Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism

Chasing Ghosts exposes the ill-founded paranoia that has allowed the national security state to both feed at the public trough and undermine America’s civil liberties tradition. Since 2001, the United States has created or reorganised more than two counter-terrorism organizations for every terrorist arrest or apprehension it has made of people plotting to do damage within the country. Central to this massive enterprise is ‘ghost-chasing,’ as less than one alarm in 10,000 is an actual threat - the rest all point to ghosts.Authors John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart contend that the ghost chase occupying American law enforcement and fueling federal spending persists because the public has been lead to believe that the terrorism threat is significant. The chance that an American will be killed by a terrorist domestically in any given year is about one in four million (under present conditions). Yet despite this statistically low risk and the extraordinary amount of resources put towards combating threats, Americans still worry and the government still spends billions. Until the true threat of domestic terrorism is understood, the country cannot begin to confront whether our pursuit of ‘ghosts’ is worth the cost.