Why Is Terror Alert Threat Level Still Yellow
This week’s “most asked ” question in our email… The answer: DHS didn’t change the threat level before and after agents nabbed Najibullah Zazi because advisories to local police were deemed sufficient. Actually there’s a little more to it than that. James Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington and writer of one of my favorite and perhaps “largest” books on my bookshelf , responds in this article.
The investigation into a potential Al Qaeda plot in the US has triggered a raft of warnings from federal authorities about suspicious activity around stadiums, hotels, and train stations, among other places. But it hasn’t moved the color-coded terror alert system.
The Department of Homeland Security’s national threat level was yellow – or elevated – before and after counterterrorism agents nabbed Najibullah Zazi. He’s the Denver airport shuttle driver at the center the investigation into an alleged plot that authorities say involves plans to build peroxide-based bombs.
In fact, the alert system has been static since 2006, when British officials foiled a plan to blow up transatlantic flights headed to North America from London. That caused the warning to jump to red (severe) for those flights and to orange (high) for general attacks.
But there’s no reason this latest terror investigation should have raised the terror alert, says James Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
“What is widely perceived as a system to update the American people about terrorist threats is not really designed for that,” he says. “When you raise the color-coded system, it’s a blunt instrument” that triggers specific actions by law enforcement and federal agencies.
An EMP Attack, Thinking The Unthinkable – James Carafano
July 27, 2009 by national
Filed under Emergency Preparedness
When the 9/11 Commission issued its report, it complained that federal agencies had a colossal “failure of imagination.” Nobody could accuse Newt Gingrich from suffering that shortfall.
When he delivered a major address on national security last week, the former Speaker of the House went after Defense Secretary Robert Gates for planning for the future the Pentagon wants, rather than dealing with the many serious problems it may actually face. Gingrich mentioned one challenge that many find too terrible to contemplate — which is why our government should spend a lot more time doing exactly that.
I’m referring to the Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). This method of attack is usually associated with a nuclear blast. In addition to thermal, radiation, heat and concussive force, an atomic detonation throws off an incredible amount of electro-magnetic energy.
Picture a massive tsunami, but with lightning instead of water. And, like the surge produced by lightning, electrical systems act like antennas sucking down a rush of electrons that fry circuits and burn out micro-chips.
EMP is not normally addressed when talking about nuclear attack, because most nuclear strikes are planned as low-air bursts where most of the energy, EMP included, go straight into the ground (and flattening the city in-between). In such scenarios, electrical systems would be disabled by EMP, though few would notice, because most people would have been crushed or melted in the firestorm following the detonation.
A deliberate EMP attack, however, would be different. If, for example, an enemy detonated a nuclear weapon carried on a ballistic missile 200 miles or so above the earth, people on the ground might never know an attack occurred. But if the explosion happened high enough over North America, the blossom of EMP might cover the entire United States.
