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
Everything we do is designed to keep planes flying, bring loved ones closer, enable sports fans to gather, help businesses stay open; in other words, to keep the country moving,
The president has given me an extraordinary opportunity to serve my country in this incredible period since September 11th, 2001.
We've engaged the law enforcement community around this country, but there are also certain things we can do within this country outside of law enforcement that would be a deterrent to an attack, ... The president's strategy gives us a road map to accomplish that.
More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it. 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 the White House was really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' We often lost the argument.
While there are no indications that terrorists are planning similar attacks in the United States in the near term, we have asked train and rail operators in the country to be on a heightened state of alert,
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.
It all adds up to this: your country is ready, not waiting,
In spite of everything we have done, we are only at the beginning of what will be a long struggle to protect this country from terrorism,
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,
America is a country that will not be broken by fear. And instead, America is a country blessed with citizens marked by goodwill and great resolve.
We do not know how long it will take to defeat the scourge of terrorism or how many Americans will give their lives for the cause. But we do know one thing with absolute certainty: The passengers and crew of Flight 93 won the first battle,
These credible sources, ... suggest the possibility of attacks against the homeland around the holiday season and beyond.
And they are constantly evaluating procedures, both in the United States and elsewhere, to find gaps in our security posture that could be exploited.
Protecting this information is critically important. Shut them down and you shut down America as we know it,