[Carlson:] Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. It's a yellow day in America. That's the official word from Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge, who today announced a new security alert system that rates the risk of terrorism by color. Green means very little threat. Red means head for the hills. Yellow indicates a significant risk of terrorist attacks. And yellow is where we find ourselves today. So now you know. Feel safer? The administration is hoping you do. Critics scoff, saying the color wheel approach is a formula for hysteria, rather than vigilance. Joining us, long time CIA officer and best selling author Bob Bayer and retired colonel Randy Larson, who was the director of the Anser Institute for Homeland Security. And here, Bill Press.
[Press:] Colonel, I think this whole color-coded thing is total nonsense. I mean, so a couple months ago, John Ashcroft says we're on the highest possible alert, which I guess under the system is red. And now as Tucker just said, Tom Ridge and by the way, that ended yesterday. And today, Tom Ridge says we have this whole new system. And now we're yellow. I hadn't noticed, frankly, anything change overnight from red to yellow. But my question to you, so the next level down would be blue, which is guarded. So I'm an American citizen. What am I supposed to do differently when I'm told we go from yellow to blue?
[Randy Larsen, Anser Institute:] Several things. First of all, yellow is a good place to be right now because you can't focus so much on the colors. And you know, you got 45 days to put your comments in, just like you did. And they're going to have a way to review it to go back. Look what it says under yellow. Checking communication systems with other jurisdictions to make sure. Reviewing your plans if you're an emergency planning business. Those are things that I hope my emergency planners are doing out there. This is more aimed at those police officers that have been working too many 12-hour, seven-day shifts.
[Carlson:] Now Bob Bayer, no offense or anything, but of course you're against this. You're a CIA guy. And CIA guys are experts. It's like the chef at the restaurant doesn't want anybody into the kitchen to see what he's doing. You don't think the public has a right to know, but the public does have a right to know, doesn't it?
[Bob Bayer:] No. There's nothing we can do about these vague threats. They are winning the battle. They are terrorizing us. We should be terrorizing them, not the other way around. We're playing right into their hands. This is the problem I got with it. And they're going to be playing with this system. They're going to be sending false information, defectors other people so we go up to red. It weakens the government. It embarrasses the government. And then when we're down to blue, they're going to hit us. I know the way these guys think.
[Press:] I still want an answer. I'm not a law enforcement expert. I'm an American citizen. I'm being told by my government that it's no longer yellow. I can relax a little bit. I'm now blue. What do I do? I didn't do anything differently between yesterday and today when we went from red to yellow. This stuff is just kaka.
[Larsen:] It's because the system we had before wasn't sufficient. All we had was be on alert or nothing. And all we had was the high alert. We need a system, like we've had in the military, like we have for weather systems and tornados and hurricanes. We've got to be able to go up and we've got to be able come down. As a citizen, if you get a red alert you probably better not come to work that night.
[Press:] Can I ask a real dumb question.
[Larsen:] Sure.
[Press:] I mean, why isn't every terrorist alert a red alert? What is a green terrorist alert? When they throw water balloons or what?
[Larsen:] Green is not. And believe me, we're not going to be green, I don't think, for several years. You can probably take that one right off of there. I hope we could get to guarded some day. Yellow means, we are at war today, Bill. We're at war against a vicious enemy. And the American people need to know yellow. Now we start getting intelligence information, it's probably going to crank up to orange. My concern is if it goes up to red. I agree with you, red gets real tough on our economy. What are you going to do if the Super Bowl's coming up, and all of a sudden, they go to red?
[Press:] We've been in red for two months.
[Carlson:] Now wait a second.
[Larsen:] No, it wasn't red. It's why we didn't have a good system.
[Carlson:] Now Bob Bayer, that's right. You heard Colonel we did have a good system. And I think the analogy with hurricanes is a good one. Look, we have a national system that predicts hurricanes and tells people when they're coming. Isn't this what you last time you were on, you said we need a national system. Here we have one.
[Bayer:] He asked you to meet with the police and the FBI and the CIA, who know how to do their job. But if they have something specific, if we have a license plate, a single person that we know, yes, fine. Put the alert out. Let the citizens go out and look. But this general alert gets everybody excited for a long time. Then they start to ignore it. And a year from now when they make an alert, everybody's going to ignore it.
