Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Saturday Morning News

Look at Terror Threat Codes

Aired September 14, 2002 - 09:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: America's threat alert will stay at Code Orange, at least through the next week, second-highest of five levels of alert, seen there on your screen. The Office of Homeland Security says it's playing it safe, reevaluating the threat every day.
But we've learned from a new survey that many cities are just mostly ignoring this alert system.

CNN's Patti Davis has more on that. She's live at the Washington Monument, where it's a beautiful sunny day. The softball game should be beginning shortly.

PATTI DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Hi, Miles.

In fact, that survey found that 35 percent of cities felt that that increased terror alert threat status really had no impact on them. It did not increase their level of concern. Certainly not the case here in Washington, D.C., among law enforcement. In fact, here on Washington National Mall, the U.S. park police have put double the number of officers here around the monuments than they normally do.

Now, how has that impacted tourists? And we're joined by a group of tourists here from Oklahoma. They are attending the inaugural powwow at the Smithsonian.

Can you tell me, what is the color code right now? What did they increase it to, do you know?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wasn't it orange?

DAVIS: It is, it is, orange, you got it right, good job.

Has it impacted you at all? Are you being more vigilant? Does it mean anything to you that the terror threat's now up to orange?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It makes me feel a little bit better that they have more law enforcement out, because just coming out to Washington, D.C., from Oklahoma, from our small -- or nice, quiet state, it's, you know, it's a little eerie. It makes us feel -- it makes me feel a lot better that there is more law enforcement out. I feel a little bit safer.

DAVIS: And you were saying, you were saying back home that there were some concerns about you coming out this time of year. What were people saying?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were worried because we were all women going to the capital, and it was near September 11 and everything. And so some people didn't really want us to come.

DAVIS: And what did you tell them?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We'll be OK,

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We'll be OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's not actually in the club at the college. It's the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. But it was her 18th birthday yesterday, so we brought her with us.

DAVIS: So you decided you're coming, and you're going to celebrate.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If we can go, it should be safe enough for her to go. And the drive wasn't really that bad. And we noticed a lot of security everywhere, so it makes us feel a little better.

DAVIS: All right. So these tourists feeling pretty safe here in Washington, D.C., even though that color-coded level has gone from yellow to orange. That happened last Tuesday.

As you can see behind me, a lot of touch football games going on here in Washington, D.C., people going about their business as usual.

Now, earlier today I spoke with some other tourists who were here, and one of them from New York City said, in fact, that he did know that the color code had gone from yellow to orange and said, quote, "You've just got to be fearless. If you're from New York City, you've got to go out and do whatever you have to do."

Some good advice from somebody from New York City here in Washington, D.C. -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much, Patti, we appreciate that. Enjoy the good weather as you talk to people out there.

Let's talk more about the terror alert codes. Some cities, people are ignoring them, others taking them to heart. Case in point, that woman who reported a suspected terror plot in Florida, she actually, of course, was in Georgia when this all happened.

Is this, does this prove that the system is working? Or does it prove that we're all becoming a nation of snoops on each other?

Security analyst Kelly McCann here to weigh in on this.

Kelly, good to see you.

KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Hi, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Are we all becoming snoops on each other?

MCCANN: No, I don't think so. And I think that, in fact, we don't want to discourage anybody from engaging in that kind of, you know, behavior where they think they see something reasonably suspicious and then, you know, let law enforcement know that.

I mean, as much as the students, now, the medical students who were detained, are crying this is an injustice, it would have been imprudent for us not to proceed as the police did.

And secondly, if they are saying that, you know, there was a cultural insensitivity towards them, then they exhibited a cultural insensitivity towards the United States if they had inappropriate remarks in a public place.

So, I mean, this is the human condition. A process corrects the human condition, and that's what the police did. So it sorts itself out.

O'BRIEN: All right. So it might be in excess here and there, but in the grand scheme of things, all this pretty well justified given the tone of the times?

MCCANN: Absolutely. If you think about what the police did, you could take out almost any element, and still it would have resulted in a stop. And it -- for instance, if you took out the discussion in the diner, they still had illegal and alertive behavior by running a toll booth.

And then secondly, on top of that, that pattern of behavior is consistent with drug trafficking where you have a decoy who drives erratically or at speed or does alertive behavior, hoping to bring the police to them, while the mule goes along at the speed limit.

So there are many reasons that these men could have been stopped. Add to that the discussion that was reported by the -- from Georgia, and then add to that the fact that the dogs alerted, and I think we couldn't have done anything else.

O'BRIEN: I mean, it -- when you add it all up, there's a lot of seemingly suspicious behavior here. Of course, the allegation is, on the other side, we were just talking to someone who is in close contact with those families, that this is -- amounts to prejudice, tantamount to racial profiling.

I suppose you can make a pretty strong case that profiling is justified these days. Would you go along with that?

MCCANN: Not racial profiling. Behavioral profiling, where racial profiling becomes a secondary element. Miles, if you've ever traveled across the country and have walked into a small diner in a place where you are a stranger, and you're not from around here, conversation stops and people spin in their chairs and stare at you.

And that doesn't mean you like that behavior, but that's the way people are. So we can't say that the condition right now is any different than it was previously. It's just that people are hypersensitive.

O'BRIEN: Yes, all right. Well, so what about these -- does this prove that the whole alert system -- which, when it was released, I think there was a bit of a snicker factor attached to it. Do you think it's working?

MCCANN: It's working in that the recent change to orange came from evidently the same source that revealed there was activity in Lackawanna that should have been investigated. So that link, the information link, is working.

The link that kind of breaks down is, and the inconsistency we see nationwide, is that people, state governments and city governments are pretty much left to their own design to figure out what they want to do in regard to the threat level, therein being inconsistent.

So unless it's regional information, people can choose to do absolutely nothing. The other thing is, is...

O'BRIEN: Well, I mean, you get -- as you well know, Kelly, you get into a jurisdictional thicket when you start to talk about...

MCCANN: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: ... you know, mandating things on a federal level for state jurisdictions or local jurisdictions.

MCCANN: Absolutely. But, you know, it's kind of like that scene from the "Men in Black" when Tommy Lee Jones is talking to Will, and he says to him, you know, Just think of what you think you'll know tomorrow.

People have to remember that they don't know what the federal government does. They're acting on what we've talked about before, actionable intelligence. And people don't have access to that. So sometimes what seems to be a knee jerk isn't at all.

O'BRIEN: All right. Quickly, before we get away, was it a bit of hysteria that we got caught up in yesterday?

MCCANN: No, because the airspace had to be controlled. If there was a chance there was an improvised explosive device, you have to control radio frequencies, electronic impulses, things that could set the device off. The same behavior you saw yesterday could happen at an any stadium where an unattended package was seen and people prudently, especially with an anniversary date, reacted. So I don't think that it was a knee jerk.

O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, who looks at security matters for us, as always, we appreciate your insights. Good to have you with us.

MCCANN: Thanks, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com