Newspaper Editorials Tackle Alleged Politics Behind Terror Alert

By: Charles Geraci In recent days, news outlets as varied as The New York Times, Fox News, CNN and the BBC have run stories speculating on the motivations behind the raising of the terror alert for New York, Washington and northern New Jersey -- all home to key financial sites.

Now, newspaper editorial pages are weighing in on the question.

When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raised the alert Sunday, he did not mention that much of the surveillance activity he cited was at least three years old. On Tuesday, when the age of the intelligence was revealed, government officials said that there was an indication of reconnaissance updates as recently as January. But neither Ridge nor any other official said how much of the information may have been updated.

While the overwhelming sentiment among the nation's larger circulating newspapers has been to not criticize the motivations behind the latest warning, despite credibility problems surrounding the Iraq war, The New York Times did challenge the administration's claims.

On its editorial page, the Times on Tuesday said that it was right to step up security at the terror-prone sites, "But it's unfortunate that it is necessary to fight suspicions of political timing, suspicions the administration has sown by misleading the public on security."

Then, on Thursday, a Times editorial raising questions about the terror alerts noted that the White House had "expressed outrage at the suggestion that there could be any politics behind any of its warnings, but the president has some history to overcome on this issue...Some of the past terror alerts have seemed aimless and happened when the Bush administration would have benefited from a change in the political conversation."

It also hit Tom Ridge, in his latest terror announcement, for doing "a real disservice to himself, his president and the public by giving what amounted to a campaign pitch for 'the president's leadership in the war against terror."

But the Washington Post, on Tuesday, discussing reform of the intelligence community, supported the new terror alert saying, "Better to go more slowly and get it right -- especially considering that the changes will be made in the heat of battle, as the latest warnings serve to remind."

A Los Angeles Times editorial even suggested that the specificity of the latest warning "suggests that maybe the CIA's work, including in Pakistan, where it helped guide a raid on an al Qaeda cell last week, is starting to improve."

The Chicago Tribune refuted the notion that the alert may have been, in part, politically motivated. The paper said Wednesday, "Some of the reaction to the weekend warning of an elevated terrorist threat against financial icons in New York, New Jersey and Washington was irresponsible."

The Tribune mentioned Howard Dean who said on Sunday, "I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush he plays this trump card, which is terrorism. ... It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics."

And the New York Post on Wednesday concluded, "Frankly, the administration would have been irresponsible had it not raised the terror alert and publicly disclosed this information. ... Besides, it's better to be proven wrong in sharing information about a possible attack -- than to be proven wrong in predicting that no such event will occur."