[Carlson:] You don't you think the government has the ability, and you would know, to discern between phony disinformation from abroad and real threats?
[Bayer:] No. This is the whole problem is right now, every crank and kook in the world is coming out of the woodwork, making threats. And the government doesn't know what to do about it. So what they do is put a blanket threat out there, in case something happens.
[Cya. Press:] Colonel.
[Larsen:] No, you can't tell police officers that the condition is orange and not tell Bill, because the police officer's going to go home and tell his wife and kids. And that wife's going to call Bill's wife.
[Press:] All right. I want to take that one more step. You can't tell Bill without telling terrorist a, b, c. So you put out the word nationwide. We've gone up to red because we hear there's an attack on a nuclear plant. What are they going to do? These guys are not dumb.
[Larsen:] Welcome to warfare in the information age, Bill. And second of all, that may act as a deterrent. They may think we've broken a code. We know where they're coming.
[Press:] Send them somewhere else.
[Bayer:] Look at this nuclear threat in New York a couple months ago, where there was this report of a bomb, a nuclear bomb. What if we had gone out in the press and said, and to the whole world, and said there's a nuclear bomb in New York. The city would have emptied. It was a false report. It was from a fabricator. He didn't do it.
[Carlson:] And that is exactly right. And that's not at all what's being suggested by Tom Ridge. The idea is that the general threat will be characterized so that when people are on the subway and there is a package ticking in the corner, they don't think, well, perhaps someone left an alarm clock. They suspect maybe it's a bomb. And isn't that helpful that people would be vigilant and alert?
[Bayer:] No. Done this for 20 years. We had a threat every day in Beirut about a kidnapping. We knew there was a kidnapping.
[Carlson:] But that's Beirut. I mean, that's little. I mean, it's by definition, right?
[Bayer:] Yes, but we're not getting far away with 911.
[Larsen:] A system like this, we've used the military for years. It's been very effectiev. For not only military officers, but for their dependents.
[Press:] I want to tell you why I have so much confidence in our government today. Because you know, post 911, we've been on our toes. And our government agencies have been doing their job. But we learned that yesterday, because yesterday, in the mail, a flight school in Florida got from the INS two visas that were applied for by the two terrorist terrorists, Mohammed Atta and his cohort, both of whom flew those planes into the World Trade Center. They were mailed in their name by the INS one week ago, and arrived on the day11. We don't know what we're doing. The color system proves it. And the visa proves it, doesn't it?
[Larsen:] The color system has nothing to do with that story.
[Press:] It does indeed.
[Larsen:] It does have to do with something...
[Carlson:] Of course, it doesn't.
[Larsen:] We got to get better at sharing information. We got a long way to go in sharing information between intelligence and law enforcement. But I tell you, there's another debate that you and I can have about that firewall between intelligence and law enforcement, because I don't know how far we want to lower that. We start talking about civil liberties, but we need to lower the problem.
[Carlson:] Bob Bayer, quickly.
[Bayer:] It's a sign of weakness. It's a sign of weakness if we go to this color coded system and the terrorists know it. They look at us as being weak. What we have to do is turn the tables onthem and move against them, and show that we're not weak. This thing is it's just...
[Carlson:] And we can't do both. At least, we can acknowledge there's a threat and take action against terrorists.
[Bayer:] Well, what action have you taken today, now that you know we're in a yellow threat?
[Carlson:] Well, we're having a show on the very subject. I'd say Bill Press and I are doing our part to fight... You didn't do anything.
[Press:] I tell you, I'm only having one glass of wine with dinner tonight, because we're in a yellow threat. So there.
[Bayer:] Good plan.
[Press:] And red, just a glass of water.
[Bayer:] Just wine.
[Press:] All right, thank you, gentlemen. Randy Larsen, thanks for coming. Bob Bayer, good to have you back again. Be alert. Now when we come back, you've heard him speak. You've heard him laugh. But you're not going to believe what your president did today. When we come back, we'll go to the videotape and sing along with George in our picture of the day. Can't miss that.