U.S. Sees Drop in Terrorist Threats

Counterterrorism squads have also begun learning how to recruit informants and follow leads that do not necessarily lead to arrests, an official in the field said. "They thought they would be rounding up terrorists every week," said one senior counterterrorism official who helped train such a squad outside Washington. "But they weren't. There was some frustration," but the same officers are now learning intelligence tradecraft, he said.

Police are also honing counterterrorism efforts, working with businesses nationwide to screen for suspicious activity involving the acquisition of certain kinds of materials, vehicles, training and licenses that have figured into terrorist plots.

Public vigilance remains high, at least in major cities, officials said. This winter, for example, FBI agents were called to investigate when workers at a Northern Virginia hospital grew suspicious of two men who asked about nighttime staffing levels, ostensibly because they were considering whether their new doughnut shop should stay open 24 hours.

It turned out the men had, in fact, obtained a new doughnut franchise, two security officials said.

"Could what happened with the 9/11 operators in the pre-event stage happen today and nobody pick up on it? No, I don't think so," said Cathy Lanier, head of special operations for the D.C. Police Department. "If they went through the same surveillance practices, forged documents, they would be picked up somehow. Along the line, there would be red flags, and I would say there is probably a good chance the red flags would have come through the public and not law enforcement or other sources."

Even if the threat has eased, officials throughout the government acknowledge major shortcomings in homeland security. Borders remain porous, chemical plants are poorly protected, the quality of baggage inspection is uneven, and countless other vulnerabilities have not been addressed.

Some officials also express a nagging worry that analysts simply have less information to sift through, or less time to concentrate on it given the bureaucratic transitions in the intelligence community.

"There's been a kind of constant non-action, or non-tension whatever you want to call it," one state homeland security adviser said. "There's not a whole lot of new stuff."

Several officials in urban areas that are considered prime targets, said they worried most about what law enforcement is not detecting. "I'm not so comforted" by the drop in intelligence warnings coming out of Washington, said one senior U.S. intelligence official based elsewhere. "I'm concerned about what is going on under our radar scope. And I'm worried about the radar scope."

Michael A. Mason, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, said that as far as he is concerned, there has been no drop in the threat level.

"The desire to harm Americans is certainly still out there whether that is wrapped around a specific threat or not," Mason said.

D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who co-chairs the homeland security committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, cautions that "complacency can settle in the further we get from 9/11. We tend to think everything is normal. I don't feel that way."

Ramsey said he believes the Homeland Security color code will never go below its current level of yellow, which denotes an "elevated" threat level.

"We will never be at green again," Ramsey said. "Normal was redefined on 9/11. Normal is yellow."

Staff writers Sari Horwitz, Dan Eggen, John Mintz and Allan Lengel and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.