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 Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Friday that despite Jay Leno’s jokes, the national color-coded alert system was working well – and was getting better.
“I don’t care if you laugh,” Ridge said, “as long as you have your emergency kit ready.”
Ridge was in St. Louis to speak Friday night at the national convention of the Red Cross. In the afternoon, he met with Post-Dispatch editorial writers.
Ridge said the alert system had improved in two key ways.
First, he said, because the level of protection is constantly rising, so is the threshold for moving the threat condition up a notch or two. The result should be fewer moves up (and then down) the color spectrum.
And second, he said, “We’re targeting the information to locals. After the last alert over the holidays, we kept three or four sites at orange after everybody else went back down.” Such targeting should mean fewer nationwide inconveniences.
Asked whether the increased level of protection had actually foiled any terrorist plots, Ridge said, “One of the people we detained said they’d called off a plot against a bridge in New York City because the security was too tough. But maybe he was just blowing smoke.”
Ridge added: “We have to be right a billion and three times a year. Terrorists have to be right just once.”
He conceded that security could go only so far. Although his department is now emphasizing railroad security, Ridge said that realistically, security steps for passengers on big city mass-transit systems would have to stop short of rigid.
“People take subways because they’re quick to get on and off,” he said. “People in New York won’t stand in line to get on a subway.”
Instead, he said, officials were putting the main emphasis on the hazardous materials carried on freight trains.
“We’re working with the railroads,” he said. “When we raise the threat level, the railroads make adjustments. They may alter routes or adjust their storage and delivery systems.”
Similarly, he conceded that barges on inland waterways like the Mississippi River got less attention than cargo containers coming in from overseas. The reasoning: Most of the barge cargo is produced domestically.
“The most important thing we can do is to push our borders out,” he said. For example, he said, U.S. security experts now are checking U.S.-bound shipping containers at ports overseas. And foreign governments are providing lists of passengers on flights bound for the United States.
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