{"id":4176,"date":"2005-05-11T11:00:19","date_gmt":"2005-05-11T15:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4176.html"},"modified":"2005-05-11T11:00:19","modified_gmt":"2005-05-11T15:00:19","slug":"ridge-says-those-pre-election-terror-alerts-werent-necessary-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ridge-says-those-pre-election-terror-alerts-werent-necessary-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Ridge says those pre-election terror alerts weren’t necessary after all"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems like quite a coincidence. The Bush White House, anxious for a second term and intent on making the election about national security, would intermittently announce new terror-alert warnings to the public, each time leading to a bump in the president’s approval rating<\/a>. Sure enough, the president won and we haven’t heard another terror-alert warning since. Interesting fluke, right?<\/p>\n

And in case we didn’t have enough reason to be cynical, Tom Ridge now insists many of those election-season warnings weren’t necessary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.<\/p>\n

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or “high” risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.<\/p>\n

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation’s homeland security apparatus.<\/p>\n

Ridge said he wanted to “debunk the myth” that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.<\/p>\n

“More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it,” Ridge told reporters. “Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert). … There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, ‘For that?'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A lot of this sounds like Ridge trying to cover his butt a bit — the warnings were based on weak evidence and he doesn’t want to be the one responsible for them — but yesterday’s claim doesn’t entirely add up. Under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and Bush administration rules, only the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> can publicly issue threat warnings, and they must be approved in a complex interagency process involving the White House.<\/p>\n

Now, however, Ridge is saying he didn’t always support the warnings, but “some people were really aggressive about raising it.” OK, Tom, who?
\n
\nIf Ridge wasn’t ultimately responsible for the terror alerts, who was? And if the intelligence was weak, what motivated those who made the final call?<\/p>\n

The fact that Ridge wasn’t always on board with these warnings is not entirely new. In late-May 2004, John Ashcroft told the nation<\/a> that the U.S. is facing a new, serious threat from al Queda. He later admitted<\/a> that neither he nor Mueller had met with Ridge to discuss the latest intelligence about the alleged imminent threat. In fact, just 48 hours before Ashcroft’s announcement, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said they had no new intelligence<\/a> pointing to the threat of an attack.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, however, Ridge made it sound as if this was a more a systemic problem that led to problems on more than one occasion. If so, it’s time of Ridge to name names — and for Dems on the Hill to raise hell over this. Ridge said he was “overruled” on elevating the threat level to orange in 2004. Who overruled him? Ridge said there were some in the administration who were “really aggressive” about the warnings to the public. Who were these people and why were they so aggressive?<\/p>\n

This has the potential to be a real scandal. How long, do you suppose, until Ridge comes out and disavows everything he said yesterday?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems like quite a coincidence. The Bush White House, anxious for a second term and intent on making the election about national security, would intermittently announce new terror-alert warnings to the public, each time leading to a bump in the president’s approval rating. Sure enough, the president won and we haven’t heard another terror-alert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}