Several student patrons are working on research papers about the Cold War era and some are focusing on the nuclear arms race and the fear of nuclear attack. It's been fascinating finding and reading materials we have in our print collection, including information published by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) in the 1950s and the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) during the Kennedy administration. (For a concise history of civil defense preparedness, read "Civil Defense and Homeland Security: A Short History of National Preparedness Efforts" published by the Homeland Security National Preparedness Task Force).

The students are just as fascinated (and sometimes amused) as I am with these documents that represent an era we never knew and a fear we can't relate to. Or maybe we can relate...our generation lives in fear of terrorism "code red" rather than the red scare of communism or atom bomb attack, but it's still a fear.

Anyways, the students and I found some more civil defense documents listed in the print Monthly Catalogs (we owned some FCDA and OCDM docs, but not as many as I would've liked), but we also found some on the internet. So I thought I'd share some of these online government sources I've discovered in my hunt for all things Cold War/Civil Defense related:

* Clips of historical "test" films at the DOE agency website.

* "Mr. Civil Defense Tells About Natural Disasters!" A government document comic book!

* "In Time of Emergency: A Citizen's Handbook on Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters" (1968).

* The "Survival Under Atomic Attack" booklet can be found in federal depositories, but here is an online transcription.

* NARA records of the OCDM.

* "Atomic Culture" article by the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.

* Not a government source, but a virtual Civil Defense Museum website created by a Civil Defense enthusiast.

* "Civil Defense Log Dies at 67, and Some Mourn It's Passing" article at NYTimes.com.


And my favorite...Civil Defense videos!

* Internet Archive's collection of Civil Defense Films and other media/film resources on civil defense.

* Some of YouTube's collection of Civil Defense Films.

Did they really think ducking n' covering under a school desk would protect them from a nuclear attack?

Assessing Publicly Available Data
From RAND website:

How much data regarding U.S. anti- and counterterrorism systems, countermeasures, and defenses is publicly available and how easily could it be found by individuals seeking to harm U.S. domestic interests? The authors developed a framework to guide assessments of the availability of such information for planning attacks on the U.S. air, rail, and sea transportation infrastructure, and applied the framework in an information-gathering exercise that used several attack scenarios. Overall, the framework was useful for assessing what kind of information would be easy or hard for potential attackers to find. For each of the attack scenarios, a team of “attackers” was unable to locate some of the information that a terrorist planner would need to gauge the likely success of a potential attack. The authors recommend that procedures for securing sensitive information be evaluated regularly and that information that can be obtained from easily accessible, off-site public information sources be included in vulnerability assessments.

The Department of Homeland Security has 25 operations centers throughout the U.S., and according to a recent GAO audit, they're not collaborating very well.

Here's the full story:

GAO faults DHS for poor management of watch centers

According to the report, DHS doesn't have a clear set of procedures in place for the operation of its Homeland Security Information Network, which in turn hampers the operations centers' ability to share information related to terrorist threats and the like.

As we saw after 9/11, the lack of coordination between the FBI and CIA put the nation at risk. Obviously, there has to be better cooperation among these 25 centers in order to avoid a similar situation. The same goes for information-sharing prior to, during, and following a natural disaster or other catastrophe.

It's alarming that "basics" like information-sharing policies and procedures are either non-existent or poorly defined at both the regional and national levels, especially given that more complex and technical processes are needed to keep the citizenry safe.