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Terror probe raises issue of when to alert public

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The investigation into terrorist activity is posing tough challenges for U.S. authorities such as determining how much and when to tell the public of potential threats, a terror analyst said Sunday.

"September 11 has awakened us to the fact that it is an extremely dangerous world," said analyst Brian Jenkins, speaking on the CBS news show "Face the Nation."

"The government is going to become more adept at communicating this information," Jenkins said. "We as citizens are going to have to become more adept at dealing with it."

The U.S. government announced a weeklong state of high alert Monday, and it has been extended "indefinitely," Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Friday.

Asked if the nonspecific threat that sparked the alert was still thought to involve only one week, Ridge said, "We're going to keep everybody on the Monday alert -- that attentiveness -- indefinitely."

Also on Friday, California Gov. Gray Davis defended his decision to reveal an FBI warning about a terrorist threat to major bridges in the West, dismissing grumbling from some federal officials who appeared to suggest he had overreacted.

"Most of these turn out to be just that, just noise," Jenkins said, adding that it is difficult to topple a bridge. "We are going to share some of that noise with the public."

Such continued warnings present local and federal officials with a challenge, said former Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who also appeared on the news program.

"The question is what do you warn?" Berger said. "We look around every room we walk in. We look at every person. It's a tough call. Nobody wants to be sitting on a piece of evidence after a terrorist incident."

The continued probe into terrorist activity since the September 11 attacks has raised concerns about the security of U.S. infrastructure, from public water supplies to energy sources and nuclear power plants.

Jenkins said U.S. authorities needed to take issues such as the security of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline seriously without worrying the public.

"The problem we have is that if we are going to catalog all of our vulnerabilities, we are going to catalog 50 items before we get off the East Coast," he said.

Journalist Seymour Hersh said U.S. investigators are hampered by what he called an outdated way of gathering intelligence.

"We have an FBI that needs to be retrained to fight terrorism," Hersh said. "We have a diminished CIA; we're using Israelis to help translate Arab-language intelligence."