Ethics

Ridge's Crazy Conspiracy Theory

By Ed Brayton

I'm sure you've all heard by now that Tom Ridge, the Secretary of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, has a new book coming out that says that he was pressured to raise the terror alert level just prior to the 2004 election in order to help Bush win.

Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, says that he refused the entreaty just before the election from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a summary of the book from publisher Thomas Dunne Books.

Ridge writes that there was a "vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion" about raising the threat level. He says his aides told the White House that doing so would politicize national security.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 24, 2009 (boomark / email).