America on high alert after terror threat

The solemn business of commemorating 11 September has been brutally overlaid with another emotion – anxiety. Washington announced last night that it was raising for the first time its colour-coded level of alertness from yellow to orange, from "elevated" to "high". Only one category remains: red or "severe".

The new alert appeared to be focused specifically on the security of US installations overseas. "There is no specific threat to America," President George Bush said in an address at the Afghan embassy in Washington. Yet officials had not ruled out that terrorists could also be eyeing targets in America. They said they were considering arming anti-aircraft missiles deployed around the Pentagon, ostensibly for an exercise. The missiles could be used to protect America's seats of government.

The US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, said: "The US intelligence community has received information based on debriefing of a senior al-Qa'ida operative of a possible terrorist attack at a time to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States."

Mr Ashcroft added that he also had information about individuals in the Middle East plotting suicide attacks.

Noting that he was not moving America to the highest level of alert, Mr Ashcroft said he was not recommending that anniversary events be cancelled. But he urged vigilance.

The White House has advised Americans to go about their lives just as they would on any other morning in September. A strange admonishment indeed on the first anniversary of the worst tragedy ever to strike the nation and as fears of new attacks intensified.

Plans for events to mark the destruction of the twin towers at the World Trade Centre, the attack on the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania have been in the works for months. Nowhere is the schedule of remembrance more packed than in New York City itself. It will begin long before dawn with processions of bagpipers from all five boroughs towards ground zero.

Even as the White House sought to underplay any sense of drama in the new alert, it managed to create the opposite effect by confirming that Vice-President Dick Cheney had been moved to an "undisclosed location". As they spoke, the sky above the White House shuddered with the blades of a helicopter. Thus, the eyes of mourners in New York will be distracted as they attend the series of events in the city. Distracted by the sniffer labradors milling beneath them, by the sharp-shooters prowling on the rooftops above them and by the unexpected road blocks on bridges, around the United Nations headquarters and outside other landmarks.

In 12 months, New Yorkers have managed to reassert some normality in their routines. But today will bring back the sadness. The heightened security will bring back the stress and the worry.

All across the country the preparations to honour the 3,000 who died are ready. In hundreds of cities and towns, church bells and fire sirens will sound at 10.05am and 10.28am, when first the south tower and then the north tower, of the World Trade Centre collapsed. There will be memorial services, wreath-layings, and sombre concerts, but also tree plantings, naturalisation ceremonies, even a firework display. Into the single day of 11 September 2002 will be compressed the contrasting moods of an entire year; starting with the shock and grief, but metamorphosing into an outpouring of patriotism.

In millions of homes, US flags are being readied anew, feel-good symbols of American togetherness and resolve. Added to this already potent mix, will be the question of Iraq and the far-from-certain feelings in most Americans as Washington continues with its drum-beat of warnings that Saddam Hussein must be displaced. War is on the horizon.

Schools and parents are also wrestling how to deal with the day. "Young children should not watch those images again and again," Laura Bush, the First Lady, pleaded yesterday.

In a country so relentlessly dedicated to the pursuit of the dollar, the forces of commercialisation are lapping at the gates. Bookstores are overflowing with material related to 11 September (there are already 150 11 September books, from slim tomes to coffee-table slabs, to choose from); commemorative souvenirs have flooded Hallmark shops and folding tables on the pavements. And there is the urgent question: Is Kelly Clarkson, winner last week of the American Idol TV talent show, the right person to sing the national anthem at the ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial?

All the while, President Bush will be striving to recapture the mood of patriotic unity that so benefited him immediately after the atrocity. Thus, the President will attend three ceremonies, first at the Pentagon, just outside the capital, then at a new shrine to those who perished in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the fourth hijacked airliner crashed. Finally, he will travel to New York for an evening unveiling of a temporary memorial to those who died in the towers. Later he will cross the harbour to Ellis Island to address the whole nation in a television broadcast.

New Yorkers hope only that dignity, not political advantage, will be the main order of the day's many events. These will include two citywide moments of silence at 8.46am and at 9.04am; an official memorial service at ground zero, when the former mayor Rudy Giuliani will read the names of the victims; Governor George Pataki will read the Gettysburg Address; the current Mayor Michael Bloomberg will recite the "Four Freedoms" from a 1941 speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Meanwhile all of the city will be watching and waiting for the fresh attacks should they come. Every siren will make citizens jump. Every plane that passes will make them look up.