Lawmakers Critical of Terror Alert

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and NICK ANDERSON

Oct. 31, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers confronted the Bush administration Tuesday about its decision to put out an extraordinary terrorism warning earlier this week, questioning whether the FBI’s alert could do more to alarm than protect an already-anxious public.

“Whenever general warnings are given, the people we represent don’t know what to do, and we don’t know how to advise them,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) fumed after a noontime meeting with Thomas J. Ridge, the director of the White House Office of Homeland Security. “You wonder what these warnings achieve other than to create more fear.”

As that debate raged on Capitol Hill, law enforcement agencies nationwide moved to reassess security measures in response to the FBI warning issued Monday about the threat of possible attacks in the next week.

The Federal Aviation Administration put new restrictions in place on private and general aviation flights in the airspace around 86 sensitive nuclear sites. But many law enforcement agencies said they have already been at their highest states of alert for weeks and aren’t sure what more they can do.

In Los Angeles, the LAPD actually downgraded its alert status Tuesday after reviewing the FBI warning. The department went on a citywide tactical alert Monday night in the hours after the latest warning was issued, but then changed that to a “modified” alert Tuesday. The downgrade means that officers will resume responding to nonemergency calls.

Already Reeling From Sept. 11 and Anthrax

“The decision was made that there was no reason to maintain a citywide tactical alert,” LAPD spokesman Lt. Horace Frank said. “Once we reviewed a lot of the information we’d received, we decided a modified tactical alert was more appropriate.”

Still, the FBI’s latest warning clearly agitated some people already reeling from the one-two punch of the Sept. 11 attacks and the current anthrax scare. Around the country, people making travel plans, going to sporting events and considering other options for the week peppered police Tuesday with questions about how they should respond to the terrorism threat spotlighted by the FBI’s warning.

Although some lawmakers praised the administration’s decision to issue a broad warning, others complained that the alert was too vague to help protect people from terrorists.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said Ridge got an earful from lawmakers in closed meetings on Capitol Hill. Dodd said the FBI’s announcement of a threat provided “a lot of noise, not a lot of clarity. . . . It’s unfortunate.”

The FBI notified about 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide Monday that it had received “credible” information that there could be more terrorist attacks in the next week. Federal authorities say they are taking additional steps to ensure extra vigilance at airports, power plants, border crossings and other sites that could be vulnerable to terrorists.

Threats Came From Multiple Sources

The warning, the second of its kind this month, is believed to have grown out of concerns that operatives associated with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network are still at large in the United States and could be planning further attacks.

Since Sept. 11, intelligence agencies have aggressively monitored electronic intercepts, exchanged information with foreign intelligence services and contacted past associates of Al Qaeda in an effort to track possible terrorist movements.

Law enforcement officials refused to discuss the nature of the new intelligence. But Ridge told reporters Tuesday that the information came from multiple sources.

“The decibel level was louder [than in the past], and there were more sources,” Ridge said. “It was just a convergence of credible sources that occasioned the alert--more than usual is all I can tell you.”

Administration officials, criticized for putting out a similarly vague warning Oct. 11, debated whether to publicize the latest threat assessment. But officials at the Justice Department, the FBI and the White House defended the final decision to go public.

“It’s a difficult and fine line that we walk,” Ridge acknowledged. “But I think America understands and, hopefully, appreciates that when there’s that kind of information available to us, we just share it with America, as incomplete as it might be.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the administration was putting out all the information it could.

“The American people have heard everything that we know,” Fleischer said. “The information that led to the issuing of this threat did not contain specific information--for example, about what sites, what state. If any of that were provided, we’d be sharing it.”

Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), who backed the administration, acknowledged nonetheless that lawmakers are concerned about the cumulative effect of the warnings.

“If you cry wolf too many times--you’ve all read the story, you know what happens,” Bennett told reporters.

Meanwhile, lawmakers continued to respond to the new sense of vulnerability created by last month’s attacks. Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would spend $12 million annually to protect drinking water.

“Now is the time to move forward on this long-term plan to strengthen our water systems against terrorist threats,” Jeffords said.

Daschle Supports White House Decision

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), whose office received an anthrax-laced letter this month, defended the administration’s latest warning, saying that making information about such threats public is better than putting it out privately to police agencies and then risking “leaks or misunderstandings” once word filtered out.

But that did little to mollify some people.

One FBI agent said he got calls from several police officers in the New York City area who were planning to attend Tuesday night’s World Series game and wanted to know whether Yankee Stadium would be safe.

The best he could tell them, the agent said, was that President Bush was attending the game to throw out the first pitch.

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Janet Hook and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this report.