WASHINGTON — The threat level has never gone below yellow, once went to red and now may fade to black.
The Department of Homeland Security is poised to end its five-tiered, color-coded terror warning system, a post-Sept. 11 endeavor that has been called too vague to be useful and has been mostly ignored or mocked.
So forgotten is the system that the DHS has not even changed the terror alert level in four years, even after the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Instead of changing the alert color, within 24 hours of the foiled plot, the DHS opted to issue new security measures to airlines and businesses.
One alternative under consideration is to change to only two threat levels: elevated and imminent. Under the new model, whenever the threat level is changed to “imminent,” government officials would be expected to be as specific as possible in describing the threat and recommending a response without jeopardizing national security.
A senior homeland security official, who did not want to speak on the record about a decision still under review, said, “The goal is to replace a system that communicates nothing.” Tribune Co.
