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 quality of this intelligence, based on multiple reporting streams in multiple locations, is rarely seen and is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information,
to date, there is no specific intelligence that tells us or indicates to us that the convention itself would be subject to an attack.
Yeah, we weren't certain, ... Still, in the context of everything else (intelligence chatter and a terror attack in Saudi Arabia), we could not set it aside and dismiss it as not credible.
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.
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.
compared to previous threat reporting, these intelligence reports have provided a level of detail that is very specific.
The intelligence that we've received over the past several weeks is ... a series of general non-specific threats against the United States.
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.
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,
Protecting this information is critically important. Shut them down and you shut down America as we know it,
Our approach at this point is to think big but begin implementing on a small scale, ... We want to get it right.