in particular.



3. Phase III involved an HSI-hosted Scenario-Based Exercise with government officials to discuss possible prevention and response strategies for minimizing the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon.

Scope and Limitations In determining the best strategy for allocating their limited resources, NMI sector agencies must consider the full range of terrorist threat scenarios against national icons. For the purposes of this modest research effort, however, we limited our study to consider only one type of attack that could be directed against a national icon: that of an improvised explosive device (IED). The majority of significant terrorist attacks in the United States have involved the use of IED’s, suggesting that this is a likely scenario.

We further narrowed the scope of this study to include only a subset of national icons, chosen from among the hundreds that fall within the NMI sector. Working with DOI and its NMI sector partners, we developed a preliminary list of those icons that seemed likely to rank among the most symbolically important to Americans. We added to this list those icons that appear to have the highest popularity with tourists, based on visitation statistics for the past year (2006).

Some limitations on our research effort included the following:

• Inability to survey the public at large. Regulatory constraints prohibited us from surveying a sample population fully representative of the American public. Our conclusions regarding the icons that Americans consider most important may therefore be subject to certain biases particular to the small sample populations we surveyed.

• Limited number of data points. We based our conclusions on a study of the psychosocial impacts of previous terrorist attacks in the United States. The small number of such attacks necessarily introduces some uncertainty into our results. Further, the lack of previous attacks on purely symbolic targets in the United States qualifies our predictions of the psychosocial impacts of such an attack.

• Inability to isolate the influence of specific variables. The wide variety of forces that work to shape the psychosocial impact of any terrorist attack act concurrently after the event, such that it is difficult to isolate and define the impact of the attack as opposed to the impact of the government’s response, the resulting media coverage, or other societal events that occur in the same time period.

Key Findings Our key findings included the following:

• Our surveys provided preliminary evidence that the most symbolically important national icons are those that represent the American government and/or the American values of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. The and the icons

were of particularly high importance to survey respondents. Due to respondents’ beliefs that the government is providing a high level of protection for these icons, a successful terrorist attack on any of them may have the potential to undermine

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public confidence in the government’s ability to protect against terrorist attacks in general.

• Our literature review and roundtable suggest that any terrorist attack may have the potential to cause psychosocial impacts in the form of emotional and psychiatric distress, as well as changes in cognitive beliefs and social behaviors. Our research suggests that an attack on a national icon may have a particularly strong impact on several measures in these latter categories. Such an attack may be more likely to decrease confidence in government, or diminish economic activity by deterring tourism.

• Finally, our Scenario-Based Exercise suggested that DOI and its NMI sector partners may be able to mitigate some of the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon, particularly through ensuring a demonstrative physical presence of protective services at national icons, and utilizing effective risk communication strategies to inform and engage the public. We recommend that NMI sector agencies target their risk communications at managing public expectations by alerting the public of possible risks to national icons, and include the public in prevention efforts by inviting them to report suspicious activities to security. Similarly, we recommend that the NMI sector develop in advance the types of messages officials should deliver to the public in the event of an attack. Exercise participants suggested that such efforts could mitigate the psychosocial impacts of any attack by providing a realistic yet reassuring perception of the government’s abilities, as well as specific instructions to help the public prepare and respond. One important part of this is providing a visible security presence – officials at national icons who can both interact with the public, and serve as additional security resources in the event of an emergency.



INTRODUCTION Terrorist attacks are a threat to the safety and security of our country. Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 (HSPD-7) and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) identified seventeen high-priority sectors of critical infrastructure and key resources that require increased protection from terrorist attacks. Government agencies with responsibility for protecting the infrastructure in each of these sectors perform risk assessments to determine how to allocate their limited resources to provide the best level of protection from and response to potential terrorist attacks. Such risk assessments typically consider three types of consequences: economic effects, injuries, and fatalities. However, The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets (“Strategy”) warns that a terrorist attack against critical infrastructure “could result in not only large-scale human casualties and property destruction, but also profound damage to our national prestige, morale, and confidence.”2 This suggests that there is potentially a fourth category of consequence – psychosocial impacts* – that should be considered as part of the risk equation. The Homeland Security Institute (HSI) undertook a modest pilot study to begin exploring the potential psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks, particularly attacks on symbolic targets such as national icons.

Defining and measuring the psychosocial impacts of terrorist activity is a particularly challenging problem. In June of 2006, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’) Human Factors Division held a conference to discuss the feasibility of developing a quantitative index of the psychosocial impacts of extreme events. At this event, DHS defined “psychosocial impacts” as “an event’s effect on the public’s attitudes and behaviors,” and further suggested that these effects may “have significant long-term political and economic consequences, as well as effects[s] [on] the health and well-being of individuals.3” Such effects may be of special concern to the government, as they suggest the potential for an attack to cause decreased confidence in government, reduced economic activity, or an increased burden on the public health system.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) – the agency with primary responsibility for securing the National Monuments and Icons (NMI) sector against terrorists – is particularly interested in determining whether the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack might be of a magnitude sufficient to warrant inclusion of these factors in risk assessments and resource allocation decisions for the NMI sector.† While other sectors protect structures that provide basic services, such as transportation, the NMI sector has responsibility for the security and protection of symbols of our national cultural heritage and values. An attack on one of these symbols may not ∗ In our research, we noted that scholars variably use the terms “psychological impact” and “psychosocial

impact” to describe this dimension of the consequences of terrorism. We chose to use the term “psychosocial impact” throughout this paper, for several reasons. First, this term seems to be gaining currency in newer research on the topic. In addition, the term “psychosocial impact” implies not only purely psychological changes, such as changes in mental attitudes or beliefs, but also follow-on changes in social behavior. The latter is likely as important to government agencies as the former; for example, the government is not only interested in whether a terrorist attack might increase the level of fear in the population, but also how people change their actions in response to a more fearful psychological state.

† The Department of the Interior chairs the Government Coordinating Council for the National Monuments and Icons sector, which also includes several agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense, along with the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and the United States Capitol Police.



have a readily quantifiable impact on basic services, but may be a particularly strong blow to the national psyche. A pressing concern for DOI and its NMI sector partners, therefore, is understanding whether the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon can be understood and measured, whether experts believe that a quantification of such impacts would rise to a material level, and if so, whether NMI sector agencies can devise preventive or response strategies to mitigate such effects.

Objectives A complete assessment of the issues raised above would have required more time and resources than was allotted for this initial effort. However, working in concert with DOI and its NMI sector partners, HSI developed an initial framework for beginning to explore some of these complex questions. This effort was modest and should be considered a pilot study. The project objectives included the following:

1. Assist DOI and its NMI sector partners in identifying those icons that Americans view as the most important national symbols, an attack on which would constitute the most direct blow to “national prestige, morale, and confidence.”

2. Explore and define basic measures of psychosocial impact that a terrorist attack on an important national icon might affect.

3. Assess whether and what types of activities NMI sector agencies could potentially take to mitigate the psychosocial impacts of any future terrorist attack, in terms of either preventive measures or response activities.

Methodology HSI conducted three phases of research in support of these objectives. The first phase focused on assisting DOI and its NMI sector partners in understanding which national icons are most symbolically important to the American people, as well as how public attitudes regarding national icons might contribute to the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on an icon. In support of these goals, HSI conducted two small pilot surveys designed to rank and validate the importance of a selection of national icons. Both surveys asked respondents to rank a selection of national icons in terms of their importance. The first survey also tested the extent to which respondents saw national icons as symbols of “national prestige, morale, and confidence” by asking them to describe the qualities that they believe lend importance to particular national icons. The second survey then began to look toward the potential impacts of a terrorist attack on the icons symbolizing such qualities by asking whether respondents’ confidence in government includes a level of assurance that the government is providing adequate security for symbolically important national icons.

The second phase of research focused on further exploring the potential psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks in general, and beginning to investigate whether an attack on a national icon might result in impacts of a particular type or magnitude. As an initial step in addressing these questions, HSI conducted a literature review to identify whether and how other studies have discussed psychosocial impacts after previous terrorist attacks in the United States. Given the relatively small number of previous such attacks, the pool of literature in this area was limited. We therefore explored this issue further by convening a roundtable with a select group of experts



in fields ranging from terrorism, behavioral analysis, threat assessment, and consequence management. This discussion allows us to gain additional insight into the characteristics of an attack that might contribute to shaping any resulting psychosocial impacts, as well as the ways in which those impacts might change in the event that the attack targeted a national icon.

In the last phase of research, HSI developed a Scenario-Based Exercise to explore strategies that could be employed to minimize or mitigate the potential psychosocial impacts identified in earlier research. We invited government officials who have responsibility for creating strategies for protecting against and responding to terrorist activity in the NMI sector to participate in this event. The ideas proposed in this exercise and the ensuing discussion formed the basis for the suggestions included in this report regarding the types of activities that may be best suited to mitigate the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon, and that therefore may be of most value to NMI sector agencies’ decision-making processes.

Scope and Limitations In determining the best strategy for allocating their limited resources, DOI and its NMI sector partners must consider the full range of terrorist threat scenarios against national icons. For the purposes of this modest research effort, however, we limited our study to consider only one type of attack that could be directed against a national icon: that of an improvised explosive device (IED). The majority of significant terrorist attacks in the United States have involved the use of IED’s, suggesting that this is a likely scenario.

We further narrowed the scope of this study to include only the assets that fall within the NMI sector. Working with DOI and its NMI sector partners, we developed a preliminary list of those icons that seemed likely to rank among the most symbolically important to Americans. We added to this list those icons that appear to have the highest popularity with tourists, based on visitation statistics for the past year (2006). Table 1 lists the fifteen icons that we ultimately included.

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Limitations Our analysis is also necessarily subject to the following limitations:

• Inability to survey the public at large. Regulatory constraints prohibited us from surveying a sample population fully representative of the American public. As a result, the sample sizes for our surveys were small. Our conclusions regarding the icons that Americans consider most important may therefore be subject to certain biases particular to the small sample populations we surveyed.

• Limited number of data points. We based our conclusions on a study of the psychosocial impacts of previous terrorist attacks in the United States. The small number of such attacks necessarily introduces some uncertainty into our results. Further, the lack of previous attacks on purely symbolic targets in the United States qualifies our predictions of the psychosocial impacts of such an attack.

• Inability to isolate the influence of specific variables. The wide variety of forces that work to shape the psychosocial impact of any terrorist attack act concurrently after the event, such that it is difficult to isolate and define the impact of the attack as opposed to the impact of the government’s response, the resulting media coverage, or other societal events that occur in the same time period.

Report Overview This report presents our analysis and findings from the three phases of research outlined above, organized into the following four sections:

• Section I: Understanding Icon Importance identifies the national icons that our pilot surveys indicate may be among the most important, and describes why our survey respondents value these icons.

• Section II: Psychosocial Impacts of Terrorist Attacks describes the dimensions and possible measures of the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon based on reports of the psychosocial impacts of previous terrorist attacks in the United States.

• Section III: Strategies for Mitigating the Psychosocial Impacts of an Attack on a National Icon provides insight into those psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks that DOI and its NMI sector partners may be able to mitigate, and discusses several possible mitigation strategies.

• Annotated Bibliography is a reference tool that lists a selection of the articles most relevant to further research on the topics covered in this pilot study. A brief summary is included for each article.



SECTION I: UNDERSTANDING ICON IMPORTANCE The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets (“Strategy”) warns that a terrorist attack may cause significant harm to our “national prestige, morale, and confidence.” Because national icons symbolize the values underlying these concepts, the Department of the Interior (DOI) – the agency with primary responsibility for securing the National Monuments and Icons (NMI) sector against terrorist attacks – and its NMI sector partners are concerned that a terrorist attack on a national icon may have particular significance. As a starting point for exploring this possibility, NMI sector agencies are interested in understanding whether the American public values all national icons equally, or whether there are some icons that Americans perceive as more important, an attack on any of which could potentially have a greater impact.

HSI took a first step toward answering this question by conducting research designed to provide at least an initial understanding of the following:

• Which national icons are the most symbolically important to the nation,

• The characteristics that might elevate an icon to this status, and

• The public expectations of security at these icons as this relates to the potential for an attack on an icon to have a particularly significant psychosocial impact on the public.

Methodology HSI conducted two modest surveys to gain initial insight into which national icons might have particular symbolic significance to Americans, as well as how public attitudes regarding national icons might contribute to the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on an icon. Both surveys asked respondents to rank a selection of national icons in terms of their importance to the nation, which provided insight into the degree of value that respondents place on particular national icons. This enabled us to create a ranked and tiered list comparing the importance of the selected icons. The first survey also tested the extent to which respondents saw national icons as symbols of “national prestige, morale, and confidence” by asking them to describe the qualities that they believe impart national icons with importance. Finally, this survey allowed participants to suggest additional icons – not included in this initial survey or in our analysis – that may also deserve a place on any list of the icons that are most important to the nation.

The second survey – to a different audience – provided some validation of the list of most important national icons we generated based on responses to the first survey. This second survey also contained questions aimed at exploring the potential impacts of a terrorist attack on one of these icons. Working under the assumption that any decrease in confidence in government after a terrorist attack might be especially severe in the case of an attack on a national icon – due to presumed public expectations that the government is providing adequate security for national icons – we tried to assess the degree of security that participants believed NMI sector agencies should afford national icons. Concurrently, we also attempted to assess the extent to which participants believed that NMI sector agencies were meeting this obligation. Our expectation was that a comparison of the results on these two measures might yield some insight into the potential for a priori public expectations of icon security to affect levels of confidence in government after an attack.



Constraints and Limitations

Regulatory constraints limited the scope of both surveys by preventing us from surveying the public at large. As a result, we endeavored to develop small-scale “proxies” for the public at large by surveying two smaller populations. The first survey included participants from within HSI, while the second included faculty from a small college in Iowa.

The HSI population included a wide demographic mix of people familiar with national monuments. Nevertheless, we do note that the HSI population lives and works in the vicinity of the national icons in the Washington, DC area, many of which appeared on the two surveys. There is some chance that participants’ familiarity with these icons might have encouraged them to rank the Washington, DC-area icons as more important than other, more distant icons. In addition, the HSI population consists of homeland security professionals who are perhaps more aware of security issues than the general population. We attempted to correct for any biases introduced by the unique location of the HSI population by surveying individuals far removed from the Nation’s capital. We therefore selected a university population in Iowa to receive our second survey.

Taken together, we note that the data from the HSI and Iowa populations may still be subject to bias. Participants in both populations average more years of education than the general public. In addition, the two populations clearly would not account for all of the possible regional differences in views of icon importance or value. Finally, the number of participants in the two surveys, while adequate for offering initial predictions in this pilot study, is lower than would be necessary to truly represent the diversity of opinion in the American population overall. We recommend that any future surveys attempting to verify the results of this pilot study use a larger and more diverse population to refine our initial results.

Appendix 3 provides demographic information on population that participated in the first survey; Appendix 4 provides the same information on the population that participated in the second survey.

Public Perceptions of Icon Importance The objective of the first survey was to identify which national icons our respondents most valued. The survey included questions that allowed each participant to rank a sample of fourteen prominent national icons in order of their “importance to nation,” list any missing icons that the participant felt should have been included in the list, and explain the qualities by which s/he judged the “importance” of the selected icons. We used participants’ responses to create a list of the most important icons in rank order, along with a set of categories identifying the underlying values that make these icons important to respondents.

Most Important Icons

The first question on the survey asked participants to rank the fourteen selected icons in order from most to least important. We computed the mean or average rankings for each icon to produce the ranked list shown in Table 2. The confidence intervals in the far right column of Table 2 provide the range within which the mean of each icon would likely fall (with 95% certainty) if we were to repeat the survey.



Table 2: Ranking of Selected National Icons

Name of Icon Mean Confidence Interval T

ier

1

2.25 2.49 3.98

1.79-2.71 1.96-3.02 3.26-4.70

Tie

r 2

5.21 6.40 6.49 7.77 8.34 8.57 9.04 9.89

4.58-5.84 5.48-7.32 5.83-7.15 6.99-8.56 7.64-9.04 7.85-9.28

7.95-10.12 9.09-10.68

Tie

r 3

11.15 11.60 11.83

10.50-11.80 11.06-12.15 11.32-12.34

The data in Table 2 suggest that participants placed the highest value on . These included the , both of which had confidence intervals predicting that these icons would rank in the top three on any subsequent survey. In fact,

appeared in one of the top three positions on 87% of the surveys we collected, while the appeared in one of these positions on 83% of surveys. These data

.

The claimed third place in the survey results, appearing among the top three icons on 60% of returned surveys. The lack of overlap between the confidence interval and those of the and the g suggests that the is likely to continue to rank behind these icons in any subsequent survey. However, the large percentage of participants who ranked the among the top three, along with the minimal overlap between the confidence interval and the confidence interval of the number-four ranked icon, distinguishes the from those icons below it in the middle tier.

