The POSH affair was just that, a venn diagram of bold-face names from New York High Society and Haute Fashion crowds. The dress code for the evening was POSH and the crowd did not disappoint. Iris Apel was a resplendent bird of paradise in chartreuse silk Ralph Rucci, festooned with costume jewelry and her signature black-rimmed glasses. Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera drifted in a little later and chatted with Vanity Fair's Bob Colacello and Lady Jane Spencer-Churchill. Emilia and Pepe Fanjul were on hand to support their friend and fellow host, Pauline Pitt. Mrs. Pitt's daughters were also in attendance: Dr. Samantha Boardman Rosen and Serena Boardman Theodoracopulos. Waiters wafted around pushing through the long palm leaves that hung in front of them like stage curtains, bearing flutes of champagne and full-to-the-brim glass es of cold white wine.

Lorry Newhouse was in a floral creation by Rodarte. Her husband Michael, who runs the newspaper division of Condé Nast, looked natty in a striped purple suit. When we complimented him on his choice, with the speed of a flasher, he showed us the bordello-red lining of his jacket.

When the recipient of the POSH Fashion Visionary Award herself arrived, Vanity Fair Special Correspondent Amy Fine Collins, she was instantly swarmed by admirers. With her raven-black elfin hair and a designer's dream slim physique, Ms. Fine Collins takes very classic clothes and makes them cool. Last night was no exception, as she arrived in hot pink Carolina Herrera accessorized with dangling emerald and diamond earrings. She was accompanied by her daughter, Flora, a poised 17-year-old. "I'm wearing Alice and Olivia" she said, "except for these," she noted pointing at her rhinestone covered spike heels, "these are hers" she said pointing to her mother. (Later we looked at the label, "Manolo Blahnik," Flora said, sounding almost apologetic.)

Designer Naeem Khan chatted to Anthony Todd with his wife Ranjana, who wore a dress of her own creation that could have come straight from the set of Pirates of the Caribbean, complete with sheer netting and shells. They mused on why the sale was called POSH, "I don't know, but it's a word we use in India a lot," said Ranjana, "we were all taught the Queen's English."

Stacey Bendet had taken POSH to a new level by carrying her own flask full of Champagne. "It's Caitlin's birthday," she said by way of an excuse, pointing to one of the girls, her fingernails painted in jail-stripe black and white. 

Guests were finally herded into the Plaza's Belle Époque-inspired dining room. The Observer sat next to the king of fur, Dennis Basso, who told us that he used to volunteer for Lighthouse and read to the blind. "I thought I'd be reading them journals, magazines and so forth. They gave me a man who was studying microbiology and I had to read these incredibly complicated scientific tracts to him. Every other word, he'd have to make me stop and explain it to me. The blind man was telling me how to read!  We soon decided that it wasn't for me and that I was much better at recording readings." 

The evening's hosts got up one by one to make speeches. Co-founder and Lifetime Visionary award winner Kim Baker Campbell made a sweetly rambling speech in her 1930's movie star tones about her "entire Baker family" and named them all, including step-children.

Bergdorf Goodman's SVP, Women's Fashion Director Linda Fargo also received a Lifestyle Visionary award and finally explained the origins of the word POSH. It came from traveling in the best cabins on the legendary Cunard Cruise Line to from England to India, those which avoided the glare of the sun: Port Out and Starboard Home.

As the clock stuck the witching hour (in this case about 10:15) guests drifted out the door, their multi-colored frocks spread out into New York's city streets like a rainbow fan. -Daisy Prince

The government's "partners" in this month-long, well-meaning public-awareness campaign will include many national groups, including the American Red Cross, the National Association of Broadcasters and the Advertising Council. Newspapers and airwaves will be saturated with messages urging worried citizens to learn how to cope with "emergencies."

Presumably the September campaign will improve considerably on Secretary Tom Ridge's earlier advice, such as wrapping windows in cellophane secured with masking tape to thwart poison gas. How could anyone criticize the idea of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts helping their neighbors prepare to escape a terror attack?

Let's hope that Mr. Ridge can set politics aside when he inaugurates this campaign. (For a darkly amusing chart that plots terror alerts against the President's poll ratings and various political events, see http://juliusblog.blogspot.com. These bloggers could never function as journalists-they're too independent, skeptical and creative.)

Unfortunately, the news that has emerged about the administration's bungling of its latest orange alert suggests otherwise. Their first mistake came when Mr. Ridge misled the press about the information that prompted him to elevate the threat level on the Sunday after the Democratic convention. The alert was based on information that was at least three years old. His remarks obfuscated that truth.

Administration officials quickly explained they had acted on the basis of current intelligence that amplified the alarm raised by the old computer files. But Mr. Ridge's British counterpart, Home Secretary David Blunkett, soon denounced the entire exercise.

Writing in a London newspaper on Aug. 7, the British counterterror chief asked acidly: "Is that really the job of a senior cabinet minister in charge of counter-terrorism? To feed the media? To increase concern? Of course not. This is arrant nonsense."

According to press reports, the Bush administration's closest allies in the Blair government were "dismayed by the nakedly political use made of recent intelligence breakthroughs both in the U.S. and in Pakistan." The Brits simply didn't believe there was any imminent threat justifying a public alert.

That brings us to the second, more serious error committed by the Bush administration last week. To justify the Ridge announcement, unnamed officials revealed that an Al Qaeda operative arrested in Pakistan had provided fresh information. On Aug. 2, The New York Times named the captured operative, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.

Leaking Mr. Khan's name enhanced nobody's safety-with the possible exception of certain Al Qaeda members warned of their own impending capture when they read the morning newspapers. For within a few days, Reuters reported that following his arrest, Mr. Khan had been "turned." A computer expert picked up in Lahore, he was said to be helping the authorities break up terrorist cells in Britain and the United States.

Security officials in London are still enraged because the Khan leak from Washington forced them to act too precipitously, rushing to arrest 13 suspects in broad daylight raids across Britain the next day. No doubt the C.I.A. officials whose high-tech tracking efforts led to Mr. Khan's capture felt similar frustration. In a war against terrorist groups that have proved nearly impossible to penetrate with human agents, the loss of such a well-placed turncoat could prove tragic.

There is no question about who perpetrated the leak. On Aug. 8, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice admitted that the administration had disclosed Khan's arrest to The Times "on background." Experts around the world are still astonished by this reckless decision.

"The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse," said Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane's Defense publications. "You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place?"

That is the pertinent question, and the answer is all too obvious.

What useful purpose was served by Mr. Ridge's press conference remains unclear. His defenders say that he would be mercilessly criticized if he failed to warn the public about a real attack. But the problem during the months before 9/11 was not the government's failure to post constant vague alerts of impending disaster, true as they eventually would have proved to be. The problem was that the agencies and individuals responsible for protecting the United States, including the President, failed to mobilize and act together, despite many warnings from within and outside the government.

It is encouraging that American intelligence agencies and their allies in Britain and Pakistan have begun to roll up Al Qaeda cells. It is troubling that their efforts were compromised for political advantage.