2004, August 04: Joe Conason - "Howard Dean sees red over Code Orange"

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It's hard not to become cynical when President Bush trots out our Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge like clockwork whenever his administration is being hammered by negative reports concerning their performance. One wonders if even Mr. Ridge can no longer stomach the "cheerleader for terror" role that has been foisted upon him, as he plans to retire following the election. His dubious reason is that he can't afford to send his two teenage kids to college on his $175,000 salary. Talk about two different Americas, how many of us with families have managed to send our kids to college with incomes well under $100,000? Since Sunday when we first were told of code red status for various financial targets on the East Coast, it has now been disclosed that this was based on three year old information. -SV-
Howard Dean sees red over Code Orange by Joe Conason \| New York Observer 2004 AUGUST 04
Somebody owes Howard Dean an apology. Over the past few days, the former Vermont governor and Democratic Presidential candidate has endured a barrage of bad press and nasty commentary, simply because he expressed honest doubts about the government's latest terror alarm. Republican pundits and politicians predictably denounced him. Senator John Kerry disowned Dr. Dean's remarks, and Senator Joe Lieberman went further, suggesting that anyone who harbors such doubts must not be "in their right mind." In short, to think that the Bush administration might issue an alert for political advantage is a symptom of madness. The latest news reports, however, indicate that Dr. Dean's suspicions were hardly unfounded. On Aug. 1, as every alert citizen knows, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge held an unusual Sunday press conference to announce that the Bush administration had raised its color-coded threat level from yellow to orange in certain selected places - in New York and New Jersey's financial centers and the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C. In his opening remarks, Mr. Ridge told America that the decision was provoked by "new and unusually specific information." The stolid bureaucrat went on with boilerplate rhetoric about the administration's brilliant performance in securing the homeland. Somewhat gratuitously, he urged us all to"understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror." Mr. Ridge did not, however, explain what he meant in describing this scary information as "new." His response to reporters who asked for more specifics was opaque and nearly incoherent. Within 48 hours, we learned why he wouldn't give a straight answer. But first, while most Democrats reacted cautiously, Dr. Dean spoke out on CNN. "I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism," he said. "It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both in it." He didn't have to wait long for a measure of vindication. Two days after the Ridge press conference, the truth about the "new" threat leaked out. On the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, various unnamed officials revealed that the data cited by Mr. Ridge was actually "three or four years old." According to the newspapers, there is no fresh evidence of a planned assault by Al Qaeda on East Coast financial institutions.	That doesn't mean Osama bin Laden's minions won't try to strike the buildings they surveyed years ago. Vigilance is imperative. But as one senior law-enforcement official confided to the Post, there was no clear reason for Mr. Ridge to hit the "orange" button last Sunday. Equally troubling was the secretary's failure to explain that the information wasn't exactly "new," although it had been obtained recently from computers seized in Pakistan. His remarks on Sunday were simultaneously incoherent and misleading. For instance, a reporter inquired whether Mr. Ridge could link "this plot" to the "pre-election threats" he had mentioned at a widely criticized July 8 press conference. "I think one could reasonably infer that this could be part of that effort," he replied. "But I don't think you necessarily should put a time frame around when these targets, if they were ultimately the subject of an attack, would be attacked. I mean, given the specificity of the information, you've got to appreciate that and consider that in light of the broader general threat to try to disrupt the democratic process." What did Mr. Ridge mean by all that tangled verbiage? He seemed to be suggesting that the threat information was indeed current. (Subsequently, he claimed that Al Qaeda had"updated" its old surveillance information last January, without citing any proof.) Cynicism about the administration's possible misuse of terror alerts has been stoked repeatedly by the performance of Mr. Ridge and his rival, Attorney General John Ashcroft, who proclaimed a sudden terror scare last spring when the President was in trouble over Iraq. Those who would still disparage Dr. Dean must account for another curious event that coincided with the Democratic convention. On July 29, Pakistani officials announced the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an alleged Al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 embassy bombings. The Tanzanian suspect had been picked up a few days earlier, but for some reason the authorities chose to display him only hours before the climactic moment of the Democratic convention. It might be almost possible to believe that this confluence was pure coincidence, except for a telltale clue: Ten days earlier, an investigative article published in The New Republic reported that Bush administration officials have been demanding that Pakistan apprehend"high-value" terrorist suspects before November - and preferably during the final few days of July.
* * * * * You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason@observer.com. FROM THE NEW YORK OBSERVER http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp

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