On the other end of the scale, the survey results just as clearly pointed to the three least important icons among the selected fourteen included in the survey. The mean rankings and confidence intervals of the

predicted that these icons would continue to rank among the bottom four (positions 11-14) in any subsequent survey. A full 79% of survey participants ranked the

among the four least important icons on the list; only one participant placed it in the top five. The appeared in the bottom four on 74% of returned surveys, and the was in this bracket on 70% of the surveys. Neither of these icons appeared in the top five on any survey. Participants clearly saw the

l as being of the lowest importance among the fourteen icons listed on the survey.

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Icons whose mean rankings fell between the top and bottom tiers, in terms of importance, exhibited greater variation in their rankings. Though their mean rankings put them in the order shown in Table 2, the fact that over two-thirds of survey participants ranked each of these icons in positions 4-11 is the only significant pattern that emerged for them. The comparatively wide confidence intervals for the middle tier icons further confirm that while none of these icons belong in the top or bottom tier, in the results of this survey, there was no broad agreement among survey participants as to the importance of the middle tier icons relative to each other.

The only exception to this was the which ranked number four in overall importance according to our survey results. Interestingly, over one-third of participants (34%) ranked the exactly in the number four position. Clearly, this icon ranked at the top of the middle tier in this survey.

It is also worth noting that the and exhibited considerable variability in their rankings, as their frequency diagrams in Appendix 3 show. For the

, this may reflect a lack of knowledge among survey participants regarding this icon. Our discussion with early survey participants revealed that many were unaware that the

In the case of the the variability in participants’ rankings may reflect some ambiguity in the wording on the survey. The survey asked participants to consider the importance of each icon, but did not stress that participants should consider only the icon’s symbolic importance. For other icons, this difference in wording would be insignificant, as the value of these icons is wholly symbolic. However, the

Several participants who ranked the near the bottom in terms of importance noted on their surveys that their rankings reflected the icon’s symbolic value, . At the same time, those who ranked the among the three most important icons described its importance

We may therefore expect to rank lower in importance on any subsequent survey that instructs participants to consider only the symbolic value of each icon.

Other Important Icons

Having determined that the fourteen selected icons fell into three definable tiers, according to the results of our preliminary survey, we were also interested in understanding whether this sample set of icons may have included all of the most important national icons. Question 2 on our survey

* The are similarly important for both their symbolic values,

and the functions they provide to society. However, even these functions are symbolic: the

any of the comments from participants who ranked the

indicated that participants saw the importance of these two icons as resulting from their symbolic function, rather than their function .

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collected data to address this issue, asking participants to list any important national icons missing from the list provided and to indicate where any such missing icons would rank.

Table 3 lists the national icons that participants believed deserved a spot on our list of the most important national icons.

falls outside the scope of our current study because it does not encompass any one specific symbolic structure. The , however, is certainly the type of icon that would fit into our study. In fact, this icon was one of the most-visited in 2006, the year from which we used visitation data to determine the most-visited icons. We did not include it on our survey

Since two of our survey participants thought to add it to our selected list of the most important national icons, however, it would be worth adding the to any future versions of this survey to determine how it compares to the other icons on the list.

Table 3: Other Icons Suggested by Participants as Among the “Most Important”

Name of Icon Number of Times Mentioned by Participants DOI Responsibility?

13 No

7 No

4 No

3 No

3 No

3 No

2 No

2 No

2 Yes

1 No

1 No

1 No

1 Yes

1 No

1 No

1 No

1 No

Icon Value

After determining the ranked order of the fourteen icons on our survey, we analyzed the results of survey Question 3 to determine the qualities by which participants judged icon importance. This question asked participants to explain why they believed that their chosen top three national icons were important. We suggest that the qualities by which participants judged icon importance act as surrogates for the symbolic values associated with the most important icons.

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As shown in Table 4, survey participants primarily judged as most important those icons that represented the U.S. government or the core American values of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. We note that our system of government itself embodies these latter values, suggesting that these categories may represent very similar concepts. On this basis, we suggest that the most important national icons include those that Americans see as symbols of one or both of these concepts: the U.S. government, or the values of freedom, democracy, and opportunity.

Table 4: Most Important Symbolic Values

Symbolic Values Percent of Participants Judging Importance on this Basis

Represents American Government/Leadership • Government/Leadership/Authority • Power

85% 80% 20%

Represents American Values • Freedom/Democracy/Opportunity • Diversity

76% 62% 5%

Irreplaceable/Historical 36%

Prominent 33%

Belongs to American People 11%

Public Perceptions of Icon Security Based on the results of both our first survey and round table discussion with subject-matter experts, we designed our second survey to collect data on public perceptions of icon security. As described above, our first survey involved respondents who live and work in the vicinity of Washington DC, the location of many of the icons included on the survey. To account for the possibility that these respondents attached greater importance to the icons located in their community, we included a question on our second survey that asked respondents – none of whom lived in the vicinity of the population that received the first survey – to also rate the importance of the selected national icons.

When asking this second population in Iowa to rate the importance of the selected national icons, we included mention that the Federal government is the organization responsible for protecting each of the selected icons from harm or destruction. This choice of wording reflects the consensus of the experts who participated in our round table, who suggested the main differences in psychosocial impact between a terrorist attack on a national icon versus an attack on a non-icon would arise due to the public’s expectation that the government is providing adequate protection for national icons. The question on icon importance in our second survey tested the degree to which respondents believe it is important to protect each of the selected national icons.

We next asked participants to indicate the degree to which they believe that each of the selected icons is currently well-protected. Comparing the results of these two questions provides insight into whether the public believes that the Federal government is providing adequate protection to the national icons that respondents believe are most important to protect. If our survey shows that respondents believe the Federal government is indeed adequately protecting the most important



national icons, then this result adds weight to the suggestion from the round table that a successful attack on an important national icon could cause Americans to lose confidence in the government’s ability to provide protection against terrorist attacks in general.

Public Impressions of Ideal Icon Security

As discussed above, Question 1 on the second survey asked participants for their opinions regarding how important it is for the Federal government to protect each of the sixteen listed icons from harm or destruction. Participants indicated whether they considered the protection of each icon to be “very important,” “somewhat important,” “not too important,” or “not at all important.” We computed the percentage of responses in each these four categories for each of the icons included in the survey, as shown in Table 5.

The data indicate that over 85% of survey participants believed the government should provide the highest degree of protection to the

“tied” as those icons for which respondents believed protection was “very important.” These results parallel those of the first survey, which ranked the first and second, respectively, in terms of their importance compared to other national icons. This finding also supports our hypothesis that Americans place more value on those national icons that are representative of either the government or its democratic values. Finally, our results on the second survey provide initial evidence that the suggestion from experts at our roundtable that Americans hold the government accountable for providing icons with the utmost in protection may indeed have merit.

Survey participants ranked the a close third, with 84.8% of respondents considering its protection to be “very important.” This contrasts with the results of the first survey, in which the ranked tenth in importance out of the 14 selected icons, placing it next to last in the second tier. As with our first survey, we asked participants to rank the overall importance of the selected icons, rather than the symbolic importance of these icons. As mentioned above, respondents’ widely-varying opinions on the importance of the may indicate that Americans do not consider it to be a highly important icon in terms of its symbolism and prominence, but understand the potential severity of non-psychosocial consequences from a successful terrorist attack on the

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Table 5: Ideal Security of Selected National Icons*

Name of Icon Very

Important to Protect

Somewhat Important to Protect

Not Too Important to Protect

Not at All Important to Protect

Tie

r 1

•

87.9% 87.9 84.8 81.8

0.0% 0.0

12.1 15.2

6.1% 6.1 3.0 3.0

6.1% 6.1 0.0 0.0

Tie

r 2

•

66.7

63.6 57.6 57.6

51.5 48.5 48.5 48.5 42.4

27.3

24.2 18.2 30.3

30.3 33.3 30.3 27.3 39.4

6.1

9.1 18.2 12.1

15.2 15.2 18.2 18.2 15.2

0.0

3.0 6.1 0.0

3.0 3.0 3.0 6.1 3.0

Tie

r 3 •

37.5 36.4 24.2

37.5 39.4 39.4

21.9 18.2 30.3

3.1 6.1 6.1

The was not significantly far behind the in our second survey, with 81.8% of the survey population believing its need for federal protection was very important. While half of the participants in the first survey were not directly informed that the

, participants in this second survey were made aware

that the . This may explain its inclusion among the top

* Where the first survey included ” as an icon, the second survey included

y was chosen because it

received the highest number of visitors in 2006, the latest year for which visitation statistics were available. The , which ranked third in terms of visitation (behind the

) was chosen was added to the survey because it was the most-visited among

the (according to the 2006 statistics); national icons that are important primarily for their artistic value were missing from the initial list of icons included on the survey.

† It is worth noting that the ), which was not included in our survey, often receives more annual visitors than the

. Further, the a potential source of national pride. Because of these factors, it

seems likely that the results of a survey on national icon importance that included the would rank this .

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tier of icons in the second survey, while it ranked near the top of the middle tier on the first survey. Overall, this result adds some validity to our first survey’s finding that the

alls near the top of the list of most important national icons, and provides additional evidence that Americans may see the as one of the national icons requiring the highest level of protection.

It is also notable that the , which was a distant third behind the in the results of the first survey on icon importance, ranked near the top of

the second tier in this second survey. This difference in the rank between the first and second surveys likely reflects the fact that the and moved above it in rank on the second survey. As discussed above, the high position of the is likely an anomaly stemming from the wording of the survey questions, while the may have moved up the list of importance on the second survey due to greater understanding among these survey participants concerning the . Like the

suggesting that our original conclusions regarding the values that render an icon

among the most important remain unchallenged despite the slightly lower ranking on the second survey.

In addition, the results of the second survey suggest that the may rank similarly in importance to the . This icon was not included on

the first survey but ranked slightly higher on the second survey, with fully two-thirds of respondents indicating that they believe the is “very important” to protect. These results offer further indication that national icons representing American values are likely to rank consistently among the most important.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are those icons for which participants believed the government could safely provide less than the highest degree of security. On our second survey, these included the

respectively, which were also the three lowest-ranking icons on our first survey’s question rating icon importance. This lends further validation to the tiers of icon importance established in our first survey. However, it is also worth noting that while respondents to our second survey believed that the

require less protection than the other national icons included in the survey, over one-half of these respondents considered each of these icons at “somewhat important” to protect. This indicates that respondents likely believe these icons do deserve protection, but might accept at least some degree of reduction in the level of protection.

Actual Icon Security

Question 2 on the second survey asked participants to rate how well they believe the Federal government is currently protecting the selected icons. Participants chose whether they believed each icon was “well-protected,” “somewhat protected,” “not very protected,” or “not at all protected.” We computed the percentage of responses for each icon in each of these four categories, as shown in Table 6.

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Table 6: Actual Security of Selected National Icons

Name of Icon Well- Protected

Somewhat Protected

Not Very Protected

Not at All Protected

•

81.8% 72.7

15.2% 24.2

3.0% 8.0

0.0% 0.0

•

39.4 21.2 6.1

15.2 9.1 6.1

6.1

3.0

12.1 12.1 9.4

15.2

54.5 63.6 66.7

54.5 60.6 63.6

60.6

57.6 48.5 48.5 50.0 42.4

6.1 12.1 21.2

33.3 27.3 24.2

27.3

36.4 33.3 30.3 34.4 36.4

0.0 3.0 6.1

3.0 3.0 6.1

6.1

3.0 6.1 9.1 6.3 6.1

•

6.1 3.0

36.4 36.4

36.4 42.4

21.2 18.2

Based on the data in Table 6, respondents to this question clearly believed that the and the , respectively, are receiving a high level of protection. Table 5 shows that these two icons also ranked the highest as those ideally important to protect. These results demonstrate the possibility that the public may have a high level of confidence that the government is providing adequate security to the two icons that Americans believe are most important (see Table 2). This also implies that respondents may have confidence that the government is capable of providing a high degree of protection against terrorist attacks on national icons, where necessary.

As mentioned above, in asking the question about public perceptions of icons security, we sought an indication of whether the suggestion from experts at our roundtable is valid, namely that the government should be concerned that an attack on a national icon could decrease public confidence in the government’s ability to protect against terrorist attacks. Our survey results suggest that this concern is worth taking seriously for the and the

the two icons that respondents indicated as most important on both surveys. The – which respondents on both surveys indicated is near the top of the list in

terms of importance or importance to protect – also belongs in this group, with over one-third of respondents indicating that they believe the is “well-protected.” That survey participants expressed confidence that the government is providing a high level of security for these highly-important icons certainly opens up the possibility that a successful attack on either of these icons would call into question the government’s ability to protect against terrorist attacks.

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At the other end of the spectrum, there were two icons in particular that participants in our second survey felt were comparatively less secure. About two-thirds of the surveyed population believed that the are “not very protected” or “not at all protected,” with a considerable number of respondents believing that protection for these icons is nonexistent (21.2% and 18.2% believed that these two icons receive no protection, respectively). While these results indicate that survey participants believe that and are not receiving adequate protection, it is important to note that this reflects only their perception of security for these icons, and may not reflect reality. In actuality, these icons may be receiving wholly adequate protection. Further, our survey questions regarding public perceptions of icon security were aimed to test whether respondents believed that the most important national icons are well-protected; since the

were not among these, we did not attempt to interpret respondents’ beliefs regarding security for these icons.

The remaining data in Table 6 suggests that respondents were fairly confident in the level of protection that the government is providing to the remaining icons included in the survey. For these icons, approximately 50% of survey participants indicated that they believe the icon is at least somewhat protected. While less compelling than the results for the

, these results also indicate a level of public confidence in the protection that the government is providing to important national icons. This suggests that an attack on an important national icon may indeed have the propensity to undermine confidence in the government’s more general ability to provide protection against terrorist attacks. Further, this impact on confidence in government may correlate to some degree with the level of importance the public affords the national icon targeted in any such attack.

Summary and Conclusions Our surveys provide preliminary evidence that the most symbolically important national icons are those that represent the American government and/or the American values of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. Based on these criteria, we can identify two general categories of symbolic importance for national icons:

• Category 1: Icons with Nationwide Importance. This group includes those icons that represent the values listed above. The icons that we placed in Tiers 1 and 2 would fall into this category. The results of our surveys provide preliminary evidence that Americans across the country may recognize these icons as among the most important to the nation.

• Category 2: Other Icons. Icons that do not meet the criteria for inclusion in the category above fall into this group, including the icons that we identified as Tier 3 in our survey. Examples include the and other national icons that mainly represent . It is important to note that many Americans could view the icons in this category as important to the nation, even if the icons do not rank among the very most important to our survey participants. Similarly, terrorists’ reasons for viewing a national icon as important, from a targeting standpoint, may be very different from American perceptions of important national icons. Domestic terrorist groups, in particular, may have reason to target icons that are not nationally

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prominent. Therefore, Category 2 icons continue to merit a basic level of protection from terrorist attacks.

A closer look at the icons in Category 1 is instructive for understanding how the psychosocial impacts of an attack might differ even among these “most important” icons. Participants in our surveys clearly believed that the are especially important national icons, even compared to other icons in Category 1. More than any others, these icons

– and its underlying values. Our survey participants further indicated that they not only think the government should provide a high level of security for these icons, but also believe the government is adequately meeting this requirement. Due to these expectations, it is possible that a successful terrorist attack on the would have the greatest potential to undermine public confidence in the government’s ability to protect against terrorist attacks.

This may hold true for an attack on the remaining icons in Category 1, as well. Survey participants seemed to expect only slightly less government protection for the remaining Category 1 icons, but they also appeared to have less confidence in the level of protection these icons currently receive. This being the case, the success of an attack on one of these other Category 1 icons may come as only slightly less of a surprise, and could induce the public to place a certain degree of blame on the government for not taking additional steps to protect these national icons. We note here again that these observations pertain to public perceptions of icon security only, rather than actual icon security. The public view that some important national icons are not receiving maximum protection may not reflect any true gaps in security. In fact, as discussed in Section III below, this may indicate an opportunity for DOI and its NMI sector partners to inform the public about its icon protection strategy and engage the public’s assistance.

The remaining icons in this category included the , along with many of the icons Washington, DC, such as the

, and the various monuments .

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SECTION II: PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPACTS OF TERRORIST ATTACKS As the National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets (“Strategy”) suggests, a terrorist attack may have impacts on the broader population that go beyond the traditionally recognized consequences of physical destruction, loss of life, or a sudden blow to the economy: an attack may also harm our “national prestige, morale, and confidence.” Such consequences fall under the category of “psychosocial impacts” and are of particular interest to the Department of the Interior (DOI) and its NMI sector partners due to their responsibility for protecting national icons symbolic of these concepts. To support the NMI sector’s need for greater understanding in this area, HSI undertook to identify measures currently used to understand the nature and extent of the psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks, and to determine whether any of these measures might be particularly significant in the event of a terrorist attack on a national icon.

