State Of The Union: Living under code orange

By Ray Suarez
In Washington DC

The latest in Radio 4's series of personal views on the US presidential election comes from journalist and author Ray Suarez.

He reflects on life in today's Washington DC, and says the constant fear of attack has prompted many people to consider which of the candidates would be able to keep them safe from terrorists.

US authorities consider Washington a possible al-Qaeda target

At the start of this month the Department of Homeland Security raised the threat alert in Washington and New York from code yellow (elevated risk of attack) to orange (high risk of attack).

Nothing looks very different around here.

I don't run extra fast to the front steps to get my morning paper or wear a helmet on my morning commute.

I don't keep my kids indoors all day, and I haven't wrapped my house in plastic.

And that's part of the problem.

We aren't really sure - either here in Washington, where I live, or in New York, where I'm from - just what we're supposed to do, except be more worried.

Worry without end, amen.

There is no goal to the worry. No end date, no expiration, no arrest or conviction or military victory or ceasefire or anything we've been told about that will bring the president to the television screen to say, "That's enough."

This all started the way the Department of Homeland Security started - with the terrorist attacks of 2001.

My house is now somewhere on the front line in some strange new kind of war

I was on a bridge crossing the Potomac River in Washington on the morning of 11 September and watched massive clouds of smoke belching from a frantically burning Pentagon.

Jet patrols

What you heard over and over during those first days almost three years ago was a variation on the following: The world has changed. Nothing will ever be the same again.

So my house, just a mile or so from the vice president's house and a few more miles from the White House, is now somewhere on the front line in some strange new kind of war.

Late at night I can stare at the ceiling and listen to the sound of fighter jets on intermittent patrols over Washington.

It sounds like they turn around and scream back to the capital somewhere right over my head.

FBI investigations failed to find who was behind the anthrax attacks

My local post office was for a time believed to be contaminated by whoever sent anthrax-tainted letters to a United States senator.

Unfortunately I was in my car a few blocks away from the post office when a worker sounded the alarm.

I was close enough to be stuck for a long, long time and too far away to know why.

Off kilter

We stopped getting mail, started, then stopped again.

When mail did resume, it arrived warped and strange. It had been plunged into water and dried and delivered.

The gas bill hadn't come. The electric bill hadn't come.

Both companies reissued their bills and told us not to worry about late payment.

Yet my neighbours and I don't live under siege.

Imagine trying to be worried all the time. Could you do it?

We aren't constantly scanning the skies or looking over our shoulders. But life is slightly off kilter. Everything's normal until, suddenly, it's not.

The other night I took my daughter to a reception for a national journalists' organisation at the historic Union Station right near the Capitol Dome. Seventy thousand journalists were trying to get into the station.

Normally it wouldn't be a problem but, with heavily armed police searching bags and guards and magnetometers blocking the doors, getting into the station was suddenly a complicated and time-consuming trial.

After 40 minutes in the queue I was still half an hour from the door.

I gave up. Though it did look like a nice party.

Snipers

Family was in town this week and I was showing them around, and that exercise forces you to look at a place through their eyes.

The street in front of the White House is torn up, impassable, never to be opened to cars and trucks again.

The snipers you always suspected were on the roof of the White House are now patrolling, visible, bristling with heavy weapons, even waving to tourists.

Ronald Reagan's funeral was guarded against attack

Recently I watched police set up road blocks not far from my house, as the security cordon around the National Cathedral for Ronald Reagan's funeral.

Now, instead of just being a traffic problem or a crowd control problem, the funeral of a former president has to be treated as a terrorist target.

A fleet of tow-trucks pulled all the parked cars off the street for a mile near the cathedral and God knows where they towed them.

World capital

One of the nicest aspects of daily life here was the feeling that we Washingtonians were small shareholders in the life of a world capital.

Our kids visited embassies on school outings. Our meals out in restaurants were suddenly distracted by the hubbub at the front door as the speaker of the house or a cabinet member strolled in.

A trip to a Saturday Little League game could be unexpectedly delayed as motorcycle escorts zoomed into view and the king of somewhere or other sped by.

