Terror Threats Should Not Become Government Secrets

So what’s a governor to do? He’s tipped by the feds that terrorists may be plotting to blow up big bridges in his state starting the next morning.

Does he:

* Call his wife and advise her to take the longer route to San Francisco? Share the info with top aides and a few megabucks contributors?

* Or let everybody in on the secret, most important the public he answers to and is sworn to protect?

Clearly, I’m biased. As a consecrated, career news reporter--and an American hooked on democracy--I firmly believe that the more people know, the better off they are. They can decide for themselves how to size up and use information. Whether to drive onto a bridge.

It’s paradoxical that some others in the information-dissemination business have been rapping Gov. Gray Davis for, you’d think, divulging state secrets. As if information about possible bridge bombings is solely the property of the privileged, another perk for the powerful.

Davis also is tagged with “crying wolf” because nobody--except perhaps some terrorists--really knows whether those bridges might blow. Well, better that he overreact than under-inform when the subject is detonation of suspension spans at rush hour.

There have been grumblings from within the federal bureaucracy. Anonymous officials reportedly are annoyed with the governor. This figures.

Governments of every level--the Davis administration included--habitually try to hide troublesome information from the public. Anything that could embarrass themselves, invite scrutiny or rile the masses.

You can bet that riled masses lit up phone lines in the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department--on the east side of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge--after Davis’ disclosure. “I went ballistic,” Sheriff Charles Plummer said. “Now I have people scared. For what? For nothing. I wish the governor would govern and leave us alone.”

Information also is a jealously guarded commodity. And if any of it is to be revealed to the unwashed, it must be delivered with the proper spin, while preferably promoting the dispensing agency.

Such is the government mind-set.

That’s why it was refreshing Friday to see the president unhesitantly stick up for the governor--a Republican siding with a Democrat.

“As a former governor, I didn’t particularly care when the federal government tried to tell me how to do my business . . . I was elected by the people of Texas,” President Bush told inquiring reporters in the Rose Garden. “I think any governor should be able to conduct their business the way they see fit.”

There’s also a point here that keeps getting missed: This is not about spilling too much information, spooking the bad guys and interfering with the investigation of a crime. It’s about trying to spook the bad guys and prevent a crime.

As Davis told CNN’s Larry King: “If terrorists know we know they may be coming, they may not come and that is what we want. We don’t want to just clean up, you know, the dead and wounded.”

A more likely scenario if Davis had kept mum, however, is that the startling story would have leaked anyway. There were hundreds of potential leakers--not just within the governor’s inner circle, but among the National Guard, highway patrol, Coast Guard and sniffing-dog teams that were rushed in to protect the bridges.

Then we’d be moaning about an irresponsible governor trying to cover up a terrorist threat while tipping off only his wife and pals.

Of course, what nobody knows yet is how good Davis’ information was. He said it was “credible” and came from three separate federal agencies. They turned out to be the FBI, Coast Guard and Customs Service. Each essentially said the same thing: Unspecified terrorist groups reportedly were planning six attacks on West Coast suspension bridges during rush hours from Nov. 2 to Nov. 7.

The FBI alert called the information “uncorroborated” and added it “should not be furnished to the media . . . without FBI permission.” Davis considered this routine, boilerplate, FBI language. He did inform the FBI’s L.A. bureau chief just before going public and did not hear an objection.

The Coast Guard, however, labeled it “reliable information.” And Customs said its “unconfirmed, raw information” came from a source “that has been reliable and tested in the past.”

That caught the governor’s attention. Within a few hours, he was standing before TV cameras warning Californians.

Davis’ problem is he’s always chasing cameras. He’s a camera hog and a headline grabber--automatically suspected by political insiders of being an opportunist.

But that’s irrelevant here. Because Davis’ natural instinct to make news enlightened--and benefited--the public.