With the holidays having passed uneventfully except for security-related flight cancellations and delays, the Bush administration Friday lowered the national terrorism risk level from high to elevated–or from orange to yellow in the color-coded advisory system.
But Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said officials were still concerned about terrorists seeking to hijack airliners and use them as weapons, as happened on Sept. 11, 2001. For that reason, airlines and airports would stay on high alert, he said.
Some critics, however, questioned whether the administration was too influenced by the calendar in deciding when to change the threat levels. They also asked whether the administration was too focused on commercial aviation at the expense of other, less-protected targets.
When he announced the higher threat level just before Christmas, Ridge said the move was in response to the volume of credible threats in terrorists’ communications, or chatter, monitored by intelligence experts. The chatter was then at its highest level since Sept. 11, Ridge said.
“Now we are still concerned about continued threats, but the threat conditions that we’ve been following have diminished,” he said Friday.
Ridge emphasized that his main concern remained that terrorists might again use aircraft to conduct attacks. But he added that other industries and certain cities were a source of concern as well.
Ridge declined to provide specifics but said those jurisdictions and industries had been asked to remain at the higher alert status.
Hoover Dam in Nevada would stay at the orange level, as well as McCarran International Airport, which serves Las Vegas, which had been mentioned by federal officials as a possible target.
After raising the alert level before the recent holidays, U.S. officials persuaded French and British officials to delay or cancel flights from their countries when U.S. intelligence suggested particular flights had been targeted by terrorists. As a result, thousands of passengers encountered travel difficulties.
Many international government and airline officials also were dismayed and frustrated by new U.S. aviation rules issued in recent weeks that required foreign airlines to place armed guards on certain flights bound for U.S. airports.
On Friday, Ridge emphasized U.S. sensitivity to the problems caused by the delays and cancellations. He indicated that U.S. officials would consult with their overseas counterparts to agree on standards for disruptions of flights.
“The administration has reached out to these countries, [France, Britain, Spain, Mexico] simply to say that we need to establish a better protocol to deal with the kind of cancellations or the delays,” he said. “Not in any way are we apologetic for what we’ve done. It was the right thing to do under the circumstances.”
The holiday period also featured nuclear scientists from the Energy Department being dispatched to several cities looking for signs of radioactive material at suspicious sites.
Officials were greatly concerned about terrorists exploding so-called dirty bombs, conventional bombs equipped with radioactive materials, at crowded holiday venues.
The timing of raising and lowering the threat level prompted some skepticism.
Charles Pena, defense policy analyst for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, asked, “Why did it go up in the first place and why is it back down?
“I think the simple answer is because Christmas and New Year’s is over. We’re so date- or calendar-driven, which ultimately probably has next to nothing to do with any planned Al Qaeda attacks. … It has a cover-your-bases, to use a kinder euphemism, aspect to it.”
Pena also thought too much attention was being paid to aviation, which is now a harder target for terrorists because of increased security. Other potential targets should receive more attention, he said.
But Frank Cilluffo, a former Bush administration official and associate vice president for homeland security at George Washington University, disagreed.
“It’s not the calendar-bound thinking as much as it is what the intelligence information is and when they’re getting it,” he said. “It’s not because we have fears on those dates.
“It’s more what information is coming through the system, and that’s the intelligence we’re getting,” Cilluffo said. “Whether it’s increased chatter or [other] intelligence means, it’s not us choosing the dates. It’s the adversary.”
He speculated that the intelligence strongly pointed to more attacks against aviation.
