[Infowarrior] - Editorial: Terror alert, gray

[Richard Forno]

EDITORIAL: Terror alert, gray

America needs a more effective warning system
By | Thursday, August 6, 2009

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/06/terror-alert-gray/?feat=

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has appointed a 17-member  
board to review and evaluate the Homeland Security Advisory System,  
the familiar, if often ignored, five-color terror-alert warning. The  
system is long overdue for review and should be improved.
The system was established in March 2002 as a readiness measure for  
state and local law enforcement and the public generally. It has been  
the butt of many jokes, and most Americans have no idea what the  
current alert level is at any given time. But the system has some  
utility. It works best when there are concrete signs of increased  
terrorist activity. The last time the system went to red alert was in  
2006 after evidence emerged about a plot in Britain to bomb trans- 
Atlantic airliners.

Unfortunately, the alert status often has fallen victim to politics.  
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.

The political equation at the lower end of the scale is more mundane.  
The United States has been at yellow alert (signifying "significant  
risk" of attack) since 2006, with airlines at orange alert ("high  
risk"). Some localities maintain their own alert levels. For example,  
the New York City metro area is at orange alert and generally stays  
one level above the federal alert status. The country as a whole has  
never been to blue ("general risk") or green ("low risk") alert since  
the system was implemented, and it probably never will be. In part,  
this is because the world is a dangerous place, and there always will  
be some degree of threat.

No policymaker will risk lowering the alert status to blue or green  
because if an attack took place after the change, it would be fatal  
politically. Lowering the alert level might even encourage terrorists  
to attack, either because they would assume our guard was down or to  
demonstrate that they still are a force to be reckoned with. Yellow is  
bureaucratically safe. It does not court charges of creating undue  
panic, but neither does it promise we are safe. Yellow is the de facto  
floor. The Department of Homeland Security could do away with blue and  
green, and it would make no difference.

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.

The most important reform would be to take politics out of the warning  
system. To the extent possible, threat levels should be tied to  
objective measures determined by counterterrorism experts. Rather than  
using a national alert system, threat levels could be determined on a  
regional and local basis by the scores of joint counterterrorism task  
forces that already operate nationwide. The task forces are closer to  
the threat, understand it better and can respond more quickly to  
changing circumstances.

Modern global terrorism is decentralized, complex and adaptive. The  
last thing we need is an alert system that is centralized, sluggish  
and unchanging.