Specifically, HSI analyzed studies of the psychosocial impacts of previous terrorist attacks in the United States to understand the accepted methods for measuring such impacts and to identify any particular target characteristics that might contribute to shaping the psychosocial impacts of an attack. By systematically comparing the patterns of psychosocial impacts that occurred in the wake of previous attacks, we sought to develop a preliminary understanding of the attack and target characteristics that may amplify such impacts. The limited number of previous attacks in the United States, along with the lack of a complete set of data measuring the psychosocial impacts of each of these attacks, prevented us from drawing any definite conclusions on this topic. However, this analysis provides DOI and its NMI sector partners with preliminary insight into some of the ways in which the psychosocial impacts of an attack on a national icon might unfold. This can then inform NMI sector agencies’ strategies for mitigating those aspects of psychosocial impacts that are within their ability to influence.

Methodology We began exploring the psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks by conducting a literature review of studies documenting the psychosocial impacts of “successful” past attacks in the United States that involved the use of an IED. “Successful,” in this case, refers to attacks that were of sufficient magnitude to affect some or all of the traditional measures of the consequences of terrorist activity (economic damage, fatalities, and injuries). While we do not know if any or all of these impacts need to be present to generate a psychosocial impact, we quickly discovered that data on any type of psychosocial impacts existed only when an attack also had significant impact on traditional consequence measures. The examples of such previous attacks that we analyzed in this study included the following:

• 2001 Attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (“9/11 attack”),

• 1996 Atlanta Olympics Bombing,

• 1995 Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (“Oklahoma City bombing”), and

• 1993 World Trade Center bombing.



Notably absent from this list is any attack in which a largely symbolic national icon served as a target. Although we identified five examples of such attacks occurring over the past century, none of these “succeeded” on a level sufficient to generate studies into their possible psychosocial impacts. Appendix 1 summarizes the impacts of these attacks on traditional consequence measures. Because of this, it is difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions as to whether an attack on a national icon would affect the type or magnitude of any resulting psychosocial impact.

In an attempt to explore this issue further, we convened a roundtable with a select group of experts in the fields of terrorism, behavioral analysis, threat assessment, and consequence management. We sought their insights on how the characteristics of an attack might influence or amplify the resulting psychosocial impacts, and in particular, how the psychosocial impacts might change in the event that the attack targeted a national icon. Appendix 2 includes a summary of the main points of the roundtable discussion.

Limitations of the Data

The conclusions we drew from our literature review and round table discussion are necessarily subject to several limitations. First, the overall lack of instances of terrorist activity in the United States was a key constraint in our study. This lack of attacks, while certainly fortunate, forced us to base our conclusions regarding the psychosocial impacts of terrorist activity on a small number of data points.

Second, although we were able to identify patterns of psychosocial impact by studying survey data collected after each of the attacks we considered, the ability of such data to accurately represent the impact of an attack likely decreases over time. Shortly after an event occurs, government responses, media coverage, and other unrelated events in society all influence the public’s attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors. The complexity of accounting for all of these factors makes it difficult to isolate and identify the precise degree of the impact of any one variable.

Finally, the majority of the studies we identified that document the psychosocial impacts of previous terrorist attacks lack baseline data. While some of these studies are longitudinal in nature, they begin recording data on a particular population only after that population has experienced a terrorist attack. It is therefore difficult to determine the extent to which that population’s attitudes and behaviors derive from experiencing the attack. In addition, such studies rely on self-reporting – each participant must individually assess the extent to which the terrorist attack in question affected his or her attitudes and behaviors. References to the attack in survey questions may contribute to some participants reliving their experience of the attack, skewing responses. Further, such surveys leave open the possibility that participants may simply use different criteria when asked to subjectively assess their reactions to an attack.

Dimensions of the Psychosocial Impact of Terrorist Attacks No consensus yet exists regarding how best to measure the psychosocial impacts of terrorist activity. Experts at a June 2006 DHS roundtable on the psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks identified over 50 possible methods of measuring such impacts.4 Initial searches for data regarding such measures in the wake of previous terrorist attacks in the United States revealed a variety of approaches, making it difficult to compare data across incidences. Some of the literature focused on documenting the prevalence of psychiatric disorders occurring in the wake



of terrorist attacks. Others measured the post-attack prevalence of such cognitive beliefs as public expectations of becoming a victim of a future attack, and security-enhancing behaviors such as avoiding crowds or stock-piling necessities.

In our roundtable discussion, we sought insights on both psychological as well as social measures. Appendix 2 documents the major findings from our roundtable discussion, which, in part, validated the measures on which we identified data during our initial literature search. In addition, roundtable participants suggested that any terrorist attack could have the potential to affect levels of confidence in government, and perhaps economic behaviors or community involvement. We combined these additional potential measures of psychosocial impact with those we had identified in our initial literature, to create a broad list of potential psychosocial impact measures to form the basis of this pilot study. Table 7 provides this list of measures, which seemed to fall into four categories reflecting the emotional, psychiatric, cognitive, and behavioral changes that occur in a population that experiences a terrorist attack. We focused the remainder of our literature review on finding data documenting the extent to which these measures may have changed in the wake of previous terrorist attacks. The remainder of this section presents our findings for each of the categories in Table 7.

Table 7: Measures of Psychosocial Impact

Psychological Dimension Social Dimension

Emotional Measures Psychiatric Measures Cognitive Measures Behavioral Measures

• Levels of fear, sadness, anger, anxiety

• Optimism / pessimism about the future

• Prevalence of psychiatric disorders caused by the stress or trauma of the event

• Expectations of another attack

• Perceived likelihood of being a victim of a future attack

• Confidence in government

• Confidence in the government’s ability to prevent and protect against terrorist attacks

• Security-enhancing behaviors (e.g., avoidance of public events or crowded places, stockpiling necessities)

• Helping behaviors (e.g., volunteering)

• Changes in consumer spending patterns

• Changes in travel or tourism trends

Emotional and Psychiatric Impact Measures

As noted above, our literature review revealed that most studies on the psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks have focused on identifying any increases in symptoms of the psychiatric disorders that are commonly affiliated with experiencing traumatic events. Some of the studies we identified looked at the prevalence of emotional distress symptoms indicative of these disorders, while others studied the prevalence of the disorders themselves.5 Studies relating to the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attack, especially, document both types of impact. Below we summarize the results of studies documenting emotional distress symptoms after these attacks, then move on to discuss the findings available on the percentages of people for whom these symptoms became clinically diagnosable psychiatric disorders.



Such an analysis can yield insights for DOI and its NMI sector partners in a number of key ways. First, several of the studies we identified raised the possibility that any nationwide increase in the prevalence of emotional distress and psychiatric disorders could create additional demands on the public health system, particularly in the form of a surge of affected people seeking treatment in the immediate aftermath of an attack. In fact, a study conducted in Japan after the Aum Shinrikyo subway sarin gas attack suggested that such psychosocial casualties may “outnumber the physical casualties [of an attack] by…four to one.”6 Second, there is some evidence that the emotional or psychiatric distress a population feels can lead to changes in the cognitive and behavioral measures of psychosocial impact. In other words, if the emotional or psychiatric distress of a population is managed appropriately, this could potentially alleviate the scope and magnitude of some of the longer-lasting cognitive and social impacts. We discuss this at greater length later in this section.7

Emotional Impact of the Oklahoma City Bombing

One of the most comprehensive studies we found documenting emotional reactions to the Oklahoma City bombing8 came from Pfefferbaum et al. They compared responses to this event among residents of Oklahoma City – the population most directly affected by the bombing – and Indianapolis, a second Midwestern city of similar size that served as a control group. The cross-sectional study surveyed these populations in 1995, just after the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as in 1996 and 1998. Pfefferbaum et al. grouped the symptoms into categories representing the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) identifies as one of the most common psychiatric disorders that traumatic events typically cause. Table 8 provides a snapshot of Pfefferbaum et al.’s significant findings.



Table 8: Emotional Impact of the Oklahoma City Bombing on Residents of Oklahoma City and Indianapolis9

Oklahoma City Indianapolis

PTSD Symptom 1995 1996 1998 1995 1996

Had Intrusive Thoughts 28.9* 22.7* 17.1* 11.9 4.5

Intr

usiv

e R

eexp

erie

ncin

g

Had Dreams/Nightmares About Oklahoma City Bombing

3.2* 1.7 1.2 0.9 0.3

Avoided Reminders of Event 16.1* 6.2 n/a 5.8 2.8

Lost Usual Interests 6.7 7.1* 7.6 5.2 3.1

Felt Isolated n/a 6.3 6.5 n/a 1.8

Avo

idan

ce/

Num

bing

Pessimistic About Future 4.2 3.2 n/a 1.8 3.9

Had Sleep Disturbances 11.0 24.2 n/a 9.1 17.3

Lost Temper 9.5 7.2 n/a 8.4 4.1

Had Trouble Concentrating 8.5 18.5 n/a 7.6 12.3

Startled Easily 12.1* 12.1* n/a 5.4 5.8 Aro

usal

Felt High/Moderate Stress 40.3* 20.1* 12.9 30.2 10.4

Shortly after the attack, Pfefferbaum et al. asked the populations in Oklahoma City and Indianapolis whether they had experienced each of the symptoms in Table 8 since the bombing. They then repeated this survey at one year and three years after the event; unfortunately, their study did not include baseline data for comparison with the post-attack values. However, we note from the data in Table 8 that on all but two measures, the populations in Oklahoma City and Indianapolis each reported more psychiatric and emotional symptoms immediately after the attack than in the following years. Further, on the majority of these measures, the percentages of each population experiencing distress decreased steadily over the years following the attack, suggesting that the Oklahoma City bombing did have an impact on both groups. Pfefferbaum et al. interpreted this trend as a natural dissipation of symptoms that they believed suggested that the emotional impacts of a terrorist attack may be self-limiting. While this does not preclude the possibility of an attack causing a surge in the number of people seeking health treatment for emotional distress, it does suggest that any such surge may be limited in both size and duration.

Notably however, two measures suggest exceptions to this observation. Residents of both Oklahoma City and Indianapolis reported notable increases in sleep disturbances and trouble concentrating one year after the event. Pfefferbaum et al. did not speculate as to the cause of this seeming anomaly, but we suggest that these data indicate that some types of emotional impacts may manifest over the longer-term rather than in the immediate aftermath of an attack.

* For these measures, the difference between the Oklahoma City and Indianapolis populations was

statistically significant.



On about half of the measures studied, Pfefferbaum et al.’s data show that residents of Oklahoma City experienced greater emotional distress from the attack than did residents of Indianapolis, though as noted above, the data also suggest that the latter population did experience emotional distress from the event to some degree. Pfefferbaum et al. concluded that the population living in close proximity to the attack site experienced greater distress due to “pervasive stimulus cues in Oklahoma City” that amplified the emotional impact of the attack on the local population. Although Pfefferbaum et al. did not study media exposure to the event, we note that the suggestion that it is the pervasive extent of exposure – rather than only direct exposure – that increases the impact of an attack implies that the extent of media coverage could play a central role in determining the magnitude of emotional impact from an attack.

If validated, Pfefferbaum et al.’s hypothesis here could also prove especially significant to DOI and its NMI sector partners. Due to their status as nationally-recognized symbols, it seems possible that national icons could be the sorts of targets that, if attacked, would attract significant media attention. Given this, Pfefferbaum et al.’s findings introduce the possibility that an attack on a national icon might have the potential to cause a particularly strong emotional impact that extends beyond the directly affected locale.

Emotional Impact of the 9/11 Attack

Studies conducted after the 9/11 attack suggest similar conclusions. One of the most comprehensive of these was done by the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center (NORC). The NORC study consisted of a survey distributed both nationwide and in a sample population within New York City, the site of two of the terrorist events that occurred as part of the 9/11 attack. NORC then repeated the survey among both populations between January and March of 2002. Table 9 presents NORC’s findings on measures of the emotional impact of the 9/11 attack, organized according to the categories of PTSD symptoms used in the Pfefferbaum et al. study of the emotional impact of the Oklahoma City bombing.



Table 9: Percent of Americans Reporting Psychiatric and Emotional Impacts of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks10

National New York City

PTSD Symptom 2001 2002 2001 2002

Felt Depressed 33.3 21.1 42.2 33.4

Felt Lonely/Remote 26.8 23.8 30.7 26.3

Avo

idan

ce/

Num

bing

Felt Dazed and Numb 45.7 12.3 46.3 17.3

Had Trouble Sleeping 51.2 30.9 59.4 39

Lost Temper 19.9 17.7 27.2 20.3

Kept Forgetting Things 19.7 21.1 27.9 34

Felt Nervous/Tense 49.9 26.9 62.5 33.6 Aro

usal

Cried 60.3 20.6 74.1 31.6

As was the case in Pfefferbaum et al.’s study of the emotional impact of the Oklahoma City bombing, NORC’s data on the emotional impact of the 9/11 attack shows that the population closest to the site of one of the attacks reported greater emotional impact from the event than did the nation as whole. Notably, as Table 9 shows, this was true for all measures of emotional impact that NORC studied. Like Pfefferbaum et al.’s study, NORC’s survey did not collect baseline data that could indicate the true magnitude of any change to these measures due to the attack. Once again, however, for each emotional impact measure listed in Table 9, NORC found a decrease – sometimes of more than 50% – between the percentage of people reporting the symptom in 2001 and those who were still experiencing the symptom several months after the attacks. As Pfefferbaum et al. suggested, this may indicate that the immediate emotional impact of an attack dissipates rapidly over the subsequent four to six months.

In particular, the attacks appear to have increased the percentage of Americans feeling depressed, feeling dazed or numb, having trouble sleeping, feeling nervous or tense, or having cried recently. Although for most of these measures more than half of Americans experienced the symptom after the attack – and as many as 75% of New York City residents cried after 9/11 – these measures had decreased by about one-third by the time of NORC’s second survey four to six months later. This conforms with Pfefferbaum et al.’s inference that the psychiatric and emotional impacts of a terrorist attack may be self-limiting.

Once again, however, we observed that NORC’s findings, like Pfefferbaum et al.’s, suggest that the prevalence of some emotional impact symptoms may increase over time. Pfefferbaum et al.’s study found that the Oklahoma City bombing had a greater negative affect on the ability of people to concentrate at the time of the one-year anniversary of the attack. On a related measure, NORC’s findings show forgetfulness increasing over the year following the 9/11 attack. Since the differences here between the 2001 and 2002 results are small and may be within the margin of error, more research would be needed to determine if forgetfulness – or perceptions of forgetfulness – truly increases over the months after a terrorist attack. However, the similar trends in the Pfefferbaum et al. and NORC studies suggest that a terrorist attack may become an increasing distraction for people in the months after the event.



Unlike Pfefferbaum et al.’s study, NORC’s report does not specifically indicate which differences in response between the two populations studied were statistically significant. However, it seems notable that NORC found at least an eight-point difference* between the New York City population and the national average on five measures of emotional distress. This result offers preliminary corroboration to Pfefferbaum et al.’s suggestion that exposure to “pervasive stimulus cues” can amplify the emotional impact of an attack. We note again that baseline data for both the New York City and national populations would be necessary to validate this finding.

A 2003 book chapter on Fear and Terrorism: Psychological Reactions to 9/11 by Huddy et al. provides additional validation for the theory that exposure to “stimulus cues” – especially visual images spread through the media – increases the emotional impact of terrorist attacks. In their article, Huddy et al. report a clear correlation between emotional and psychiatric distress symptoms and the number of hours of exposure to TV coverage of the 9/11 attack. While the study was not able to identify conclusively the direction of causation, the author’s analysis provided preliminary evidence that “TV viewing elevates perceptions of risk and fear and anxiety.”11 This suggests the possibility that encouraging people to limit their exposure to visual images of an attack may help to diminish the severity of any resulting emotional impacts.

Psychiatric Impact of the 9/11 Attack

The results above suggest that the symptoms of psychiatric disorders may increase in the wake of a terrorist attack, suggesting that the prevalence of the disorders themselves may also increase. According to the 4th edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the two disorders most commonly found in populations that have experienced a terrorist attack are Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).12 The DSM-IV describes identical symptoms for these two disorders, including persistent and intrusive memories of the event, avoiding reminders of or attempting to numb feelings associated with the event, and strong persistent emotional reactions such as fear.13 According to the DSM-IV, a person must experience these symptoms for at least one month to meet the criteria for having PTSD. Someone who experiences these symptoms for less than one month qualifies as having ASD.

In addition to ASD and PTSD, the DSM-IV identifies depression as another psychiatric disorder that is likely to occur in a population that experiences a terrorist event.14 The DSM-IV lists symptoms of depression as feelings of worthlessness or guilt, difficulty concentrating, sleep disorders, and loss of interest in formerly enjoyable activities. Though the data cited above on the emotional impact of terrorist attacks is organized according to the major categories of symptoms of PTSD and ASD, the major symptoms of depression also clearly appeared in these data sets.

The results of the studies described above suggest that the symptoms of PTSD/ASD and depression may be prevalent following a terrorist attack. Further, these studies predict that exposure to stimuli reminiscent of the attack may tend to increase a person’s likelihood of developing one or more psychiatric disorders, but that the majority of symptoms of these disorders may dissipate over time without treatment. We identified several studies of the incidence of psychiatric disorders after the 9/11 attack that confirm these results.

