"Former DHS Secretary, Tom Ridge" ~ CNN

Ridge talks about his experience at DHS
Nick Hoover | Washington | April 18

The Agonist - I met former homeland security department secretary Tom Ridge tonight after a talk at American University's Washington College of Law.

He was surprisingly candid with the audience and then with me and others who were able to speak with him for 20 minutes or so after his talk ended.

I've distilled the interesting and newsworthy parts of his talk and post-talk comments after the jump. Some of the topics covered: national ID cards, sharing information among agencies and with local law enforcement, the early days of the department, the terror alert system, border security and the "minutemen."

Ridge said that there are still some agencies that make mistakes sharing bad or not enough information with local law enforcement, especially the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“Sometimes the Joint Terrorism Task Force doesn’t share and sometimes they share too much,” he said.

One example he cited was a recent case in Massachusetts, where shoddy information was given to local officers regarding four Chinese terror suspects and a possible dirty bomb.

“We pulled our little group together and within 10 minutes we knew these guys weren’t credible,” Ridge said of the intelligence that led to that premature warning.

The intelligence was based on fake documents that had been found in Texas and that it was all too obvious, the work of sloppy amateurs, he said.

“Sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot and create some anxiety out there,” he acknowledged.

He said a central mission of the DHS is to make sure that good intelligence is disseminated properly to police.

“That is one of the greatest contributions the DHS can make,” said general counsel to the 9/11 commission Daniel Marcus, who helped moderate the discussion with Ridge.

Ridge said that before the formation of the DHS, the FBI had a culture where, even when they had information, they were still reluctant to tell local law enforcement because of issues of jurisdiction.

On national ID cards:

Despite language in the legislation that created the DHS, there is a need for a national identification card and the country is evolving in that direction anyway, Ridge said.

“We need fingerprints and one of these days we’ll have irises and some day you might have your DNA on a chip,” he said.

This would not only be good for counter-terrorism purposes, it would also help with identity theft and immigration, he added.

Noting he has been pushed to secondary screening three times himself, a national ID card would help stop unnecessary stoppages, he said.

But the best solution to security is to deal with it globally, he said.

“We need to make a concerted effort for the world to create documentation verification,” he explained.

And the United States should be a leader.

“If we’re going to ask the rest of the world to do this, we’ve got to do it first,” he said.

However, security is not the only or ultimate angle the government should look at to stop terrorism, he said, noting that rulers have to be perceived as legitimate because one of the root causes of terrorism are strong feelings of disenfranchisement and persecution.

On technology:

There are promising developments in technology for DHS, Ridge said.

“Some of the biggest advancements have come from the science of detection,” he said.

For example, one that he seemed very excited about is one in which containers at ports would be photographed and x-rayed and the results would be matched against the ship’s manifest. As I understood it, the photographs would somehow be analyzed for physical data to help agents decide if the actual contents of the shipping container match up with the supposed contents. He noted that the manifest will have already been matched to a complicated algorithm that is now in place and being used.

However, he said that there needs to be a better funding model so that advancements that come out of research project arms like DARPA can quickly make it into the public domain, although he also said he understands the problems (i.e. taxation and congressional action) inherent in the probable necessity of public funding of such programs.

On trouble organizing the department in the early days:

Ridge said that among the biggest difficulties in forming the Department of Homeland Security was integrating various agencies into the new paradigm.

“From day one, we began branding ourselves differently,” Ridge said. “That’s not just a seal … that’s the way we treat each other and go about our jobs.”

Each of the agencies coming on board with DHS had had their own cultures stemming their own bureaucracies, rules and regulations, he explained.

One of the agencies that had to change the most was the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which Ridge called a “dysfunctional agency” with a “Byzantine set of rules.”

On jurisdiction:

Although the Terrorist Screening Center falls under the Department of State, Ridge and his colleagues at DHS “thought [it] should be ours and still think counter-terrorism screening should be ours.”

On the future of terror alert system:

Although he acknowledged the issues people have raised with the terror alert system, he said that it is necessary and applauded its ability to speak to both the public and law enforcement.

“I hope it survives. I think it’s an excellent system,” he said.

One of the important things that DHS has tried to do is add context and meaning to publicly announced terror warnings, Ridge said.

“Ashcroft, Mueller and Tenet would go out and tell America ‘the threat will be worse tomorrow’,” he said with a sigh. “’Have a good day’.”

“You can do it like that,” he added, but it’s important to give as much information to people as you can so as to assuage fears while simultaneously giving people fair warning.

However, sometimes the news media are incredibly quick to find out and report the information. Ridge related a story in which the cabinet secretaries had decided to raise the threat level. He was “literally walking up the stairs” to tell the President about their intention, but CNN scooped him.

On decisions to raise the threat level:

Ridge also talked a little bit about the decision-making process surrounding raising terror alert levels.

The action is a cabinet-level group decision by “half the cabinet,” he said.

The DHS is the least inclined of the departments to raise the threat level and the most inclined to share necessary intelligence with law enforcement, he added.

On message:

Ridge acknowledged that in the first few days after the initial cases of anthrax were discovered in 2001, the government was not speaking with one voice.

However, he said, “it was a good foundation to build on the department.”

On the role of the DHS:

There have been extensive discussions to discern what role DHS has or will have in intelligence gathering and analysis, Ridge said.

“The role of the intelligence unit is somewhat circumscribed in the legislation” that created the DHS, he said.

He explained that although he thinks the public doesn’t want DHS collecting intelligence on the public, they do want good analytical capabilities.

For example, there have been times when the FBI and CIA have made conclusions based on data that was analyzed by the DHS, but the DHS disagreed with those conclusions and were found correct, according to Ridge.

“We may not be as large, but we match them in our analytical capability,” he said.

On the formation of the border agency:

Another story he relayed was about the creation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has brought several former border control agencies under one roof.

He said that despite 40 years of studies suggesting creation of one overarching border agency, when he decided he wanted one and brought it to the homeland security council, it went nowhere because the council voted it down.

But nine months later, the President brought it up with them and a totally different response came, characterized by Ridge as “Great idea, Mr. President.”

“That’s the way it works,” he said as the audience laughed.

On personnel:

He said that when they first brought up the idea of the new pay scale and personnel system at the DHS, they ran into much expected resistance from unions.

“They said to me, ‘it’s never been done before’,” Ridge said. “I told them that’s not a reason not to do it.”

He added that the new system will probably be completely implemented by April 2007.

On the "minutemen":

He had some strong words for the Minutemen now staking out the Mexican border for illegal immigrants.

“I’m just not big on vigilantes enforcing the law.”

“If they feel that strongly about it they should come in and do some paperwork to free up some space for agents to go out in the field.”

“They’ve got Lou Dobbs making a career out of it.”

“If you feel that strongly about it then raise your taxes and have your local law enforcement down there doing it.”

And finally...

Ridge and his colleagues initially wanted to have an undersecretary for weapons of mass destruction, but they thought it sounded too ominous