December 22, 2003- was the 5th time, it seems.
Christmas holidays. On the Saturday that Saddam was revealed as captured to the American people, Bush signed patriot act 2.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/05/20/terror.main/sidebar graphic which I could not open, shows the levels of terror alerts. if someone could post the graphic, that would be great.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/05/20/terror.main/Tues, May 20th, 2003
The raising of the threat level comes as the nation prepares to celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, when war veterans are remembered and large public gatherings are held.
'Reasonably spooky stuff'
On Capitol Hill, Undersecretary of Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson said intelligence indicates "terrorists continue to plan attacks against targets in the United States, and for this reason, the alert level has been raised.
"There is increased specificity in what we hear, but not necessarily in terms of the target," Hutchinson said.
It marks the fourth time the level has been raised to orange...
(This was also the time for the huge march on Washington before the invasion...also, Ashcroft and Bush had had patriot act 2 in the wings, waiting for the invasion of Iraq to shove it down America's throat, but had to pull back when someone in the DoJ leaked to The Center for Public Integrity.)
March 17th, 2003
" The last time was March 17, the day President Bush gave Saddam Hussein a 48-hour ultimatum to step down as Iraq leader. About a month later, it was lowered to yellow, or "elevated." No terrorist attacks occurred inside the United States."
Feb. 12th, 2003
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/terror030213_falsealarm.html"Feb. 13— A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.
The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.
The informant described a detailed plan that an al Qaeda cell operating in either Virginia or Detroit had developed a way to slip past airport scanners with dirty bombs encased in shoes, suitcases, or laptops, sources told ABCNEWS. The informant reportedly cited specific targets of government buildings and Christian or clerical centers.
"This piece of that puzzle turns out to be fabricated and therefore the reason for a lot of the alarm, particularly in Washington this week, has been dissipated after they found out that this information was not true," said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism chief and ABCNEWS consultant."
(the article goes on to note that the informant was not given a polygraph before his information was used to issue the heightened alert.)
the first alert was on the anniversary of 9-11, 2002.
I just found this excellent overview by the ever-wonderful quakers..
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/terror/sup/code-orange_alert-sys.htm"The first use of Code Orange covered two weeks, September 10-24, 2002, and was associated with the first anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington. The second orange alert, the "duct tape and plastic" saga, came five months later and went for nearly three weeks, February 7-27, 2003. This period included both Washington and Lincoln's birthdays and the federal Presidents' Day holiday. The four week long March 17-April 16 third alert covered most of the period of "major combat" in Iraq. The most recent Code Orange was declared on May 20 specifically because of Memorial Day (May 26) and ran through May 30. The fact that the last alert was the shortest may reflect growing (and perhaps unwarranted) confidence that higher alerts act to thwart terrorist incidents. Conversely, many observers think Washington ended the alert after eleven days simply to break "siege fatigue" before raising the alert level back to orange for the July 4 holiday -- as was nearly done in 2002.
There seems to be a pattern of tying the higher alerts to specific anniversaries or events, ostensibly on the premise (or Western bias) that terrorists always will favor a combination of symbolism and occasions when crowds might gather, thereby increasing the possibility of casualties. This tendency to highlight anniversaries has undoubtedly not escaped the attention of U.S. opponents. On the four occasions Code Orange has been announced, the justification has rested largely on non-specific credible indicators such as increased "chatter" on communications links identified as related to "terrorist" cells.
Moreover, intelligence officials were forced to admit that the February 2003 alert was based largely on fabricated information from a detained senior al Qaeda operative, as was a Christmas-time manhunt for five "infiltrators" (for which the color code was not raised).
U.S. authorities should seriously consider that intentional deception is being practiced. The fact is that since September 11, 2001, the only "terrorist" attacks within the U.S. have been the anthrax contamination, which authorities are inclined to attribute to a domestic source, and the string of pipe bombs in the rural Midwest that were left by a domestic misfit.
The suspicion that the color code system is being misused was further fueled during the Iraq war. Government officials reportedly considered adding a sub-level within orange -- one could imagine something like "flaming orange" -- for very high risk. The reason Washington did not want to go to Code Red was economics: the Administration feared such a move might further damage the economy. Moreover, Code Red would involve shutting down government facilities, which would be costly, whereas with a "flaming orange" level, federal employees could be sent to alternate work sites. And at Code Red, state and local governments, which spent $2 billion dollars on extra security during the Iraq war period, would see another spike in costs (leading to Administration-induced "fiscal fatigue" from so much fear-spinning) even if there were no specific threats directed toward their jurisdictions."
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