* The Pfefferbaum et al. report included confidence intervals for the measures used in that study, the

majority of which were approximately +/-4%.



Dissipation of Psychiatric Disorders Associated with Terrorist Attacks

As noted above, data on the emotional impact of a terrorist attack suggest that any increase in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders resulting from an attack may dissipate in a matter of months for the majority of people. Table 10 provides several examples from studies that looked at the changes in these measures over time after the 9/11 attack. As shown, for each of the populations and disorders studied, symptoms decreased substantially during the first two months after the attacks; incidence of PTSD, in particular, had returned to baseline levels or lower after only six months*. This data matches the results of the studies mentioned above on the emotional impact of terrorist activity, which also found that the emotional symptoms that lead to the major psychiatric disorders of ASD, PTSD, or depression tend to dissipate on their own within a few months of the attack.

Table 10: Dissipation of Psychiatric disorders in the Months after the 9/11 attack

Population Disorder Time of Attack 2 Months 6 Months

Attack Survivors15 PTSD 37% 15% (after 1 mo.) 0.6%

NYC South of 110th St.16 PTSD 7.5% n/a 2.9% (after 4 mos.)

New York City17 PTSD n/a 11.2% 0.9%

Nationwide18 Depression Symptoms 71% 24% n/a

Nationwide19 Stress Symptoms 44% 16% n/a

Correlation between Proximity to the Attack Site and the Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders

We also identified several studies confirming that incidence of psychiatric disorders follows the pattern observed for emotional distress after a terrorist attack, with the greatest increase occurring closest to the cues associated with the attack site. One of the most useful studies on this topic appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine shortly after the 9/11 attack. Authors Galea et al. studied the rates of PTSD occurrence in New York City – the site of one of the terrorist events that occurred as part of the 9/11 attack – between five and eight weeks after the attacks. They found that “those who were in the New York City metropolitan area on September 11 were 2.9…times more likely to be probable cases of PTSD than those who were elsewhere that day.”20 In fact, even within New York City, symptoms of PTSD were highest among those who lived closest to the site of the attack and noticeably decreased as proximity to the site decreased. A 2006 study by Susan Brandon and Andrew Silke found that 10% of adults living south of 110th Street in Manhattan – which includes the bottom 2/3 of Manhattan down to the World Trade Center site at the south tip – reported symptoms consistent with PTSD. South of Canal Street – an area that encompasses the few blocks surrounding the World Trade Center site – 20% of adults reported symptoms consistent with PTSD.21 That this data follows the pattern observed for

* As noted above, the baseline incidence of PTSD among Americans is 3-4%. [Susan E. Brandon and

Andrew P. Silke, “Near- and Long-Term Psychological Effects of Exposure to Terrorist Attacks,” in Psychology of Terrorism, ed. Bruce Bongar and others (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 177.]



emotional impacts above not only provides additional evidence that pervasive stimulus cues can increase the psychosocial impact of an attack, but also suggests the potential for this impact to translate into an additional burden on the public health care system, especially in the first few months following an attack.

Attack Characteristics Possibly Influence Emotional and Psychiatric Impacts

In addition to the above observations, we also noted that on both emotional and psychiatric measures, the impact of the 9/11 attack was consistently greater than the impact of the Oklahoma City bombing. In fact, as discussed above, NORC’s data indicate that as much as half of the American population experienced one or more emotional distress symptoms as a result of the 9/11 attack. In contrast, Pfefferbaum et al. found only one emotional distress symptom occurred in more than about 10% of the population outside of Oklahoma City after the bombing in that locale. We suggest that comparing the characteristics of the two attacks could provide insight into the characteristics that might influence the magnitude of any resulting emotional or psychiatric impacts.

We identified the following differences between the 9/11 attack and the Oklahoma City bombing, any of which could have contributed to the greater degree of emotional and psychiatric impact resulting from the former:

• Scope and magnitude of the 9/11 attack. The attacks occurred in multiple locations and caused greater structural damage and loss of life.

• Visibility to “Stimulus Cues”. The 9/11 attack unfolded over time, allowing Americans to witness much of the damage in real-time (e.g., the media was present to film the second plane as it struck the Twin Towers and to document the collapse of both towers as this occurred).

• Civilian targets. Most targets in the 9/11 attack were civilian in nature, such as the World Trade Center office buildings and the four commercial airplanes.

• Iconic value of the targets. The 9/11 attack targeted structures that were familiar to many Americans, including the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers.

While the observation that these differences could have contributed to the difference in emotional and psychiatric impacts resulting from each attack is very preliminary, these characteristics could inform future research in support of NMI sector agencies’ need to understand the potential psychosocial impacts of an attack on a national icon. As noted above, an attack on a national icon may have particular potential to attract media attention and, given the high-profile nature of particular national icons, it seems possible that the resulting visual images of such an attack could be especially dramatic, such as occurred with the 9/11 attack. In addition, an attack on a national icon would largely target civilians, just as with the 9/11 attack. Together these factors support the idea that it may be worthwhile for DOI and its NMI sector partners to pursue more research to identify and refine our understanding of the particular attack characteristics that shape the magnitude of the psychosocial impacts of terrorist attacks.



Psychosocial Impact: Cognitive Measures

Understanding the potential cognitive impacts of terrorist attacks is similarly important, as data on these impacts could provide insight into how an attack might alter Americans’ opinions of and confidence in government leaders and policies. Our data on the cognitive measures of psychosocial impact comes mainly from nationwide public opinion polls that explored such topics in the wake of each of the four attacks included in this study. We first discuss poll data on the extent to which each attack affected public expectations of future terrorist events or levels of worry over becoming a victim of a future attack. We then include the results of polls that attempted to identify whether such fears affected support for the President or confidence that the government would be able to protect Americans from future terrorist attacks.

Worry Over Becoming a Victim of a Terrorist Attack

We collected data regarding the public’s levels of worry about terrorist activity from nationwide Gallup polls. Specifically, the polls asked the question: “How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism: very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried, or not worried at all?” Figure 1 displays responses to this question at the time of each case study attack, as well as the baseline level of worry about becoming a victim of a terrorist attack between these events.

Figure 1: Impact of Major Domestic Terrorist Attacks on Americans’ Levels of Worry over Becoming a Victim of a Terrorist Attack22

Gallup did not collect data on Americans’ levels of worry about terrorist activity in the few years prior to the Oklahoma City bombing. However, we noted that the low percentage of Americans that were either “very” or “somewhat” worried about becoming a victim in April 2000 – after nearly four years without an attack – suggests that baseline levels of worry about becoming a victim of an attack may be as low as 24% among the American public. Gallup’s data shows that this level was nearly 40% shortly after each of the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Olympics attacks, and spiked to 58% after the 9/11 attack. Given the unpredictable nature of terrorist activity, we interpreted this trend as suggesting that an attack serves as a reminder that terrorist attack is a real

Percentage of Americans Worried that They or a Family Member Will Become a Victim of Terrorism

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Okla. CityBombing (Apr.

1995)

(Jul. 20-21,1996)

Atl. Olymp.Bombing (Jul.

27, 1996)

(Aug. 1998) (Apr. 2000) WTC/PentagonAttacks (Sep.

2001)

(Sep. 2002)

Very Worried Somewhat Worried Not Too Worried Not At All Worried



threat, but that as memories of an attack fade over time, so do worries about experiencing a future attack.

We also suggest that the noticeably higher increase in the number of Americans worried about becoming a victim of a terrorist attack after the 9/11 attack suggests that there were certain characteristics particular to that attack that seem to have amplified its cognitive impact. As we identified in the section on the emotional and psychiatric impacts of terrorist attacks (above), some of these characteristics may include the unusual scope and magnitude of the attack, or the fact that the attack unfolded over time, allowing a high percentage of Americans to witness the event as it occurred. Although these factors differentiated the 9/11 attack from the Oklahoma City bombing or the attack on the Atlanta Olympics, we do not have enough data to begin to suggest the extent to which any of these factors may have accounted for the increased cognitive impact Gallup recorded after the 9/11 attack.

Confidence in Government after a Terrorist Attack

To understand how increased worry over becoming a victim of a terrorist attack might affect public confidence in government leaders or policies, we examined trends in Gallup polls on these issues. Perhaps surprisingly, we found evidence that despite the increased levels of worry that occur after a terrorist attack, past terrorist attacks in the United States also seem to have generated a surge of support for the President and for the government in general. Figure 2 depicts the results of Gallup polls measuring public approval rating of the President after the first World Trade Center attack, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 9/11 attack.* According to these data, the President’s approval rating increased to some degree immediately after each attack, with the 9/11 attack preceding an especially large boost of public approval for the President.

Figure 2: Impact of Terrorist Attacks on Presidential Approval Ratings23

* These data come from weekly Gallup polls that ask the question: “Do you approve or disapprove of the

way President ––––– is handling his job as president?”

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

1993 WTC Bombing 1995 Okla. CityBombing

2001 WTC/PentagonAttack

Week Before Event3-4 Days After Event~2 Weeks After Event~6 Months After Event

Percentage of Americans Expressing Approval of the President’s Job Performance



Figure 3 documents a similar pattern for public confidence in the government’s ability to prevent terrorist attacks. These data come from an ABC News/Washington Post poll that measured the level of public confidence in the government’s ability to prevent future terrorist attacks after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, and the 9/11 attack.* Unfortunately, these organizations only posed this survey question in the aftermath of each attack, so it is difficult to determine the baseline measure between attacks. However, we suggest that the especially high percentage of people expressing confidence in the government’s ability to prevent terrorist attacks shortly after the 9/11 attack, and the slow erosion of this number over the following months, suggests that this measure follows the same pattern as the data in Figure 2.

Figure 3: Impact of Recent Terrorist Attacks on Public Confidence in the Government’s Ability to Prevent Future Terrorist Attacks24

We interpreted the public’s decision to increase support for the President and confidence in the government in the aftermath of each of these attacks as a possible example of the phenomenon known in social psychology as a “rally effect.” John Mueller, who first identified the rally effect, noted that it seems to occur after events that are “international, …[involve] the United States…; and [are] specific, dramatic, and sharply focused.”25 While Mueller did not originally see terrorist attacks as falling into this category, at least one post-9/11 study by political scientists Marc Hetherington and Michael Nelson suggests that such attacks may have the requisite characteristics: they cause sudden, unpredictable death and destruction, and fear – at least in the immediate aftermath – that an outside enemy† is targeting Americans or American institutions.26

* The specific polling question used in the ABC News/Washington Post survey was: “How much

confidence do you have in the ability of the U.S. government to protect its citizens from future terrorist attacks: a great deal, a good amount, a fair amount, or none at all?”

† Although the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was not an international event, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, many Americans and the media speculated that the perpetrators could have been foreign nationals.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

May 1995 (Okla. CityBombing)

Atl. Olymp. Bombing(Aug. 1996)

WTC/PentagonAttacks (Sep. 2001)

6 Months Post-9/11(Jan. 2002)

1 Year Post-9/11(Sep. 2002)

A Great Deal A Good Amount A Fair Amount None At All

Levels of Public Confidence in the Government’s Ability to Prevent Future Terrorist Attacks



Our research suggested that the magnitude of the rally effect may depend to a large degree on the President’s actions. Hethrington and Nelson offer some evidence that a dramatic increase in public approval occurs when the President takes clear action to confront a potential rally-inducing threat to the nation.27 The President’s visit to the site of the attack on the World Trade Center immediately after the 9/11 attack may have met this criterion by demonstrating the government’s engagement in finding the perpetrators and preventing future attacks.

There is also some evidence to suggest that any public tendency to rally around the President – or support the government in general – in the aftermath of dramatic, large-scale terrorist events may lead to negative implications for the government over the long term. As Hetherington and Nelson observed “the passage of time [eventually] brings more sober-minded public evaluations of the president’s performance,” at which point the lack of previous dissent may prove especially detrimental to the government.28

This possibility may be particularly relevant to DOI and its NMI sector partners. At our roundtable discussion with subject-matter experts, there was general agreement that an attack on a national icon may have the potential to decrease public approval of and confidence in the government. Where two of the three targets in the 9/11 attack were not government enterprises, national icons clearly do fall into this category. Because of this, participants suggested that the public might be especially prone to interpreting an attack on a national icon as a government failure. Though we lacked sufficient data to test this hypothesis, we propose that at best, any rally effect resulting from an attack on a national icon might be particularly prone to rapid dissipation, and at worst, such an attack might create a backlash against public approval of the President and confidence in the government to prevent terrorist attacks either immediately or over the longer term.

Psychosocial Impact: Behavioral Measures

In addition to understanding how public attitudes toward the government might change in the wake of a terrorist attack on a national icon, we also considered how such an attack might alter public behavior. We focused on behaviors that may be important for DOI and its NMI sector partners to consider in planning strategies to respond to terrorist attacks, such as the extent to which the public will voluntarily begin to engage in helping or security-enhancing behaviors in the immediate aftermath of an attack, as well as whether the public is likely to change travel and tourism patterns or even willingness to continue spending over the months after an attack. We describe our findings for each category below, including mention of where data seems to be missing or inconclusive.

Changes in Helping Behaviors and Security-Enhancing Behaviors after an Attack

We identified several studies or polls conducted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack that suggest that Americans responded to that event with some very positive behaviors, taking steps to help others and to enhance their own security. Table 11 summarizes the changes in six different measures of these types of behaviors that occurred after the 9/11 attack. Unfortunately, we were unable to find data on these or similar measures following other terrorist attacks in the United States, so we cannot verify that the patterns identified here also hold true after other terrorist events. Nonetheless, the 9/11 studies provide useful data to allow for preliminary conclusions.



Table 11: Percentage of Americans Engaging in Helping or Security-Enhancing Behaviors after the 9/11 Attack29

National New York City

Behavior 2001 2002 2007 2001 2002

Donated to Charity* 51.4% 39.3% n/a 54.5% 41.8%

Donated Blood* 24.3 14.1 n/a 36.5 18.5

Hel

ping

B

ehav

iors

Did Extra Volunteer Work* 7.8 11.9 n/a 15.0 9.8

Avoided Gov. Buildings, Downtown Areas* 14.7 13.1 n/a 26.9 24.3

Avoided Crowded Areas† 19 16.2 n/a n/a 27.0

Secu

rity

-E

nhan

cing

B

ehav

iors

Made Emergency Plans‡ n/a 17.0 25.0 n/a n/a

The University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) collected data on three measures of helping behavior after the 9/11 attack. These included donating to charity, donating blood, or engaging in increased volunteer work. As shown in Table 11, the 9/11 attack motivated more than half of Americans to donate to charity, and nearly one-quarter to donate blood. A smaller percentage of people increased their participation in volunteer work. On all of these measures, the percentage of people in New York City participating in these actions was higher than the national average. One study found that those who engage in such helping behaviors after an attack represent those who experienced a stronger emotional impact from the attack,30 which is consistent with our earlier observation that New Yorkers exhibited more emotional distress after the 9/11 attack than did the nation as a whole. Taken together, we suggest that these data indicate a significant tendency on the part of the public to respond to an attack with a desire and willingness to help the victims, and further, that the percentage of people engaging in these behaviors may correlate with the degree of emotional impact of the attack.

This information could be useful in helping DOI and its NMI sector partners create response plans for terrorist events. The NORC data suggest that government agencies need to be prepared to handle a particular volume of volunteers. In fact, in a study of people who volunteered at the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 attack, sociologist Seana Lowe found that the one of the most common complaints concerned the inability of many would-be volunteers to find a task for which to volunteer. Lowe’s research suggests that the Red Cross alone processed 15,570 volunteers in the 2.5 weeks after the attack, most of whom waited in lines hundreds long in the hope of offering their services, and many of whom never found an opportunity to donate their time.31 In light of this, we suggest that NMI sector agencies have a plan in place at least to prevent these potential crowds from interfering with the work of emergency response personnel,

* Indicates data from NORC study. † The first data point comes from a Gallup poll question that asked participants to indicate whether they

were avoiding crowded events or crowded areas. The 19% reported here includes both respondents who were avoiding public events and crowded areas, or respondents who were seriously considering doing so. The remainder of the data in this row comes from the University of Chicago’s National Tragedy Study, conducted in 2002. The Study asked respondents about their actions during “the last week or two.”

‡ Indicates data from Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll.



if not to harness the talents of emergent volunteers and the resources offered to charities to supplement official response efforts.

The NORC data on the prevalence of security-enhancing behaviors after the 9/11 attack may suggest an opportunity for educating the public. The data in Table 11 report that less than one-quarter of people nationwide took precautionary measures to avoid sites that might be attractive to terrorists, such as crowds, government buildings, or the downtown areas of cities. NORC did not speculate as to whether these low numbers reflect a lack of knowledge of the types of sites that terrorists may find attractive, or a lack of fear of personally falling victim to a terrorist attack at one of these sites. In addition, the lack of information on baseline values of these measures further complicates the task of interpreting them. However, we note that NORC’s data indicates that among those who did engage in these actions, the behaviors had a high degree of staying power, as measured in NORC’s 2002 survey. At the same time, NORC found that the number of Americans who made emergency plans in response to the possibility of a future terrorist attack actually increased. We suggest that this latter point, especially, implies that after an attack, many Americans may be receptive to suggestions from government agencies regarding how best to protect themselves from a terrorist attack, or to act in response to an attack in the short term.

