Terrorism Alert System Needs Changing
Christopher Cox (R-CA) is the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security in the House of Representatives. He thinks the color-coded terrorism alert system has to be more specific, that it needs some fine-tuning.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
It's a familiar scale by now: yellow, orange, so far never red. The color-coded alert system was set up after 9/11 to signal the risk of terrorist attacks. This week the House of Representatives passed legislation to refine the alert system. Congressman Christopher Cox, chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, says it's about time.
CHRISTOPHER COX:
Two years ago on a chilly day in March, the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, DC, announced that the entire nation was going on orange alert. From the significant risk of terror attack at the yellow level that had been in effect the day before, Americans were told that now there was a high risk of terrorist attack. To most Americans, the difference was difficult to understand. But as state and local police went on overtime across the country, costs ran up dramatically. Even though the threat information that gave rise to the stepped-up security couldn't be pinned down to a specific terror plot anywhere in the United States, the nation stayed at orange for a full month.
Since the color-coded warning system was first introduced, America has been on orange alert for a total of 11 weeks. The unreimbursed cost to cities alone from these generalized warnings has been more than three-quarters of a billion dollars. That doesn't begin to count the added federal spending or the economic impact from millions of Americans waiting in security lines away from productive jobs. And while the cost of these generalized alerts has been high, it's difficult to argue that the security benefits have been worth the price.
The good news is that increasingly, the Department of Homeland Security has been relying on more carefully tailored warnings, such as the August 2004 warning to the financial sector in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC. And this week, the Congress has taken another step towards refining the national threat warning system. Legislation just passed by the House requires that future warnings be tailored to the specific geographic and economic sectors believed to be at risk. More importantly, future warnings will have to include useful guidance on appropriate protective measures that can be taken.
And under this new law, a change in color can no longer be the exclusive means of warning the public. We've all learned the hard way that vague warning lacking in specifics only serve to scare people, but we also know that in a free society, keeping threat information under wraps won't do either. That's why it's so important that we continue to improve the threat warning system that, for too long, has had millions of Americans seeing red.
BLOCK: Christopher Cox is the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security in the House of Representatives. He's a Republican from California.
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