No, not really wondering. I remember this tactic being used pretty frequently and had pretty much forgotten the election eve edition. Silly me...
Ridge Says He Was Pressured to Elevate Threat Warning
By Garance Franke-Ruta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 21, 2009 5:40 PM
Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, the first director of the Department of Homeland Security, says that he was pressured by other Bush administration department heads to raise the national security-threat level on the eve of the 2004 presidential election -- a move he rejected as having such uncomfortable political undertones that it could destroy the administration's credibility.
The disclosure comes in Ridge's new book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege . . . and How We Can Be Safe Again," written with Larry Bloom and published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press. It will not hit bookstores until Sept. 1, but a copy of the book was obtained Friday by The Washington Post.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft "strongly urged" that the threat level be raised just three days before the election, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sided with Ashcroft in the "vigorous, some might say dramatic discussion," Ridge writes.
Five days before the 2004 election, Osama bin Laden had released to al-Jazeera a message critical of President Bush. "As you spoil our security, we will do so to you," he threatened.
The next morning, a Saturday, Ridge and his aides huddled at DHS headquarters.
"A threatening message, audio or visual, should not be the sole reasons to elevate the threat level," they concluded, according to Ridge. Given that protective steps had already been taken in advance of the election, "No one felt it necessary to consider additional security measures," Ridge writes
A videoconference with members of the intelligence community and relevant Cabinet chiefs followed. The position Ashcroft and Rumsfeld took provoked Ridge to wonder, he writes, "'Is this about security or politics?'"
Federal Bureau of Investigation director Robert S. Mueller III sided with Ridge, he writes, and in the absence of consensus, no recommendation was made to White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend.
Instead, a Ridge aide advised the president, who was flying on Air Force One to a campaign stop, through his aide Dan Bartlett that DHS was "strongly opposed" to raising the threat level, and by the next day the question was dropped.
"I believe our strong interventions had pulled the 'go up' advocates back from the brink," Ridge writes.
"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector."
He submitted his resignation within the month.
Other former Bush aides dispute Ridge's account. "I actually chaired the meeting and called it," Townsend told CNN on Friday. "Tom Ridge knew very well that I agreed with him that I didn't believe there was a basis to raise the threat level, but I knew there were others in the Homeland Security Council that did believe that and we agreed we'd have the conversation."
"Not only do I not think . . . that politics played any part in it at all -- it was never discussed," she said.
"In other parts of the book, Tom acknowledges that politics never played a role in any of his decisions about the threat alert system. So you have to wonder if this is not just publicity meant to sell more books," she added.
A spokesman for Rumsfeld rejected Ridge's assertion.
"The story line advanced by his publisher seemingly to sell copies of the book is nonsense," Keith Urbahn said in a statement. "During the fall of 2004, Osama bin Laden and an American member of al-Qaeda released videotapes that said in no uncertain terms that al-Qaeda intended to launch more attacks against Americans. . . . Given those facts, it would seem reasonable for senior administration officials to discuss the threat level."
The revelations in Ridge's book were first reported earlier this month by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but they drew national media attention -- and a flurry of denials from former administration officials -- only after U.S. News & World Report's "Washington Whispers" column. mentioned them Wednesday afternoon.
Ridge also reveals in the book that his relationship with Rumsfeld was distant, with the Pentagon chief rarely making himself available for meetings with his domestic security counterpart.
And Ridge says that he was never invited to a White House National Security Council meeting, that he was routinely "blindsided" by an information-withholding Federal Bureau of Investigation during Oval Office briefings, and that his efforts to establish regional Homeland Security offices in New Orleans and six other major cities in the years before Hurricane Katrina were thwarted by bureaucracy.
The man who oversaw America's airport screening was himself singled out for screening more than two dozen times, he reports.
Threat-level warnings became a subject of controversy in 2004 after one rise was declared just days after the Democratic National Convention that summer. The move was seen by some at the time as redirecting public attention toward an issue where Bush was stronger (terrorism) and away from questions about the war in Iraq being raised by challenger Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
Some of the intelligence behind the alert was ultimately revealed to be three to four years old, though newly obtained.
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland of Security," Ridge said at the time.
In the book, he admits that the public skepticism that greeted that warning helped inform his thinking heading into the pre-election discussion.
"We could fairly predict the public outcry of a national threat alert without sharing specific and credible information to justify it on the eve of an election," he writes. " . . . [W]e knew there was a widespread suspicion of such motives and tactics, and this could entirely undermine the credibility of not just the department, but the administration."
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