Changes in Tourism and Travel Habits after a Terrorist Attack

Beyond the helping and security-enhancing behaviors that a terrorist attack may invoke, an attack may also affect economic behaviors. The most relevant economic behaviors to DOI and its NMI sector partners are changes in tourism and travel habits. Unfortunately, we found that the majority of reports discussing changes in tourism and travel patterns after previous terrorist attacks in the United States focused on the changes that took place after the 9/11 attack. Although these reports show that the tourism and travel industries clearly suffered after this event, the available data cannot indicate whether the magnitude of this effect would have been the same if the attack had not involved the airline industry.

We did find one report that provides evidence suggesting that any terrorist attack may result in some degree of downturn in tourism, however. An Oklahoma newspaper, The Journal Record, reported in October 2001 that tourism had decreased in that state in the month following the 9/11 attack. The article notes that Oklahoma is a “drive-in” state – that is, most tourists travel to the state via car rather than airplane.32 This decrease in tourism in Oklahoma may indicate more broadly that Americans’ unwillingness to travel after the 9/11 attack was not only related to increased fears of traveling by plane*, but also may have reflected a greater level of fear of visiting tourist sites, even those located far from the most popular tourist destinations.

While this finding comes from only minimal data, the implications for NMI sector agencies are significant. If the 9/11 attack, which targeted prominent buildings in major cities, may have made Americans more reluctant to visit tourism sites by car in the more remote areas of the country, then the potential for an attack on a national icon to deter large numbers of people from visiting other NMI assets seems more likely. This possibility underscores the importance of providing

* A 2002 Gallup poll found that 33% of Americans reported that they were less willing to fly on airplanes

as a result of the 9/11 attack. [George Gallup, Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 2002, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2003), 264.]



adequate protection for national icons, not only to prevent an attack, but also to ensure that the public will continue to view NMI assets as safe destinations to visit.

Summary and Conclusions The studies discussed above suggest that any terrorist attack – including one targeting a national icon – is likely to have some measurable effect on the population in several categories of psychosocial impact: emotional and psychiatric, cognitive, and behavioral. Below we summarize the specific impacts that these studies suggest are most likely to occur in each category, based on trends observed in the aftermath of previous terrorist attacks in the United States. Given the small number of such attacks, however, these observations remain preliminary in nature.

Emotional and Psychiatric Measures: Not surprisingly, the data suggest that the greatest emotional and psychiatric impact occurs immediately after an attack. There is some evidence to suggest that the degree of exposure to “stimulus cues” related to the attack may determine the extent to which an individual is likely to exhibit symptoms of emotional or psychiatric distress. Because of this, people who live or work in close proximity to the site of the attack appear more likely to experience such symptoms.

However, the fact that a certain percentage of the broader population also seems to have experienced an emotional or psychiatric impact from previous attacks suggests that direct exposure to such stimulus cues may not be necessary. Visual images of the attack portrayed on TV may contribute to increasing the severity of the emotional and psychiatric impact and the number of people effected. Further research would be needed to determine the extent to which other attack characteristics, such as the scope and magnitude of the event, extent of damage to civilians, and inclusion of high-profile targets, may also contribute to shaping the emotional and psychiatric impacts of an attack. Despite the potential for widespread emotional and psychiatric distress after an attack, however, such symptoms seem likely to subside for most people within one to six months, suggesting that while there may be a surge in demand for public health services after an attack, this could prove to be short-lived.

Cognitive Measures: The cognitive impacts of terrorist attacks appear to be somewhat counterintuitive. While studies of public attitudes and beliefs in the aftermath of previous terrorist attacks suggest that the number of people who worry about becoming a victim of a terrorist attack may increase, measures of confidence in government may also increase. This phenomenon, known as a “rally effect,” suggests that despite fear of further terrorist attacks – or perhaps because of this fear – people tend to unite and rally behind the President and government in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Approval for the President and confidence in the government’s ability to prevent future attacks would then increase as a result.

There is some evidence that the President’s response to the attack may play the largest role in determining the magnitude of any post-attack rally: a President who demonstrates a high degree of engagement in responding to the attack may amplify the rally effect. However, as the rally effect dissipates, the potential seems to exist for a more severe backlash against the government to emerge if the public disapproves of the government’s actions in responding to the attack. There is some suggestion that this backlash may prove greater after an attack on a national icon, since a successful attack could be more easily interpreted as a failure of the government to provide security.



Behavioral Measures: Perhaps as a correlate of the unity expressed through the rally effect, an increase in community-oriented behavior appears to be the most common behavioral impact of a terrorist attack. In particular, trends observed after previous attacks in the United States suggest that Americans may step up in large numbers to volunteer their time and resources to help in recovery after an attack. There is also some preliminary evidence that this altruistic behavior persists and even increases in the months – and sometimes years – after an attack. This suggests the possibility that in the event of an attack on a national icon, DOI and its NMI sector partners may need to be prepared to handle an influx of emergent volunteers and make use of any resources offered to charities to supplement official response efforts.

Studies documenting security-enhancing behaviors after an attack may suggest additional opportunities to refine plans for responding to a terrorist attack. The patterns seen in the aftermath of previous attack suggest that most Americans did not alter their daily lives to enhance their security after these attacks. People continued to visit crowded or downtown areas, and only up to 25% of Americans took steps to stockpile necessities. However, there is at least a small amount of evidence that the 9/11 attack, at least, had a measurable effect in decreasing tourism, even to less crowded destinations. This provides an early indication that an attack on a national icon might raise the public’s perceived risk of visiting national icons to a level that could deter them from doing so, an outcome that may undermine the basic mission of DOI and other NMI sector agencies to ensure that all visitors are able to access and enjoy these shared symbols of cultural heritage.

Considered together, these potential impacts suggest that the psychosocial dimension may be an important element for DOI and its NMI sector partners to consider in its risk management and resource allocation strategies designed to secure national icons against terrorist attack. By taking steps to prevent or prepare to mitigate the psychosocial impacts of an attack on a national icon, NMI sector agencies could potentially lessen any post-attack burden on the public health system, minimize loss of confidence in government, and effectively leverage any tendencies of people to offer assistance or take responsibility for enhancing their own security in the event of an attack. Significantly, our research suggests that in preparing to mitigate such potential psychosocial impacts of terrorist activity, DOI and its NMI sector partners would also be taking the steps that are most likely to minimize both the actual and perceived risk to the public from terrorist attacks on national icons.



SECTION III: STRATEGIES FOR MITIGATING THE PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPACTS OF AN ATTACK ON A NATIONAL ICON Sections I and II, above, discuss the findings of our pilot study as they pertain to providing preliminary validation for the NMI sector’s concern that a terrorist attack on a national icon – particularly a high-profile icon of high symbolic importance to the public – has the potential to cause a significant psychosocial impact on the public. Our research provides an early indication that this impact could include a post-attack burden on the public health system, a loss of confidence in government, and a decrease in economic activity – including through deterring the public from visiting national icons. Although our findings are preliminary, DOI and its NMI sector partners have sufficient concern about these potential impacts to begin investigating possible strategies for mitigation.

The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets (“Strategy”) acknowledges the importance of protecting the National Monuments and Icons sector from the consequences – including psychosocial consequences – of a possible terrorist attack, calling upon NMI sector agencies to collaborate with state, local, and private security and law enforcement entities to ensure adequate security for national icons. The Strategy further notes that providing security for national icons is particularly challenging due to NMI sector agencies’ mission to ensure continued public access to such icons. This suggests that striking an appropriate balance between comprehensive security measures and open access to national icons may require DOI and its NMI sector partners to consider not only which security measures might be most effective, but also the psychosocial impact that the security measures themselves may have on the visiting public. To assist NMI sector agencies in determining possible mitigation strategies that account for such factors, HSI hosted a Scenario-Based Exercise built around the basic understanding of psychosocial impacts that we gained through our first two phases of research on this project.

This section will discuss the results of the Exercise, which suggested various mitigation strategies available to DOI and its NMI sector partners to reduce the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon. These include both pre- and post-attack strategies – especially the use of risk communication – as a way both to educate the public and to involve them in prevention and response efforts. The results of the Exercise suggest that DOI and its NMI sector partners can use such messaging as a tool to engage the public in prevention efforts (such as reporting suspicious activity), to manage public risk perceptions by informing and educating, and to support immediate and positive post-attack behavior among public visitors present during any attack on a national icon.

Methodology To examine the value of various mitigation strategies, we conducted a Scenario-Based Exercise that posited a terrorist attack on the

The results of our surveys on national icon importance, described in Section I of this report, suggested that the national icons located

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Working with DOI and its NMI sector partners, we assembled a group of representatives from some of the agencies that participate in the protection of prevention of potential terrorist activity, and consequence management in the event of an attack. We then facilitated discussion among Exercise participants about strategies to prevent and protect national icons from a terrorist attack, and to respond to and recover from such an attack.

Appendix 5 provides further details regarding the scenario, Exercise participants, and discussion highlights. However, we note one highlight in particular that frames our discussion below: participants recognized that the combination of live news coverage, internet messages, and cell phone imaging would make all Americans instantaneous witnesses to any such attack. They seemed to accept our earlier findings that the images of death and destruction played out in front of national icons that are important representations of American values and history could amplify the psychosocial impacts of the attack. This led participants to express concern about the public losing confidence in the government – one of the potential psychosocial impacts that we identified in Section II as a possible long-term consequence of a terrorist attack on a national icon. Participants felt that the public would come to view a successful attack in that venue as indicative of the government’s inability to protect them in a more general way. Thus, the management of public perceptions of risk, and of expectations about security became major themes in the discussion of both pre- and post-attack mitigation strategies.

Prevention and Protection: Pre-Event Mitigation Strategies The Exercise participants highlighted the value of preparing the public for any event that might occur. Many observed that after an attack, the public has a tendency to overestimate the attack’s predictability: the public begins to believe that warning signs before the attack should have been sufficient for the government to have prevented the attack. Our literature review uncovered similar evidence suggesting that such public perceptions of government “failures”– including the government’s inability to prevent the attack as well as simply to foresee it – are likely to seem inexcusable to the public in the aftermath of an attack. Such observations underscore the importance of pre-event mitigation strategies.33

Participants noted that DOI and its NMI sector partners have the opportunity, before any attack occurs, to begin influencing public expectations regarding the realistic risk of an attack and government’s ability to prevent it. In particular, Exercise participants suggested that the government should never state that it is doing its “best” to prevent terrorist attacks, as such vague statements may imply to the public that the government has greater control over attack prevention than is realistically possible. Instead, participants recommended that the government simply assure the public that the government is using all available information to counter the terrorist threat. In this way, NMI sector agencies can manage the public’s expectations about the security of national icons.

In addition, Exercise participants agreed that the demonstration of physical presence by protective services is key both to the prevention of an attack, and to creating a sense of security for the public present at an icon or a major event. Several participants suggested that there may be a need for more trained uniformed officers throughout the NMI sector. One variant of this was the observation of the likely value of a number of mounted officers in the vicinity of national icons

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during tourist season and special events. Traditionally, law enforcement officers on horseback have represented a highly visible presence, a source of information for the public, and a visible place to receive information from the public.

Further, participants suggested that DOI and its NMI sector partners could supplement their law enforcement and security efforts by engaging the public in prevention and protection efforts wherever possible. Exercise participants noted that the agencies with responsibility for protecting national icons are unlikely to have a wide-spread and comprehensive presence sufficient to notice every possible suspicious activity. NMI sector agencies may therefore benefit by asking the public to act as a force multiplier to report any suspicious activity they may notice. Exercise participants realized that members of the public have the potential to act should they suspect something out of the ordinary, but they must receive regular clues from the government about what types of activity to report, and how and to whom.

In particular, some participants suggested that DOI and its NMI sector partners could prepare and disseminate special event-related messages during the main tourist season or significant public events taking place at national icons. Suggestions regarding the types of information for these publications included instructions for both recognizing and reporting suspicious activity, and for appropriate actions to take should an emergency occur. Public awareness and preparedness should be the objective across a spectrum of potential crisis events. This information can be disseminated in many ways, but messages should be consistent and repeated often. Such publications should focus on raising public awareness and preparedness in a manner consistent with inculcating appropriate preventative actions and emergency response skills, not to increase fear. These details could be tailored to the particular national icon or event.

Finally, Exercise participants suggested that the government must also educate those public officials who are likely to become the face of government response on the best messages to communicate in the aftermath of an attack, as well as the best strategies for delivering these messages. Participants stressed the importance of undertaking such “message mapping” in advance, which they saw as an essential part of minimizing the psychosocial impact of any attack. One participant pointed to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his “successful” reaction to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. This participant suggested that the immediacy with which Mayor Giuliani was able to reassuringly address the citizens of his city and the country at large was the result of his office having devised messages for such an emergency situation in advance, and trained him to deliver them with the appropriate tone. These messages reflected the criteria for effective risk communication (described in further detail below): the messages were targeted to reassure the public that the government was doing everything possible with respect to recovery. Participants seemed to agree that the lesson learned from Mayor Giuliani’s success is that planning messages ahead of time for government officials to deliver during emergency events, including designing messages mapped to describe specific government actions in response to specific types of emergencies (e.g., a terrorist attack), could be an effective strategy for mitigating the impacts of any attack.

Response and Recovery: Post-Event Mitigation Strategies Our earlier literature review identified studies indicating that long-term adverse effects from a crisis – including psychosocial impacts resulting from a terrorist attack – are more likely to



persist among individuals who feel that the government is not addressing their needs.34 In particular, the Hetherington and Nelson study discussed in Section I of this report offers evidence that the government’s actions – particularly the President’s actions – in the immediate aftermath of an attack play a large role in boosting public confidence in the government’s ability to prevent or protect against future attacks. Both the experts at our earlier roundtable and the participants in our Scenario-Based Exercise stressed the importance of the government restoring any loss in basic social and community services to communities in the vicinity of an attack as a way of stimulating public resilience and reducing fear. However, while restoration of basic services may take time, Hetherington and Nelson’s study suggests that simply delivering a message to the public clarifying the details of the event and the government’s intended actions in response could be enough to begin reducing potential psychosocial impacts from the attack in the immediate aftermath.

Both the experts at our earlier roundtable and the participants in our Scenario-Based Exercise recognized the importance of the government’s messaging or risk communication strategy as well. Participants noted that even in the absence of other basic services, frequent messages could verify to the public that the government is functioning. In addition, sending such messages could serve as a symbolic indication that the government is “taking charge” of the situation and “doing something,” which participants believed has significant value in terms of reducing the impacts of any attack. Through our literature review, we identified a study on “Risk Perception and Terrorism” that outlined specific criteria for maximizing the effectiveness of such risk communications, including:

• Expressing empathy for those who experienced the attack,

• Providing information on the details of the attack and any threat of future attacks with as much specificity as possible,

• Describing the credibility of any details known about the attack or future threats,

• Explicitly describing the actions the government plans to take in response to the attack, and

• Providing detailed instructions regarding the best actions the public can take in response to the attack.35

Exercise participants agreed on the importance of each of these factors, noting in particular that government efforts to mitigate the psychosocial impacts of an attack should include post-event communications that both provide honest information about the attack and future threats, and educate the public to enable people to help themselves and take necessary precautions to enhance their own security. Participants stressed their belief that messages should be clear and accurate rather than speculative, as retracting information could cause confusion among the public and undermine public confidence in the government’s messages and ability to respond.

In addition, participants at both events noted that although the government is often wary of the media, working closely with them in the aftermath of an attack may be vital to ensuring that the dominant message to the public consists of factual information from the government rather than speculation created by the news media. Our literature review provided further validation that consistent and complete media coverage of a spokesperson that the public sees as an expert may enable government officials to retain the public’s trust. It also may minimize psychosocial



impacts, especially anxiety, fear, and the cognitive and behavioral changes these feelings induce.36

However, some Exercise participants were of the opinion that, in general, the government could do a better job of putting the right person in front of the media than during some past crises. They argued that the public would prefer to hear from the Mayor, Governor, President or relevant elected officials, whom the public will look to as the face of the government’s response. Exercise participants noted that during the response to Hurricane Katrina, a CNN reporting crew was first on the scene rather than a government official. Participants remembered that confidence in the government to handle the situation did not rise until the public saw an official government presence in New Orleans several days later. If the government is not formally present, the public is less likely to rely on public systems to support them, and more likely to ignore instructions when government officials do arrive on the scene to attempt to maintain order.

