Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
For two years now, the United States has been in a constant, officially designated state of alarm about terrorism. Since launching a five-tiered, color-coded "advisory system" in March 2002, Bush's new Homeland Security Department has never dropped the threat level below yellow, or "elevated risk" of an attack. The nation has endured a nerve-racking code-orange, or "high-risk" alert, five times in the same period.
In a dangerous new era for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, with Osama bin Laden still at large and terrorism spreading beyond al-Qaida, few would dispute that terrorism remains a serious threat. But some intelligence experts say that many Bush anti-terrorism policies, from the color-coded alert system to aviation security, are far better at stoking public anxiety than at stopping attacks. Some poorly conceived measures, argues one counterterrorism expert, may even help terrorists plan their next deadly mission.
Proponents of the color-coded alert system argue that it's the fastest, most effective way to alert thousands of law enforcement officials nationwide, especially at the local level and among private security services. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Brookes believes the administration has been "judicious" with the system. "There's a lot to be said for people paying attention when we're at a higher level of alert," says Brookes, now a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Terrorists can be deterred by the knowledge that their plans have been exposed. I don't believe the administration has been crying wolf."
Others are not so sure, pointing to the murkiness and unreliability of the intelligence on which the alerts are based, and their suspicions that the Bush administration turns up the threat level for political purposes. "I do think the intelligence agencies are doing a good job and have stopped quite a few attacks since Sept. 11," said one FBI agent with close ties to the CIA, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But there's a huge political aspect to the administration's message which seems to orbit way outside the real issue at times."
Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, is more blunt: "I call the color-coded system the 'terrorism mood ring,'" he says. "Security isn't green, yellow and purple. This is a public relations ploy, run by people who are making decisions on security who don't really know what they're doing. They make statements that aren't backed up by any real data or empirical evidence. It's faith-based security."
Johnson believes that the administration is spreading inordinate fear about future terrorist attacks -- what author Jeffrey Rosen describes as "public fixation on low probability but vivid risks."
"They continue to insist that this is the greatest threat we've ever faced, and that's just ludicrous," says Johnson, who now runs a private security consulting firm in Washington. "I don't want to minimize the terrible losses of 9/11, and we have to take the terror threat seriously. But let's be real: We've heard the likes of Gen. [Richard] Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say that terrorism is the greatest threat we've faced perhaps since the Civil War. Are you kidding me? There were more than a half million deaths in that war. There were nuclear missiles pointed at us by the Soviet Union during the Cold War that could've incinerated millions instantly. Terrorists on their best day can't kill millions."
Others find it suspicious that so many warnings seem to spike around holiday time. The nation's fifth code-orange alert came during the 2003 Christmas season, and the Bush administration has spotlighted nonspecific terror threats around July 4 two years in a row. While the administration did not raise the threat level for July 4 either year, mainstream media carried a wave of stories in which U.S. officials discussed, among other concerns, "reports of heightened operational activity by terrorists around the world," an unspecified al-Qaida plot in Texas, terrorist "interest" in football stadiums in St. Louis and Indianapolis, unspecified plots targeting the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of Liberty, and concerns about dams and water supplies from New York to Florida to California. An ABC News report last summer noted "similar discussions" by U.S. officials prior to every national holiday since Sept. 11, 2001.
Al-Qaida has demonstrated its acumen for targeting the greatest symbols of American power and culture, and might well be eager to strike on a national holiday. But such occasions also offer the Bush administration a poignant opportunity to remind Americans of a menace in the shadows.
"I've wondered why we seem to keep getting terror warnings around the holidays, like July 4 and Christmas," says the FBI agent. "Terrorists will try to strike whenever they can; they aren't going to wait for Christmas to blow something up."
Aviation security also remains a contentious issue. Just days after the country went on high alert on Dec. 21 of last year, several international flights into the U.S. from London, Paris and Mexico City were canceled due to the threat of hijackings. More were canceled in January and February, stranding thousands of passengers and costing airlines, according to some industry analysts, up to a quarter-million dollars per grounded plane. Many passengers, skeptical about the whole process, were furious.
Brookes believes it's a necessary price. "The bottom line is protecting lives. We have to be right 100 percent of the time, and a terrorist only has to be right 1 percent of the time," he says. "Even in the best security situations, somebody can get through with something. The Arab names are very difficult; what happens if you get one mixed up, and the guy you're after gets on the plane?"
But Johnson, who helped investigate the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in the early 1990s, says that the December flight cancellations were "a low point" in U.S. security policy.
"Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge announced there were no air marshals on inbound international flights, and that we'd only put them on select flights based on specific threat information," he says. "At the same time, he's alleging they've got information that al-Qaida is targeting those kinds of flights. Well, for God's sake, all we've done is tell al-Qaida those flights are unprotected -- we've helped them do their mission planning. The stupidity of that is breathtaking. When I see that from someone in Ridge's position, it just shows me they don't know what they're doing."
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