Tom Ridge
Tom Ridge
Thomas Joseph "Tom" Ridgeis an American politician who served as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security from 2001 to 2003, and the first United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005. Prior to this, Ridge was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1995 and the 43rd Governor of Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2001. He is a member of the Republican Party...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth26 August 1945
CityMunhall, PA
CountryUnited States of America
The bottom line is that homeland security is not about one department, one level of government or one organization, ... It is a national call to action, a philosophy of shared responsibility, shared accountability, and shared leadership.
a very unfortunate characterization of the work that people are doing.
As of today, we now have full nationwide connectivity to the Homeland Security Operations Center, a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week nerve center for homeland security information and incident management,
that those who would do us harm may choose that date or any time around the commemorative period to do us harm again.
compared to previous threat reporting, these intelligence reports have provided a level of detail that is very specific.
An emergency is not the time to plan; it's the time to react, so be informed, ... The actions you would take in a conventional attack may be counterproductive if you took them in response to a different kind of attack.
Anybody that's spent any time combating terrorists ... will tell you that being old doesn't necessarily mean being irrelevant, ... Good intelligence can be appropriate, no matter how old it is.
are the result of offensive intelligence and military operations overseas, as well as strong partnerships with our allies around the world, such as Pakistan.
Sometimes people confuse the notion that you're going to compromise sovereignty with collaboration.
That's nothing more than sharing some information that may be relevant to pilots and may be relevant to the law enforcement community. Nothing more, nothing less,
You might want to access those dollars as well, ... tap into this existing resource.
Your characterization of it as being a significantly different threat environment, based on what we historically have heard, is absolutely correct, ... So there certainly is a diminution, reduction in the amount of intelligence, and the decibel level is lower.
You ought to consider it potentially a terrorist event because it looked like he was equipped to do massive harm and damage to people, ... Unfortunately, there's some very troubled people within our own country and we've seen they can act out and we have to be prepared and ready for them as well.
These credible sources, ... suggest the possibility of attacks against the homeland around the holiday season and beyond.