Columnist Jeff German: Ridge’s color code bleeds into confusion

Friday, Jan. 9, 2004 | 5:37 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 10 - 11, 2004

HOMELAND SECURITY Secretary Tom Ridge probably has the toughest job in the Bush administration.

Keeping the nation safe from terrorists, an enemy we often can't see or hear until it's too late, is indeed a daunting task.

But after the way Ridge handled Friday's announcement lowering the color-coded terror alert, it's clear to me -- and others such as Nevada Homeland Security Adviser Jerry Bussell -- that there's room for improvement on the coordination front.

Ridge runs an agency, after all, that receives billions of dollars in public funding to protect us. It ought to at least be clear about the threats we're facing.

"We need to have a seamless way of going up and down the alert status so we know what we're talking about," Bussell told me in the middle of a hectic Friday morning in which Ridge and the national media put another scare into Nevada officials.

Ridge held a news conference in Washington to lower the nation's post-New Year's Eve terror alert from the second highest level of orange to yellow, the third highest level.

At the 9 a.m. announcement, which came on the Sun's street edition deadline, Ridge said certain locations and sectors of the economy, such as the airline industry, would remain on a higher alert status. He didn't say orange, but that's what everyone figured he meant, unless Ridge had come up with a secret designer color between yellow and orange, such as mango.

Ridge refused to disclose what areas of the country would continue in a heightened state of vigilance, but as he spoke, CNN was flashing that Las Vegas, along with New York, Washington and Los Angeles, would remain on an orange alert.

That, of course, caught my attention as the presses were preparing to roll. So I made a quick call to the usually accessible Young.

The sheriff said he was left with the initial impression from officials in Washington that Las Vegas indeed might be on orange alert. But he added that he was heading to the office to read an e-mail he had received from Ridge's people detailing the situation and didn't want to say for sure whether that was the case.

Then I telephoned Bussell, who told me he had just been in contact with ranking homeland security officials in Washington and was assured that no areas in Nevada, including Las Vegas and McCarran International Airport, would remain at orange. Bussell said yellow was the color of the day.

A few minutes later Young called back to say the e-mail made it clear that Las Vegas was on yellow.

Young said a federal homeland security official had just told him that the CNN report suggesting Las Vegas was on orange alert was erroneous.

But as I got off the phone with Young, our federal government reporter, Jace Radke, sent word back that a McCarran spokeswoman was saying the airport had been told by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which is under Ridge, to stay on orange alert.

That was news to Young, the TSA wouldn't confirm it, and Bussell said it simply wasn't case. Bussell insisted again that all of Nevada, including the airport, was on yellow alert.

After getting additional briefings from the feds, the McCarran spokeswoman called Radke back to say the airport really wasn't on orange alert, but rather was on some sort of higher-than-yellow security level. I'm guessing mango.

If Ridge was trying to make us feel safer Friday, he didn't exactly accomplish his goal. We should feel lucky that none of this occurred in the context of a real emergency.

The brunt of the responsibility for the lack of coordination rests with Ridge, who's supposed to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

As it turned out, we got one story from Ridge, another one from local officials and still another one from the national media, which may or may not have gotten bad information from people working for Ridge.

It's enough to make you colorblind.