In addition to putting an appropriate spokesperson in front of the media to convey messages to the nation as a whole, Exercise participants noted that government officials – and especially emergency management personnel – at the scene of an event could potentially use messaging as a tool to enlist the help of people at the scene in response efforts. As we noted in Section II, a terrorist attack on a national icon may result in a large number of “emergent volunteers” – members of the public who are either present at the site of the attack when it occurs, or who arrive at the scene in response to the event, and are willing to contribute their services to response and recovery efforts. Exercise participants noted that the value of emergent volunteers may be extremely high in terms of supporting official efforts to manage the immediate impacts of the attack. In particular, participants noted that first responders may be able to determine who among the public already at the scene have begun acting in a leadership role to assist others. Proper leadership from an experienced professional could not only encourage the efforts of these emergent volunteers, but in the process, focus the general public’s response on emulating that same spirit.

Summary and Conclusions DOI and its NMI sector partners have an unusual opportunity to deal directly with the public. In this context, communication at national icon venues is a natural phenomenon, and public exposure to a variety of “official” presence and messages is simplified. Our Exercise suggested that NMI sector agencies may be able to enhance their efforts to mitigate the potential psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack by taking advantage of these opportunities. In particular, ensuring a demonstrative physical presence of protective services at national icons can both enhance security and improve the visitor experience.

In addition, a review of on-site messages and communications practices at each major national icon could ensure that signage not only provides directions from point to point but also alerts the public to emergency phone numbers, first aid locations, and emergency evacuation routes from each specific place. Such messages could also explain to the public how to recognize and report the types of venue anomalies and suspicious behavior that NMI sector agencies’ law enforcement personnel are trained to notice.

Finally, to avoid unnecessarily increasing fear among the visiting public, such messages could be crafted to inform and guide visitors about how to enjoy the “iconic place” safely and securely.



Proactively communicating such messages may have excellent payoff in the event of any kind of emergency.

Beyond this, Exercise participants discussed the potential value to DOI and its NMI sector partners of working with agencies that promote travel to their major tourist venues, and with hotels throughout the region – to ensure that they, too, will remind people that safety and situational awareness should be a feature of their trips. That can include messages about remembering to plan rallying points should members of a family or tourist group be separated for any reason. It also could include government-sponsored messages about exit routes from a venue in case of an emergency, including map details. Such communications subtly prepare the public to think through their personal responsibilities and will equip them to deal with a terrorist attack or any other emergency in an unfamiliar locale. They also prepare the public to receive at-site emergency messages from the government at the moment of a crisis.



Appendix 1: Previous Terrorist Attacks against National Icons The list below includes successful terrorist attacks against national icons that have occurred since the early 1900s:

• 1983: U.S. Capitol Building (Senate). On November 7, 1983, a bomb exploded in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol Building. The perpetrators called the switchboard for the Capitol Building to warn of the bomb shortly before it exploded. The blast caused $250,000 worth of damage to art and furniture in the building, but did not cause any fatalities or injuries to people. An organization calling itself the “Armed Resistance Movement” claimed responsibility, stating that the bomb was meant as a protest against recent U.S. military intervention in Grenada and Lebanon.37

• 1980: Statue of Liberty. On June 3, 1980, a bomb exploded in the base of the Statue of Liberty, causing about $18,000 in damage. The explosion occurred at 7:30pm, when the monument was closed to tourists; as a result, there were no injuries or fatalities from the blast. The FBI attributed the attack to Croatian nationalists seeking to call attention to their cause for separation from Yugoslavia.38

• 1971: U.S. Capitol Building (Senate). On March 1, 1971, the Weather Underground successfully detonated a bomb in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol Building. The group placed the bomb in a men’s restroom and timed it to explode in the early morning hours. No one was hurt or killed in the explosion, but the bomb did cause about $300,000 worth of damage. The Weather Underground claimed that they had meant the bombing to be a protest against recent U.S. military intervention in Cambodia.39

• 1954: U.S. Capitol Building (House). On March 1, 1954 a group of Puerto Rican nationalists armed with guns entered the House gallery and sent a hail of gunfire into the chamber below. The attack injured five Congressmen; no one was killed.40

• 1915: U.S. Capitol Building (Senate). On July 2, 1915, former Harvard University professor Erich Muenter placed a bomb in the Senate Reception Room. Muenter set the bomb to explode at midnight during a holiday period when the Senate was out of session; as a result, there were no injuries or fatalities from the blast. The bomb caused minor damage in the Reception Room, including shattering windows, damaging furniture, and dislodging plaster from the ceiling.41 Muenter later used a pseudonym to claim responsibility for the bomb in a letter to the Washington Evening Star, in which he stated that he had intended the bomb to be a protest against American involvement in World War I.



Appendix 2: Round Table Agenda and Participants

Round Table Agenda

August 14, 2007

Round Table Discussion: Psychosocial Impacts of a Terrorist Attack on a National Icon

Agenda: 8:30 Check-in 9:00 Project Overview

Project Objectives and Scope Approach and Methodology Round Table Objectives

9:30 Round Table Discussion, part 1 12:30 Lunch; Recap of Discussion Themes 1:30 Round Table Discussion, part 2

3:30 End of Day Summary and Closing Remarks Discussion Questions: The following questions are intended to provide a starting point for discussion:

1. What are the current attitudes and beliefs of the country toward terrorism and terrorist attacks on our homeland? How has the psychosocial impact on the public of the 9/11 terrorist attacks evolved over time?

2. What have been the key influences on public attitudes and feelings regarding homeland security?

3. Which types of potential terrorist events are likely to be tipping points for the public, in terms of causing adaptation, habituation, or sensitization to terrorism? How do such modes of response influence the psychosocial impacts of terrorism?

4. What would be the likely impact of a terrorist attack on a national icon, particularly an icon that is a purely symbolic target )? Why might terrorists target a purely symbolic national icon?

5. Do the characteristics of an attack (targeted icon, number of casualties, type of casualties, type of attack, identity of attackers, etc.) influence the psychosocial impacts on the public? Are some factors more important (more influential) than others?

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Round Table Participants • is a Behavioral Science Consultant on

counterintelligence and national security issues. He regularly teaches and consults with law enforcement agencies, the Intelligence Community, and DoD. As a

is a

Board-Certified Forensic Psychologist who worked for with the U.S. Secret Service for more than a decade helping to develop, refine and study behavior-based protocols for threat assessment and protective intelligence, and he also serves on the Forensic Psychology Advisory Board for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. He

• retired in July 2002 from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he

In that position, worked to integrate

DoD’s technical and operational activities to deal with WMD. has been a scientific advisor to the UN Secretariat, and has served on advisory committees for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization, the Institute for Nuclear and Geologic Sciences of New Zealand, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, and was on the University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory. He has been a consultant

. He is currently on program review committees for the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

• is an ethnographer who specializes in national security and the anthropology of work. is the Lessons Learned Program Manager at the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a former Associate of the National Intelligence Council, a former Visiting Scholar at the Sherman Kent Center, and

•

came to The George Washington University after a 21-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency, where, he

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of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat for President Jimmy Carter, led a research program in the psychology of treason, and initiated the U.S. government program in understanding the psychology of terrorism in the late 1970s. He has published widely on crisis decision-making, leadership, and the psychology of political violence and terrorism. His most recent book,

.

• and serves as a Consultant to the Department of Defense Counterintelligence Field Activity and the National Threat Assessment Center. He finished his 25-year career with the Secret Service as

initiated and developed a new unit charged with conducting research, training, and operational support for the prevention of targeted violence, including public official-directed violence, school shootings, stalking, and workplace violence.

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Highlights of Round Table Discussion 1. What are some of the psychosocial impacts of terrorism in general?

a. Due to size of nation very few events would have a universal hit on the nation’s “psyche,” but some factors could magnify the psychosocial impact of any attack, including:

i.

b. The 9/11 attack clearly had a psychosocial impact

i. Unlike what we see on TV or in the movies, panic is not the natural response of people to a social calamity

ii. What we saw after 9/11 was an increase in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), drinking/smoking, and family violence

iii. Avoidance of cities and crowds – people stayed at home more, changed their shopping patterns to go to less crowded places or to go to the mall at less crowded times of the day/week

iv. These reactions were especially strong in the areas closest to the sites of attack

c. 9/11 also caused more long-term adaptation across the country – a “new normalcy” that indicates people’s attitudes have changed in specific ways

i. More xenophobic as a population, specifically towards Islamic people; out-group threat increases after an attack

2. Increased vigilance – population on a flight is less tolerant of aberrant behavior

a. People’s feelings of personal vulnerability and fear are the main components of short- and long-term psychosocial impacts; any demoralization seems to be transient

i. Much of the fear of terrorism felt after an attack is due to the unpredictable nature of terrorist attacks, and coordinated attacks further magnify the fear quotient

ii. We also feel most helpless when we’re supposed to take care of someone and we can’t do it

iii. Therefore, the unpredictable nature of terrorism causes adults to fear that they will be unable to cope; there is a fear of loss of competency

3. What might be the psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon?

a.

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ii.

b. Due to the importance of vulnerability in understanding psychosocial impact, attacking an icon might not demoralize America unless it made people feel personally vulnerable;

i. is more likely to arouse a large psychosocial impact because now we expect the government to be aware of the risk of terrorism and to have taken steps to protect us

ii. The greatest impact may very well be on faith in government, because we assume our government would give these icons the highest protection and the government is also directly responsible for protecting national icons

iii. However, it is possible that an attack on an icon that did not result in mass casualties would decrease confidence in government and possibly morale, without increasing the sense of vulnerability

iv.

c.

i. People in different regions feel different degrees of attachment to national icons; some targeted structures may only be well-known to the people who live near them

ii.

iii.

4. How can the government best respond to and promote recovery from the psychosocial impacts of terrorism?

a. Psychosocial impact of terrorist attacks in general is affected both before and after the fact by the government's response to people’s feelings of vulnerability and fear

i. After 9/11, bringing people together and having them identify with each other helped manage the psychosocial impacts because it is easier to mourn and heal as a collective

ii. At the same time, media exposure after 9/11 had the whole country sensitized to terrorist events

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b. The longer-term government response after an attack must meet the public’s need for information without providing so many alerts that people become habituated and began to feel skeptical of the government's ability to protect from terrorism

i. Constant changes in the terrorism threat level (color chart) made the public habituate after 9/11; we need information but the government giving out fear-inducing information too frequently caused people to stop listening to the warnings – people have to continue to live their lives even if the government is saying that threat is imminent

ii. This kind of habituation may reflect a lack of confidence in government and skepticism that government can protect us from terrorism

iii. However, if the public is kept in the dark by the government then people begin feeling a further loss of control and confidence, and their uncertainty can lead them to have less confidence in government and to act in unpredictable ways

c. Government’s immediate response should be measured, and focused on the facts and the most immediate problems

i. Government should resist the urge to speculate in order to provide immediate answers because backtracking by the government can cause confusion and problems

ii. Government should reassure people that we will determine who is responsible, and should outline steps to prevent a follow-on attack in the short-term, then discuss/focus on strategy to mitigate damage – get away from rush to vengeance

iii. One of the worst things that the government can do during a crisis is not provide basic necessities as quickly as possible – continuity of social and community services tends to have a very calming effect on people

iv. In the aftermath of a terrorist attack the Israelis clean up right away and reopen to show that life goes on; this mitigates the impact of the attack

d. Government should choose a spokesperson carefully and use the media as a tool

i. Be very careful to not let military speak to the public over the media, because this can cause panic

ii. Don’t reach for the President early, because once they are the talking head you can’t pull him back later; don’t want the President out there in front – other person can be sacrificed if necessary

iii. Most government treats the media as adversarial, instead of as a communication tool for distribution of information; government should give the media a steady flow of information, otherwise the media will cover the event with speculation based on what they have in memory

e. Never state that we are doing the best we can – state that future attacks are possible but that we are using the information available to us to counter the terrorists

i. Be careful not to be absolute in guarantees, don't act with bravado, and be realistic in reactions



ii. There is no absolute security – need to manage expectations of the American people for the security of icons and other targets

iii. California government provides good examples of nudging people toward feeling secure while simultaneously accepting and acknowledging the constant risk of earthquakes and wildfires

5. How can the government best prevent or prepare for the psychosocial impacts of terrorism?

a. In the best preparedness strategies, balance is key

i. Showing your force is important as part of protective action, hardening potential targets

ii. One recent study found a 20% reduction in the likelihood of a target being selected for attack when efforts were undertaken to harden that target; terrorists will generally pick a softer target if available

iii. Important to note that when a terrorist attack is unsuccessful, there is a tendency for the terrorists to attack the same target until they succeed (at least in the case of al Qaeda)

iv.

v. Also need to balance the need to provide security information to the public with the need to keep information on security gaps away from the potential terrorists – some of our decisions in an obvious, public way have created wonderfully attractive vulnerabilities, such as the ease of blowing up screening stations in sea ports or airports as a method of shutting down the entire port

b. Citizen participation in choosing security measures is really important, as is measuring and monitoring public acceptance of security measures

i. Even if additional security measures are not implemented, people feel the need to know that there was at least a thought out there

ii. Studies at the found that visitors who are researchers get annoyed with the repetitive screening they have to go through during every visit, but tourist visitors don’t mind the security screening

c. Public’s overall impression of government preparedness may be inflated by the amount of attention and money going to this issue, yet it only takes one failure to cause skepticism and lack of confidence in government preparedness efforts

i. Concern about the reaction to the money already spent if another attack happens

ii. One big problem is that people don’t see the overall success rate of counterterrorism programs, only failures, and then they become cynical if an attack (a “failure”) occurs; the issue is often that our failures are trumpeted while our successes are ignored or cannot be reported

iii. If you do everything you can to prepare and an event still occurs, no one will care that the job was done correctly or even that you managed to mitigate the damage after the event

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iv. Build realistic confidence by advertising the government’s “low error rate” or other measure of success in preventing attacks

d. Difficult to measure government preparedness, and metrics may not be the best way

i. DHS constantly asks what is our performance in protection measures, using metrics – each sector lead must explain how they measure success, and the only answer they can give is that they haven’t had an event as of yet.

ii. Also, attempts to justify grant money and investment against a set of metrics can actually drive government to make bad decisions because it leads to building capacity, not ability

iii. However, a potential hazard of using the lack of an attack as a metric is that it implies that you have failed if you have an attack when in fact that may not be the case – the attack is the end of a long sequence

iv. Only metric that matters is the measure of the success rate of a sequence of fake attack attempts: How many runs against my own system did I catch?

v. Can only measure deployment against a plan, but not against what may have happened without the plan

e. Federal government officials come into office unprepared to deal with terrorism

i. Training would be good for incoming cabinet members and politicians to make them aware of terrorist threats and to get them working together on this problem

ii. War-gaming that the military does is really important

f. At the state level, preparation for terrorism is easier to sell because it can be argued that the capabilities are also needed for natural disaster preparation

i. Due to regular natural disasters in CA, they are the forefront

g. Justifying funding for prevention of attacks on national icons could look at the Secret Service as a model

i. The Secret Service was successful in shutting down Pennsylvania Ave. based on vulnerability, rather than metrics

ii. Did not spend time on the idea of the icon purely for its value, but argued that if it were hit during a celebration the consequences would be more severe, plus the fact that it could make it more valuable to a terrorist as a target



Appendix 3: Survey 1 Methodology and Findings Participants in the first survey included 53 employees of the Homeland Security Institute (HSI). The survey included questions that allowed each participant to rank a selection of fourteen icons in order of their “importance to nation,” to list any missing icons that the participant felt should have been included in the list, and to explain the values that s/he considered most important in ranking the selected icons. The icons included in the survey were those that we expected Americans to consider “most important,” based on both visitation statistics and DOI’s years of experience in administering national icons. Results from this survey allowed us to create a ranked and tiered list of the most important national icons, along with a set of categories that describe the correspondingly important values that these icons symbolize.

Demographics of Survey 1 Participants

The figures below provide basic demographic information on the population that participated in Survey 1.

Figure 4: Gender of Survey 1 Participants

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Figure 5: Ages of Survey 1 Participants

Figure 6: Familiarity of Survey 1 Participants with Selected Icons

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Icon Frequency Diagrams

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Appendix 4: Survey 2 Methodology and Findings The second survey included 31 participants from a small college in Iowa. This survey served two purposes. First, it verified the tiers of “most important” national icons that we developed from the results of the first survey. In addition, we used the second survey to ask participants for their impressions of the adequacy of current security measures the government uses to protect icons. The results of both the first survey and the round table discussion suggested that one of the main factors differentiating an attack on a national icon from an attack on a non-icon would be the public’s expectations of the level of security that the government is providing to national icons. Asking survey participants for their opinions provided us with a basis for predicting how this factor might influence the magnitude of any psychosocial impacts of a terrorist attack on a national icon.

Demographics of Survey 2 Participants

The figures below provide basic demographic information on the population that participated in Survey 2.

