This was the first incident under the overall auspices of the new Department of Homeland Security, and about 450 federal, state, and local agencies and volunteer organizations worked together in a textbook example of interagency cooperation and collaboration with local communities. In the weeks between February 1 and May 10, 2003, nearly twenty-five thousand men and women searched 680,750 acres of land—in essence, walking every square foot of an area roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. The US Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau
