Tom Ridge Changes Tune, Now Suggests Politics Influenced Terror Alert Levels - kdka.com

Tom Ridge Changes Tune, Now Suggests Politics Influenced Terror Alert Levels - kdka.com:

Former Pennsylvania Governor and Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge is calling out former colleagues in the Bush Administration, suggesting they tried to play politics with the terror alert level.

The charge comes in a book due out next month.

Ridge claims other members of the Cabinet pressured him to raise the terror alert level shortly before the 2004 Presidential election.

He says Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pressed him to support increasing the nation's terror threat level from yellow or 'elevated' to orange, meaning 'high.'

Just four days before the election, Osama Bin Laden had issued a videotape threatening new attacks on the United States.

But in his book, Ridge says there was 'no support' within his department for boosting the threat level and he refused.

He writes: 'I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?''"