Figure 7: Gender of Survey 2 Participants

0 10 20 30 40 50 60Percentage of Participants

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Figure 8: Ages of Survey 2 Participants

Figure 9: Familiarity of Survey 2 Participants with Selected National Icons

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Survey 2 Participants' Familiarity with Selected Icons

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Appendix 5: Scenario-Based Exercise Agenda, Participants, and Scenario

Scenario-Based Exercise: Agenda

October 25, 2007

Scenario-Based Table Top Exercise: Psychosocial Impacts of a Terrorist Attack on a National Icon

Agenda: 8:30am Check-in 9:00 Introductions and background

9:15 Objectives for the day and introduction of the game process 9:30 Overview of scenario 9:45 Session I: Attack Consequences and Response Resources

10:30 Break 10:45 Session II: Engaging the Public

12:00 Working lunch: focus on homeland security mission space and the impact of attacks on national icons

12:45 Break 1:00 Session III: Prevention and Protection Measures 2:15 Break 2:30 Session IV: Prevention – Indicators and Warnings 3:30 Summation and conclusions 4:00 Concluding remarks by participants Objectives:

• Based on research and the results of table top exercise, determine what actions should be taken to prevent and protect against terrorist attacks on national icons.

• Determine the role of the public in our prevention and protection efforts to secure the national icons,

specifically looking at how we may engage the public in situational awareness and inform them of their responsibilities.



Scenario-Based Exercise: Participants • Sponsor: – , Department of Homeland Security, Science

and Technology Directorate

• Sponsor: – , Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate

• Analytic Stakeholder: Department of the Interior, Office of Law Enforcement, Security, and Emergency Management

• Facilitator: Homeland Security Institute

• National Archives Building

• , Commercial Facilities Sector, National Infrastructure Protection Plan

• Healthcare and Public Health Sector, National Infrastructure Protection Plan

• Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Uniform Services University of the Health Sciences at Bethesda Naval Hospital

• Emergency Services Sector, National Infrastructure Protection Plan

• Technical Security Division, Office of Protection Services, Smithsonian Institution

• National Mall and Memorial Parks, National Park Service

• Healthcare and Public Health Sector, National Infrastructure Protection Plan

• Office of Risk Management, Department of Homeland Security

• on detail to the Office of Law Enforcement, Security, and Emergency Management, U.S. Department of the Interior

• Office of the National Capital Region Coordination, Department of Homeland Security

• Member, Board of Directors, Appalachian Search and Rescue Conference; Homeland Security Institute

• Homeland Security Institute





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Scenario-Based Exercise: Scenario for Discussion

We used a large-scale icon attack scenario as a starting point for discussion during the Scenario-Based Exercise.

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Scenario-Based Exercise: Highlights 1. Prevention and Protection Strategies: Role of the Government

a. We could charge admission to the icons to increase security as necessary, but at some point, people will stop visiting because of the cost and market forces will come to bear – need to strike a balance

b. Smithsonian conducted a survey about the impact of enhanced security measures and found that public acceptance of the measures was high, but the threshold/patience level is 15 minutes of wait time for security checks

c.

iii. Any countermeasures of that type would be extremely costly in terms of meeting the mission to make national symbols accessible to the public

iv. If the collapses it can be rebuilt bigger and stronger, but the problem of continuing psychosocial impact arises from the public seeing

2. Prevention and Protection Strategies: Engaging the Public Through Effective Risk Communication

a. If you change the awareness level in people you will change their behavior and reactions in the event of an emergency as well as their perspective of the security they have in their lives and that of the government’s role (raise confidence)

b. The message must be contoured to your audience or else you can repeat it a hundred times and people will swear they never heard you say it

i. Neighborhood watch is a good example: you don’t just put up signs but distribute papers documenting past crimes and giving examples of the kinds of behavior that are suspicious (this was done in Falls Church, VA)

ii. Citizens become active and alert when they know specifically what to watch for and what to do

iii. Inform the public of the risks and how they should respond so that people can mentally rehearse what they would do in the event of an emergency

iv. In Metro stations, signs remind riders to be aware of unattended bags and packages left on trains

v. People should discuss meeting points with family members beforehand, knowing that lines of communication will most likely be cut off

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vi. so they ask the public to be a force multiplier and report suspicious activity; the public seems to have an interest in participating

c. We have a large population of people who are willing to make a report if they see something suspicious, but how do we educate people on what to report and encourage them to do so?

i. Six years since 9/11, fatigue has set in with regard to vigilance – a person’s threshold for calling to report suspicious activity has risen such that people are now less likely to make a call than they were 4 or 5 years ago

ii. The public’s awareness of risk rises and declines – there are things we can do to keep the issues in people’s minds, but even so, the public's awareness will wane sometimes

iii. Rephrase the public’s role: these are your national icons, it is your responsibility to help ensure their protection

iv. There are things that facilitate the reports of suspicious behavior, but there are many obstacles, for example, hesitation to make reports for fear of being accused of racial profiling

v. Right now when you enter the only sign of a security presence is the guard that searches your bag upon entry, then after that, security falls from peoples’ minds as they tour

vi. Can use a large sign to notify people of their role in security when they enter a or national icon: include a list of activities that should be reported as well

as the steps that people should be taken in the event of an emergency – letting people know the safest way to evacuate the building and what they should expect from staff in terms of assistance, etc.

vii. Counterpoint: the value of signs and messages is limited due to concerns for aesthetics; distributing brochures will cause problems with traffic flow as people stop to read them in addition to increasing trash, etc.

viii. Counter-counterpoint: To some degree the National Park Service is accustomed to building in messages directing people where to go/not go (e.g. in the Everglades: “do not feed the alligators”)

d. Perhaps there is a national message, an integrated approach to address the public’s role in the event of a mass emergency (general message applicable to the public at large)

i. Messages in and of themselves do not really penetrate our minds; an advertising campaign does not promote psychosocial resiliency

ii. Having pre-prepared messages that can quickly be disseminating through the media to address the public’s concerns should be our primary focus

iii. Notifying people through cell phones will not work in the event of an emergency, etc., is still helpful though because if they are aware of these possibilities beforehand, they will be less likely to panic

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iv. Could let people know that text messaging has the lowest bandwidth so calls from cells phones should be the last form of communication in the event of an emergency to avoid jamming the cell system as we saw in 9/11; no one is spreading this message that landlines and text messages are the best form of successfully communicating in an emergency

e. Do we want to keep people constantly on edge? Couldn’t signs just be posted during times of heightened risk (e.g., during major events) rather than year-round? The approach could be seasonal

i. The season also affects the number of security personnel on site, etc., but there is no system in place to increase public awareness accordingly

f. Are the systems in place/those proposed trying to protect the people or the icon?

i. Smokey the Bear: you helped to prevent forest fires to save the forests, not yourself

ii. Both need to be addressed: the icons carry great significance, but the human death toll raises the most attention

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bongar, Bruce. “The Psychology of Terrorism: Defining the Need and Describing the Goals.” In

Psychology of Terrorism, edited by Bruce Bongar, Lisa M. Brown, Larry E. Beutler, James N. Breckenridge, and Philip G. Zimbardo, 3-12. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Bongar discusses the developing threat of “megaterrorism” – a tactic used by terrorists to kill as many people as possible as the cost of pursuing a political objective. This shift in terrorism – from wanting to gain attention without killing a lot of people to causing as many deaths as possible – has left the government and military unprepared to deal with the unprecedented numbers of medical and psychological casualties should a WMD attack occur. Fear, stress, and exhaustion, for example, cause more casualties than physical violence, an effect that has been heightened by 24-hour news networks. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were followed by an insufficient mental health response, the result of inadequate disaster training among many mental health professionals.

Brandon, Susan E., and Andrew P. Silke. “Near- and Long-Term Psychological Effects of Exposure to Terrorist Attacks.” In Psychology of Terrorism, edited by Bruce Bongar, Lisa M. Brown, Larry E. Beutler, James N. Breckenridge, and Philip G. Zimbardo, 175-193. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

The authors found that the length of exposure to a harmful (or potentially harmful) event directly correlates to the intensity of an individual’s response. The attacks on 9/11 produced effects in concentric circles; those living in New York City reported having felt the highest levels of sustained distress, while the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) decreased with distance from Ground Zero. For all people affected, distress dissipated significantly with time. The authors also took an in-depth look at adaptive behavior, compensatory responses, positive emotions, affective and cognitive reappraisal, habituation and sensitization. They argue that a national discussion of unconventional attacks would help to familiarize the public to terrorist attacks and possibly lower disruption should an attack occur, in addition to informing response, recovery, education, and preparedness strategies.

Brück, Tilman, and Bengt-Arne Wickstrom. “The Economic Consequences of Terror: Guest Editors’ Introduction.” European Journal of Political Economy 20 (2004): 293-300.

The authors argue that it is extremely difficult to quantify the costs of terrorism given the difficulty entailed in defining damage and measuring losses, especially with regard to second-order and indirect effects. Nonetheless, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) estimated the costs of the 9/11 attacks as $14 billion USD for the private sector, $1.5 billion USD for state and local government, $0.7 billion USD for the U.S. federal government, and $11 billion for rescue and clean-up operations. Over the long term, fear and other indirect effects of terrorist attacks also have harmful repercussions for the economy. Widespread uncertainty felt after 9/11, for example, reduced consumer spending, slowed investment, and increased the level of unemployment.



Butler, Adrienne Stith, Allison M. Panzer, Lewis R. Goldfrank. Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism: A Public Health Strategy. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003.

Terrorism can be psychologically devastating, causing a range of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive reactions. As such, addressing the psychological health of the public immediately following an attack is critical. Currently, however, the nation’s mental health, public health, medical, and emergency response systems are not capable of meeting the psychological needs that would arise following an act of terrorism as many gaps in coordination, services, and training continue to exist. Managing the psychological consequences of terrorism will necessitate an array of interventions pre-event, event, and post-event by a variety of service providers.

Butler, Lisa D., Leslie A. Morland, and Gregory A. Leskin. “Psychological Resilience in the Face of Terrorism.” In Psychology of Terrorism, edited by Bruce Bongar, Lisa M. Brown, Larry E. Beutler, James N. Breckenridge, and Philip G. Zimbardo, 400-417. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Findings from countries targeted by terrorists suggest that a significant group of persons directly exposed to attacks (18% to 50%) develop symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Individuals indirectly exposed also experienced various levels of trauma symptoms depending on the amount of television news coverage viewed. The authors also analyzed coping both during and after an attack. Following 9/11, people who used denial, self-distraction, or disengagement suffered considerably greater levels of distress and trauma symptoms than those engaged in either actively coping with or accepting the situation. Crain, Nicole V., and Mark W. Crain. “Terrorized Economies.” Public Choice 128, No. 1-2 (July 2006): 317-349.

Crain, Nicole V., and Mark W. Crain. “Terrorized Economies.” Public Choice 128, No. 1-2 (July 2006): 317-349.

This paper explores the macroeconomic consequences of terrorism using data collected from 147 countries over the period of 1968-2002. Analysis of this data shows that the number of terrorist attacks and related casualties has a direct impact on a country’s or region’s economic performance. Danieli, Yael, Brian Engdahl, and William E. Schlenger. “The Psychosocial Aftermath of Terrorism.” In Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences, and Interventions, edited by Fathali M. Moghaddam and Anthony J. Marsella, 223-246. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004.

Danieli, Yael, Brian Engdahl, and William E. Schlenger. “The Psychosocial Aftermath of Terrorism.” In Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences, and Interventions, edited by Fathali M. Moghaddam and Anthony J. Marsella, 223-246. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004.

This chapter examines terror as a form of psychological warfare, complete with a summary of existing empirical literature on the related trauma and consequences of terrorism. In the event of an attack (either real or potential), widespread panic and anxiety are common, suggesting that long-term social and psychological effects are just as damaging, if not more so, than the “acute effects.” Research has also shown that



intentional, sudden, and violent man-made disasters are far more psychologically damaging than natural disasters of similar magnitude and consequences.

Delahanty, Douglas L. “Are We Prepared to Handle the Mental Health Consequences of Terrorism?” The American Journal of Psychiatry 164, No. 2 (Feb. 2007): 189-191.

Research on the psychological consequences of both the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11, 2001 attack show a high occurrence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among individuals living in close proximity to and/or directly impacted by the attacks. Six months after 9/11, however, victims demonstrated a significant decline in symptom severity. The article concludes by acknowledging that there is little consensus on the most effective way to address issues of mental health in response to a mass-casualty terrorist attack.

Flicker, Marcia H. and Meryl P. Gardner. “Which Is Scarier: The Mall or the Mail?” Paper presented at the Direct Marketing Education Foundation Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, October 20, 2002.

Following 9/11, many Americans experienced increased anxiety when gathering in crowds. Marketers believed this would decrease store-based purchasing and create a dramatic rise in catalog and Internet shopping, a hypothesis based on past consumer reaction to crime in the early 1990s. The 2001 anthrax attacks, however, made Americans fearful of the U.S. mail. With this in mind, the paper addressed the question of whether American shoppers were more scared of the mall or mail. The results of the study show that post-9/11 there was no noticeable decrease in the number of people shopping in malls. Instead, individuals adapted their behavior to avoid crowded areas, shopping on weekdays rather than weekends, for example. Further analysis indicated that proximity and exposure to the actual events (9/11 or anthrax attacks) had less of an effect on behavior than originally expected. Rather, psychological factors had a more profound impact on consumers’ reactions and behavior modifications. However, while decreases in retail store holiday shopping did occur, this drop was not a direct result of fear of terrorism, but rather an economic downturn and “general malaise after the Sept. 11 attacks.” It is important to note that catalog shopping also declined, while web-based sales increased dramatically for reasons of convenience and economics, more so than fear.

Frey, Bruno S., Simon Luechinger, and Alois Stutzer. “Calculating Tragedy: Assessing the Costs of Terrorism.” CESifo Working Paper 1341 (November 2004): 1-31.

This paper uses empirical means of measurement to show the damage created by terrorist attacks. Researchers drew upon data from the Euro-Barometer Survey Series (1979-1999) to determine the number of terrorist attacks and casualties for any given country. Additional information derived from the survey series included terrorism’s impact on foreign direct investment, savings and consumption, stock markets, foreign trade, the urban economy, and national income and growth.

Frey, Bruno S., and Dominic Rohner. “Protecting Cultural Monuments Against Terrorism.” Defence and Peace Economics 13, No. 3 (June 2007): 245-252.



This article defines cultural monuments as those “with which the whole nation identifies itself.” These monuments are also generally well-known worldwide, making them attractive targets for terrorists. The authors argue that some cultural monuments will remain at high risk of attack regardless of the preventative and protective measures instituted. For these monuments, they suggest that the government reduce defensive measures, which produce marginally decreasing returns, in order to better direct efforts toward reconstruction. Should a monument be attacked, the government’s capacity to rebuild is crucial as the quick restoration of these cultural icons has a beneficial impact on the psychological health of the affected population. Quick reconstruction decreases feelings of grief and defeat. Reconstruction will also be seen as a victory over terrorism, thereby providing terrorists with fewer incentives to attack.

Greenberg, Michael, Peyton Craighill, and Alexandra Greenberg. “Trying to Understand Behavioral Responses to Terrorism: Personal Civil Liberties, Environmental Hazards, and U.S. Resident Reactions to the September 11, 2001 Attacks.” Human Ecology Review 11, No. 2 (2004): 165-176.

The article suggests that people experience fear and dread when environmental hazards have catastrophic effects not easily controlled or understood. In order to cope, individuals tend to build mental models to warn themselves of impending threats while reducing their risk. People actively engaged in such psychological and physical coping mechanisms are not capable of eliminating their worry in its entirety, but do experience an improved quality of life.

Persons experiencing strong feelings of fear and anger in response to a terrorist attack are also those most likely to support government access to personal records and take precautionary measures such as stocking non-perishable foods, avoiding crowded public places, and stopping air travel. The results of this study confirm these assumptions. Americans in general, for example, disapproved of a government review of personal records the year following 9/11, in contrast to New York City (NYC) residents who had lost the most and supported the initiative. People living close to or in NYC were also those most saddened, scared, and worried about another attack. Changes in behavior were thus markedly greater in NYC than the rest of the country.

Guthrie, Chris. “Risk Realization, Emotion, and Policy Making.” Missouri Law Review 69 (October 26, 2004): 1039-1045.

Data from surveys taken after 9/11 indicates that the level of psychological trauma reported was less than initially expected. The author argues that this is the product of a human tendency to overestimate the emotional impact of a future negative event. In actuality, these events have a less harmful affect on our sense of well-being than we anticipate.

Hetherington, Marc J., and Michael Nelson. “Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism.” Political Science & Politics 36, no. 1 (January 2003): 37-39.

The authors find that the 9/11 terrorist attacks caused a “rally effect,” defined as a “sudden and substantial increase in public approval of the president that occurs in response to certain kinds of dramatic international events involving the United States.”



The September 11 rally was the largest rally ever documented, lasted longer than any previous rally effect, and resulted in the highest approval rating ever recorded for a U.S. president. The authors present several theories regarding the origins of the rally effect, noting that none of these are sufficient to explain every recorded rally. However, the authors do note that presidential actions that are conducive to arousing patriotism seem to contribute to causing a rally. Further, as the number of media reports regarding the rally-inducing event decrease and memories of the event begin to fade, the public will begin to engage in more objective evaluations of presidential actions. This slowly erodes the rally effect.