Then it was possible - as I did - to run into the then-Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, alone in the men's clothing section of the department store around the block from my house, doing his Christmas shopping.

Now, after he was targeted in the anthrax attacks, he's better protected.

It's always been noted with pride that any citizen can drop in and visit the office of his or her congress member or senator.

It's still true; it's just harder to do.

Capitol Police check all vehicles on Independence Avenue

Instead of just popping in, you are now met by guards far from the entrance doors to the Capitol.

You are searched, scanned for dangerous objects, asked to call ahead to let the Congressional Office staff know you're on your way.

It's still open; at the same time just a little more closed.

Because of the work I do, people assume I know more than they do about terrorist information or about what's really behind the new threat level.

Hyper-cautious

My sister-in-law got in touch to ask me whether I thought it was safe for her to go to Spain on holiday.

I laughed right out loud, probably not the reaction she was looking for.

Then I reminded her that she lives a mile and a half north of the United Nations. I live in Washington.

If we were both approaching our lives with the hyper-caution she was thinking about in approaching a Spanish holiday, we would pack up our kids and run from our homes. But we don't.

But some do.

My brother, working in law enforcement in lower Manhattan at the time of the 2001 attack on New York, got himself transferred to a remote, rural part of New York state.

He is a brave and decent officer. The attack didn't scare him away necessarily, but it knocked some of the fight out of him.

Living in New York City just started to seem too hard.

Would another attack send voters rallying to the president or prove he hasn't made them safe?

We visited other friends at their home in rural Vermont last summer. The woman of the household had been working across the street from the World Trade Center towers and watched them fall.

They packed up the kids, cashed in their chips and headed for the woods.

Everybody has a personally calibrated meter for these calculations.

And of course, with the election just around the corner, everybody's asking themselves, "Which of these guys is going to make me safe - Bush or Kerry?"

Bush leads the opinion polls when it comes to the question, "Who can best protect the United States from terrorism?"

But what effect would another attack have?

Would it send the voters rallying to the president? Or prove that George Bush hasn't made them safe?

Expense

Though we hope we never get the answer, Americans do believe another attack is on the way.

It's all incredibly expensive too.

Hundreds of millions of dollars - some local, most federal - has been spent to make it harder to attack Washington.

Since the federal government is now spending almost $500 billion more for this year than it's going to collect in revenues - and will do the same next year - it's safe to say we'll be paying for all of it for decades to come.

For those who still work around the places considered prime terrorist targets, a kind of gallows humour has evolved

Now, Washington's peculiar.

It's a federal city, not part of any state, and not fully self-governing.

We are wards of the Congress, with no elected representatives to the national legislature.

Imagine London with no MPs.

So the people who live in the capital have no say in these security decisions.

Alert fatigue

And even people who agree with them find that a little hard to take, as our local government - constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy - is ordered to upgrade security and then has to beg the federal government for the millions to do it.

A security expert on television the other day referred to "alert fatigue" - a sense that, 35 months into waiting for the next blow to land, people naturally let down their guard.

Imagine trying to be worried all the time. Could you do it?

It's one thing if there are subsequent attacks and that vigilance feels continually necessary.

I was thinking about the IRA Christmas bombing campaigns in the late '70s and early '80s. I was living and working in London then.

I had a feeling - along with my West London neighbours - that something really bad could happen, that telling police about an unattended parcel or a suspicious person did make sense, but even that waned after a time and the high streets returned to normal.

Humour

For those in Washington who still work in and around the places considered prime terrorist targets, a kind of gallows humour has evolved.

Just don't tell any jokes around the layers of security around the public places now. They don't laugh, and they may just escort you right off the premises.

The signals are no less confusing in New York.

The day after the terrorist alert was raised to orange there, federal officials re-opened the Statue of Liberty, which had been closed to visitors since the 11 September attacks.

Remember that old movie advert - "Be afraid; be very afraid"?

In 2004 we add, "Or... don't be afraid. It's your call."

State Of The Union is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Fridays at 2050 BST and repeated on Sundays at 0850 BST.