Emergency Response to Domestic Terrorism: How Bureaucracies Reacted to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing

"Emergency Response to Domestic Terrorism" analyzes the emergency response to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Terrorism is a complex threat, and the American government is expected to deter or intervene in every attack. For that reason, the government must be better prepared to respond to acts of terror. One critical element is to understand what constitutes an 'effective response'. To answer this key question, the author examined the existing literature and interviewed thirty-one elite participants in the emergency response to the bombing. The result is a unique qualitative case study that analyzes the response efforts undertaken after the bombing to draw conclusions about their relative success or failure.