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
I hope that in a post-9/11, post-Katrina world, there wouldn't be a mayor in the nation who wouldn't go back to the drawing board and say, 'What have I done in terms of communication systems?'
I just met a fireman who was trying to save somebody else's house when his went up in flames, ... In the operations center, there are a couple of people on duty today -- 12-hour shifts. They lost their homes, but they know they still have a job to do, and maybe their presence will help save somebody else's homes.
Clearly, we could provide enough security to put the mass transit systems out of business, ... Trying to find that balance is something we need to do.
Clearly, Canada is not going to send troops to Iraq. That's just a fact and you've made that decision ... so that's off the table. But maybe we re-engage on softwood, re-engage on missile defense. It's an opportunity.
In the meantime, as on the other occasions when the national threat level has been increased, we encourage members of the public to continue their daily work, family and leisure activities with a heightened awareness,
If you make it a referendum on a president with a 67 percent approval rating, you shouldn't be surprised if the election goes against you.
By and large, I think you're going to see any country that hosts Olympics -- it's a wide international stage -- to go to those lengths to provide maximum security,
George wants to win but he won't divide us to do it,
We want visitors from abroad to continue to come to the United States, but we also want to secure our borders,
We had specific information that needed to be acted upon relative to the Air France flights.
We are working with the pilots' association in Great Britain and other foreign carriers, ... We hope to convince them in time that, on targeted flights, the use of well-trained air marshals adds another level of security for international travel.
We don't want to broadcast to everybody where we're going to be doing this, but those areas and elements within the private sector, they have already been contacted and they understand that for the time being we want to maintain a similar level of security,
When our incident management team and our coordination center was notified (of the explosion), within in a very short period of time ... we knew what was going on at the local (and) state level, ... We engaged immediately in conversations with the Coast Guard, the EPA, the Health and Human Services.
with as much information as possible as quickly as possible.