WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) — Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Monday said he plans to announce a new level to the terrorism threat alert system he hopes will keep the public better informed.
The National Threat Advisory System will be augmented with an intermediate-level threat capacity, national security news outlet Defense One reported. The current system has never been activated because it can only be used when there is a credible threat against the United States, which is a “pretty high bar” Johnson said.
“I believe in this environment we need to get beyond that and go to a new system that has an intermediate level to it,” Johnson said at a Defense One Live event, adding the new system will reflect “the current environment and the current realities.”
The advisory change comes soon after the Islamic State attacks in Paris and after a husband and wife killed 14 people and injured 21 others in San Bernardino, Calif. —an act President Barack Obama defined as terrorism during a televised address Sunday night.
Obama retired the color-coded terrorism threat-level system first put in place by former President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks.
Johnson said he will announce the new terrorism threat alert system “in the coming days” and said he hopes it will remove “some of the mystery” surrounding global terror threats.
“We need a system that adequately informs the public at large, not through news leaks of joint intelligence bulletins to law enforcement, not through leaks from anonymous government officials,” Johnson said. “We need a system that informs the public at large what we are seeing … what we are doing about it and what we are asking the public to do.”