Huddy, Leonie, Stanley Feldman, Gallya Lahav, and Charles Taber. “Fear and Terrorism: Psychological Reactions to 9/11.” In Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government & and Public, edited by Pippa Norris, Montague Kern, and Marion Just, 256-278. New York: Routledge, 2003.

The attacks on 9/11 heightened feelings of fear and anxiety among many Americans which led to less clear information processing, the tendency to overestimate risk, and increased risk aversion. The authors conducted a survey to explore the prevalence of social dislocation as a fourth consequence of fear. The survey results indicate that reported feelings of fear and anxiety have behavioral manifestations and raise the perception that future terrorist attacks will occur. Results also show that physical proximity to an attack and/or frequent viewing of television news coverage also stimulates a greater sense of a personal rather than national threat in addition to increased levels of post-traumatic stress. Fear also increased the likelihood of a negative view of the national economy and personal finances, while raising sentiments of distrust and suspicion of others. With respect to national security policy, the survey concluded that acts of terrorism generally harden opposition to the enemy “and promote support for a belligerent response, especially when the attacks elicit low-to-moderate levels of fear. When levels of fear increase, however, support for belligerent action against terrorists decreases, presumably because it raises the likelihood of further terrorist retaliation.”

Jackson, Brian A., Lloyd Dixon, and Victoria A. Greenfield. Economically Targeted Terrorism: A Review of the Literature and a Framework for Considering Defensive Approaches. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007.

The report examines the economic consequences of terrorism as well as defensive measures to protect against terrorists seeking to cause economic damage. The authors argue that the costs of behavioral change are the result of the perceived likelihood of future attacks and the potential consequences on investment, financial markets, and other economic costs. They suggest that defending against economically targeted terrorism requires investing in security preparedness measures and actions to manipulate the public’s perception of risk. If people believe that the security measures in place address the threat than they will see the situation as generally secure. If this balance is not achieved, the resulting perception of risk can produce behavioral changes with economic costs in addition to increasing the demand for security and preparedness expenditures (thereby forcing government and businesses to invest in protection measures).



Jenkin, Clinton M. “Risk Perception and Terrorism: Applying the Psychometric Paradigm.” Homeland Security Affairs II, No. 2 (July 2006): 1-14.

The author argues that it is primarily the threat of future attacks, more so than those which have previously occurred, that stimulates fear and intimidation. In other words, from a psychological perspective, “the terrorism that has not yet happened is as important as the terrorism that just happened.” Thus it is the perception of risk, regardless of whether the risk actually exists, that is capable of producing real and long-term damages. Officials must be aware that keeping people physically safe must be paired with promoting a sense of safety within the population. This conclusion highlights the importance of risk perception research as a tool through which to affect public responses to terrorism.

Libicki, Martin C., Peter Chalk, and Melanie Sisson. Exploring Terrorist Targeting Preferences. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007.

This report seeks to examine the targeting priorities of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. Every year each billions of dollars are spent at all levels of government to protect the U.S. from terrorism. However, those targets that the U.S. perceives as vulnerable to attack may not be those most attractive to the terrorists themselves. Four hypotheses are considered to explore the basis on which al Qaeda selects targets for attack. These include: the coercion hypothesis, in which terrorist attacks are designed to inflict pain to influence U.S. foreign policy; the damage hypothesis, in which attacks target the U.S. economy to reduce support for U.S. foreign policy; the rally hypothesis, in which the use of terrorism to attract recruits and gather backing in the Muslim world; and the franchise hypothesis, in which al Qaeda has a limited capability and therefore provides assistance to acts carried out by like-minded groups.

Lowe, Seana. “Community Response in a Terrorist Disaster.” University of Colorado Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center Quick Response Report 144 (2002): 1-5.

This report contains the results of interviews conducted with 23 people who provided help in response to the attacks on 9/11. These immediate responders, 20 of whom were spontaneous volunteers and the other three Red Cross professionals, described feelings of victimization, hopelessness, helplessness, and fear. The number one reported motivation for volunteering was an urgent need to better the situation of others, reclaim power, and find meaning out of the chaos. Many described their experiences as “empowering” and “healing.” The spontaneous volunteers interviewed, however, described frustration with overwhelmed volunteer management systems, which resulted in uncoordinated leadership, disorganization, and unclear information in the days immediately following the attacks. Volunteer recommendations included the creation of a family response center to open lines of communication to families, and the rapid centralization and dissemination of information to direct the actions of communities in the event of a crisis.

McCauley, Clark. “Psychological Issues in Understanding Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism.” In The Psychology of Terrorism, Volume 3: Theoretical Understandings and Perspectives, edited by Chris E. Stout, 3-30. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002.



The final sections of this article specifically look at the psychological issues raised in response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. In general, Americans became more anxious and insecure as seen among fears of flying, the preparation of wills, and increased sales in firearms. The shared threat also led to a dramatic, nationwide rise in patriotism and group cohesion immediately following the attacks, which negatively impacted the public perception of Arabs and Muslims.

Norris, Fran. “Range, Magnitude, and Duration of the Effects of Disasters on Mental Health: Review Update 2005.” Dartmouth College RED/Research Education in Disaster Mental Health (2005): 1-23.

A review of disaster literature based on 225 samples and 132 crisis events revealed that depression, anxiety, and health complications are the most common outcomes of PTSD. The data also indicated that people from developing countries or those exposed to mass violence were most negatively affected by disasters in contrast to rescue and recovery workers, who demonstrated extraordinary resilience. “Samples that experienced mass violence were more likely than other samples to be severely or very severely impaired.” Disasters “may be especially difficult for victims to comprehend or assimilate, making intrusion and avoidance symptoms more likely.”

Pangi, Robyn. “After the Attack: The Psychological Consequences of Terrorism.” Perspectives on Preparedness 7 (2002): 1-20.

The author examines fear management as a part of consequence management, the latter of which seeks to mitigate the negative psychological effects of a disaster. Terrorist attacks produce far more psychological than physical victims, making it essential for first responders to be made aware of how victims may react so that they can conduct operations accordingly. Factors influencing the rate of post-attack stress or anxiety disorders include an individual’s proximity to the attack, prior exposure to trauma, and their social network. The author recommends the creation of a mental health plan for WMD terrorism (or violent attacks in general) that contours communication, infrastructure protection, and psychological assistance to each stage of the disaster: pre-event, event, and post-event.

Schlenger, William E., Juesta M. Caddell, Lori Ebert, B. Kathleen Jordan, Kathryn M. Rourke, David Wilson, Lisa Thalji, J. Michael Dennis, John A. Fairbank, and Richard A. Kulka. “Psychological Reactions to Terrorist Attacks: Findings from the National Study of Americans’ Reactions to September 11.” JAMA 288, No. 5 (August 7, 2002): 581-588.

This article explores the findings from a nationally representative cross-sectional survey to assess the psychological impact of 9/11. The results show that one to two months after the attacks, PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) was substantially higher in New York City and in the surrounding area, where there was direct exposure to the attacks, than in other metropolitan areas throughout the country. Overall national levels of distress, however, were within normal ranges expected for a general community sample.

Schlenger, William E. “Psychological Impact of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks: Summary of Empirical Findings in Adults.” In The Trauma of Terrorism: Sharing



Knowledge and Shared Care, An International Handbook, edited by Yael Danieli, Danny Brom, and Joe Sills, 97-108. Binghampton, NY: Haworth Press, Inc., 2005.

This article summarizes findings from empirical literature to identify types of psychological distress as well as gaps in our understanding following purposeful, unpredictable mass violence. These findings indicate that many adults nationwide were disturbed by the 9/11 attacks, but that much of this distress was eventually resolved without professional treatment. The prevalence of PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) was also directly associated with exposure to the attacks, with New York City having the highest concentration of persons suffering from PTSD.

Sederer, Lloyd, Kelly L. Ryan, and Joshua F. Rubin. “The Psychological Impact of Terrorism: Policy Implications.” International Journal of Mental Health. 32, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 7-19.

The authors argue that overcoming terrorism involves understanding its psychological impact on both individuals and communities. They suggest that this requires the creation and implementation of policies to systematically bring psychological considerations into plans for terrorism preparedness and response.

Silver, Roxane Cohen. “Conducting Research After the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: Challenges and Results.” Families, Systems, & Health 22 (2004): 47-50.

The author describes the only ongoing national longitudinal study investigating the emotional, cognitive, and social responses of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This study found the attacks’ impact reached far beyond those communities directly affected and that the variability of responses could not be explained by any single set of factors. For example, individuals who watched the attacks over the television described feeling symptoms comparable to those suffered by people who directly experienced the attacks. People with pre-existing mental health problems were more likely to react to the 9/11 attacks at higher levels of distress over longer periods of time. Recognizing the difficulty entailed in collecting empirical data on responses to traumatic experiences, the author concludes that there is no one, universal response.

Silver, Roxane Cohen, E. Alison Holman, Daniel N. McIntosh, Michael Poulin, and Virginia Gil-Rivas. “Nationwide Longitudinal Study of Psychological Responses to September 11.” Journal of the American Medical Association. 288, No. 10 (September 11, 2002): 1235-1244.

This study was conducted to analyze the level to which demographic factors, mental and physical health, exposure to stressful events, 9/11-related experiences, and coping strategies can help to predict psychological outcomes over the long-term. The researchers concluded that the psychological affects of a major traumatic event felt nationwide extend beyond those persons directly impacted. In addition, “use of specific coping strategies shortly after an event is associated with symptoms over time. In particular, disengaging from coping efforts can signal the likelihood of psychological difficulties up to 6 months after a trauma.”



Sullivan, Glenn R. and Bruce Bongar. “Psychological Consequences of Actual or Threatened CBRNE Terrorism.” In Psychology of Terrorism, edited by Bruce Bongar, Lisa M. Brown, Larry E. Beutler, James N. Breckenridge, and Philip G. Zimbardo, 153-163. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

The authors report that mass violence results in more people suffering from psychiatric illnesses than natural or technological disasters. It is thus critical that officials be able to prepare and respond to terrorism to help mitigate the psychological damage and control levels of anxiety following a man-made traumatic event.

Tanielian, Terri L., and Bradley D. Stein. Understanding and Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006. Reprinted from David Kamien, The McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2006), 689-701.

Incidents of intentional mass violence, such as terrorism, are associated with the most severe psychological consequences. Emotional and behavioral consequences include PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), avoiding all reminders of the trauma, anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, and a variety of other symptoms that do not traditionally fall under PTSD. Individuals most likely affected by a terrorist attack include those who are injured, present in the vicinity of the event, first responders, and those persons predisposed to developing psychological symptoms. Vulnerable populations include, but are not limited to, children, racial and ethnic minorities, and people who already suffer from psychiatric illness.

Weimann, Gabriel. “The Theater of Terror: The Psychology of Terrorism and the Mass Media.” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma 9, No. 3/4 (April 18, 2005): 379-390.

This article looks at media-oriented terrorism, used by terrorist organizations to reach and affect large audiences of people. For terrorists, the media can become a powerful tool in their campaign to wage psychological warfare. If used effectively, the media can disseminate propaganda and make the terrorists’ cause well-known. It can also spread panic and fear, in addition to attracting support and recruits among those with whom the terrorists’ message carries appeal. “Media-wise terrorists” also “select targets, location, and timing, according to media preferences,” to gain the most media coverage possible.



ENDNOTES 1 George W. Bush, National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets, February 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/pcipb/physical_strategy.pdf (accessed October 2007). 2 Ibid. 3 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Meet on Developing a Quantitative Index of the Psychosocial Impacts of Extreme Events” (meeting summary, Arlington, VA: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, Social and Behavioral Research Program, June 1-2, 2006), 1. 4 Ibid., 8-11. 5 National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, “How is PTSD Measured?” FactSheet. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, http://ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/fs_lay_assess.html (accessed November 2007). 6 Yael Danieli, Brian Engdahl, and William E. Schlenger, “The Psychosocial Aftermath of Terrorism,” in Understanding Terrorism: Psychosocial Roots, Consequences, and Interventions, ed. Fathali M. Moghaddam and Anthony J. Marsella (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004), 228. 7 Leonie Huddy et al. “Fear and Terrorism: Psychological Reactions to 9/11,” in Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government, and the Public, ed. Norris, Montague Kern, and Marion Just (New York: Routledge, 2003), 259. 8 Betty Pfefferbaum and others, “Comparing Stress Responses to Terrorism in Residents of Two Communities Over Time,” Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 6, no. 2 (May 2006): 137-43. 9 Ibid., 141-42. 10 Kenneth A. Rasinski and others, “America Recovers: A Follow-Up to a National Study of Public Response to the September 11th Terrorist Attacks,” National Opinion Research Center (NORC) Report (August 7, 2002): 23. 11 Huddy, “Fear and Terrorism,” 264. 12 Danieli, “The Psychosocial Aftermath of Terrorism,” 228. 13 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), 463. 14 Danieli, “The Psychosocial Aftermath of Terrorism,” 228. 15 Douglas L. Delahanty, “Are We Prepared to Handle the Mental Health Consequences of Terrorism?” The American Journal of Psychiatry 164, no. 2 (Feb. 2007): 189. 16 William E. Schlenger et al., “Psychological Reactions to Terrorist Attacks: Findings from the National Study of Americans’ Reactions to September 11,” Journal of the American Medical Association 288, no. 5 (August 7, 2002): 582. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 584. 21 Susan E. Brandon and Andrew P. Silke, “Near- and Long-Term Psychological Effects of Exposure to Terrorist Attacks,” in Psychology of Terrorism, ed. Bruce Bongar and others (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 178. 22 George Gallup, Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1996, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1997), 195, 198-99l; George Gallup, Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 2002, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2003), 264. 23 CNN, “Post State-of-the-Union,” AllPolitics, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/polls/cnn.usa.gallup/012696.shtml (accessed October 2007); Karlyn H. Bowman and others, “America and the War on Terrorism,” AEI Studies in Public Opinion (July 30, 2007): 18-19.



24 John G. Geer, Public Opinion and Polling Around the World: Volume One, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), 355. 25 John E. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973), 208. 26 Marc J. Hetherington and Michael Nelson, “Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism,” Political Science & Politics 36, no. 1 (January 2003): 37. 27 Hetherington, “Anatomy of a Rally Effect,” 38. 28 Hetherington, “Anatomy of a Rally Effect,” 39. 29 Kenneth A. Rasinski and others, “America Recovers: A Follow-Up to a National Study of Public Response to the September 11th Terrorist Attacks,” National Opinion Research Center (NORC) Report (August 7, 2002): 20, 23; George Gallup, Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 2001, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2002), 242; Polling Report, “War On Terrorism,” PollingReport.com, http://www.pollingreport.com/terror.htm (accessed October 2007). 30 Lisa D. Butler, Leslie A. Morland, and Gregory A. Leskin, “Psychological Resilience in the Face of Terrorism,” in Psychology of Terrorism, ed. Bruce Bongar and others (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 412. 31 Seana Lowe, “Community Response in a Terrorist Disaster,” University of Colorado Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center Quick Response Report 144 (2002). 32 Ray Carter, “State’s Tourism Industry Impacted Little by Attacks,” The Oklahoma City Journal Record (Oct. 11, 2001), http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20011011/ai_n10149465 (accessed November 2007). 33 Clinton M. Jenkin, “Risk Perception and Terrorism: Applying the Psychometric Paradigm,” Homeland Security Affairs II, No. 2 (July 2006): 10. 34 Adrienne Stith Butler, Allison M. Panzer, Lewis R. Goldfrank, Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism: A Public Health Strategy, (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003), 45. 35 Jenkin, “Risk Perception and Terrorism,” 6. 36 Lloyd Sederer, Kelly L. Ryan, and Joshua F. Rubin, “The Psychological Impact of Terrorism: Policy Implications,” International Journal of Mental Health 32, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 15; Adrienne Stith Butler, Allison M. Panzer, Lewis R. Goldfrank, Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism: A Public Health Strategy, (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003), 122; Glenn R. Sullivan and Bruce Bongar, “Psychological Consequences of Actual or Threatened CBRNE Terrorism,” in Psychology of Terrorism, ed. Bruce Bongar, Lisa M. Brown, Larry E. Beutler, James N. Breckenridge, and Philip G. Zimbardo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 154. 37 United States Senate, “Bomb Explodes in Capitol,” Historical Minute Essays: 1964-Present, (Washington, DC: U.S. Senate), http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/bomb_explodes_in_capitol.htm (accessed November 2007). 38 National Park Service, “Chapter 1: The Statue of Liberty: Monument to an Expanding Set of Ideals,” Statue of Liberty; Celebrating the Immigrant: An Administrative History, (Washington, DC: National Park Service), http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/stli/adhi1.htm. 39 David Stout, “Capitol Hill Slayings: The Security; Despite History of Violence, Capitol is a Very Public Place,” The New York Times (July 25, 1998), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6DB1139F936A15754C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print. 40 Ibid. 41 United States Senate, “Bomb Rocks Capitol,” Historical Minute Essays: 1878-1920, (Washington, DC: U.S. Senate), http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Bomb_Rocks_Capitol.htm.

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