So the 'terror alert' was raised to the second highest.. they say to get tape and sheeting to turn your home into a bio-bunker.. have plenty of water and food handy.. there are armed federal troops in the streets.. surface to air missile batteries are in the streets..oh.. but don't panic
Bush tells Americans not to panic over security alert
Sunday, February 16, 2003 Posted: 12:29 AM EST (0529 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush told Americans not to panic about the high terror-threat warning and to let the professionals worry about keeping their communities safe from attack.
Seeking to reassure a nervous nation in his weekly radio address Saturday, he asked people only to be more alert to their surroundings and suggested a trip to the Department of Homeland Security's Web site at
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/ for tips on being more vigilant.
"Americans should go about their lives," Bush said.
Beyond that, he said, the raising of the terrorism alert level on February 7 from yellow to high-risk orange "is primarily a signal to federal, state and local law enforcement to take additional precautions and increase security measures against potential terrorist attacks."
On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said officials don't have any conclusive evidence about where, when or how the terrorists could strike. He, like Bush, sought to spread calm at the end of a week in which many people stocked up on food, water, duct tape and other supplies and watched anti-aircraft missile launchers deployed around the national capital. There is no need "to start sealing the doors or windows" against terrorist threats, Ridge said.
Federal officials recommended this week that Americans put together emergency supply kits as a precaution for terrorist attack or disaster. Two items suggested for the kit were duct tape and plastic sheeting, enough to seal a house or rooms from any hazardous materials terrorists could put in the air.
Ridge said the government has no plan to increase or lower the alert level, although he added threat information is constantly under evaluation.
Authorities had said they were worried about attacks timed to coincide either with the beginning of a war with Iraq or with the end of Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to holy Mecca that ended Thursday.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the end of the Hajj is causing officials to consider seriously lowering the threat level. At the same time, the official said there remains a "lot of energy" in the intelligence system, meaning clandestine information, that has officials worried.
Regardless, Bush promised Saturday that plans are in place to protect infrastructure such as dams, power plants, computer networks and communication systems, to tighten security at borders and ports, to collect better intelligence on emerging threats, and to detect a biological attack through an early warning network of sensors.
The president disclosed in a speech at FBI headquarters Friday plans to unify counterterror efforts, locating FBI and CIA work at a single center while the agencies' lines of authority would remain distinct.
"Many of these dangers are unfamiliar and unsettling," Bush said in Saturday's radio address. "Yet I assure you that our government at every level is responding to this threat, working to track down every lead and standing watch 24 hours a day against terrorism."
Democratic congressional leaders urged the president to send a special request to Congress to pay for the equipment, personnel and training needs of first responders, the people who would quickly respond to a terrorism emergency.
"Duct tape is not enough. Neither is empty rhetoric," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said after he and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, met with about a dozen firefighters, including some who rushed to the Pentagon after the September 11, 2001, attack.
Meanwhile the administration issued three separate reports Friday that involved domestic security:
• The "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism," which focuses on ways to defeat terrorists by wearing down their organizations, cracking down on nations that harbor them and diminishing the underlying conditions that lead to terrorism by easing poverty. The report also said finding a solution to the Middle East crisis is critical to winning the war on terror.
• A plan detailing critical infrastructure that needs protection from terrorists, ranging from agriculture to the defense industries. This recommends the government provide incentives or increase regulations on key sectors of the economy that need to improve protection.
• A plan to tighten security for vital computer networks, putting the Department of Homeland Security in the role of protecting cyberspace.
