Matthew Dallek is the author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security (Oxford University Press, 2016). Dallek is associate professor of political management at The George Washington University.
In Defenseless Under the Night, Dallek tells the fascinating history behind America’s first federal office of homeland security created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt appointed New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia as director and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as assistant director. While La Guardia focused on preparing the country against foreign attack and militarizing the citizenry, Eleanor Roosevelt believed that the OCD should concentrate instead on establishing a wartime New Deal and a focus on “social defense.”
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