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From After: How America Confronted The September 12 Era

After the White House memorial ceremony, Ridge met with the President and the Homeland Security Council to get final sign-off on the color alert system. For several days now there had been a good deal of back and forth on the details of Ridge's plan, which called for four color categories: white, yellow, orange, and red. This meeting was intended to nail it all down.

First, Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten chimed in that he didn't like using white because it didn't show up clearly on the charts being displayed and, therefore, would look bad on television. That was an issue that had come up repeatedly in the last few days. The President sided with Bolten. That raised the question of whether to change white to blue or to green. But Bush suggested that they use both -- that a color, green, should be added to the four as the lowest threat level, in order to suggest a base mark goal that they might not ever get to, but should still be there. Blue would then be the second lowest level, and the alerts would now be five colors: green, blue, yellow, orange, and red.

Then came the issue of what level they should start out with when Ridge made the color scheme announcement, scheduled for tomorrow.

Some, including Ashcroft, wanted orange, the second highest level. But Bolten wanted it to be blue, the second lowest. Bolten seemed to be prevailing when Karen Hughes, Bush's counselor, suggested that based on what she knew about the protective measures being taken near her home in Virginia, and the general climate around the country, she thought yellow was more appropriate. She and Ridge also argued strongly against Ashcroft's choice of orange because, they said, if things got more tense but not extremely so, they'd be stuck with having to go to red when they probably wouldn't want to. The Vice President, who had been inclined to go with orange, also came around to yellow for that reason.

Let's do yellow, the President said.

Copyright © 2003 by Steven Brill