Tom Ridge: I Was Pressured To Raise Terror Alert To Help Bush Win

Rachel Weiner
Huffington Post
Aug. 23, 2009

Homeland Security chief: 'We don't do politics' (Tue. Aug. 3 2004)

Days after raising the terror alert, officials at the Department of Homeland Security are on the defence over reports that their intelligence was three or four years old.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge admitted the information dated back to 2000 and 2001, but he said it was updated "as recently as January of this year."

"I don't want anyone to disabuse themselves of the seriousness of this information simply because there are some reports that much of it is dated, it might be two or three years old," Ridge said.

"This is the most significant, detailed pieces of information about any particular region that we have come across in a long, long time, perhaps ever," he said.

The terror alert came a week after Democrats nominated John Kerry as their presidential candidate, who is now neck-and-neck with Bush in the polls.

Ridge denied that the timing of the terror alert was politically motivated. He said the information was released now because it was just uncovered in Pakistan.

"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Ridge said. "Our job is to identify the threat."

His comments follow a meeting with the governors of New York and New Jersey, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City at Citigroup Center in Manhattan.

Citigroup is among several buildings reportedly cited as terror targets. Other buildings include:

* The New York Stock Exchange in New York City
* The International Monetary Fund in Washington
* The World Bank buildings in Washington
* Prudential Financial in Newark, N.J.

Ridge raised the terror alert on Sunday from "elevated" (yellow) to "high" (orange). He said officials had received "new" information that attacks could take place at what Ridge called "iconic" financial institutions.

While this isn't the first time the terror alert has been raised a level, officials say this threat is the most specific to date since 9/11.

Ridge said the attacks could be carried out in three ways -- as a physical attack, an outside cyber-attack, or an attack from the inside to disrupt operations. He added that the apparent "preferred method of attack" was a truck or car bombing.

U.S. officials say the documents and pictures that led to the terror alert largely came from Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, also known as Abu Talha, who was captured in mid-July in Pakistan.

A Pakistani intelligence official alleges that Khan, a computer and communications expert, sent messages to suspected al Qaeda members using code words.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former agent with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said he expects more and more of these terror alerts to be issued leading up to the Republic Convention in September, and the U.S. election in November.

"It is the insidious nature of terrorism, it can hit at any time and any place," he told Canada AM.

CTV's Denelle Balfour, in an interview with Canada AM, said workers will still face tight security when they go to work on Tuesday, despite a lack of terror activity on Monday.

"New Yorkers are taking all of this in stride," she said. "It's business as usual."

In related news, the pedestal in the Statue of Liberty is reopening Tuesday to the public. It was closed after the 9/11 attacks.

With files from The Associated Press"We went over backwards repeatedly and with great discipline to make sure politics did not influence any national security and homeland security decisions," former White House chief of staff Andy Card told Politico. "The clear instructions were to make sure politics never influenced anything."

"Under no circumstance was Tom Ridge or anyone else directed to change the threat level," former homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said. "It didn't work that way, and it certainly didn't work that way in 2004. It was always an apolitical process."

It seems that no other former top Bush political and national security officials were willing to respond.

* * * * *

In a new book, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge reveals new details on politicization under President Bush, reports US News & World Report's Paul Bedard. Among other things, Ridge admits that he was pressured to raise the terror alert to help Bush win re-election in 2004.

Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Dave Weigel, writing for the Washington Independent, notes that in the past, Ridge has denied manipulating security information for political reasons. In 2004, for example, he said, "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security."

"What Tom Ridge disclosed confirms our worst suspicions," said Sen. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who criticized the color-coded system back in 2003. "Just like they did in Iraq, the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to cause fear in the public to further its political goals."

The Bush administration was forced to admit in the days after the 2004 alert that it was based on intelligence three or four years old. Officials then claimed there was a previously unmentioned "separate stream of intelligence" that justified the warning -- but offered little tangible information to support their new story..

ThinkProgress recalls, the AP reported that "even 'some senior Republicans' privately questioned Ridge's timing of a terror alert that came just three days after the Democratic National Convention."

Ridge's book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again," comes out September 1.

UPDATE: Former Bush administration officials are vehemently denying Ridge's statements.