Terror Alert Level Raises Questions About Its Purpose

The debate on the nation’s “Alert Levels” system heats up as Tom Ridge, the first Homeland Security Secretary admits in his new book that his bosses at the time (W. Bush & Cheney) “pressured” him to play with the system shortly before the 2004 elections.

The Alert Level system was first implemented in March 2002 as a “readiness measure” to law enforcement authorities and the public. The 5-color terror system has recently come under criticism by the new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano who doubts its usefulness.

In a Washington Times editorial earlier this month, Napolitano said this about the system:

During the George W. Bush years, the president’s political opponents charged that the administration was trying to whip up hysteria any time the alert status moved up, despite concrete evidence that the terror threat had increased.

Ridge’s confession this week, reinforces Napolitano’s claim that the Bush Administration did indeed use the system to keep the public in fear and make them feel secure under the Republican administration.

Tom Ridge has denied that he followed through with the White House’s requests. According to his publisher:

He successfully objected to raising the security level despite the urgings of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Feeling overwhelmed by White House pressures is what led Ridge to quit, reports the Boston Globe:

[Ridge] said the episode convinced him to follow through with his plans to leave the administration for the private sector; he resigned weeks after the election, which Bush won over Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Napolitano has set up a 17 member panel to thoroughly evaluate the system and find ways of how it can be improved. She said that Congress has tried to find ways to improve the system without results. She hopes she can get the work done:

Reform is necessary. In 2007, Congress instructed the department to make the threat system more precise and to tie threat levels to specific countermeasures. That was not done. In 2003, a major interagency effort was undertaken to find ways to improve the system. Working groups examined a variety of other models, including the British Columbia Threat Advisory System, a very effective Canadian warning program. Unfortunately, the 2003 effort did not lead to any significant changes. The new panel could profitably review the records of that earlier endeavor to avoid some needless duplication of effort.

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