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Wed 4 Aug, 2004 07:02 am
Ridge was asked whether the present warnings and alerts were politically inspired and issued to aid in Bush's election campaign. To which Ridge responded "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security. I wonder how valid that denial is? The funds allotted for homeland security are being distributed not where there is the greatest danger of terrorist action and there is the most need. They are being distributed based upon where they will do the most good politically. It is good old pork barrel politics in play. The distribution issue was noted in the commissions report. Will it make an impression on the administration. I wonder since the need is greatest where Bush's support is the weakest.
Do you believe Homeland Security plays politics?
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: August 4, 2004
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 - In an election that could well turn on questions of war and peace, danger and safety, all politics sometimes seem to be security these days. And all security has an unmistakable overtone of politics, whatever the reality or immediacy of any announced threat.
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday in dismissing any suggestion that his latest threat warning had a political motive. But on Sunday, Mr. Ridge, a former Republican congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, did do some politics all the same, when he declared that the intelligence behind his alert was "the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/politics/campaign/04assess.html?th
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