Hill Agency Assails Security Alerts System

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge unveiled the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System terrorism warning system last year, but the system since has been widely criticized as vague. (Dayna Smith -- The Washington Post)

Congress has been given a few warnings about the federal system that is supposed to warn Americans of potential terrorist attacks:

The Homeland Security Advisory System is so vague about the nature of the threats that the public may begin to question its value. The five-color index also leaves unclear just what states, cities, businesses or the public should do in the face of heightened alerts. And the message takes so long to get out, and goes through so many channels, that local officials often first learn of changes from television, hours before official notice.

Such are the findings of an Aug. 6 report by the Congressional Research Service, the Hill's public policy research arm. The nonpartisan agency detailed several options for improving the system, including issuing specific warnings to targeted regions or facilities and recommending certain protective measures for states and cities. The report echoes concerns that have dogged the system since its debut in March 2002. It may provide further evidence for members of Congress who believe the system must be revamped if it is to do more than trigger a wave of security-related spending by local authorities and raise the public's anxiety level with every uptick in the threat index.

"The terror alert system may be contributing to the very panic and confusion in our society that the terrorists seek to generate," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), author of a Senate-passed measure that would require the Department of Homeland Security to provide Congress with a report on the system's effectiveness. "What the American people want are serious protective measures, rather than window dressing."

The system rates the risk of a terrorist attack according to five levels: low, guarded, elevated, high and severe. Each level is identified by a color. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raises or lowers the threat level after consulting with the Homeland Security Council, a 12-member panel that includes several Cabinet secretaries, the attorney general and the FBI and CIA directors.

Ridge has raised the threat index to orange, indicating a "high" risk of an attack, four times. On May 30, he lowered it to yellow, indicating an "elevated" risk, where it remains today. Each threat level specifies steps that federal departments and agencies should take to prepare for or prevent terrorist strikes, including restricting buildings to essential personnel, increasing surveillance of vulnerable sites and postponing public events.

Ridge has said the system needs fine-tuning. In June, he said he hoped to go to orange less often. And he suggested that if intelligence information improved, he would be able to declare high alerts only in designated cities or industries.

"We are well aware that it is a brand new program that will need to continually be refined," Gordon Johndroe, a Ridge spokesman, said yesterday. "Communicating threat information even to security personnel is a new and developing field for this country."