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.
The color-coded system was originally designed to create tiers of perceived threat for state and local authorities, as well as industry sectors, providing a menu of security options. While officials knew they would make the threat alerts public, they spent little time planning how to communicate with the public, or anticipating how people would react, several ranking officials said.
Late-night comedians were unsparing when the five-tier color system was unveiled in March 2002. Conan O'Brien said "red means we're in extreme danger, and champagne-fuchsia means we're being attacked by Martha Stewart."
Instead of being narrowly targeted, the first five alerts covered the entire nation, partly because officials feared they would be criticized if an attack occurred without their having issued warnings, they acknowledged.
In the summer of 2002, as the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approached and terrorism fears escalated, 10 federal agencies disseminated often contradictory warnings to different constituencies and the public.
Ridge, then in the White House, said on Sept. 3 that there were no plans to raise the alert to orange. But on Sept. 11, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who at the time had the authority to invoke threat alerts, did just that, saying U.S. intelligence had new information.
By May 26, 2004, Ridge, as secretary of homeland security, had sole responsibility for addressing the public about terrorism threats. He appeared that day on several news shows playing down the danger of a terrorist strike while Ashcroft announced that al Qaeda was "almost ready to attack."
"That instance really challenged the likelihood that people would trust messages from the administration" about terrorism threats, said Roxane Cohen Silver, a University of California at Irvine psychologist who has advised the Department of Homeland Security about the color-coded system.
In today's political environment, with many Americans skeptical about Bush administration invocations of terrorism threats, "the challenge for DHS is enlisting the public's trust," she added.
She said she has told officials that "maybe it would be advisable not to hold a press conference unless officials can give people something they can do about it.
"To just say 'Be alert, look around,' that's a little too vague," said Silver, who is leading a research project into Americans' emotional reactions to Sept. 11.
Some of the possible changes may be cosmetic. Switching from colors to letters or numbers may not provide the public with much additional information, but it would allow the department to move away from the current system. A more substantive option is for officials, when issuing warnings, to publicly concede ambiguities or gaps in their information, officials said.
In 2003, Ridge said that with local officials weary of the expense of orange alerts, and many Americans jaded, he might not issue more nationwide alerts. The last orange alert, released in August 2004 after the discovery of al Qaeda documents in Pakistan, was directed only at financial sites in Washington, New York and Newark.
Homeland Security officials understand that they need to improve, one DHS official said. "Public communication of risk is an inherent part of this job," he said, "and something we'll be doing forever."
