DHS Considers Alternatives To Color-Coded Warnings

Responding to widespread criticism, Department of Homeland Security officials are considering changes to the color-coded terrorism warning system and other methods of providing more useful information to the public without causing panic or disclosing closely held intelligence.

Among the possibilities forwarded to Secretary Michael Chertoff are issuing lower-key alerts on the department's Web site -- as the State Department does now with travel advisories -- rather than by holding news conferences, and changing the color categories to numbers or letters, current and former officials said.

Other options raised by some top Homeland Security officials who have studied the issue include conducting periodic polls and focus groups to better understand how people react to warnings, they said.

Also, the department may launch a years-long public education campaign, including television documentaries and participation in made-for-TV movies, officials said. The idea would be to help Americans understand the difference between various types of terrorist attacks, and explain the typically fragmentary nature of the government's intelligence about where and how they may be carried out.

An icon of the post-Sept. 11 era, the color-coded threat advisory system is unloved even by its creators. Homeland Security officials privately acknowledge the many flaws of the system under which the threat level was raised from yellow, or "elevated risk" of attack, to orange, or "high risk," six times between September 2002 and last fall. Often accompanied by vague information about the threat and official recommendations to carry on with normal activities, the system was eventually ignored or disdained because many people had little idea how to use it.

While his predecessor, Tom Ridge, was saddled with it, Chertoff now has an opportunity to tinker with it, or trash it.

Aides stressed that Chertoff, who has begun an internal review of many of the department's programs, has not yet taken up the question of the color-based Homeland Security Advisory System. They added that he may decide not to change the system's public notification component, and probably will retain many of its procedures for issuing terror bulletins to state and local officials and industry executives.

But Chertoff said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show two weeks ago that he would "listen to criticism and see if we need to adjust or improve" the system. "We want the public to be knowledgeable about what is going on but not alarm them," he added.

"We're reviewing the advisory system as part of a comprehensive review of the department . . . which will focus on improvements and adjustments that could be made to the system," said DHS spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

The underlying problem for DHS officials in communicating with the public at a time of heightened threat is that people demand detail to decide how to respond, but U.S. intelligence services almost never have such specifics.

"The intelligence is almost always much more ambiguous" than what the public craves, said Susan Neely, Ridge's top spokeswoman, who left government a few months ago. In any case, U.S. officials cannot endanger intelligence sources and methods by disclosing the information, she said.

"Talking about terrorism threats to the public is the hardest challenge I've ever wrestled with," she said.