When Orange Is an Agent of Government, Guess Who Bears the Brunt?

By CLYDE HABERMAN
NYC
The New York Times
July 13, 2007

Yesterday might well have been called Orange Day in New York. It was the anniversary of the Orange riots of 1870 and 1871: battles in the city between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics on July 12 of each of those years. Some accounts put the total death toll at 75.

In another sense, every day is Orange Day in New York.

That is the shade of the terror alert we live with, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded system of threat levels. Orange signifies a “high” risk of attack, a status that the city shares only with airliners. The rest of the country is deemed safer, its risk pegged at yellow, or “elevated.” Aren’t we the lucky ones?

Yet odds are that the average New Yorker spends more time wondering about the latest colors from Dolce & Gabbana than from Washington.

Given how the system was used in the past — abused is more like it, critics say — it became fodder for late-night television comics. Many stopped taking it seriously. The government clearly heard them laughing. Can anyone remember the last time it put the country on its color-coded yo-yo, going up and down, up and down?

Now, colorlessly, the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, offers a different sort of warning. He has a “gut feeling,” he said this week, about a heightened terror risk this summer. Not that there is “any specific, credible information about an imminent threat against the U.S.,” Mr. Chertoff acknowledged yesterday on NBC’s “Today” program. Just, you know, a gut feeling.

At a news conference yesterday, President Bush was asked what his own gut told him. “My gut tells me that — which my head tells me as well — is that when we find a credible threat, I’ll share it with people to make sure that we protect the homeland,” Mr. Bush said.

So here we are, once again trying to decipher Delphic pronouncements from those charged with keeping us safe. Given New York’s exalted orange status, who has more reason to keep eyes peeled than us? But what exactly are we supposed to look for or to do? Rummage through the sock drawer for scraps of plastic sheeting and maybe a discarded roll of duct tape? Avoid ballparks and movie theaters? Keep off buses and subways?

Mr. Chertoff’s “gut feeling” is an echo of vague admonitions from his Homeland Security predecessor, Tom Ridge, and from other senior officials. You may recall back-to-back warnings issued in May 2002. Vice President Dick Cheney said a new Al Qaeda attack was “almost certain,” and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, called suicide bombings in this country “inevitable.”

No sensible person doubts that we face real threats from Islamic fanatics. It is why most New Yorkers have accepted with little protest glancing blows to civil liberties in the form of increased camera surveillance on streets and random bag inspections in the subways. The failed car bombings in London and Glasgow — a plot hatched by doctors, no less, the British authorities say — are sobering reminders of the risks.

Still, “gut feelings” and other unspecific warnings may only reinforce a sense many people already have that the government’s message amounts to little more than: Always be afraid, be very afraid. A similar theme is echoed by some presidential candidates, not the least of them New York’s former mayor.

The thing is, though, Al Qaeda’s leaders are supposed to be the ones running scared, not New Yorkers, who at times find themselves whipsawed emotionally when it comes to terrorism threats.

Last month, for example, law enforcement officials disclosed what they called a plot to blow up fuel pipelines and storage tanks at Kennedy International Airport. The potential devastation was described as “unfathomable.” But then officials suggested that everyone take a deep breath; the plot was barely embryonic, they said, and system safeguards would have prevented any explosion from turning into a catastrophe.

Many New Yorkers probably share the view of Representative Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He wrote to Mr. Chertoff, reminding him that “words have power” and must be chosen “wisely.”

“What color code in the Homeland Security Advisory System is associated with a ‘gut feeling’?” Mr. Thompson wrote.

Actually, there might be two colors: black and blue. They’re what you get when you’ve been bruised.

E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com